Saturday 31 May 2014

That's it, game entered!

Well that's me finished my prototype game with a couple of hours to spare!!! I have a week's wait to find out if I won anything, but honestly the experience is probably worth it regardless of any prize.

I managed to complete 10 levels, implement a system where the pick-ups functioned as both lives and a fuel / timer, honestly this was something I'd not even considered doing before so working out the logic for it was an interesting experience. with the exception of the art assets here thanks to +Chris Hildenbrand the art work and animations were all created by myself, which considering I'm rubbish at art / drawing isn't too bad I think. My background music was sourced from the incomptech website thanks to +kmmusic.

You can have a play of the prototype game here.

I was linked an interesting article earlier on gamasutra about taking a game from gamejam to commercial release and while to an extent I agree with some parts of the article in that it takes time to develop the game to a full commercial release I believe that it can be done a bit quicker, especially if it's being worked on by a focused / dedicated small team, like we have here at Prickly. So with this in mind I intend to develop 'Escape from the aquarium' further as part of OGAM.

I'll go into a bit more detail and actually provide a bit more structure to my continued development of the game which will hopefully make for an interesting read.

I'm off to relax a bit now, enjoy the game prototype, any feedback is welcome including suggestions for additional content.

Thank you for your support this week, it has been invaluable!

Friday 30 May 2014

Day 4, just over 24 hours to go!

Hi guys,

Thanks for sticking with me so far!

Well I'm practically on the last stretch, just over 24 hours to go and I think I've got a pretty solid chance of getting everything done on time.

I've been having a lot of issues with the compiler in gamemaker today to the point where it wont actually let me compile the game for windows and only in html5... which is kinda OK in that I need to submit the entry in html5 anyway and the compiler seems to be fine for that.. might just be a random glitch, I cant put my finger on why it would be fine for one and not the other but I don't really have the time to work out the issue at this point, I'm supposed to be rapid prototyping not working on gamemaker issues.

Not much to say really other than I'm down to my last few things to do on my list, I've managed to outline all of my levels today so just need to flesh these out a bit and ensure they are progressively challenging. I have sourced a few sound assets but have still to implement them into the game. I have a couple of optional animations to do and include them and their mechanics into the game but these are quick to do if I have the time. Other than that it's just a case of playtesting the game and making sure everything works after i'm done... I have been testing as I go but you often find random errors and bugs after implementing something new that you didn't have before... Gamemaker is a funny thing!!

Anyway here's a few screenies for your enjoyment and thanks for your support and sticking with me this week!









Thursday 29 May 2014

47 hours to go....

Hi Guys,

If you've stuck with the blog so far this week you'll know that i'm just over half way through the GameJam and now have 47 hours left to submit my entry to the competition. A couple of entries have already been submitted however i'm confident I already have a better game and i'm not even close to being finished, tomorrow will be a long and busy day I feel.

Today i've spent a lot of time sorting out my assets so that they all match / fit in together correctly implemented the life system and also finished off the water blob and most of the game mechanic assets. In terms of mechanics left to create I have to source some sounds, create an old stone fireplace to act as an end of level goal, create a death animation for the flame encountering the water blob some kinda of animation to symbolise moving air currents, some basic water tiles and also an oil slick effect. It seems like a lot but some of them are tweaks of existing images and some are quite straightforward so I hope to be done by mid way through tomorrow. The benefit of spending a significant amount of time on the assets is that each level will be based off a tile-set meaning that new levels are easy to flesh out and I should be able to finish a level within the space of half an hour or less.

Once those are complete I can focus a bit on the story / introduction and then maybe look at implementing the FGL SDK.

I'll leave you with a couple of assets from today's activities to keep you interested!




Wednesday 28 May 2014

Day 2 of the GameJam

It's been a long and productive day today both helped and hindered by dodgy net access at home today, not sure what's wrong but I've been able to work through and create a lot more assets for the game.

I have realised it would be a good idea to generate a 'to do list' so that I can start ticking things off and also see realistically what can be done in the time remaining I'll run through what I've been up to today and then at the end of the post list what remains to be done.

Today's efforts saw progress made in the form of new sprites and animations for the levels as well as the fleshing out of the story for the game. basically your a flame trapped in the dungeon of an evil watery blob. The dungeon is part of a structure called the 'Aquarium' and your job as a player is to guide the flame through the dungeons in order to escape. I'm initially aiming for 10 levels, the first of which is a tutorial / guide as to how the game plays and how the flame can interact with the environment (some objects are flammable and can be used to access new areas. A lot of the sprites and animations for interacting with the environment were produced today as well as the title screen, menu, and the first few levels have been outlined. Additionally the core of the levels will be generated using a tile set which is now in place meaning that the only real lengthy process in creating the levels is in the idea generation side of things, all the building blocks are ready to use.

Here's a sneak peek at the title screen, let me know what you think.


Things to focus on for completion are:

Finishing game assets,
Coding key game functionality outside of movement / collision,
Sourcing sounds,
Completing the remaining levels along with the tutorial level,
Updating blog with progress,

Things to include if I have free time:

Polish game assets,
Add additional 5 levels,
Implement FGL SDK,

Tuesday 27 May 2014

And the theme is........

The theme was announced late last night (for me being UK based) and it is 'burning'. One of the key requirements for this competition is that the game be focused on the theme.

So far I've spent the first half of today mainly working on a game concept and assets in the form of sprites and working out what I want to do with the game. functionality / mechanics.

My initial thought process was to look at the key components of a flame, heat, fuel, oxygen and to somehow integrate these into my game. However time is of the essence and is rapidly ticking away so I felt that having multiple functionality with the pick ups and game controllers would fit in better than overloading the game with too many details making it overly complex and more likely to fail to meet the deadline.

To this end I have created a life / timer system based on the flame collecting kindling scattered throughout the levels, these represent the life of the flame and you collect more to keep playing each new kindling collected adds to the timer. There will be 3 sections to the timer which indicate how intense your flame is burning, the most intense flame being when you have lots of time / kindling remaining and the flame dying out when you have little time left.

Sections of the levels will require you to interact with obstacles such as ice walls which you will need to melt however doing so will remove part of your kindling giving the timer / kindling a two fold effect of being a game length controller and also a resource for the player to inadvertently use to progress through the levels.

My assets thus far are a player flame, and a generic small flame which will be left behind on flammable surfaces when the player moves over them.

I've also animated these somewhat simply but I think the effect is good enough for now, If I find myself with time to spare then I can go back and polish the graphics.










Monday 26 May 2014

What happened, what's next?

Hello and welcome back to my game development oriented blog if your a regular reader and if your new welcome!

Initially i'd like to clarify where i've been the past week and why you've not seen my blog updates. Happily it is for good reasons, I took a week off to relocate and move in with my fiancée and set up my home office / work area. It took a while to get set up but i'm back on the work train and what better way to start off in my new environment than with a game jam!

FGL are running a week long gamejam starting tonight (4pm PST) first prize is :

1st Place -
  • $250
  • Mention in the Developer Newsletter
  • FGL Profile Badge
  • Guaranteed Entry to the Bidding Spotlight once the game is complete
  • Free Reviewer Video Impression on the game of your choice
  • 15 First Impression credits
  • 500 FGL community points
So this week will be slightly different to my usual blog entry in that I will document / blog my process once the theme has been announced. Further to the above, If I can work out how to include the FGL SDK into my game then I could be eligible for a further $200.

So I've kept this short and sweet as there will be a lot of blogging done this week.

Friday 9 May 2014

Game Project Log: Antz 1

One thing i've learned so far about making games is that it is always a good idea to get your game ideas documented. This provides a few benefits, namely to give you somewhere to refer to when designing games. Too many times have I started to develop a game and then about half way through after adding loads of cool and interesting things have I looked back and gone oh... somewhat sidetracked and gone off on a tangent here. While this is all well and good while your in an academic environment or prototyping, when your working for yourself time is money. Additional benefits include but are not limited to: giving you a clear way of demonstrating your idea in writing so you can set about protecting your intellectual property, increases the professional look of your game development should you wish to sell the game or seek sponsorship it also helps to provide structure so that you can focus your creativeness on what needs to be done to fulfil your own established criteria when setting about making a game.

The first official document I would suggest you put together for any game you make is what's generally known as a game design document. This will serve to outline the selling points of the game, who your aiming the game towards, how the game will play / mechanics, what style of art your using with the game and potentially a list of assets you'll need, how the levels will look, character descriptions, how the user interface will look. Following this or a structure  similar to this will ensure that your game design document is easy to refer to and update as the project progresses.

With this in mind, here is my initial design document for my mobile puzzle game 'Antz'.

Antz is a Sokoban style puzzle game designed as a pick up and play game for a mobile oriented market. I have yet to finalise my monetisation method for the game however I will initially be focusing on releasing on android and html5. The game will be for all ages with a cartoon graphic theme throughout which will lean towards a younger audience.

The core concept of the game is that each level will have x numbers of rocks on screen and x numbers of holes (these will be the same number on any given level). The player will control an ant who has been tasked with removing the rocks from the ant's nest by pushing them into the holes. Once all rocks have been sunk in the holes the level is complete. The control method for the game will remain as simple as possible and allow for touch screen or move to mouse functionality which will cater perfectly towards mobile phones or people playing the html5 version on a pc instead of their mobiles. Menu interaction will follow suit and be via clicking / tapping buttons or screen clicks / tapping of the screen.

In my prototype of the game I created 13 levels of increasing difficulty however my initial demo of the game will probably only include 10 levels with a further 30+ being developed either to sell as an addition to the demo or to release as a whole game with ad support.

The only playable character in the game is the ant and the only interaction with the player will simply be to move the character on screen, no extra dialogue or character development is required.

In terms of assets required for the game I will need a tileset to make the levels, an animated sprite for the controlable ant, a boulder sprite, an open hole sprite and a filled hole sprite. title and menu screens and a level select screen as well as generic buttons to be placed on screen. I've copied my initial mock ups of the title and instructions screens so far so you can see the general theme / style i'm aiming for.

Obviously this is a very basic outline of the game and the details involved but hopefully this should give some background to the game and what i'm aiming towards. If you have any questions, comments, feedback or suggestions please don't hesitate to let me know.

John

Monday 5 May 2014

My current ideas, works in progress and how I go about documenting my ideas

Hello and welcome back to my game development oriented blog if your a regular reader and if your new welcome!

In my last post I touched on my background and gave a brief overview of where I am with my Game development career. If your new to the blog I invite you to check it out here. Next step is to start documenting properly the various games I have in development and establish a standard way of displaying these for easier reading for you my blog readers.

So with that in mind my current list of games on my to do list are here, these range from concepts and ideas through to games where I have made some assets and have working levels. They all share one thing in common though, they all are not complete!

Project list:
  • Antz, - a puzzle game for web / mobile,
  • Elementz, - a platform game for pc,
  • Gravity, - a puzzle game for web / mobile,
  • Loggers Run, - a fast paced reaction oriented game for web / mobile,
  • Lynx, - a side scrolling shooter for web / pc,
  • Redwood Creak (joint project with +James Macleod), - survival / horror platformer for web / pc,
  • Zombie Survivor, - action strategy shooter for web / mobile / pc,
For each of these projects I have numerous scraps of paper lying around the place with all sorts of things written on them, mechanics ideas, level layouts, character descriptions, rough outlines for gameplay etc but for the most part they lack structure, one thing I will fix with these blog updates. I also intend to use a program called spiderscribe. If you've never used this program before then I can highly recommend it, I've historically used it for brainstorming / mind mapping and documenting this process for academic projects / assessments. While the idea may seem tedious it really does help to have something like this that you can form your game ideas and concepts around. It's free and allows you to import documents, pictures, links etc that make for easy reference and a way of securing your information so you don't loose all that precious game related stuff.

For each game project I try to follow a pretty linear approach when developing my concept into a working title through to releasing it. Flesh out my idea using spiderscribe > create an introduction to the project piece outlining what the game is about, who it is aimed for, which platforms I want to release on, my initial ideas on what revenue model I will adopt, graphical concepts > then focus on more game oriented assets like tile-sets, characters, backgrounds, sounds etc. > start making the game mechanics, menu's and bringing it all together.

Each of these projects will form the basis of my ongoing project oriented blogs where I will document them further and provide a bit more insight into each game and what stage I am at with it, with uni coming to a end my intention is that I will upload at least 2 blogs every week, one being an update on one of the above listed projects (or new projects) and the other being more of a topical piece exploring one of the aspects I have had to face or come up against in learning about my new trade outside of the lecture theatre's and labs.

Friday 2 May 2014

My background, my future.

I've established this blog after being inspired by my friend and colleague +James Macleod and hope that I can inspire him to keep blogging because honestly I think I'd have gone insane without him to keep me on track the past few years.

Lets have a look at where I started out and where I am now before looking at what I plan on doing in future.

I worked for an International insurance company straight from completing sixth form, spent roughly 9 years moving from being a general admin bod through to running department wide training schemes and managing my own small team of people along side this I was the guy who you came to when a problem needed fixing.

I then moved to Scotland to move in with my then partner at the time however the job market crashed and i found myself in a low pay high burnout job that wasn't cutting it, my relationship also kinda went sour leaving me with little choice but to move back in with the parents and contemplate my next move. my choices at this time were relativly straightforward, sign on and look for work or use the opportunity to learn to do something that I'd wanted to do since leaving sixth form, just never knew how.

In 2010 I started an NC in Games Development, followed by a HNC, HND and i'm nearly finished and will be graduating this year with a bachelors in Computer Games Development. Some time in late 2010 / early 2011 I Co-Founded a 'Proto-Games Studio' under the title of Prickly Productions. +Prickly Productions was initially a blank canvas whereby we could showcase our work and start a portfolio. As our confidence, ability and knowledge grew we began to realise that theonlything stopping us from establishing Prickly as an actual games studio was our own lack of understanding of the market and a lack of finances. We have since gone on to publish our first games title, Nightmare Island.

I have since gone on to publish a few free to play titles and have several projects that i am currently working on which I will begin to document properly over the course of the next few blogs to create a more structured approach to creating these games.

As my degree is now nearly over it's about time I actually focused properly on not just making games and publishing them, but actively trying to make money from them so that I can sustain myself and my family I will also use this blog to document my progress in this regard.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and if this sounds like something you'd be interested in following then please do like / follow / +1 etc.

Thanks

John