Behind the scenes: Space

This is part 4/7 of a series of articles written by Eve, the Clever Endeavour Community Manager, about the making of the A-cobra-tic Update for Ultimate Chicken Horse, which was released in March 2020. Each article reveals some of the process of making new content for the game, and shows in-progress images of each of the A-cobra-tic features that have never been shown to the public before.

Making a very spacious level

As you can probably tell from the previous articles on the flamethrower, Snake, and the cannon, we often get inspired by community suggestions and fan art when we set out to make new content for Ultimate Chicken Horse.

One of the things we wanted to do with the A-cobra-tic Update was to take inspiration from some of the most popular user-made Party levels in the game, and turn one of those proven concepts or layouts into an official and upgraded version in the Treehouse. It seemed like a good way to pay tribute to our amazingly creative community of level editors, while also finding level ideas that did not depend on a gimmick that would require lots of iterations and testing.

The theme we saw most often was outer space. This has been requested frequently since at least November 2016, as shown in this concept art posted by SlapTheSam on Steam:

“Sheep waz here”

The requests for a space-themed level became even more frequent when we introduced the Low Gravity Modifier with the Transformidable Update, and many players made their own versions in the in-game level editor.

One that was especially beloved by the player community was Brontalo’s ‘Asteroid Belt’ (4M65-T4KU), which combines low gravity and jetpacks for extra floatiness.

this should look quite familiar

We thought it would be interesting to make a vertical space level like this, with obstacles between the start and the flag. However, there were a few things we wanted to do differently.

First of all, we absolutely did not want to have a dark background like the one from the in-game level editor, because it makes for abysmal readability of some of the hazards – mostly the black hole and hockey puck. We know some players love to make custom levels that use this as a gimmick, but we knew better than to create another Dance Party situation. (I might also have a personal grudge with the Free Play starry background after playing so many levels for featuring, and may never forgive Kyler for making it a thing in the first place. But that’s a different story.)

hello darkness my old friend~

Second, we agreed not to force the Low Gravity (or Jetpack) Modifier, because it would have negated or complicated player choice when setting custom Modifiers in this level. That meant that we had to find other ways of making the vertical climb feel natural and not too cumbersome in our space level.

We solved the latter concern with something Ben had wanted to introduce to Ultimate Chicken Horse for a long time: a UFO. Its tractor beam, which is in fact a giant black hole (the circle in the image below) with a cone-like area of effect, pulls players upwards with increasing force – and conveniently kills them if they get abducted before touching the flag.

thE green lines are called wireframes. they reveal colliders and the likes

The tractor beam definitely made Space a “gimmicky” level, which we originally wanted to avoid for fear of introducing countless technical considerations and edge cases. However, because we were reusing code from the black hole, which has been in the game for a long time, there was very little risk of encountering major bugs that we hadn’t already fixed in the past. Indeed, we didn’t have too much trouble making the level work mechanically, and spent more time on other aspects of it.

As for the background, we took inspiration from colorized pictures of nebulae, with their pretty pink and teal hues, to create a form of “atmospheric gradient” from the bottom to the top that would look spacey without being too dark. To make the gradient as smooth as possible, we applied it via a couple of layers in Unity, rather than painting it straight onto the background itself.

The last stylistic touch was to make the asteroid belt into flaming tennis balls, because Fabio had this idea of a space tennis court from which the Doomsday Meteors originate.

we’re pretty committed to the bit at this point

One final change we made to the original level concept by Brontalo was to make ours quite a bit shorter. After testing a taller version among ourselves, we found that it was too difficult and tiresome to climb to the UFO when it was placed significantly higher, and the extra distance didn’t really add anything to the gameplay. Reducing how much it stretched vertically also helped avoid situations where the camera zoomed out too much, making the borders of the level extremely apparent and complicating visibility for players.

the final space level, all zoomed out

We started our work on Space simply wanting to recreate and iterate on a fan favorite among existing user-made levels. In the end, we actually went pretty hard on level-defining mechanical gimmick to make the vertical climb work by adding the UFO and its tractor beam, in addition to changing the proportions of the playing field.

By taking inspiration from the community yet not hesitating to use all our arsenal to upscale the idea, we feel like we made Space into one of our most unique levels to date. We certainly hope that Brontalo and everyone who suggested that we make a space-themed level also feel like we did justice to the concept!

If you liked this behind-the-scenes article, we suggest that you check out the previous ones on the flamethrower, Snake, and cannon. Stay tuned for next week’s installment: we will reveal the making of the one-way gate!