GladiEATers News

[h2]Who is Diane?[/h2]
For many, food is a means to connect with our loved ones and express our creativity. A backward understanding of what is to Diane (14-Kitchelin star winner), the opportunity for the highest expression of precision and skill. Here’s how we served up Diane’s visuals.

[h2]Why is Diane?[/h2]
As chefs, we knew (and maybe were taught by) some very mean people that were simply the best at what they do. Diane is *insert generic angry chef tv personality*.
[h2]What is Diane?[/h2]
We started knowing we wanted three things from Diane’s visual design:

1. An imposing character shilouette.
   
2. Her onion creatures and Hellenic heritage to be represented.
   
3. A knife; nothing is more precious to some chefs – than their knife.
   

Unlike our other Combat Chefs, our initial posing sketch had a strong bias towards Diane being tall. Our only major consideration in this study was whether she should hold her onion, like a Shakespearean actor, or wield it on the edge of her knife.
[h2]Power Costuming[/h2]
While Diane balancing an onion at the end of her blade was poignant (or should I say *point-ignant*) it didn’t seem like a serious chef action. Instead, having her distinct chef knife Algae, named after the Greek spirits of suffering, sheathed on her leg was a great way to impose some authority while adding detail to the leg region.

Additionally, Diane started with some heels. However, going back to our design principles of Diane, a serious, hard-working chef, would probably not wear heels in the kitchen.

The other part of Diane’s key costuming was her buttoned up chef jacket, long chef trousers and necktie. These imposed that “oh no, the executive chef just walked in, and I haven’t peeled the onions from this morning's delivery yet 0 _ 0” feeling.
[h2]Oni-on[/h2]
The Onion GladiEATers have some iconic *cry on your enemy powers* inspired by onions' ability to make some people cry their eyes out (me included). Diane was embracing that by being the type of chef that makes you cry for making a mediocre broth. However, her design needed to be pushed to more onion heights.
We did this through colour: Diane’s long hair was inspired by an onion’s root, turning it onion skin orange. Additionally, we braided Diane's hair to further that tangled root image. We then added an aqua-blue eye shadow, blue eyes and clear blue lenses, all to invoke the image of Onion GladiEATers’ crying eyes.

Below is an excerpt from our developing comic book, showing a younger Diane growing that braid to the impressive length it is now. Look at her, sharpening knives and peeling onions on the streets of Thessaloniki, Greece – a real go-getter.

Finally, the Onion GladiEATers have a unique eye of Horus inspiration that we then had tattooed along Diane’s sleeve. Pro tip: In real life, you can tell a young chef’s power level by how many tattoos they have.
[h2]Hellenic Je ne ses quois.[/h2]
To tie up the magnificence of Diane is a lining of powerful gold, on her: belt buckle, ornate knife sheath, glasses and Hellenic inspired crown and earring jewellery.

We also incorporated the Greek Key on her chef jacket, a traditional continuous line motif. The geometric lines add to her precise and structured cooking style.

[h2]Pixel art precision[/h2]
When converting Diane into her pixel art persona, we had her twisting her knife through the air, planning how she’ll cut up her dish. Ad*dish*onally, for Diane’s unique chef ability we have Diane shouting at her GladiEATers when they drop below 50% Health, forcing more Power out of them.

The ability is a fun risk-reward where her strongest GladiEATers are also the most at risk of expiring. The ability is inspired by Diane’s type of angry-accomplished chef, pushing the most out of their cook underlings.

[h2]Was it your turn or mine to close?[/h2]
Diane’s design pays homage to both her Onion goons, Hellenic heritage and angry chef in one composed design. We’re happy you stuck around and are excited to share even more Combat Chef, GladiEATer and mechanic designs soon!

Is there any kind of chef or cuisine theme you’d like to see represented in GladiEATers? Anything you’d like to see in Diane’s design? Let us know in the comments or on our Discord!

We knew we wanted the final fight of a run to have some *oomph*. We also knew we wanted the character of the combat chefs to be further expressed in the battlefield. This led us to the idea of powerful chef abilities that activate on the 6th fight of the CALosseum for players to strategically adapt to.

[h3]What does a chef ability look like? (figuratively speaking)[/h3]
Let’s take the trusty Eggie, full of life and unwavering ambition. She believes in her Egg GladiEATers so powerfully that they hold on to life the first time they fall below 1 HP.



The Golden Reviving Egg appears above each GladiEATer until they are saved once, at which point it fades away – great to help players keep track of who Eggie currently still believes in.


[h3]What does a chef ability LOOK like? (Like.. literally)[/h3]
When a chef gets into the CALosseum with their chef ability active, they appear with a deity like flare and aura emenating out of them. This indicates to the player that something powerful is going on!



These auras are meant to both express the Chef’s *vibe* plus aid the idea of their abilities. In the case of Diane, her B I G knife points to her cutthroat militancy in the kitchen.

[h3]What does the B I G Knife do?[/h3]
Diane’s ability empowers GladiEATers below 50% Health with a 50% boost in Power = a testament to her pushing GladiEATers, and people, to their limits.



Her Big Knife also moves in time with the effect on the GladiEATer activating, making that visual link between the Chef's power and the GladiEATer stronger.

[h3]Could I have one more example of a chef ability please?[/h3]
...sure: Here’s Jemin, the 7th most successful C.E.A. (CAL enforcement agency) operative. Jemin is all about efficiency, secrecy… and breakfast. His ability mirrors this as he executes any opponent if they end their turn with less than 20% Health.



Does the CALncil (the governing body of the CALosseum) approve this? Well, your honour, did you SEE his blade cut down that GladiEATer? …no? I rest my case.

*we’re really excited to talk more about Jemin in a future post, he’s just the coolest dude*
[h3]Closing Time[/h3]
TL;DR Combat Chefs have awe-inspiring talent that empowers their GladiEATers. They activate on the final round of the traditional run and even in multiplayer.

Every chef has their own unique ability that change gameplay and you’ll be hearing more about them SoonTM! Do YOU have any ideas for new chef abilities, or even chefs?? Let us know in the comments or our Discord.

As discussed in Blog #2, YOU get to decide what creature to cook in GladiEATers! However, how well you cook will make your creature stronger or weaker.
What’s that you say? "How do you make sense of that?" "What about combining multiple creatures?" "There’s no way that’s balanced?!" Well, that last one was a statement – not a question. Regardless, here’s the recipe to cooking up GladiEATers!




We want the player’s cooking to impact their creatures. In a way, this is already done, as cooking food faster when time is limited means you get more food creatures. Additionally, we wanted to go further as it just made sense that the better you cook, the stronger the creature… but how much stronger?


Given that the player is already getting more creatures, we didn’t want to overdo any stat advantages and restrained the difference in stats to at most 30%. What we mean is: if the worst Chocolate Cake ever made has 100 Health, 100 Speed, and 100 Power then the best Chocolate Cake has 130 Health, 130 Speed and 130 Power. This fixed range means that even in the most extreme examples, both Combat Chefs get a decent creature and a fighting chance.

After testing, each minigame affecting a specific stat felt more exciting than one minigame affecting all the stats. Rather than the Frying Egg minigame’s 30% impact being spread out amongst the Fried Egg’s health, power and speed, the minigame only affects the Egg’s power and therefore that 30% has a much bigger impact.
Tell me which set of numbers looks more exciting:
• 11, 11, 11
Or
• 13, 10, 10
This way, each minigame performance feels important. The individual impact of each minigame also pushes the flavour *pun intended* of each cooking game. How fast you whisk an egg will make it faster! It just makes sense.




Every cooking step that cooks a GladiEATer builds up to that GladiEATer’s stats. Let’s take our flying Omelette GladiEATer. Three minigames make it up: Egg Cracking, Whisking and Omelette Frying. Cracking affects Health, Whisking = Speed and Frying = Power.



Any GladiEATer with less than two minigames will have unaffected stats at their maximum value. For example, a Raw Egg, which only has one cooking minigame - egg cracking, will only have one affected stat. A D performance in the egg cracking minigame leads to bad Health, but with no other minigames affecting the other stats, they stay at their maximum value.

So there we have it; we’ve resolved the cooking to stats mechanic for GladiEATers with 1 Minigame, 2 Minigames and 3 Minigames. We’re done right?


What about the case that a GladiEATer has more than three minigames? Sticking to our previous range limit of 30% that we set on the impact of these games, we couldn’t have an additional minigame make another 30% difference to a GladiEATer’s stats. That could make a GladiEATer 60% weaker than a perfectly cooked one – and that would frankly suck.

Instead, each additional minigame that affects the same stat will be averaged out when calculating what that stat should be. The same goes for combining GladiEATers like Avocado Paste and Toast to make Avocado Toast: we take the average of the minigames affecting Health to get the Health of the GladiEATer and so on. As example, when making an Avocado Toast both cooking the Toast and mashing the Paste are Health affecting minigames. In cooking Toast, the player scores a C, in mashing Paste they get an A - the Avocado Toast's Health will be as though the player scored a B in one minigame.

Man… I really wish we had some block of numbers separated into columns and potentially colour coded to keep track of all these numbers…


The part every designer yearns for, spread sheets! Here we store all the potential ranges of GladiEATer stats. I think it’s important to share this somewhat mundane side to the process, as this how we make sense of it all.


Our best way to display these ranges was to have the maximum values, then to their right, we show which stats are affected by the minigame that makes that GladiEATer. For example, boiling an egg here affects that Egg’s Power. The other stats haven’t been affected yet, so we keep those grey and blank, so we’ll take the max stats for that.


Wow, you’re still here! Given that you are, please let us know what you think about the system. Any problems or even ideas you have for this or other systems? How else could we have gone about this?

What about abilities, how do they interact with Power? What is Speed and how does it affect when a GladiEATer acts? Stay tuned for those discussions and perhaps some actually fun ones in-between!

In this blog, we’ll be taking you through the changes and improvements that the UI in our battle scene has gone through, to allow you to make your most tactically informed decisions as the world’s best Combat Chef.



[h3]Take One – March 2023 – All Upfront[/h3]
This screenshot is from the first build that we took to a conference, March 2023 W.A.S.D. in London. We had all our UI drawn up, and we were really quite happy with the character and colours of our UI.

However… watching people play, we felt they were overwhelmed by the sheer amount of text on screen. That bar was also so thick that we couldn’t quite fit the GladiEATers on the field.

The GladiEATers names were also a first attempt at just telling the player whatever they needed to know, but ultimately our GladiEATers should speak for themselves.





[h3]Take Two – July 2023 – Icon Cramming [/h3]
Fast forward to Develop Brighton, July 2023, we brought this version of our battle scene with a few interesting solutions to our problems in take one.

Firstly, we drastically reduced the text overload by encapsulating abilities in cool, unique icons. This not only made the interface less overwhelming but also provided a sneak peak into the GladiEATers' powers before they were cast… and we only had to draw 3 ability icons for every GladiEATer in the game!! /lol



Secondly, we brought in the Combat Chefs as physical presences within the CALosseum. Their animated reactions added a touch of life to the battlefield, and their introduction allowed us to do away with the corner icons.

A few final details were the removal of the GladiEATer name plates, spreading them out better, adding health bar section indicators, zooming out on the CALosseum artwork, adding colour to key parts to the text and greying out the non-targets when targeting an ability.

All was well --- until a new issue emerged! New players didn’t not know what to click! The icons were central but not as central as the big interactable buttons we had previously. How did we fix this? Well….



[h3]Take Three – September 2023 – Space Optimisation & Colour Control[/h3]
… colour swaps! By eliminating the visually catching bright gold and light brown from the majority of the menu, we keep the colour, and player focus, on the interactable objects. Our ability icons grew in size, became more interactive with hover and click states, and displayed their descriptions on hover.


Taking this to W.A.S.D. x IGN in September 2023, players were doing what we wanted them to easily – success!

Next, we made optimal use of the corner space left vacant by removing the portrait corner boxes by spreading out the Timeline. The Timeline received a sleek transparent black backing to allow more of the CALosseum artwork to shine through. An arrow and tiny name label also now indicated who’s turn it was.

In the bottom left corner, we introduced a sprite, name, and health bar for the GladiEATer currently taking their turn, mirroring the same for the target GladiEATer in the right corner. This maintained the cherished symmetry from the earlier version.

To assist players with colour blindness, we added meanie and friendly symbols to GladiEATers on the Timeline and positioned friendly GladiEATers above and enemies below.



We didn't stop there! Another massive improvement was the nifty pop-up that showcased GladiEATer abilities, power, speed, and any debuffs or buffs affecting them. This allowed the player total strategic awareness available at their mousetips.





[h3](Not) Concluding Remarks[/h3]
And that’s where we are for now! The battle scene has gotten a lot clearer over time. But the journey is far from over. With more tinkering and more vital player feedback, from the best community ever, will push us even further in the right direction. Sooo stay tuned and be sure to give us more and more feedback :)

[h2]Eggward’s Egg-sistential Crisis[/h2]

For many of us, Eggs are the first thing we learn how to make. In GladiEATers, Eggs are the first thing you cook – emulating life! With over 13 Egg Creatures alone, we knew we wanted a chef to specialise in Eggs.

Initially, we thought up a character = Eggward, a crazy bald man, inspired by my own choice of hair at the time, who obsessed over Eggs. However, Eggward kind of gave us the creeps and we wanted to go a bit more upbeat and positive with GladiEATers’ first chef… that was the initial path that led into Eggie’s design.





[h2]Laying down Eggie’s Posing[/h2]

The yolk of eggs has a bright sunny imagery that we wanted Eggie to mirror. In our initial pose studies, we thought about what would embody that energy best. Of what we came up with, pose 3 ended up too delicate of a step for the bashful egg creatures Eggie commands. Pose 2 was a bit too reserved and hunched over but pose 1 has such a brilliant skip in their step that our choice was made clear.



Another thing that felt very natural for Eggie was her Egg basket, a prop that has that integral link with the process of raising chickens, collecting eggs and, in general, life on a farm. Eggie’s egg farm origin brings attention to how food is sourced, a vital part of the process for any aspiring chef.



[h2]Costuming Egg-stravagence[/h2]

Eggie’s costuming started with a long maid dress and apron, visually incorporating her farmer heritage. There was a lot to love in this original sketch. Eggie’s side bird character was an adorable idea, but we felt it took the spotlight away from Eggie.



Also, we adored the puffy cloth shirt, inspired by traditional Portuguese garb - it brought a puffiness to Eggie’s apparel that suited her so well.



Importantly, Eggie’s long dress had a great flow to it, but we scrapped it for two reasons. Firstly, it covered up the exciting leg pose we had set out for Eggie in our posing sketch above; you can’t see that dynamic leg kick as well with the dress covering… her legs. Secondly, the dress didn’t feel very practical. If we wanted Eggie to invoke images of someone running through muddy fields chasing after chickens, a dress didn’t do that.



Our solution to Eggie’s dress conundrum? Denim! A pair of cut up denim jean shorts or *jorts?* felt perfect to allow Eggie the movement she’d want. In terms of material storytelling, denim has always been an icon of farm life. Also, with the cup up nature of the shorts, you could almost picture Eggie cutting them up herself; her go getter attitude coming through again. A little band aid on her knee and Eggie’s active character was on full display.



[h2]Contrasting Colour[/h2]

Eggie’s hair buns were originally set out to resemble two white eggs. We did try it – but ended up going with the more discrete egg similarity by letting that be her natural hair colour.



It was at this stage that we really saw the contrast between her upper, traditional puffed shirt, and her denim shorts come through. We leaned into this further by giving Eggie radiant golden hoop braclets and earrings.



[h2]Story Telling[/h2]

We always want a chef’s design to speak for them. Eggie’s design tells a tale of family and the importance of food in one’s heritage. How do we give Eggie’s family a presence in her design, while not actually showing them?



For us, that was the heart-warming embroidery in Eggie’s apron, done by her sisters prior to her journey to the CALosseum! Each stitch is a different level based on their age, Benedita, Sofia and Camilla all wanted to stitch in pitch in.



Another key piece of Eggie’s family was her grandmother, avo in Portuguese, Ines. Ines was the matriarch of her family and prior to her departure, Ines gave Eggie her golden Egg locket. The gold matches her hoops, so it is both sentimental and stylish.





[h2]Finishings[/h2]

So that’s Eggie! As with all our chefs, once we decided that we wanted the chefs to have a physical presence in the CALosseum amongst the GladiEATers, we created a pixel art variant of Eggie. This was paired with emotes for when they are taking a turn, defeat a GladiEATer or one of their GladiEATers expires.



Thank you for your egg-ceptional support as always! We’re egg-stremely grateful the community’s interest in GladiEATers and can’t wait to share more egg-citing content.