Calavera Studio - Games and comics

Posted on March 21, 2019March 21, 2019 by Felipe Porcel — Leave a comment

Version 2.0 Changes

The new version is here! Many small changes have been made, I also didn’t want to make any huge change that would make the game feel different.

For anyone who played miniDoom before, I’m sorry to say there is no new levels or additional content 🙁

So the changes for this new patch follow 2 principles to hopefully make the game more fun and not lose its essence:

1- Kill faster

2- Players should never get stuck

For the first most weapons got a damage or attack speed buff. Also some enemies might have had their HP reduced. For the second all levels have received many small changes like additional platforms in frustrating sections, better tutorials and more signs and items pointing the way. Also cruel enemy placement reduced in easier difficulties.

PLAYER:

The player can now shift the camera up or down, by standing still and crouching or aiming up. Camera returns to normal when moving. The time for the camera to start moving is short, and it starts moving slowly. I hope I landed it right and it never gets in the way of the player.

in orange: Area you couldn’t see before

Explosives:

-Rocket Launcher and grenades now use “Explosives” instead of just “Rockets”. This should clear the confusion of what ammo grenades use.

-Ammo color of Explosives is now dark Red. Souls ammo color is now white. Special ammo color is now bright yellow.

-Explosives now have new powerup sprites and upgrade sprites

-Rockets, grenades and frag grenades have new graphics

New sprites for the powerups, weapons and GUI !!!

WEAPONS

Shotguns:

Shotguns can deliver a lot of damage, but you have to land a good shot. I found out that many players had trouble doing that, sometimes because of the random nature of the bullet-spread. So I made the shotgun a lot more forgiving by increasing the amount of bullets and range. Landing a good shot should be way easier and landing a perfect shot will be very rewarding.

-All shotguns buffed (landing a full hit will now 1 shot a revenant with regular and 1 shot a caco with super)

-Attack range increased

-Number of bullets (damage) increased

-Stagger chance and duration increased

Minigun:

-Damage per bullet increased a bit to keep up with the shotgun (Still is by far the highest sustained damage weapon)

Rocket Launcher:

-Damage from projectile moved to first frames of explosion. The projectile itself does little damage now. Enemies in direct contact with the explosion as it detonates will take damage as if being hit by the rocket.

Grenades and frag grenades:

-Same change as Rocket Launcher.

-Frag shrapnel will not disappear when outside the camera.

-Frag Grenade damage reduced for shrapnel and increased for explosion and projectile (Damage slightly higher than before). This should give frag grenade damage more consistency.

Plasma Rifle

-Damage increased for both plasma rifles.

Gauss Cannon:

-Attack speed increased

-Deals 1.5 damage to shields (summoner and armored pinky). Many people selected this weapon to deal with Summoners so It seemed a good idea to make it a powerful option against shields.

Dark Claw:

-Increased damage a bit

-Added some background screens depicting its usage. I hope this will make it clear that the weapon is essentially a flame thrower.

SoulCube:

Damage changed to have a big burst of damage as cube deploys, then steadily reduces damage for duration (total damage is slightly higher before). This will make cube more effective against mobile enemies.

BFG 9000:

Every new patch the BFG gets buffed! So let’s keep doing it:

-Damage from the projectile moved to inner zone of damage. The projectile itself now does negligible damage, all enemies really close to it will take much higher damage than before (like being directly hit).

-Average damage increased for all damage zones (Max damage not increased).

-Distance for all damage zones increased.

Hazmat suit:

-Duration increased

-Amount of hazmat suits in levels increased. (Or placement improved)

DIFFICULTIES

I found that many players started playing by default in “Ultra-Violence” since it’s what they play in Doom. I lowered the difficulty of “ultra-violence” to make it more similar to “bring it on” which is also easier now.

-Hey, not too rough (easy) Added plenty of aid platforms in hard platform sections.

-Bring it on! (normal) amount of enemies reduced on most levels. Added aid platforms in some really hard platform sections.

-Ultra Violence (hard) damage received reduced. Has the old normal amount of enemies

-Higher difficulties remain as insane as ever!

Example of terrain modification in the toxin refinery.

ENEMIES

Mancubus:

HP reduced a bit

Attack speed reduced

Projectile life time greatly reduced

Cyber-Mancubus acid pool duration reduced

Lost soul:

-HP will not increase before Nightmare difficulty

Cacodemons:

-Regular caco: HP reduced

-2016 caco: Fireball range reduced, HP reduced

Pain Elemental

-HP reduced

Icon of sin:

-Bonus damage taken from direct rocket hit increased

-Brain now closes immediately after taking damage from BFG

Archvile:

-HP reduced

LEVELS

-Blind jumps reduced by adding ledges, also camera moving should help with this.

-More and bigger signs added to point out where the path or keys are on Mars levels

-Added camera blockers to improve visibility during some fights

-Reduced the amount of “red vines” in levels with red vines

The in-game rocket jump tutorial you all deserved

Many levels:

-Changed places that where annoyingly difficult. Such as places with too many death pits, or sections with too many falling platforms and no solid ground. Seeing people play these sections made me think that this difficult terrain was just not fun to play through. So many levels that had this kind of enemy or hazard placements have been changed to be more straightforward and less frustrating.

The mancubus blocking the path was not even dangerous, just tedious. Also this was supposed to be a secret section. It should be rewarding.

SECRETS:

The blood murals now clearly state that blue bottles mark secrets. Twice. I hope this helps out finding secrets. Also many secrets now more clearly pointed out by bottles, blood or tutorials.

Secret Doors:

-All secret doors received a new graphic which makes them MUCH easier to find (Many players never realized secret doors where a thing). Also tweaked background graphics to make them more obvious.

Hangar:

-Placement of some secrets changed, spread more evenly through the level

-Tutorial for secrets improved (I hope)

-1 new room! (Only new content in the game)

Toxin Refinery:

-More hazmat suits

-Tutorial for rocket boosting added

-Removed possibility to obtain the gauss cannon early. It was not good for properly learning the use of this weapon

Hell Gate:

-New background screens make it clearer to escape rather than fight during final lockdown

-Now have to activate hell portal manually before ending the level

-Rocket jump tutorial is now animated and demonstrates how to perform jump clearly

-Added plenty of ledges in places with many pits

MISC

Boxes will now shake when hit to demonstrate they receive damage

BUGS

Some bugs fixed, among the most notable:

-Tower of babel final boss fight crash fixed

-Pandemonium falling through the floor bug fixed

-Possible crash when killing an enemy that teleported in the same frame it spawned fixed

-Sounds not returning to normal from low bit mode when finishing The Abyss fixed

-Possible error when spawning the floor in the 3rd stage of the Icon of Sin fixed

Thats all for now. Happy demon slaying!

Posted on March 15, 2019March 15, 2019 by Felipe Porcel — 3 Comments

MiniDoom 2: A lovable mess

So it’s been a year since miniDoom2 came out. And how’s the game? Well… it’s a flawed thing. It’s a product that overgrew its purpose and became its own thing. A 15 minute demo that became a 6 hour long game. A mish-mash of different mechanics with a cero-budget plan. But it had enough soul to be born regardless.

It was also probably the best game design learning experience ever.

Running the game after a long time and seeing the copyright disclaimer and menu screen on my PC… running and shooting through a couple of levels and hearing the music… I can’t stop myself from really liking it. And many people like it a lot too… miniDoom2 has something that’s really catchy and endearing. Perhaps it’s the well-known enemies, sounds and guns that almost feel like old friends. Or maybe it’s the utterly ridiculous premise that somehow also makes perfect sense. Who knows, but if I have to describe miniDoom2 nowadays I’d say it’s: A lovable mess.

This makes sense, shut up!

The new patch

I won’t be talking about the new patch in this post. I’ll explain everything when it comes out, which will be in exactly 2 days, I hope. But the main goal of the patch is to make the game more fun and not change its essence. Also the patch does not contain new levels.

So let’s talk a bit about miniDoom2 one year later…

Greater than the sum of its parts

miniDoom2 was mainly made by 3 dudes (other dudes where involved too). Me (Felipe) a noob game designer, a reluctant graphic designer and a terrible programmer. The artist (JC) who was a total novice in pixel art when starting the game. The musician (Manuel) who had just finished a course on music for games and wanted try his new skills (he’s still probably the most experienced one in what he does).

We’re not what you would call a dream team.

I do think that a creation is usually greater than its creator, since it’s just the best parts. And in this case the team also elevated the whole project; I could have never made such a game as this without them and vice versa. Each one of us was passionate about a certain aspect of the game, we pushed each other to meet the enthusiasm of the team and the existing DOOM fans… that is something you can never achieve working on your own.

And somehow it worked out. Truly the game turned out greater than the sum of its small parts.

Who else got this reference??

The aftermath

So what have we been up to the last year? Well life REALLY got in the way. I can say that all the team had a lot in their plate after launching the game. We all moved into new places (some of us multiple times), also getting KNEE DEEP IN DEBT (haha), one of us got married, and various other miscellaneous shit.

There was also a big BURNOUT after the game came out… the final weeks of the game we crunched really hard (even after postponing the deadline multiple times). I can only speak for myself but, at the time I was recently unemployed so working on the game felt like my job. And damn I put some insane hours into it. Final weeks putting on the textures in the maps and finishing up the levels easily consumed 10 hours each day.

There WAS burnout…

We all took a break. And I can happily say that we are all in stable spots now 12 months later and finally looking forward to the future (yeah I have a pretty decent job now so chill). No concrete projects for the foreseeable future, we are all doing our things, for now at least.

Community

Let’s get real miniDoom would have been nothing if not for the DOOM and videogame development community. I mean it’s the only reason why we got hipped for doing a sequel in the first place!

The production of the game somehow got plenty of people interested, and the launch of the game also sparked many creators, gamers, developers, streamers, etc. to reach out and share, review or just play the game. And trust me that I watched 99% of the gameplay videos and comments. I just don’t respond all the time cause I’m just a common ape.

A great man made an epic tiny physical version to hold the game. It has a 3D printed USB drive holder for the game and a custom-made little box with a working QR and Bar Codes!! And then he sent it to us from the other hemisphere of the world. It took more than 8 months to get here but it did, and god damn it it’s a thing of beauty. Satan bless your soul M Skot Adams!

Truly a masterwork creation

Another incredible human is also making a fighting game where classic characters fight each other using the mechanics from their respective games. Sort of a smash brothers but 2D, a super cool idea! And he’s also working to get mini-doomguy in the game! Follow his game at

Then a student approached us and said his thesis work was a videogame. He asked me if it would be ok to use some sprites from the game to make his own and I told him “FUCK YES”. So I gave him all the graphics he needed. Sometime later he had made a miniDoom game in Python! He passed the exam with as he said “the highest possible mark”. Congratulations to you Axel Ribon, glad we could help!

This is the actual Python-made miniDoom!!

So in short, there are amazing people all over the world.

Giving back

So yeah we want to give back to the community, we always had the idea to release the assets for the game but never got around to it.

And now we finally are putting up a download section where you can download the sprites of miniDoom and create your own stuff! (now let’s see if we can finally make that damn Mac port…)

And finally thank you to everyone ever who commented, or gave a like, thumbs up, etc. Even for the harsh criticism (yes, that’s valuable too!) We appreciate every one of you, and THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!

Posted on August 3, 2018August 3, 2018 by Felipe Porcel — Leave a comment

Cut content: Levels

Last time I talked about the different weapons that didn’t make it into the game. This time I want to talk about a few ideas for stages that got changed or just didn’t make it in because of time.

Spire

The spire used to be a level from miniDoom1. It was that vertical level that was mostly red, this was the only level that didn’t have a name from any Doom level and I wanted to keep it in miniDoom2. I wanted a vertical level and my first idea was: climb a tree. I remember there being some weird dead trees in the first room of hell in classic Doom. So then I thought: climb a giant dead tree with ruins along the way. I don’t know, the idea sounded solid in my head.

I want dead trees and lava??

The poor artist tried rendering my mad ravings into textures. But in the end he had a better idea: FLESH. We changed the whole theme of the level to fleshy spires with meaty acidic interiors and a few ruins. Much cooler, and that’s why you need a team to challenge your ideas.

Fleshy is waaay more interesting

The great miniDoom DLC

Early on I wanted there to be 3 maps, with 6 levels each to achieve the great 666. We ended up with 2 maps with 6 levels, 4 trials and a bonus level. Most of the unused ideas I just spliced into the bonus level Pandemonium. But we also discussed the possibility of adding a third map later as a sort of free DLC or expansion. And for a time it was real in our minds, but later due to the huge time and effort it took to develop the game we realized it would be pretty much impossible.

The theoretical map of the expansion

So the idea of the “DLC” was to add a map in space around the 2 tiny moons of mars Phobos and Deimos. The story wouldn’t follow hell on earth, it would follow the Doom64 story. The demons where defeated in the moon bases, but a powerful demon that revives all of them appears: the Mother Demon.

The Mother Demon, from Doom64’s map “the Absolution”

Your mission is to go to the moons and guess what? RIP AND TEAR until they are empty again. The gameplay would include low gravity areas, the perils of outer space and new enemies of course.

The Arena

Just a mockup

The idea of the arena was an infinite level where you could test your skills in a series of never ending rooms where the difficulty would ramp. You would clear a room, get some health back then try to clear another more difficult room. There would be no reward just accumulate as many kills as you can so you can brag about your high score haha. There was a bit of work put into this before we realized it was too late to include it in the game. I’m actually toying with the idea of completing it and adding it to the next version of the game… what do you guys think? I took a long needed break from miniDoom but I’m feeling sort of refreshed nowadays.

See you next time; I’ll talk about enemies that didn’t make it into the game.

Posted on April 17, 2018April 17, 2018 by Calavera Studio — 1 Comment

MiniDoom 2, The Collector’s Edition?

So, an amazing fan (M Skot Adams), which probably should now be considered a honorary member of the team, made this UNBELIEVABLY amazing physical version of our silly game!

There’s a lot of things we could have hoped for our game, a “Limited Deluxe Collector’s Edition” has most certainly surpassed any of our expectations =)

Indie development taken to the final frontier, the real world!

Posted on April 7, 2018 by Felipe Porcel — 1 Comment

Cut content: Weapons

Hi, I wanted to do a few blog posts about the things that didn’t make it into the game. And there are MANY. So I’ve decided to split these posts into categories. The first one is WEAPONS.

Many months ago, when the weapons were still being selected, the original idea was to have 12 selectable weapons (with the supershotgun being a separate weapon from the shotgun).

This means there were meant to be three weapons that used ammo, and three that used energy cells. And what was this third weapon? Well there was a lot of discussion.

Heavy assault riffle

It was supposed to be a weapons with very fast projectiles that where very large. It had a similar function to the plasma in that it assisted aiming with its large projectiles, but was weaker. An early-game weapon.

Hellshot

Same weapon but with different look, used the hellshot from the DOOM2016 multiplayer because it looked better for using energy cells.

Hellshot mark 2

Ended up giving the large projectiles to the plasma and removing its homing capabilities. And made the hellshot a VERY homing weapon. Turned out this weapon was boring as hell. In the end the functionality of the hellshot, was split into the EMG Pistol and plasma riffle.

Hellshot graphics were reused as the Icon of Sin stage 2 attacks.

Lightning GUN

So the plasma riffle was an early game weapon, but it was too powerfull for that. To compensate for this, the player starts with a low energy cell count. I also nerfed the plasma riffle, opting for placing an upgrade for it in later stages. Back then I thought the upgrade could turn the plasma into the lightning gun, also from D2016. But I didn’t know if the homing would translate well into a hitscan weapon. In the end there wasn’t enough time to develop this weapon and it was dropped for the plasma riffle MK2. Which upgrades the fire rate, projectile speed and damage of the plasma.

Flame Thrower

Rockets where dangerous to use up close, so I knew a flame thrower-like weapon was needed. But no matter how much I looked I couldn’t find one in a doom game. The full story of this is explained in the Dark Claw dev post, but yeah the dark claw ended up being the flame thrower because using rockets for its ammo, this weapon ran out too quickly especially since it also shared ammo with grenades, quickly exhausting your options for splash damage, which is vital in the later stages.

Also the Dark Claw used to be purple since the hellshot was red.

BFG Upgrade

I thought about adding a newer version of the BFG that shot a projectile that would shoot lightning at close enemies, like the BFG froom DOOM3 and onward. Also dropped out of time constrains. We said it could be cool for a future expansion. But now the idea of an expansion seems a bit grim considering the massive effort this game took.