Alright, before I get any more busy or procrastinate any longer, let me get this post out there. Here are just a bunch of things I’ve been meaning to post, so I figured I’d group it all into one post.
RidTheWorld.org
You should definitely check this site out. It’s the home of my lover good friend Brandon Ridener. He’s been working in Flash for as long as I have, but he’s a better procrastinator than I am. He’s just now finally getting into the groove of things – he just released his first real Flash animation “Scene of the Crime” and is already working on his second.
SMB Interview
This was a really interesting read for me. Click here to read over a transcript of an interview with the original Super Mario Bros. creators. It was really fascinating to get to see how these guys think and how they worked together to create the Mario games. Definitely worth the five minutes to look it over.
Flash MindMeld 2011
Are you interested in making Flash games? Then this page will be like gold for you. Dozens of the most famous people in the Flash gaming field contributed small 2-3 minute voice clips giving out some of the knowledge they’ve acquired throughout the years, all for free.
LOL
I’ve been laughing at this video ever since I was linked to it a few days ago by RidBrandon. Enjoy.
Oh boy, sorry for the lateness of this post. I don’t know what it’s been, but I’ve just felt really unmotivated and overall pretty crappy for the past few days. I got a ton of work done over the weekend, but once Sunday afternoon hit, I just didn’t want to do anything but watch TV and decompose. I think I’m snapping out of it, but enough with that, let’s get this update started.
Stats:
According to my header up there, the game was 75% complete as of this time last week and currently stands at 83%. That is an 8% improvement in just 1 week. That’s the same as the 8% improvement from last week. Fascinating, I know. As the game gets closer to completion, the percentage will only increase smaller and smaller amounts (since it’s easier to gauge how much work is left as development nears the end.)
Alright, let’s get into the details.
Accomplished
Complete main menu. (Completed – In fact, check out an image of it here.)
Add level beginning /ending menus. (Completed.)
Begin creating store / upgrade menu. (Completed – The Store menu is completed finished, the upgrade menu still needs some work.)
Add more levels. (Somewhat completed – Only added one more level, and it was primarily just to test if the game can move smoothly from one level to the other.)
To-Do
Complete upgrade menu.
Add all other levels (includes a rough idea of the amount of enemies and types of enemies spawned in each level as well as customized beginning/end menus).
Start animating the beginning/end cutscenes.
Start looking for music.
Planning Ahead:
Start writing down some ideas for the two boss battles. I already have a few ideas, but I need to get them more solid.
Get the game on FlashGameLicense.com for some First Impressions, then modify the game accordingly.
This game is taking a lot longer than I originally intended. In fact, I expected the game to be done and released right about now when I first started. However, at the rate things are moving, I’d bet the game will be completed by the end of February and will be released sometime in March (probably late-March).
According to my header up there, the game was 67% complete as of this time last week and currently stands at 75%. That is an 8% improvement in just 1 week. That’s not as good as the 12% improvement from last week, but it’s not bad considering how fast the game is nearing the final stages in development.
Alright, let’s get into the details.
Accomplished
Start the main menu design. (Completed, also began programming it.)
Build more levels. (Not completed, but can begin any moment now.)
Start inter-level menu design. (Not completed.)
Start adding sound effects. (Completed, all that remains is some tweaking – making certain sounds louder, etc…)
Added various miscellaneous tweaks.
To-Do
Complete main menu. (Involves coding of a global GameMenus class, a general MenuButton class, and other things.)
Add level beginning /ending menus.
Begin creating store / upgrade menu.
Add more levels.
Planning Ahead:
Nothing new to add, same as last week.
The opening and ending cutscenes have to be planned out – possibly begin sketching out an animatic.
Begin thinking up ideas for the two boss battles in the game – how the boss will act and his vulnerabilities.
Start looking for music / possibly an artist for custom music.
That’s that. Sorry about not getting around to posting a video of some gameplay footage, I meant to do that some time this week but I honestly just never got around to it. Trying to find a decent screen capture program and a decent video editor program has always given me headaches in the past. I’ll try my best to get one up this week.
In other news, my birthday was on Tuesday. I’m apparently 20 years old now – which is incredibly weird to think about, but that’s okay.
So that’s that. I expect the game to be completed (at least 95%+) by February 20. At that point it’s just a matter of time until the sponsor bidding process ends. I’d guess a mid-March release date.
Well, that’s all from me today. Looking forward to the Super Bowl tonight. It sucks the Jet’s didn’t make it again, but that’s how it goes I guess.
And just like that, month one of 2011 is done and over with. Let’s do a quick check in on how I’m doing before I pass out. (I’m writing this post the night before it goes live and boy am I tried… yes, tried, that’s how tried I am…)
I didn’t release any new games in January like I was planning to with Don’t Panic, so my total monthly income has dropped significantly. Actually, this affects almost all the other aspects of my income. For example, since I didn’t release a new game, I don’t get a big boost in traffic to the site, thus Adsense revenue will be down.
Anyway, let’s get started…
Total’s for the month of January 2011.
Website Revenue
Google Adsense: $32.51 (-30%)
Game Revenue
Exclusive/Primary Sponsorships and Sitelocks: $0.00 (-100%)
And there you have it. Quite the plummet if I do say so myself. It’s to be expected though. Like I said up above, if I don’t release a game during any given month, then obviously profits are going to be way down.
February will be a significantly different story. JUST YOU WATCH.
Uh oh, this post appears to be about 10 hours late. Let’s get it over with already, shall we?
Stats:
According to my header up there, the game was 55% complete as of this time last week and currently stands at 67%. That is a 12% improvement in just 1 week. That’s barely better than the 10% improvement from last week which is quite intriguing, being that I hadn’t touched the game until yesterday :D.
Alright, so let’s see what I did and didn’t accomplish…
Accomplished:
Finish programming player reinforcement AI. (Completed – Wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined (copy+paste from Christmas Defense) – though I still did learn a few things.)
Start the main menu design. (Not completed.)
Build more levels. (Not completed.)
Start inter-level menu design (get “store” functionality working) (Not completed.)
Start adding sound effects. (Not completed.)
Found some minor bugs found and squished them – also made many minor tweaks.
Did some 3D modeling for the turret bullet.
To-Do:
Start the main menu design.
Build more levels.
Start inter-level menu design.
Start adding sound effects.
(Yeah, all basically what I was supposed to do this week.)
Planning Ahead:
Nothing new to add, same as last week.
The opening and ending cutscenes have to be planned out – possibly begin sketching out an animatic.
Begin thinking up ideas for the two boss battles in the game – how the boss will act and his vulnerabilities.
Start looking for music / possibly an artist for custom music.
And there we have it. I completed one task out of the five that I had listed for myself and the development progress still jumped up 12%. Am I cheating a little here? No, no I’m not. It just so happens that I definitely underestimated the difficulty in the programming of the friendly AI. Actually, that’s not true. It wasn’t so much difficult as it was just very tedious and annoying. Either way, I got it done.
Another reason for the lack of progress was due to me starting college last Monday. It was a very hectic first week and I’m pretty sure I have a solid schedule now so there shouldn’t be any more complaints.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Sorry if this appears a bit rushed (it’s because it is) but I’m just getting a little overwhelmed at the moment. Give it a day or so and I’ll be back to my good ol’ perky self.
Expect a quick video short of some gameplay footage possibly Tuesday or Wednesday.
