Edit: I forgot the “concept” part!

My game’s title is “Probe”. It is about a little robot that is sent to explore a mysterious alien fortress and runs into hostile machines and even finds usable alien technology. (Meaning Metroid-style upgrades)

There will be two characters: Zoe and Frankie. They will have somewhat different attributes, as is the way I do these things. I’m using Zoe for testing, because, well, I just usually make the female lead before the male. It’s a weird tradition that’s embedded itself into my work habits. It’s kind of like having a playable character of each gender, I guess. Just something I like to do.

Yeah… Um… I didn’t think I’d get this much done this fast. I thought this would take me at least another four hours. But I have what I called in my schedule post a “prototype”.

Or at least the beginnings of one.

What I have, specifically, is:

• An “Actor” class that can respond to collisions with terrain
• A “Terrain” class that can construct itself from stored level data
• A “GameWorld” class that can hold game entities
• A “Level Munger” that can process level files from Tiled (My editor) into AS3 that the above classes can use
• Some sprites for basic player movement
• The beginnings of a terrain tileset

In, what, 4-5 hours? I’m going to take a break, I think, and hang out in IRC.

Oh, here’s  a screenie and a link to my demo on Dropbox.

Isn't she cute?

I’ve gone straight through the “prototype” phase I talked about in my schedule post, and am now implementing a baddie. Holy frak this is going quickly. I’m sorry to emphasize it so much, but I’ve not gotten this much done this quickly in a very long time.

The only baddie I have sprites for right now is a big tank-robot that ended up looking kind of like an octorok from Legend of Zelda but as an alien robot. I’ve not added it to the game, but that’ll be in there.

I’ll post another demo when there are things to kill!

Peace

— Mr. Dude

I’ve made progress on Probe!

Now the player’s gun works, but the current behavior (Fire one each time the fire key is pressed) is temporary. I have something else in mind for that, but that’ll wait for later.

There are also baddies. They are the baddies I had art for earlier, but I redesigned them. Because the “armor-plated octorok” looked really dumb and the walk animation I had for it looked really, really bad, I dumped it an redesigned it.

You see, my premise is that the civilization that left all of this neat stuff behind was incredibly arrogant and thought that no future civilization could match their firepower. They put forth what they thought would be sufficient to hold off military firepower. Their defenses are lame enough that a research probe can fend them off with an excavation tool. Crappy aliens. Good loot, though, once I get to making it.

There are three baddies in the level, and if you kill them all you can reset the level by pressing R.

If anyone would like to, they can play my game here on my DropBox.

The controls are:

• Move – Arrows
• Jump – X
• Run – Hold C and Move
• Fire Gun – Z
• Drop through ledges – Down+Jump or press S
• Reset Demo – R

Here’s a screenie showing the redesigned baddie in all of his poorly-equipped majesty:

See what I mean? It's on WHEELS!

I’ve got a new goal for Probe. I’m having a really good time making it, and am at a good shelving point for Little Ninja. That said, I now want to just have a feature-complete prototype of Probe for the compo, and will take my time with the finished game.

I may or may not do the jam game. I’m not sure yet. But I’m definitely going to keep my sights for Probe set on having an alpha for the compo. After that, the completed game.

I’ve become aware of the fact that Probe is just… Not fun. It’s not.

That being said, I’m currently working on a jam game. I’m not going to post much about it until it’s finished, but it does follow the theme, though not explicitly.

The idea’s pretty simple to implement, so it should be done before the jam ends.

No screenies, no game description. I want it to be a surprise.

I hope you guys will like it…

— Mr. Dude

I’ve been taking a break from work, and thought I might throw a bit of my jam game out.

No demo yet (Nothing worth playing, actually), but I do have a picture of the main character.

Trying out a new art style

I’ve decided what exactly I’m trying to get across with my game. It’s a metaphor for what I experience when I learn a new skill.

Majority of the code is done, as is most of the character art. Still need background, the remaining character art, and a couple other bits. Will actually likely be done by the end of the jam.

Here’s a screenie of what I’ve got:

It's a metaphor for something else. Art!

It’s been a heck of an experience this LD. Starting planning on making 2 games, ending up abandoning one half-way through, then making a game for the jam.

Wow.

I’ve got my jam game “complete”. By “complete”, I mean that the player has all of the basic movements that I wanted, and most of the very basic features are there.

The game lacks… Well, polish. I may well have had time for it, but I didn’t have the stamina.

I’m proud, though. I actually have something to submit that resembles a game. That’s not nothing. That’s something.

Please, play and comment here.

Here’s a screenie:

It’s been an educational LD for me.

Here are a few of the things that I learned:

• I can’t stand developing more bland action games
• I am okay with developing something that is not difficult to play, even if it doesn’t have any sort of combat
• I spend loads of time on making sprites for enemies. Comparing the time I’ve spent spriting characters for Evening to the time I spent spriting characters for Little Ninja really highlights that for me
• It is more important to have a game than a thing with sound. That’s a tough one for me, but it is something that I have to learn.
• I should come here with some codebase prepared. It wouldn’t be much, but it would let me get to making the actual game much faster.
• It can still be LD if I’m in the jam, it’s just a more laid-back LD. I got it in my head not long before LD that the jam just somehow wasn’t LD (Whatever that actually meant), and denied myself a laid-back, social experience. Next time, the jam’s the plan, and the compo’s an optimistic outcome.
• It’s okay to only have one playable character, and it’s a huge time-saver. Even though I seem fixated on having spear/distaff in my games, it’s not needed for everything.
• I understand now that I have a fascination with female leads in my games. That’s not something for me to “conquer”, but something for me to simply break from now and then.

I also gained a few other things over the weekend.

Yesterday I received a DSi-XL as an “early Christmas present”. “Christmas present” meaning “thing that my mum bought for me with the money I was receiving from my relatives for Christmas”. We aren’t really big on holidays in my family, so the practical idea of just getting the thing when she already had the money and was shopping anyway, then just give it to me when we got it because having it and waiting for it is the sort of holiday tradition my parent aren’t huge on.

The DSi-XL, for those who don’t know (And I’m sure there are those) is a DSi (DS with front and back cameras that can download software from the “DSi Shop”) with very big screens. It also comes with Flipnote Studio. And on top of that, a big pen-style stylus (In addition to the normal DSi stylus)

I will probably be using Flipnote Studio to make mockups of things from here on, and I will probably start posting those mockups once I get good at making them.

I also gained a tiny bit of understanding in what Jonathan Blow calls “exploration design”. When designing Evening, I originally intended for it to be a screen-by-screen platforming challenge, but changed my mind while playing with features during early testing. Not that folks here would have seen that, as I’m sure you can guess.

Finally, I have a game idea that’s unlike things that I have done before. I really do. I’m excited about it. Something that’s actually semi-original for a change.

The post-mortem for Evening comes after the break.

Evening – Post-Mortem (Jam Version)

Summary:

Evening was originally supposed to be a low-stress run-and-jump game featuring a series of screen-long challenges leading to an ending that used the theme in a “poetic” way. What it ended up being was an incomplete but fertile prototype.

What Went Well:

• I was very deliberate in doing something that felt different than the platformers that I have made in the past, and did indeed make something that felt different to play.
• The animations for the girl were pretty good, though I still feel I could have done better.
• The art style I chose to use for the girl turned out pretty good
• I actually had something to submit for the jam!

What Went Badly

• I didn’t work nearly as hard as I could have in the last 24h that I had. I slacked off for most of that time and wound up with something that wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been
• The girl and the terrain have a visual mismatch that I felt didn’t look right. In trying to make the terrain look organic, I made it look really weird and rough.
• The graphics were incomplete, and would have added to the game immensely.
• I didn’t add in ledge-grabbing, so the “game” wound up with spots where the player would not quite make it up a jump, but could have grabbed the edge and pulled themselves up if I’d put that in. That mainly bothers me because I really wanted to put it in originally, and feel bad that I didn’t.
• The game lacked any sense of “discovery” at all. This is mainly because it was incomplete, but even the original idea was kind of lame.
• The girl’s jump animation took too long to run. I should have sped it up and maybe dropped a frame from it. It got a bit frustrating sometimes.

Overall Impressions

Evening was fun to work on, and a nice departure from Little Ninja. This game taught me that yes, I’ve been making platformers that feel fundamentally the same for a long time. Even Probe and Little Ninja feel a lot like platformers that I used to write in Python/Pygame.

Evening has some promise with a bit of tweaking, but as-is it just isn’t a real game. Still, it was game-like and I managed to get it to that point for the jam.

The controls worked fairly well, but could still use some tweaking, and some of the animations take longer than they should (Notably the pre-jump animation). Notably, I do want to separate high-jumping from crouching. As one comment playfully pointed out, you could well have the girl crawl on her hands and knees the whole time so she could jump higher. That’s weird and I don’t want that kind of behavior to give such an advantage.

Because it was an LD entry that was started with 36h left in the jam, it wasn’t very ambitious. The post-jam version will be much more interesting.

Where to Go From Here

Evening has some promise as a game provided that some things are tweaked. I fully intend to work on it and try to turn it into A Real Game.

I will add some features to it and make the level design much more complex. At the moment I’m thinking of putting in items that give new abilities along the way, and making the level design less about “go right until you win” and more about following a complex path. That means adding a vertical component to the level design, which isn’t a huge problem for me.

I will be switching from a continuous view (IE: Camera scrolls freely over the whole game world) to an area-by-area view (IE: Camera scrolls freely within set areas, and then scrolls between them when the player enters a new area)

I will probably redo my sprites for the girl, because I want her to be about 2 tiles tall. One bit of weirdness I ran into was that I couldn’t put in an overhang that was 2 tiles high, because the player would have to crouch to get into it (Her hitbox is 75 pixels tall when she is standing up) and that wouldn’t look right.

I will definitely redo the terrain. It looks really weird and I don’t like it. I will choose something that is visually simpler and actually matches the look of the game.

I have a lot of hope for Evening, and I think I can turn it into a fun game. I’ll periodically post demos as I go. (Probably not as aggressively as I was doing for Little Ninja, though…)

Peace

— Mr. Dude

Lots of folks in the LD community have non-qwerty keyboards, and it can be difficult for them to play some games due to some keys being far apart in one layout that were decided on a layout where they are next to each other.

I myself do what I can to use keys that are placed similarly on most keyboards.

The question I have is: Which keys are more “safe” to use in control schemes? Meaning, which keys tend to be in around the same place in most layouts?

I’d appreciate a general sense of this, as I really don’t know. I live in the US, where non-qwerty keyboards are very rare, so I really don’t have a sense of this.

Peace

— Mr. Dude

I like to make platformers now and then. One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that they require a great deal of artwork. Developing Evening, I spent a solid three or four hours on just the artwork for the terrain and three or four more for sprites of the girl.

That’s time not spent on gameplay, time not spent on levels, time not spent on making it fun to play.

That’s just not good when you’re working in a 48h/72h time limit.

I’m thinking that from here I’ll probably be making less animation-intensive things. Not necessarily art-light games, but games with a lower art-to-content ratio.

Shumps come to mind, as do (very simple) strategy games. As well as puzzle games. But not platformers and certainly not fighting games.

Just some thoughts I had.

Peace

— Mr. Dude

I’ve got a couple of game development-related new year’s resolutions for myself, and I thought I’d share them.

First of all, I’m going to finish things that I start. I will allow myself to shelve things, but I will finish them. I leave too many neat things unfinished. Enough of that.

Second, I will make things other than scrolling shmups and platformers. I make too many of them, and I need to broaden my experience beyond that stuff. I will still make some of them, but it won’t be all that I do.

Third, I will complete at least one mid-sized project. I want to accomplish at least something this year, and a good, mid-sized game seems like it would be the thing to do.

Finally, I will improve my artwork. This doesn’t just mean making my art look better, but being able to draw things that I currently have a hard time drawing. (Such as characters in isometric perspectives)

I’m hoping that I can hold to these, as I think they’re things that I really need to do.

Peace

— Mr. Dude

I am going to try to warm up for upcoming LD’s and Mini-LD’s by giving myself a challenge. I have a game that I will try to make in the time between tomorrow morning (Morning in EST, that is) and the time I leave for my first class in this semester. (Which is on Monday) If I really need to, I’ll also give myself the time between getting to campus and going to the class.

For those who would like to know a bit about the game I am making, information about it follows the break.

The title of the game is “Gun Gladiator”. It is an arena shooter which will feature 3 or 4 playable vehicles and several sets of waves of enemies, as well as a mode for random waves.

It will feature several types of enemy, as well as a few different bosses.

Each vehicle will have its own unique weapon, as well as varying attributes. The player will be able to upgrade their vehicles movement speed and armor, as well as the rate of fire and attack power of their weapon. In addition, each weapon will have a unique attribute which can be upgraded.

For the in-game interface, I will borrow the style of Diepix Arena and have the upgrade panel and hud in a frame next to the actual playing field.

Baddies will have varying behavior, as well. Some will move blindly and bounce off of walls, others will dart around randomly, some will follow the player. These varying behaviors will make it difficult for the player to dodge them. Not all of the baddies will be able to shoot back at the player, but some will.

Bosses will also vary in behavior, but none will follow the player. They will all be able to shoot at the player, and will have more powerful weapons than normal baddies.

I have some specifics sketched out in some design docs, but those are speculation at this point.

Wish me luck!

— Mr. Dude

Gun Gladiator eventually deteriorated into an unacceptably slow (At least on my netbook), overly ambitious story-heavy shooter. I think that would count as a failure, especially in terms of my deadline.

So, I’ve decided that I need to try again with a different time limit. This time around, it’s a bullet hell shmup. Hopefully.

The game’s title is one that I’ve been trying to apply to a game for a while now because I think it sounds really cool. (I may have used this title for an uncompleted game that I’ve posted about here, and there have been many others) The title is Starrior. (A portmanteau of “Star” and “Warrior”)

The game will borrow its style from the game Frantic (And its sequel), but will use a much less abstract style. It will support arrow keys and WASD, as well as controlling the ship with the mouse. It will have multiple weapons, special attacks, and other fanciness.

I want to have the full game with at least most of its content by the night of the 22nd.

Currently, I have the player ship moving around on the screen, including with mouse control.

I’m really hoping I can pull this off. Really.

Peace,

— Mr. Dude

I’ve got some base code for my bullet hell shmup (Lazed out for the past few days, got very little other than school work done), but I’m ready to work on other things for a while.

I am looking forward to the Mini-LD.

I have my game in mind, and partly designed. Regardless of the theme, I will shoehorn and/or BS that theme into my game. It’s a Mini-LD after all, and what would a Mini-LD be without someone bending the rules to their liking.

I’m not starting on my game early, though, so there’s that.

A bit about my game after the break, for folks who enjoy reading these sorts of things.

My game will be a top-down shooter and a tribute to Alien Breed. It is also a furry game, but rather than being modified animals or animal-like aliens, the furry characters are a type of zerg-like form of life created by scientists. That form of life is called (For the sake of a cool word containing a couple of cool letters): Zero. (In fact, the game’s title is Zero Breed)

The player will take the role of a Zero-based commando (Okay a, Space Marine) who has been sent to one of a number of facilities that have been overrun by a rogue strain of Zero called “Maniac”. The finished game will have multiple level sets, and possibly a level editor which will use Kongregate’s user-created content system.

This game will hopefully extend beyond the Mini-LD, as I’ve got a lot in store for it.

Peace,

— Mr. Dude

I’ve decided that my current idea would really work best with proper vector graphics, which I don’t have the ability to create. I have Inkscape, but I can only use those images in Flash as bitmaps. I need to be able to use images as vector within the Flash app.

That being said, I’m thinking that I’ll do something else.

I have a few different ideas to choose from, but I’ll wait until the theme is announced to decide anything concrete.

Thoughts and ramblings follow the break.

I definitely want to do an arena shooter, provided that the theme and sub-theme provide for that.

If “Text Input in an Action Game” wins, I might give the shooter some kind of text-controlled component, such as a funky weapon upgrade screen.

If “Kittens” or “Dogs aren’t Man’s Best Friend After All” win, then it doesn’t make much difference. Either way, there will likely be kittens fighting puppies.

Zombies would be an interesting theme. I would probably find some way to do that that would be unusual. Perhaps zombie robots. Don’t really know.

“Giga Pudding”. That would be a tricky one to pull off. I’ve got nothing for that.

“Title of Your Game Must be a Year” is really easy. Too easy, and I don’t know that I want it to win.

“Graph Theory” would result in an odd upgrade system, and possibly evolving baddies that follow structures involving “nodes” and “edges”. Possibly also weird movement, but that’s unlikely.

I’m actually kind of liking “Pigmen” this time. Killing hordes of pigs and using the pork to buy upgrades and weapons sound pretty fun.

“Double Zombie Rambo” would be a tough one. I’d really like to use Kongregate’s multiplayer features, but that’s more of a long-term idea.

Either of the two “Seasons” themes would be a good place to use damage types with baddies. I would probably handle both the same way, honestly.

“After the Credits Roll” would be a good plot theme, especially for ideas where the enemies shouldn’t be an immediate threat to the world.

“Action Movie” would be great for a top-down shooter, especially with zombies and/or aliens as the baddies. It would also make huge guns a good idea.

I’m really wanting to do a furry game. I haven’t done one in quite a while, and would be fun for me to do. I’m not sure of the specifics there, though.

That all being said, I’m looking forward to this one. (Am I ever not looking forward to Mini-LD?)

Peace

— Mr. Dude

I’ve got my idea all set up, I think.

My game will be titled “Zombies: 1975”. The entire title isn’t a year, but it has a year in the title. Deal.

The game’s story begins with the spread of a zombie-creating virus created by the soviet union that was spread around rural Michigan. The player takes the role of a zombie hunter fighting to rid Michigan of the communist undead.

I plan to take this into a post-LD version, as well. Hopefully.

I will be using the “Spring Physics” sub-theme in a dynamic difficulty system. It’s a bit of a cop-out, but I don’t really care,

For the record, I will actually use the spring equation (F = -kx) in my difficulty code. There ya go.

Anyway, off to write my boilerplate!

Peace

— Mr. Dude

I’ve actually gotten somewhere with my game. Which amazes me.

Currently, the player can walk around on the screen, and faces the mouse pointer. Also, the player’s feet are animated, so they take actual foot steps when they walk. Mind you, the feet “step” forward no matter which way you are going, but that player sprite is about 20×20 pixels (1x zoom, as well), so the sprite it pretty tiny regardless.

I’ve also got five different images for different parts of the player. That is, 5 pairs of feet, 5 pairs of arms, 5 heads for each gender and 5 torsos for each gender. The actor factory accepts the player’s gender and part variants, and builds a skeleton based on them.

Very happy with how this is going. I’ve already gotten some base code down, and hopefully the rest will go at least as smoothly.

Peace

— Mr. Dude

I’ve actually got a demo working now!

You can walk around and fire your gun! No sounds yet, though…

Controls:

• Move – Arrows or WASD
• Aim – Move Mouse
• Fire Gun – Left Click

If you like, you can play it on SwfCabin here. (I would have put it on DropBox, but DropBox seems to be having some kind of weird problems right now, so SwfCabin will have to do :()

Here’s a screenie:

Not much to look at yet...

I’ve decided that I have a few goals for today. Hopefully, I can get all of these done by tonight.

Firstly, I want to have some kind of baddies that will stagger up to you and hit you. They should also die when shot.

Secondly, I want to have more than one weapon. Probably a machine gun, a shotgun, and a high-powered rifle in addition to the pistol.

Third, I want health powerups and player death. That’s pretty crucial, and may come before multiple weapons.

I can probably pull those few things off, I think. Given that, I’ve got a large portion of my game right there! 😀

I’m very optimistic. (Call me Pollyanna if you will…)

— Mr. Dude