A few hours late, but whatever. Here’s the second installment of the “weekly game update” for Hero Dude.

Accomplished

• Designed and updated tile graphics, however, I am now leaning towards scrapping all the current tiles and redoing them.  I’m trying to get a graphic style that I can stick to for the rest of the game.  The same goes for the design of Hero Dude himself – I’m still trying to get that right.
• Designed and added a quick HUD to the game.  Look’s good so far.
• Drew up a plan for the entirety of world 1 (which encompasses about 4,000 x 1,400 pixels in size).

To-Do

• Need to optimize loading times.  As it stands, loading level 1 takes roughly 15 – 20 seconds which is unacceptable.  Attempting to understand how to utilize ByteArrays to convert the XML to a speedier format to parse.
• Create tiles and graphical assets for the World 1 plan I drew up.  Build the level completely (at least with tiles, not necessarily objects such as characters, etc…)

Planning Ahead

Same as last week, no changes.

• Need to figure out how I’m going to go about collision detection.  The two possibilities are either 100% tile-based, which will work in most cases.  However, with this method, detecting collisions between enemies and moving platforms will be difficult.  The other possibility is 100% SAT (Separating Axis Theorem) collision detection.  With this method, I completely understand how to detect collisions, however, I don’t yet understand how to resolve the collisions appropriately.

Not bad being that I didn’t work on the game at all until yesterday / today.  College is starting to throw everything it’s got at me being that there’s roughly 1 month left until the end of the semester.  I actually set aside time on Friday to start and complete two different 4-5 page papers that aren’t even due until May.  Why?  Because they were just weighing me down and constantly on my mind.  Feels good to have that out of the way.

Here’s a screenshot of the World 1 plan I just drew up.  Take a look to get the basic idea of level 1.

That’s all for now.  Tune in next week for more amazing news!

Oh crap.  Here we go.  The first “weekly game update” installment for my upcoming game, Hero Dude.  I’m gonna place a bet that there will be 14 of these before the game is done.  Let’s find out!

Check out the bottom of this post for a playable Flash file of what I have so far + screenshots!

Stats:

So, the development process on this game is relatively new.  I technically started working on this game about three weeks ago, but didn’t get around to making the weekly game update post for the past two weeks.  Why?  Mostly because there wasn’t much to report on.  However, progress is being made, now!

The game is currently 3% completed.  What does that mean?  Not much.  Why “3%?”  Because it’s bigger than “1%.”  Since I did work on the game, I figured it shouldn’t be “1%” anymore, so, yeah.

Accomplished

• Loads of work completed regarding parsing an XML file to build a level.
• After many sketches, came up with a design for Hero Dude.  The design will most likely continue to be slightly altered over the coming weeks.
• Got the level camera working perfectly.  Implements smooth scrolling, shake effect, and ability to zoom.
• Programmed a nice parallax scrolling effect with a repeating background.
• Lots of graphic work with tiles.  Whether or not these tiles appear in the final game is undecided, they will most likely be tweaked over time, if not completely scrapped.

To-Do

• Continue expanding the test level – both adding more variety in the tile graphics as well beginning to add objects to the game world.
• Work on adding a HUD.
• Build the BMPLoader class and optimize it.  This class will load the bitmap versions of all graphical assets of the objects that the level will utilize during the loading process at the beginning of the level.

Planning Ahead

• Need to figure out how I’m going to go about collision detection.  The two possibilities are either 100% tile-based, which will work in most cases.  However, with this method, detecting collisions between enemies and moving platforms will be difficult.  The other possibility is 100% SAT (Separating Axis Theorem) collision detection.  With this method, I completely understand how to detect collisions, however, I don’t yet understand how to resolve the collisions appropriately.

So that’s that.  Lot’s of work getting done.  Here are two screenshots of some nonsense.

And here’s a playable file.  Click here to play around with the camera.

That’s all for this week.  Hopefully I have more good news next week as well!

Wow, so that was a very fast month.  I know that I’ve said many times before that I’d have Don’t Panic out in March, but I guess I just ran late on the deadlines.  However, bidding is coming to an end soon, so I can 100% assure you that it will be released in April.  Anyway, let’s see how much I was able to scrape together this past month.

I was actually able to sell some late sitelocks of 2 of my older games this month, which actually surprised me.  I guess it goes to show you that primary sponsorships are definitely worth it even though you’re getting less money up front.  Also, I through together a quick Adwords campaign this past week (with a free $100 voucher) and it appears this in turn also upped my Adsense income, who would’ve guessed!?

Anyway, let’s get started…

Total’s for the month of March 2011.

Website Revenue

Google Adsense: $295.12

Game Revenue

Exclusive/Primary Sponsorships and Sitelocks: $1,950.00

Mochi Ads (Total): $380.34

• Mochi Ads (Oil Spill Escape): $157.57
• Mochi Ads (Christmas Defense): $189.77

CPMStar Ads (Total): $540.86

• CPMStar Ads (Oil Spill Escape): $256.86
• CPMStar Ads (Christmas Defense): $297.00

Game Sessions

Gameplays (Total): 269,136

• Gameplays (Weapons on Wheels): 179,519 (-)
• Gameplays (Oil Spill Escape): 18,499 (-)
  
• Gameplays (Christmas Defense): 71,118 (-)
  

Monthly Total

Total: $3,165.42

A really great month if I do say so myself.  Unexpected, as well.  I didn’t even release a game.

For those of you interested in development progress of Hero Dude, I’ll have a playable demo of what I have working tomorrow (Saturday) along with the “Weekly Game Update” post.  Don’t get your hopes up, it’s not much.  You just get to play around with the camera at this point.

PS – The above revenue stats are complete BS.  It’s April Fool’s day, silly.  I’m not going to fill in each individual amount, but the income for March was only $68.00.  Not much since I didn’t realease a game.  We’ll see about April, however.

Anyway, until tomorrow…

So yeah.  Don’t Panic is all completed and was uploaded to FlashGameLicense.com earlier this week.

So far it has had three bids.  The first two were the obligatory nonsense bids, less than even 10% of the game’s value in my opinion, but the most recent bid is more in the serious business range.  At this rate, I can confidently say that bidding won’t last too long and the game will be released  sometime in April.

Meanwhile, I took a break much of this past week.  I spent most of my free time between class just playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and generally just not doing much.  However, the past two days I’ve been getting back into the swing of things.  I’ve been laying the “groundwork” for Hero Dude – drawing some concept art and coding the main “core” files of the game.  Things are definitely going a lot smoother than I imagined.

Even more good news is I have my spring break this week.  Well, good news for me, at least. 🙂

That’s all for now.  Next week there will be a real “Weekly Game Update” when I actually have something to say.

The final weekly game update for Don’t Panic!  Holy crap!

Alright, well this is it.  The game is 100% completed.  All that’s left is to put it up for bidding on Monday afternoon.  It should be live on the FlashGameLicense marketplace by Tuesday morning.  I’m very excited for this game, it truly is a lot of fun to play it.

Anyway, let’s get into the final breakdown.  (Check the bottom of this post for screenshots and the trailer!)

Accomplished

• Finish animating the opening cutscene.  (Completed, and may I say, it looks boss.)
• Put game on FlashGameLicense.com for First Impressions.  (Completed.)
• Make trailer, screenshots, and thumbnails.  (Completed.)

To-Do

• Make a “cheat enabled” version and upload it to FlashGameLicense for sponsors to test out.

Planning Ahead

• Start working on Hero Dude concept art!

Screenshots

• Main Menu – http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/9471/ssmainmenu.jpg
• Cutscene Still – http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/3599/sscutscene.jpg
• Gameplay 1 – http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/1871/ssgameplay1.jpg
• Gameplay 2 – http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/4964/ssgameplay2.jpg
• Gameplay 3 – http://img814.imageshack.us/img814/4190/ssgameplay3.jpg
• Boss 1 – http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/541/ssboss.jpg
• Interlevel Menu – http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/6734/ssinterlevelmenu.jpg
• Store Screen – http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/813/ssstore.jpg

Trailer

I know I’ve predicted a March release, but I just don’t see that happening now.  I need to stop underestimating how much time is required at the very end of the game sponsorship cycle.  Expect the game out by mid April at the latest!