Another week, another weekly game update.  Here we go.

Stats:

According to my header up there, the game was 45% complete as of this time last week and currently stands at 55%.  That is a 10% improvement in just 1 week.  That’s better than the 6% improvement from last week.  (I’m hoping to bump this up to somewhere in the 60%+ range by tonight if I can get enough work done, however.)

Alright, so let’s see exactly what I got done on my “to-do” list that I created last week, shall we?

New screenshot, gasp!

Accomplished:

• Program the flying enemy as well as design and program one more type of flying enemy.  (Completed, even though the idea of flying enemies was removed, I did add another enemy. Enemy’s are basically done.)
• Give bullets some polish (trails, impact animations, etc).  (Completed, well, maybe 95% completed, but good enough.)
• Begin programming the player’s reinforcement AI to do their particular job.  (Half completed.)
• Draw and animate the player and his reinforcements in their top-down form.  (Completed.)
• Start the menu design (simple 3D-programming involved).  (Not completed.)
• Added some weather effects, attempting to optimize them for performance however.
• Other miscellaneous tweaks and optimizations.

To-Do:

• Finish programming player reinforcement AI.
• Start the main menu design.
• Build more levels.
• Start inter-level menu design (get “store” functionality working)
• Start adding sound effects.

Planning Ahead:

• 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 that’s the end of the that.  I think I got a lot of work done.  Not as much as I would have liked, but I’ll take it.

The thing that sucks, however, is that college starts up for me again tomorrow.  What does that mean?  I’m not 100% sure yet.  It’s not like I’m going to stop working on this project.  If anything, progress might slow a little bit.  Actually, for some reason, I find I sometimes work harder on my game projects during college semesters, I don’t know why though.  So we’ll see.

In other news…

…Now that we all know what I’ll be doing later – excuse me if there’s no game dev progress made tonight.

Well, not my animation.  Sorry to get your hopes up (LOL WHO AM I KIDDING?)

No but seriously.  My good friend Brandon has released his first real animation ever on NewGrounds today.  Check it out – Scene of the Crime.

Go and five it up so it’ll get noticed and possibly even front-paged.

Even though he’s worked in Flash for almost as long as I have, he’s never actually released anything besides miscellaneous tests and whatnot, so this is quite the momentous occasion.  He also has a site (RidTheWorld.org) which currently is actually more inactive than mine (gasp).  Hopefully that’ll change in the future though.

Alright, that’s it.  Go check it out and stuff.

What’s up everyone?  Like I promised in my latest weekly game update post, here are some screenshots and inside looks into the development of the “good guys” from my upcoming game “Don’t Panic.”  A big thanks to my good pal Rid Brandon who helped me with the designs.

So my goal for these guys were to look very innocent.  Peaceful, innocent, not looking to do anything other than look adorable – you know, that kind of stuff.  They’re aliens too, by the way, in case you didn’t know that.

Anyway, here’s what I came up with at first.

Click image for larger version.

I know, it’s horrifying.  Rid Brandon thought the same thing and assisted me with the design process.  Here was his first go at it.

Click image for larger version.

At first, I wasn’t too crazy about it because it didn’t capture that innocence look I was aiming for.  However, I eventually broke down after numerous failed attempts and then tried to figure out what I really wanted.  After taking some inspiration from Rid and his sketch, I broke out my tablet and started drawing a sketch.

Click image for larger version.

This sketch, as you can see, eventually turned into one of the characters (the main character, the one the player plays as during the game).  I really liked how he turned out, and continued with a similar design for each of the other four aliens.  The only major difference between them being their color.

Click image for larger version.

After being absolutely sure I had something that I liked, I made top-down versions of them – the versions you will see in the game.  (Only half completed at the moment, I may have to draw arms for some of them, plus animation for some as well.)  In fact, the only reason I bothered to draw the side-view angles of the aliens is because I plan on making a beginning and ending cutscene involving them.

Click image for larger version.

And there you have it.  That was the basic design process I went through while designing the main alien characters.

I already have the enemies designed, actually they’ve been in the game a while.  I didn’t bother with side view angles of them, though I may actually need them for the cutscenes – I’m not sure yet.

The only character left to design is the boss – who will also require a side view design.

So… that’s that.  Hope it wasn’t too boring.

Site Updates

Just a quick note I did some quick updates to the site.  Nothing major.  I just found and installed a decent lightbox WordPress plugin that actually works (unlike the other piles of crap I’ve tried).  So now clicking images is sexy.  I’ve also added an RSS Link to the top navigation bar.  Why?  Because I can, that’s why.

Also another quick note, lots of work done on “Don’t Panic” today.  For some reason I really felt like working today even though I’ve been suffering from the worst headache I’ve ever had that clocked me in the face out of nowhere last night.  Seriously, one minute I was fine and the next I was holding my head in agony – what’s the deal with that am I right!?

Alright, well, that was a fast week.  Jeez, time flew right by.  Anyway, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do today, so let’s jump right in shall we?

Stats:

Alrighty, well, the game is finally titled!  After a long period of not having a clue for a name, it just hit me one day.  I’ve already made a post about it (and I also have it in the header area) – but in case you still haven’t heard, the title will be “Don’t Panic.”  That may make the game sound all serious and whatnot, but I assure you that’s not the case, if anything the game will make you laugh once or twice during the cutscenes.

According to my header up there, the game was 39% complete as of this time last week and currently stands at 45%.  That is a 6% improvement in just 1 week.  Not nearly as good as the 19% improvement from last week, but I’ll take what I can get.

I admit that Minecraft took up at least 3 or 4 days of development progress away from me at the beginning of the week, but I’m over it now.  I made a post about it earlier, so check it out if you want to see more on the topic.

Accomplished:

What I’ll do here is take the “To-Do” list from the previous week and amend whether I did or didn’t complete the task.  I’ll also add to the end of the list any tasks I completed that I didn’t have listed.

• Animate more variations of explosions.  Some small explosions, some bigger ones, and some unique-looking ones.  Shouldn’t be too hard but it will be very tedious work.  I finally get to use my tablet, though.  (Completed, it was very tedious work, but I did it.)
• Program and design flying enemies.  FLYING ENEMIES! (Half completed.  I designed one flying enemy after scrapping the design at first and starting over, I didn’t do any programming though.)
  
• Give bullets some polish (trails, impact animations, etc).  (Not completed.)
• Begin programming the player’s reinforcement AI to do their particular job. (Not completed.)
• Start designing the player, the player’s reinforcements, and the player’s weapons.  (Half completed.  I designed both the player and his reinforcements, but not in their top-down form, which is the form you’ll see them in 99% of the game.)
  
• And above all – come up with a title! (Completed.)
• Created the game title art.  You can check it out in the sidebar under “Recent Game Dev Pics.”
• Enabled functionality for player to use scroll wheel to scroll between weapons.

To-Do:

• Program the flying enemy as well as design and program one more type of flying enemy.
• Give bullets some polish (trails, impact animations, etc).
• Begin programming the player’s reinforcement AI to do their particular job.
• Draw and animate the player and his reinforcements in their top-down form.
• Start the menu design (simple 3D-programming involved).

Planning Ahead:

All of these are currently carried over from last week, nothing new to add at the moment.

• The opening and ending cutscenes have to be planned out.  This can’t be accomplished until I know what the player and his team will look like.  (How difficult or easy it will be to animate them.)
• Design and program the opening and in-between menus including the “buy” menu, “upgrade” menu, etc.  Also implement robust saving and loading functionality.  This can’t be accomplished until the game is further along in development.
• Begin adding new levels as well as program each level’s enemy-spawning algorithm.  This can’t be completed until all enemies have been created and bug tested.
• A half-way boss battle and a final boss battle.  This can’t be completed because it’s going to be a pain in the ass to program since I want it done right.  Not a very good reason but too bad.

Alright, that’s the review of the game dev work for the past week.  Not a lot done, but like I said blame is on Minecraft!  Next week will be different for sure.  Also, this is my last week until I return to college on January 24th – once that happens I’m sure my productivity will be slightly affected, but hopefully not too much.

It’s worth mentioning that I do have a new project on my plate as well – “Hero Dude” has returned and is currently in the planning stages.  I explained more of it in this post, so go read about it there.

Well, that’s it for this week, until next time!

(PS – Sorry for the lack of screenshots, like I said in my last Weekly Game Update post, don’t expect screenshots every week because sometimes it’s just not warranted.  I will have a post in a day or two outlining the development process of the character designs, however, so that’ll be nice.)

So I thought I’d make a post about Minecraft since it seems to be biggest thing in the world at the moment.  I decided to purchase myself a copy and give it a whirl even though I didn’t exactly know what the game was about.  (Honestly I still don’t get it.)  I figured since it was a successful indie game it’d be in my best interest to check it out.

I may have become a tad addicted for a few days – just a little.

My awesome house.

I still don’t get the idea of multiplayer.  All I see are a bunch of people talking to each other about finding lava, whining about losing their diamonds, and asking “who griefed my house?”.  However it does get addicting once you start building things.  I don’t know why exactly, but it got me hooked for a while there.

This actually leads me to my next topic on “procrastination”…  You see, since I can’t play Minecraft and work on my game at the same time – production came to somewhat of a standstill there for a good 3 or 4 days.  It sucks, yes, but I’m getting back into the groove of things.

Don’t Panic

And we officially have a title for my top down defense/shooter game – “Don’t Panic.”  It may seem a bit odd, but it fits with what I have in mind.  It’s more of a comedic title/game than anything else.

New Game

Well, it’s not technically new.  Hero Dude has been mentioned a lot in the past.  And that eventually led to the game being scrapped due to lack of ideas.  But now that’s all changed.  I’ve always wanted this game to be my main game, the one I make sequels for and whatnot.

Anyway, I had an epiphany earlier today and the game is officially back on.  It’s still in the planning stage where I will be doing tons of writing and sketches of things before I dive into actual coding.  (Also I want to finish Don’t Panic before I seriously begin anything else.)  Look out for this one, as it is going to be my biggest project ever.

Well that’s it for the updates today.  I’ll have the new Weekly Game Update up over the weekend.  BYE!