I'M NOT DEAD!

So I haven't been very active recently for a number of reasons, which I don't really want or need to get into. Mostly I've just been "not up to it". That all said, it's a new month and that means a new Game A Month. Kinda. I'm still learning Unity, in-fact I'm quite far behind where I was to be at this point, but I'm still working on it. There will be a game this month, but it will most certainly be very simple, I'll try to squeeze all the content I can out of whatever it is going to be, but we'll all have to wait and see how this month turns out. I'm feeling positive about it!

So what did I do during February? Not much to be honest. The website I was supposed to build didn't get off the ground. Between the both of us being busy we never got a proper idea for it together and communication about the website has hit a standstill (we haven't spoke about it for weeks now). In my personal life I hit a bit of a rut, causing me to basically do nothing productive. That said I did begin learning to make a platform game in Game Maker and began learning Unity 5 by following this guys tutorials, on a friends recommendation:

Dude's named Jimmy Vegas and I quite like his teaching style. Check him out here if you are interested.

Honestly, that's all I wanted to get across today. I'm alive, feeling better & still working on game dev. Hopefully by next week I'll have something cool to show you!

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

Continuing into February

I finished a game yesterday! Go here, give it a try & tell me what you think!

What a beautiful intro screen.

NOT THE BEES!

This level is actually quite difficult. Aim for the turrets!

What's this rising from the bottom of the screen...

Super bonus ultra hard wave!

Now onto my plans for February.

Firstly I'm building a website for someone (my boss specifically) which will be fun but difficult as I haven't done any web dev since uni. It's paid work though, which is great and means it definitely takes top priority. This brings me onto point two.

There will be no official game of the month for February. Between the website building, more time at work (we've got a busy month ahead) & wanting to do some other things, which I'll cover in a moment I'm going to be too busy to guarantee that I'll produce a full game worth a month of work. That doesn't mean I wont release anything, just I'm not counting it as a proper game a month.

Instead what I'll be doing is spending time learning Unity some more as well as getting to know physics in game maker. Why? Unity is a very powerful environment to develop games and in game make I currently have no idea how to build a platformer or use physics. Both things I'd like to do/use in the future.

That's all today folks and thanks for the support so far!

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

4C Progress: 22nd Jan

I am very happy to say things have been going pretty damn well with this project so far. There is still a decent bit of work to go (which I'll cover below) but so far so good. This week I've added powerups, a fully functioning upgrade system, improved graphics and other HUD elements. Here's a few gifs to treat you eyeballs too:

Collect powerups from your foes!

Look, it's not as shitty looking a rectangle anymore!

Upgrade your powerups to become big and strong!

660 bullets per second for 10 seconds = 6600 bullets!

Upgrades for all!

So what's next? I hear you cry across the cosmos. Firstly I'm going to experiment with two new enemy types (one is a boss!) Whether they'll work or not I dunno. Next is a proper wave system with specific enemies spawning in specific numbers on specific waves. Simple really and the reason I'm testing extra enemies before doing this as I don't want to be rebalancing the game multiple times. Not. Fun. After is sound design (which is pretty self explanatory) and lastly a bit of graphical polish and a couple of simple menus. A lot for 7 days, but definitely doable. So I hope to see you at the end of the week with my first monthly game in hand!

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

4C Progress: 14th Jan

Update time! Development is going a little slower than I'd like but overall I'm still making decent progress. 4C now has three types of enemy and the AI has been vastly improved. The game also has a "wave based system" now as well. While at the moment it's just used as a break between levels (it increments a wave counter that effects the enemies health among other things) it'll soon have an upgrade system built in too allowing the player to upgrade a variety of stats, between levels. Still deciding on whether the player can actively use powerups or will just gain them occasionally during levels. The player will definitely be able to upgrade the strength of them to ridiculous proportions though. I love mad abilities. Other than that, my main goal next week is adding some proper graphics (still gonna be pretty simple but much nicer to look at) and a few sound effects.

Wow, that rectangle...

Otherwise all is well!

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

January's Prototype: 4C

What's this!? A midweek blog? From now on, in order to fit my new working system (which I talk about here), I'll be doing blog posts on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th of each month. At least I'll be aiming for that.

Say hello to 4C, at least the first prototype. In case you can't guess from the gif, 4C stands four colours. It's a simple shooter with a mechanic you've probably seen before, change colours to be able to damage specifically coloured enemy ships. Which at the moment have a shockingly stupid AI and just fly towards the ship constantly firing bullets (that's you!). As a prototype it's actually surprisingly fun, especially when the ships get close and panic ensues. If you're looking at the gif and thinking, "Damn that looks bland." you'd definitely be right though. Being a prototype lots of features are to be added of course! Here's the general order of what I'm going to add:

-Improved ship AI: The basic enemy ship will fly around the top of the screen and shoot bullets at you, get hit too much and BOOM, you ded son.

-Multiple enemy ships: I'm thinking three main types. The basic variety as mentioned above, a smaller variety that will spawn in clusters and fly towards the player damaging the them on impact and a battleship class that soaks damage and can fire a lot of bullets. A LOT OF BULLETS. Of course these may suck in practise and I may come up with more, who knows.

-Player abilities/powerups: With the enemies being kitted out the player should be to. Spread shots, fire rate bonuses and the like will be available to the player. How this system works I'm still deciding.

-Levels/Waves: Certain enemies/mechanics I want to introduce over time so I'll be setting up a basic level system. The enemies will become more numerous and stronger as you progress but perhaps you'll get stronger too...

-Sounds & Music: I'm actually going to make a start on the sound design a little earlier than usual. I want this game to have the best sounds and music I've done yet so I'm going to dedicate a lot of time to getting it right. Plus it'll be the first time I'll be writing fast paced songs in a while so it's better I don't rush.

-Tweaks, balancing & everything else: After all that it's a case of tweaking the game to make it as fun as possible. This'll be the bit that takes forever (I'm calling it now) but will ultimately benefit the game the most so it's important.

-Menu & UI: I'm leaving the menus and UI to as late as possible for two main reasons. One I like a minimalist UI anyway so I don't think it will take much time to do (he says), and I also hate making UI elements just to rip them out once the game has been tweaked or altered in some way making certain bits redundant. It's a waste of time on a task I don't like that much anyway.

-Polish: Here's where I spend about two days messing with slight glow effects just to make the bullets look a tiny bit nicer.

And that's the plan, I've three weeks to do as much of this as I can and for once I'm feeling like I'll actually get close to finishing it all (and now I've said that I'm doomed to do fuck all).

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

A New Year!

So as 2015 has come to a close 2016 begins, it's time for me to reflect on the past year and share my plans for the year ahead! Also I ramble far too much...

Being totally honest I feel the last year for me was kind of a mixed bag. I learnt a lot of stuff but I can't shake the feeling I could have had a much easier time of it. Developing Revolver has taught me a load it's true. I've learnt some indispensable lessons from time management & planning to more of the nitty gritty of game dev, but I feel that should I have not terribly inflated the amount of work for Revolver and kept the scope small I maybe in a better position now. If I'm not getting it across clear I want to say I don't regret working on such a huge project, just that I wish I took the advice I'VE SEEN EVERYWHERE to start small. Seriously I can't say it enough, and this is from personal experience, DO NOT start with a big project. It just tires you out, it will probably not turn out any good and you'll just end up feeling bitter about the whole thing. Let's face it. If you want to develop games or already do it's probably because you enjoy it. The second you stop enjoying it is a moment you should take a step back and work out why. That doesn't mean give up of course just take a breather and work out what's up. It's taken me a whole freaking year to get round to doing that and decided on a much better plan of action (which I'm writing about in the next paragraph bear with me), don't do what I did and just frustrate myself working on something not worth it. Again I feel I must reiterate, I'm not saying, "If it gets difficult, give up and do something different." That's stupid, game dev is difficult, hell life is difficult, don't give up. No what I'm saying is, "If you're on your sixth month of a one month project, that working on makes you feel like you're scaling Mt.Everest with broken legs take a step back and work out what you should/want to be doing. Or something."

ANYWAY.

What's in store for this year. Taking into account all I've said and done the plan for this year is a simple one. I'm going to make one game a month for at least the first six months, hopefully more but we'll see how it goes! It really is a simple as that. Each month I will design and develop a new game, from scratch and release at the end of the month. General plan is first week I will work on ideas, design and attempt some prototypes. Second week will consist of building the main systems, functionality and building a majority of the game. The last week will involve major testing and adding additional stuff, think extra powerups, gamemodes and the like. The third week will be a halfway point between the second and last. If I need extra time to finish the main functionality I can or if I've done with that I can move onto the extra features stuff, or take a break. Whatever is best. "And it really is as simple as that." he says, "It'll be totally the easiest shit." he says. Nah joking aside doing many more, smaller projects is a far better for me and it'll make much more interesting reading for you.

That's that really. Forget everything I said last year and come join me on what will be a much more interesting year of game dev and other stuff too.

Also Happy New Year!

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo