Ever Have One of Those Months...

... where you've had a fever for over a week straight?

This is probably the most sick I've ever been over an extended period of time. I've been pretty much bed ridden since March 2nd, and my productivity in all things has essentially hit zero. In fact, the only reason why I'm able to post up this blog entry is because I just woke up a few hours ago and I need to occupy myself with something that doesn't take too much mental energy until I can rest again. Still, at least I can talk about what's been going on this past month.

First up, I have a few screenshots to show for the game I'm working on in my Game Design class. Enjoy!

Here we have a simple terrain.

And the top-down view.

This Terrain I roughed out in a few hours for the tactical RPG I'm working on. Oh how I wish I had more time to work on this game. Sadly, my Data Structures class seems to hog every possible second it can like the greedy class it is. I may have more to show next month, but don't count on it.

Next up, 8-Bit Dimension! The game I wish I had the time to finish already. I haven't been able to put any effort into it since before the semester started, but I'm determined to put some time aside next week when spring break begins. At present due to my illness I'll need to spend significant time catching up on all of my school work, so I expect to bring Beta1 from about 50% done to some where around 75% done. I had hoped to finish Beta1 during Spring Break to allow a lengthy period for Q&A while I wrap up the semester, but it looks like right now I will have to try and wrap up the entire thing in the early summer. On the plus side, I finally found someone willing to do sound for the game, so expect sound some where down the pipeline at or before final release.

Finally, the mystery Android game I talked about last month is well under way. Due to the entire team being students, we're taking a slow and steady approach to working on the game until the semester ends, at which point it will pretty much become a full-time job in the hopes we can meet a September release. We have a studio name chosen which means you can either expect to see the name of this blog change, or a new one crop up in the next month or two, and the project name (which has absolutely no bearing on the final game) should be decided when we meet on Saturday to go over our progress over the past month. I hope to reveal both to the public as soon as possible, but with the matter of studio name that will have to remain under wraps until it's formally established and we purchase a domain for it. Who cares about a studio name any way?

Well, my cough is acting up again so I should be getting back to bed. Sorry I didn't have more to share, but I promise you there's a lot of exciting stuff waiting just beyond the horizon. Now of only the semester were over so I could get to work on all this stuff like a man possessed! Till next time, stay well, and if you have a fever for more than 4 days, well, I hope you have health insurance!

February Update

It's February and school is officially in full swing. This semester has me swamped with even more work than last semester, something I didn't think was possible! In addition, it is beginning to look more and more like my Fall semester will see me going to Drexel University. A frustrating experience as this will kill my independent study time, but necessary as I know my knowledge of the material will eventually plateau without learning from professionals.

Onto news regarding my current projects!

8-Bit Dimension has seen some work since the Alpha v2 Release last month. I managed to get the Beta roughly half way done before the semester started. Sadly, once classes started, all work on that was put to a halt so I could focus on my classes. It's gotten so bad I've had to shelve ALL games to focus on my school work. Next up is my social life and a majority of my non-academic obligations if I find I can't keep up with the work load. Still, I'm hoping I can sneak in a little work next month during spring break assuming my professors don't see the vacation as an opportunity to unload a mountain of work upon me.

I've also done some minor touch ups on my "Ring of Fire" game that I made last semester. Still nothing amazing enough to re-release a new version, but you may see it at some point down the pipeline when I embrace my lack of a life and accept my computer chair bound destiny. This semester in Game Design I we will be working with Unity, and I plan on making a bare bones 3D tactical RPG. I might even have some screen shots to show off next month with my awful Maya modeling skills. I never claimed to be an artist.

There is, however, another game I have not mentioned before on this blog. A game spoken of in hushed tones as not to rouse the creative minds at Zynga. In less than 24 hours I will begin production on my first commercial endeavor with two pleasant and very talented individuals. I would say more, but many of the finer details are still in the works. For now, let's just say it -might- be an Android game, and I -might- need to direct you to a new blog in a few months. Needless to say, I'm really excited and have the support of a few individuals who have much more experience in the game industry than I do.

And that's that. I'll be back next month with some goodies to share with all of you. Until then, be safe, and have fun playing the games you love!

8-Bit Dimension Alpha 2

The download for the new version can be found here.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Holiday season! After a holiday break and a nice trip that left me pretty sick, I've put the finishing touches on Alpha 2. I just got back home late last night, so I'm in the process of catching up with every thing that I've missed here in New Jersey since I left. After I take care of that and I do a little recovery I plan on starting work on the Beta version of 8-Bit Dimension.

Unfortunately, I can't give an accurate prediction as to when that might be available. School starts again in roughly 2 weeks, as will my work on another project. I've allotted time to complete at least 25% of the necessary work for Beta 1 before my classes start again. As usual, if I find I have more free time than expected, some of that will be put towards expediting the work on Beta 1. Also, as was the case with the last two school semesters, any development schedule will go out the window once school starts, and I'll be lucky to make ANY headway with the game. As a man of my word, I can guarantee that the full version will eventually be up, and it will be up at the soonest possible point.

Now, as for the change log for Alpha v2, I made the following improvements to the game:

- Added controller support. (See below for more information)
- Added a score mechanic.
- Added a set number of lives. A player starts with 2 and may obtain up to 6 extra lives as their score increases. If the player has no extra lives remaining and loses a ball, it will be Game Over.
- Added a level indicator.
- Added a pause feature.
- Added scaling difficulty. The ball will now increase in speed periodically when it collides with blocks. The silver blocks will affect the speed by a greater measure than the colored blocks. In addition, colliding with the upper wall will automatically set the speed of the ball to a new minimum if it hasn't reached that speed yet.
- Added items. (Note: Item effects have not been added to the Alpha version. Rather, it is currently an empty place holder in an effort to get feedback on item appearance rates.)

Controller support is extremely basic as befits an arcade game such as this. As with Mana Clash, it was designed utilizing a traditional NES controller to recapture the retro feel, and there is no way to re-map the buttons in game, so you will have to use your own button remapping software if you are using a different controller.

D-Pad: Controls movement.
Button 0: Fire the spell.
Button 3: Pauses the game.

Beta 1 will focus on item effects and rates. I plan to have several different effects that items will have on game play, and thus will need lots of time to properly implement and test each one. In addition to managing the items, I hope to implement roaming enemies and perhaps a new level, but that will depend solely upon the progress made in getting the items to work properly. As usual, please feel free to give me any constructive criticism you can so that I can continue to improve upon the game.

8 Bit Dimension Alpha 1

The download for 8 Bit Dimension Alpha 1 can be found here.

What is 8 Bit Dimension?

8 Bit Dimension is a Break-Out! style game, where you are a character that has journeyed into the 8 Bit Realm of video games to find the cause of missing and corrupt data. Trapped in the seemingly random assortment of blocks are objects and characters from retro video games that must be saved by destroying the blocks of code that imprison them. With your trusty shield, advance through the levels, gain power ups, and save the games!

Controls:

Left & Right Arrow Keys: Move the Shield back and forth to prevent your "debugging" spell from being destroyed.

Misc. Notes:

This is a bare bones playable version of the game with two repeating levels. Lives are toggled off in this version in order to allow the player to test bugs without constantly getting Game Over. Currently, there is no pause ability or controller support. Expect them for Alpha v2!

In order to run the game, download and unzip the .rar file. Then, in the destination you unzipped it to, look for the "8BitDimension v.0.3.6.exe" file and simply double click it to run. Feel free to rename the file in order to make it easier to find, but do not remove it from the folder with the rest of the files. The .exe needs all of those other files in order to run properly.

Future releases will see the addition of controller support, score keeping, power-ups, enemies, scaling difficulty, and sound and a few other surprises I'd rather not spoil yet.

Enjoy!

The Ring of Fire - Game Maker

And so, tomorrow will mark the end of my semester. It's been a tough journey, and it's not even over yet! I still have to somehow complete my final Flash project which is due tomorrow. Today was my final class for Game Design Theory and Culture and the one in which we all had to present our final project. I put a ton of work into my game, poured my heart and soul into it and... was unfortunately unable to finish it to my satisfaction.

If nothing else, from this project I learned that in the real world of development, you can't always put every thing you want into a game in order to meet the deadline. Think back on all of the games you've ever played, particularly those that fell short of your expectations. Was there ever a game that seemed like it had one REALLY good feature, that a lot of work went into, but the rest of the game was complete crap? Or perhaps a game that was visually stunning and the first hour or two is fun, but the rest of the game is copy/paste repeats only included to soak up time? These are the games I'm talking about. Games that, given Blizzard's development cycle (And not even then in some cases... ::cough::DiabloIII::cough::), could really shine and be amazing, but because of the demands of the industry, it just isn't possible.

So, even though my game may have been a failure in some respects, painfully so despite the fact I poured 20 hours or so working on it over the past two months, I cannot consider it a complete failure for the lessons I have learned along the way. Going forward, I will be keeping this in mind with all games I make. At home, programming at my leisure and keeping up with a development schedule I have lots of control over, I can afford to take time, focus on areas that may or may not be important, and release the game when ever I feel like it. I mean, 8-Bit Dimension is still in development hell (though I will be picking it back up after Christmas.) In the future, when I am working on projects that go beyond the realm of "hobby" I will have to weigh these factors and make sure I deliver a game that honors the expectations of my customers in addition to the work of the developers.

Regardless of how good or bad I think the game I made is, as promised, I will include a download link for all of you to try it. Although there are many shortcomings in this short game, the biggest was being unable to fully implement the battle system in time for my presentation. If I had literally 2 more hours to work on it I am positive I could have finished coding everything that needed to be done into an at least semi-playable state. I may go back and work on this some more in my free time to create a "Full Version" of the game, or I might just take the assets I used in making this game and program it outside of Game Maker. I'm still undecided at this point, but I'll let this project sit on the back burner until a time that I'm ready to give it more of my attention.

Please, feel free to let me know what you think. Much of the game is in an unfinished state, and there were many aspects I had to grossly simplify in order to get them to work on time for the final presentation. The download for the .exe can be found here.

That's all I have for now! Have a Merry Christmas everyone, be safe, and I look forward to sharing some very exciting news with you in the following weeks.

EDIT:
Something that completely escaped my mind when I posted this yesterday was to include the controls for my miniature game, so for those of you who may not have played it yet, here they are:

Arrow Keys: Move the Character.
Enter: Interact with People/Objects; Confirm
Backspace: Cancel
Spacebar: Open Menu

Introducing: The Heroes!

Small post again, as I'm knee deep in working on three games currently as well as a veritable mountain school work.

Production on my final project for Game Design Theory and Culture is officially underway, and full production will probably begin sometime next week after our next to last project is turned in. As I previously stated, this game will be a top-down RPG as a tribute to my favorite game series: Final Fantasy. That said, I'm starting to discover a few problems with working solely with the Gamemaker GUI especially in relation to an RPG and I've already had to jury rig a few things to get them to work and I'm barely even 1% of the way through development. Oh how I wish I was allowed to use RPGMaker or even scripts!

Back on topic, last time I showed you a few sprites for some enemies that will make an appearance in the game. This time, I present to you: The Heroes!

Zane is the main character of this RPG. Orphaned at a young age as all good JRPG characters were, Zane was raised by the military as a child soldier. The game starts off with his first real assignment. Unfortunately, you won't see the repercussions of said assignment because this RPG is due in a playable form by the end of December, so you will have to be left in an eternal cliffhanger!

Esuna is another Orphan and probably the only friend Zane has. (Oh! Tragic Past AND Friendless! The JRPG soup thickens!) Esuna is even younger than Zane and decides to tag along to help him in his quest because Orphans and Street Rats really have nothing better to do. My only question is, who let this little girl go on such a dangerous mission!? Esuna is a bit eccentric and peppy, showing off her glowing personality in her obscure and frankly weird sense of fashion. (HINT: It's the "prettiest" amalgamation of rags she could find.)

Mathieu is the third in our traditional party of four, and he is a young Ranger of Kent. Kent usually chooses a dark, Hunter green to represent itself, and so Mathieu wears an outfit sporting his nation's colors. It also doubles as camouflage! While older than Zane, Mathieu still isn't quite an adult meaning that the next character has to be our token older dude!

Meet Master Park. Aside from just stepping out of the 80's, Master Park is a Major in Kent's military meaning he's also known as Major Master Park. Notice the Hunter green ensemble. Unfortunately for Master Park, tragic things happen to him throughout the course of the story. Luckily for him, he gets off lucky as the game will end long before any "unfortunate" circumstances were to befall him. Good for you Master Park! So why isn't Zane wearing green armor if he's also a part of Kent's military? Well, for one, green plate armor is hard to come by and two, ::REDACTED FOR SPOILERS::.

So there's your motley band of heroes for the RPG I'm making. Next month I'll be posting up my final project for better or for worse for all of you to play around in. Until next time!

Something Different

I know I promised an update earlier this month and apologies on the delay, but I have literally been buried under the weight of homework. I forgot just how much work you get in school, and now that I'm actually doing my homework, I see for the first time how insane it is. In any case, that's not the reason I am posting today...

Starting Monday, I'll begin production on my final project for Game Design and Theory, a full game created in Game Maker. Now, admittedly, I have never touched Game Maker. When I decided I wanted to dive in and learn programming in order to make games, I did give Game Maker some thought, but eventually decided against it because I wanted to learn the intricacies of making games from scratch and just what goes into it. After spending two classes with a tutorial that could have been condensed to a single class, I still find the "coding" part a little awkward, but I'm looking forward to using this for rapid game development.

After some thought, (admittedly, not much) I settled on making the type of game I've been wanting to make for a long time now - a top down, 2D RPG. I figured if I'm going to spend two months working on a project, it might as well be something I haven't done before to teach me something new. I'll be developing this game as a homage to Final Fantasy, and so while there may be some similarities, the end experience will be entirely unique. Luckily, I do have a few pictures of enemies that will make an appearance in the game to show you today:

This is your basic, level 1 Goblin. A staple of traditional 2D RPGs. What hero doesn't want to just run into hundreds of these pathetic creatures and kill them for equally pathetic experience points and gold?

And this would be the level 2 Goblin! While, yes, I will have some palette swaps, I am also attempting to make each sprite a little unique in it's own way. Not much more to say about these minions of evil.

Finally, we have the first boss, and major antagonist of my little RPG, Garrick, the Traitor. Story details will be revealed later, but the events surrounding this villain will reverberate throughout the entire story should I decide to expand upon it.

And that's all I have for now. I'll be going to Philly this weekend for mega-nerdom in the form of the Philadelphia Magic Grand Prix. Of course, I will provide updates on this and my other projects as more is available. Enjoy, and talk to you all again soon!