This is amazing. I haven’t missed a weekly game update post in like a month. That’s gotta be some kind of a record.
General Stuff:
I feel really good about this past week. I’m still spending nearly half of my “work time” getting out sitelocks for Don’t Panic, but I’m still getting a good amount of work done on Defective. The progress completed only jumped from 8% to 12%, but that’s not really that bad at all.
Accomplished:
Character movement completed.
Character’s can now shoot, particle effects and all.
Character’s take damage and their health is affected. When they are killed they explode into a bunch of particles.
Added foundation to allow level’s to read from vectors/arrays in order to build/blit the levels.
Characters collide with walls accurately. (Also designed 3 different wall blocks.)
HUD functions properly.
Miscellaneous tweaks and optimizations.
To Do:
Add explosive blocks that can detonate and destroy/hurt the walls/characters around them.
Have the level read from an XML file/ByteArray and build the level accordingly.
Pictures!
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy…
Well that’s it for this week. I’d love to get a video up some time this week of some gameplay just so you guys can get a peek at how it looks in action.
I wanted to write up a quick overview post on what’s going on to break up the monotony of the Weekly Game Update posts. Before I dive into that, I just want to talk about that FlashGameLicense Developer Competition I was clamoring about in my last post – I didn’t end up entering it.
The idea of creating a simple game within 24 hours was (and still is) very appealing to me, but after the competition started and I began trying to brainstorm game ideas (for the theme of “greed”), I realized that it was kind of pointless. Sure the idea of winning the competition was a good motivator, but the bigger motivator was producing a game (or at least a prototype of a game) that I could end up being sponsored. I decided that unless I came up with an absolute killer idea for a game, I wasn’t going to waste my time. And so that’s what happened. I instead got some work done on Defective, which brings me to the real topics of this post…
1. Defective
I’ve already completed the two “To Do” tasks I set for myself this week. The player moves around and shoots bullets all up in his joint – it’s great. Next I’m going to work on having the bullets collide with an enemy and from there I’ll start basic collision detection with walls for both the player and bullets.
2. Don’t Panic
Don’t Panic was easily my most successful game to date, hence why two months after it’s release I’m still talking about it. This week I uploaded the game to Kongregate (vote 5 please ;)) and a review of the game was posted over at FlashAddict. I’m still selling sitelocks for the game and a post-mortem writeup is in the works.
3. Untitled Game
Yes, I’m officially working on another game. Right now, all I have to show for it is a text document full of gameplay elements and a Flash document with some sweet concept art. I am beyond excited for this game, and I believe it will easily be my greatest game when it’s completed. The great thing is, it’s not a “big” game, it’s more similar to games like Angry Birds and Fragger – a level-based, get-the-highest-score type of game. Once I have the core mechanics down, the rest of the work will be simply designing the levels. As far as I know, it’s an original idea for a game and I’m looking forward to working on it.
I think I covered everything I wanted to talk about, so I’m going to go now.
Stuff got done this past week. Not a lot of stuff, but a good amount of stuff.
General Stuff:
Alright, this past week has been a lot of Flash work. However, not all of it was related to Defective. Believe it or not, I’m still working on Don’t Panic. (As in, re-branding the game and selling non-exclusive licenses.) This took up a good amount of time, but I did find some to get some progress done on Defective. (For those interested, I’m going to write up a post-mortem on Don’t Panic as soon as I’m done with all the sitelocks.)
Accomplished:
Programmed basic movement and shooting for the Player. (However, there is an annoying bug I discovered which needs fixing.)
Designed and implemented the HUD (Heads Up Display).
Re-tweaked the background to be much simpler, it looks great with the parallax movement of the stars.
Implemented an optimized particle system.
To Do:
Finish tweaking the basic movement of the Player. (And fix that bug.)
Make the player shoot (design a bullet, code the Bullet classes, utilize the particle system for a bullet muzzle/trail effect).
Picture!
Yes, that’s right. Just one picture.
In Other News…
I’m writing this at 9:00am on Saturday morning. Chances are I got at least one of those “To Do” items done by the time this is live.
Why am I writing this so early then? Family is over today, so I won’t have time to do it later.
I also won’t have time to do it later (or tomorrow morning for that fact) because of the 8th FGL Developer Competition that begins at 1:00pm EDT today. The challenge is to develop a game in 24 hours given a specific theme. I’m really looking forward to it, not just so I can win (which I will), but to see how fast I can work if I really needed to. Plus at the end of it I might have a good enough game to get sponsored.
Don’t Panic has been released on AddictingGames.com. I’m really excited about this since AddictingGames is one of the biggest game sites out there.
I’ve been waiting for Kongregate.com to get back to me regarding a non-exclusive license purchase, but since it seems they’re passing on it, I’ll be uploading Don’t Panic there on Monday. Expect a post telling you to go vote 5 there when the game goes live ;).
Two “Weekly Game Update” posts on time! I’m on a friggen roll!
General Stuff:
Alright, let’s see what happened this week. I didn’t do much. I don’t know what happened honestly. I mean, I started the week off strong by completely re-doing the HUD (and may I say I think I was able to make it look very shnazzy.) However, I just started losing day after day by procrastinating.
On Friday I got back into it though. And by “got back into it,” I mean I decided to start the game completely over. New art, new Project file, the whole nine yards. What am I trying to accomplish from this? Well first off, I want to approach the game with a different art style, and unlike my previous artwork, I instantly have a really good vibe with this version. I’m starting the code over for two reasons – one, there’s not much to “scrap,” so it’s not a big deal. Two, now that I have a really good idea how the game is going to function, I feel by starting over I can keep the code very clean and optimized.
Accomplished:
Started the game development process over :).
Drew the art for all of the enemies and the player.
To Do:
Program basic movement and shooting.
Optimize the particle system class and re-add it to the game.
Videos!
Yesterday, I recorded myself drawing the art for all of the enemies and uploaded it to the Youtubes. Enjoy.
Alright, I’m done. I’m actually writing this post the night before and right now my back aches, my stomach is upset, and I feel tired. WHAT DEDICATION.
Alright, one month later the “Weekly” Game Update’s are back. Let’s get back into it, shall we?
General Stuff:
Alright, so I didn’t do a lot of work on the game this past week. All I’ve done since I’ve been home really is just build the foundation for a basic particle system that I can use for ship exhaust, bullet trails, explosions, etc. (So what I’m saying is, it technically took me over four weeks to create about three new classes and write a few lines of code, yeah…)
So, yeah, that’s what this Weekly Game Update will be about.
Accomplished:
Designed the player, though I think it’s going to go through a few revisions before it’s finalized.
Noted down lot’s of gameplay ideas in my notebook, beginning to really flesh out the game.
Built a basic particle system.
Designed and applied a simple HUD. The design will have to be revised a few times, however.
To Do:
Create / revise some more graphics including the player, HUD, and other level elements.
Optimize the particle system for speed and performance.
Pictures!
Yeah, I told you there would be pictures. Here are a few of the particle system as it is right now. (As it stands, it seems it can handle about 5,000 particles before lag sets in. I’m hoping to get that number up to 10,000 at least after I work on the optimization. (It’s all blitting.)
And yeah, that’s about it for this week. In case you missed any of the following:
