Hi all!

In this first post my intention is that you all know what Breaking Fast is about, and also a bit of the history of the game and the team behind it.

To sum up: Breaking Fast is a 2d Mario Kart where characters are pieces of breakfast food. In addition to the racing component, we add brawling dynamics in the line of Super Smash B. Brawl (yes, we're keen on Nintendo games). The game will be released in Spring on Steam. This is the trailer we prepared for the Greenlight campaign back in June 2016. The game has changed quite a bit since then, but you'll get a grasp of its main idea:

Now a bit of history behind the development.

Back in August 2015, I wanted to learn Lua (it was a language that had drawn my attention for some time) and Ludum Dare was coming up. Therefore, I looked for frameworks in this language and I came across the wonderful Löve. After experimenting some days, the first prototype of Breaking Fast was partially made (of course with placeholder sprites), just for the sake of learning. However, by that time I was finishing my ph.D. and I had to keep it in a drawer. Once I finished it and given I had had so much fun while making the prototype I retook the project together with my girlfriend (artist) and with a friend who is musician. This was back in January 2016. Over the rest of the year we were working on this game as well as attending different game events (including PAX East), although most of them in Spain (where we're from). This served us to gather lots of invaluable feedback and as internal deadlines to push forward the development. Also, we were granted several awards (two Public Choice Awards and one 2nd Best Game Award), which was a boost of motivation to continue the project.

Later last year, a friend of us who is a professional game developer working for a big company contacted us and proposed a part-time collaboration that we happily accepted. He's mainly in charge of programming the online mode, which is great because we can now focus entirely on the basic gameplay while he works in parallel.

Currently, most of the main gameplay is completed. We're currently in the process of polishing and improving the game feel, as well as finishing the integration with the networking libraries of Steam. Also, we're starting the localization of the game to several languages. Although a big part of the development is completed, I'll keep you posted on the latest news and events. Also, don't hesitate to ask any question you may have, and I'll answer as soon as I can.

Thanks for reading and let's keep in contact.

Breaking Fast - Weekly Update #1

Hi! The countdown to the release of Breaking Fast continues and this last week we've been quite busy with different tasks. Now, each of us want to tell you what we've doing. Let's get started!

Francisco (Programmer): I've been working on the game localization. Breaking Fast is going to be released in 10 languages: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. This last week I received the localization file, and I've built a localization manager in order to deal with all the languages. This has proven to be more challenging than I initially thought. The first cause of this complexity comes from the fact that you need to consider incomplete sentences to be filled up at runtime. For example, you may have a sentence like: "User {Steam ID} wants to join a new race". The second cause is that there might be more parameters, and they can be in a different order for different languages. Also, some of the parameters can be images instead of text. For example: "Press {button image} to jump". In the end, I succeeded in this task!

Óliver (Musician): This week I've been revising the music mixes that I've been composing. I usually export to .flac, because I find it useful to save a copy at the highest quality and taking less space than a .wav. I realized that when converting into .ogg, volume goes up a bit (not sure how to avoid it), so there are some moments, where the original reaches -01 dBFS, the converted file outreaches 0dBFS, which is not bad. My solution consisted of adjusting a limiter to -0.5dBFS, in such a way that upon conversion, the new file never outreaches 0dBFS and doesn't saturate anymore. Once this problem was fixed, I mixed the songs again, a slow process in which you have to listen to the sound relationship between all the instruments, both separately and in conjunction, which seems to be a never-ending process.

Manuela (Art and UI programming): During the last week I have been preparing the art for the different tournaments that will appear in the game, as well as setting up the necessary menu screens for this game mode. Additionally, I have polished the art for the new scenarios that have been added recently to the game, which unfortunately for now I can speak much about… Let's say that all of them are food-related! :P

David (Online programmer): Breaking fast is a great game to play with friends, but it will be even better when you play with friends at home against other friends online! We will feature a split screen online multiplayer up to 4 local players and 8 players in total. I had a working prototype of the online mode on a Local Area Network (LAN) that we've been using to test the basic functionality, but after that, we needed proper online support. Thanks to the awesome people that made Move or Die! and some hard work from our side, we have now Breaking Fast fully integrated with Steam, which means you can now invite your friends within the lobby to join your online game and see who is faster!

This is our weekly update! Hope you found it interesting and don't hesitate to ask any question.

Breaking Fast - Weekly Update #2

Hi! One more week has passed, and we've continued our assigned tasks. As in the previous week, each of us will summarize what has done this last week:

Francisco (Programmer): I started a settings manager and I integrated the localization manager (that I had finished the previous week) with it. In order to test this manager, I prototyped a simple settings screen, as you can see in the video below. Now, the game detects at start time whether it's the first launch, and sets the default settings if that's the case. Otherwise (if it's been launched before), it reads a settings file. This is the kind of boring stuff that nobody sees or appreciates, but that it's necessary!

Oliver (Musician): this week I've continued tweaking the mixture of the songs I'd already composed and I'm quite satisfied with the sound. I used Super Mario Kart as a reference for the composition and instrumentation, and Mario Kart 8 as a reference of the sound, which has a classic inspiration and a modern sound. Also, I'm composing the new songs for the last levels. For example, for the Parisian café stage I took the typical French vals-musset as a reference, although I've kept the instrumentation of the previous songs of the game to keep it cohesive. I'm still on it… hope you enjoy it!

Manuela (Artist/Designer): During last week I have been preparing the classification screen that will appear after the races. Additionally, I have been finishing up the number of experience points that will be obtained with different game events, as well as the number of points that are necessary to unlock the different items in the game.

David (Online programmer): this week I've been focused on two aspects of the online mode, firstly I've been polishing the current flow of searching games and joining them (this also includes friendly invites). Most of the changes are to handle error cases such as games becoming full as you were about to join them and similar errors, nothing too exciting but definitely needed! Secondly I've been handling the case where players disconnect from the online game, either the server or a remote client. So hopefully now the game knows what to do when someone disconnect, specially during level load! (Because otherwise the race would never start, as we need to wait for all the players to load the level to start at the same time!)

Breaking Fast - Weekly Update #3

Let's continue with our weekly update!

Francisco (Programmer): this week I've been working on keeping track of the players progress as they play Breaking Fast. Obviously, Breaking Fast will ship with several selectable characters, stages and tournaments, but there will be more of these that can be unlocked as players play races. In order to unlock new items, players use experience points that they build up over time. So basically, the most important information that we must store is these experience points as well as the unlocked items. As part of this logic, of course, we need to ensure that players only can see (and select) the selectable items available up to that point. This is mainly achieved with a file that is created the first time the game launches and that is updated as soon as something important changes. For the settings file (and others), I use this wonderful JSON lua library for encoding and decoding the information, but the progress is so simple that I created my own format which is faster to read and write. The following screenshot shows an excerpt of the progress manager, which reads and writes to a progress.data file.

Oliver (Musician): this week I had to prepare a workshop about video games audio, so I couldn't focus much on Breaking Fast..... However, I continued the song for the parisian café level and I finished up the last eight sound effects.

Manuela (Artist): given that Breaking Fast is going to be distributed on Steam, during last week I have been creating the Steam trading cards, as well as the badges, emoticons and backgrounds that come with them. The production of the backgrounds has been specially challenging, as the design guidelines of Steam indicate that they should not use very bright colors, and the art of Breaking Fast is specially bright! However, I think that you are going to like the final result... But you'll have to wait until Breaking Fast is finally out!

David (Online programmer): this week I've been focusing on fixing some bugs with the flow of entering/leaving a lobby and handling some edge cases, online programming is so much fun... yaaay... Also, I've been polishing all the gameplay elements you will find in the offline mode, making sure everything is synchronized across the network and that clients keep in sync, something really tricky with Breaking Fast as the game pace is incredibly fast. After the first online testing sessions the game seems to behave quite well, so hopefully you will have the same great and fun experience in both the offline and online modes!

The following video shows part of one of the online test sessions we carried out:

Breaking Fast - Weekly Update #4

Here we go with our weekly update. We're really looking forward to releasing the game and seeing the people reaction to the final version!

Francisco (Programmer): I've been working mainly on the tutorials that will show up at the beginning of the game in order to explain the basic controls to players. There will be 9 very short tutorials that will teach players a wide variety of actions, from jumping to performing a counterattack. From a design perspective, I started sketching the tutorials on index cards (as shown in video below). I tried to keep them very simple yet comprehensive, without revealing too much about the dynamics of the game so that players experience surprise on their first race.

Manuela (Artist): During last week I have been polishing the different menu screens of the game, making sure that all the information that the player may need is correctly displayed. For example, in the screen that appears when a race has ended, apart from the basic information about the players positions, I have included information about the obtained experience points and a message that appears if some item has been unlocked thanks to these points. Additionally, every piece of text is now translated in the current language of the game.

David (Online programmer): This week I've been mainly focusing on fixing existing minor bugs in the online mode and hooking in some other various things like translations to different languages, sound effects , etc. The other bit that took most of my week was the ongoing steam integration, where I'm trying to make use of some of the services valve provides, like the ability to store crash reports on a server so we can examine and fix them quickly! On a side note, we did our first test with the achievements systems, and it worked :D but more of this in next week's update!

Breaking Fast - Weekly Update #5

Hi! Let's continue with our weekly update. This last week we've been busy with new music and sounds, Steam achievements and menu screens. Let's get started!

Francisco (programmer): I finished polishing the tutorials that I'd started the previous week. I've also devoted a good amount of time to integrate all the sounds in a coherent way. For example, in a multiplayer game, the sounds for all human players should be heard, whereas the sound for the CPU players should only be heard if any of the players can see that CPU player. Also, I added some additional sound and visual effects for one of the boosters, which is going to be very cool… but I don't want to spoil it! :P

(What's that blue thing coming? And why is the screen blue tinted?)

Oli (musician): in the following video you can watch the making-of of one of the stage songs, which I first sketched as a piano version. What does it inspire you?

Manuela (artist): during last week I have been polishing the art for the different menus in several ways. For example, for the main menu I have changed the layout of the different options and added some meaningful icons. Additionally, I have added some tweens in order to give more dynamism to the screen. You can see these changes in a gif that shows an almost-final version of the main menu. Compared to the old one it has changed quite a lot, don't you think?

David: As mentioned in last week's update, we've been playing around with the achievements system on the steam API. We have now a decent framework in Breaking Fast to track down some player stats and link them to some of the achievements. We are currently in the process of adding all the achievements so for all of you, achievement hunters, there will be plenty to do! :) Achievements aside, I'm currently adding some more code support to the new screens Manuela is finishing for the online mode, here is a sneak peek of the new Create Game screen!

This weekend we'll be showing Breaking Fast at Granada Gaming, a video games event held in Granada (Spain). In the next post, we'll tell you about our experience. In the meantime, if you have any question or suggestion, we're looking forward to hearing from you.

Breaking Fast - Weekly Update #6

This weekend Granada Gaming has been held in Granada (Spain), a video games event that has been co-located with Ficzone 2017, a huge event about comics, board games, cosplay and anime. The event has exceeded all the expectations and the number of visitors has been huge (although I don't know official figures yet).

Of course, we've attended this event to show, one more time, Breaking Fast. As usual, people have enjoyed the game quite a lot, and groups of people of all ages have played it and replayed it lots of times, pushing the limits of their friendship at times...

On Saturday evening, there was a networking event for the indie devs (Devs&Beers) where we could talk to each other in a more relaxed environment with nice food and drinks. We had the chance to meet other devs with whom we'd already shared stand in other events, and it's a very warm feeling when you see that they continue working on their illusions in such a volatile and fragile industry in Spain. Also, we could get to know new people and projects, which is also very welcome. During this networking dinner, interesting debates arose about the state of the industry and how indie devs can overcome the barriers in the search of success.

Also, if you've never heard anything about Granada, you should probably know that it's very well known for its "tapas" (although if you're from abroad, you might think they're typical in Spain in general), mid-size plates that are served for every drink you order. And the quality of the food is up to the expectations of the Mediterranean diet, so yes, it's a good place to eat.

One of the celebrities invited to Granada Gaming was Akira Yamaoka, who is a composer famously known for his work on Silent Hill. As part of the networking program, we developers had a group meeting with him in which we could ask him whatever we wanted to know. One of my questions was about how to commercialize a game like Breaking Fast in Japan once it's localized in this language. He told me that he thought this game could sell well in Japan and advised me to partner with a breakfast food company to gain visibility.

As a final anecdote, there was a girl who attended the event wearing the official t-shirt of Breaking Fast! She had participated in one of the contests we organized in previous events and she had won. And there she was, exhibiting with pride this t-shirt while playing Breaking Fast. This was a really awesome moment for us!

Breaking Fast - Weekly Update #7

After three weeks of intense work, we come back to our usual Weekly Update. First of all, sorry about the big lapse of time since the last update, but after Easter holidays we had some rescheduling and were extremely busy putting it all together. First of all, let me introduce the crew behind Breaking Fast in this personal and homemade video crafted with love:

Now that we know each other (well, kind of) better, let's get back to what we've been doing these last weeks:

Francisco (programmer): we want to release the game as polished as we can, so at this point in the development this means only one thing: I've been correcting bugs, bugs and... ah yes! more bugs!. In a fast-paced game with so many possible interactions between several characters at the same time, it's not surprising that properly testing the game takes lots of time. Whenever I get to reproduce a bug that I've seen just once, I feel like I've won a prize! In addition to bugs, I've also added support to change the controls in a configuration file. So now, as you can read and see below in Manuela's section, you'll have quite a lot of freedom to map the keys/buttons.

Manuela (artist): During last weeks I have been adding control customization to the game, so now players can choose between different gamepad profiles and also change the keys that are to be used during the gameplay.

I have also added some predefined sentences for the lobby in the online game mode, so players can communicate through the chat even if they don't have a keyboard, using the ABXY buttons of the gamepad.

Also, I have improved how draws between players are managed. For example, now if two players arrive in third place, they share the same position in the podium!

David (network programmer): Tournaments! That's it, the online mode is now officially completed with the addition of another game mode. They will work a little bit different compared to the offline mode, but basically you can now challenge your friends in a series of 3, 4 or 5 races, so forget about those lucky quick race wins, here you will have to prove your skills over and over again!
Also, some more exciting news, we can now finally say the game is fully cross-platform, so it doesn't matter if you are playing in a Mac, Windows or Linux machine, you can still challenge your friends or random players in the online mode regardless of their platform!

In other unrelated news, if you own a steam controller you will be glad to know they are now supported for a more pleasuring gaming experience from your cozy sofa!

In the next installment, Oliver, the musician, will tell you more about what he's been working on. In the meantime, we show you the incredible rivalry between the Milk and the Jam... Let us know if you have any question or suggestion.