Jul 30 2011

VVVVVV LEVEL

Yup. I’ve spent the past two days writing what amounts to indie game fanfic.

The single best thing about VVVVVV – the thing that made it work, I think – was that it had instant restarts from checkpoints all over the place. You could tackle incredibly hard challenges and failing wasn’t a problem, since you were straight back in there for another go.

Yeah, I’m doing things a bit differently. 😀

The approach I’m taking is totally different from VVVVVV. The levels are a bit easier, I think; you should be able to clear them on your first go, if you sit and think and work out the timings. Likewise, a lot of them have multiple paths through to reward observation as much as timing.

The other thing I’m doing differently is that collecting trinkets (“power cells”) removes gravity lines in an area. This is how your progression through the central tower works, but it also means that once you’ve collected a power cell, the challenges on the way back to the hub are slightly different. Of course, you can just die and walk back to the hub… but where’s the fun in that? That’s the loser way out. 😀

I’ll finish and release this over the weekend and write up a more detailed breakdown (with spoilers!) on Monday.

Jul 27 2011

FLASHGAMELICENSE

Well, I’ve emailed sponsors. I’ve put Vigilance up on FlashGameLicense. What’s next? I have no idea! I’m totally willing to believe that now the bids roll in and I make ONE MILLION DOLLARS. We’ll see.

I’ve also fixed a few things about the game. The biggest is the filesize: Vigilance was 20MB initially, since the ten minutes of music was all encoded at 256kbps. I’ve managed to cut that dramatically by switching from my old familiar mp3 encoder, BladeEnc, to LAME.

MP3s encoded to 128kbps with BladeEnc universally sound horrible. LAME? Well, it depends on the track, but I’ve got some at 128kbps and some at 192kbps. That seems to work for me.

All that, and now the game’s down to 12MB. Result!

I also made this icon, because FGL wanted one:

😀

Vigilance is up for bidding for the next two weeks. After that, I’ll have to do a little work to integrate the sponsor’s branding, plus whatever else they want done to it.

In the meantime, I’ll continue work on Reels of Steel. I’ve also been thinking about doing a level for VVVVVV now that there’s a level editor. Now, I know it wouldn’t make me any money, but one of the nice things about being an indie developer is that you can just spend a week modding someone else’s game for the hell of it if you feel like it. I reckon I’ve got to do that some time or it’s just a wasted opportunity. 😀

Jul 25 2011

EVER VIGILANT

I admit it – I basically did nothing last week. But that’s okay! It was a holiday, I guess. Or something.

I’m making up for it now. 😀

Today I’ve been prepping Vigilance ready for sending out emails to sponsors and such. I’ve already put together a list of sponsors who might be interested, tiered by whether they carry or focus on “edgy” or “adult” games (most don’t!). I’ve also fixed the bug I was having in Playtomic analytics, which was entirely not their fault; I’ve ported their API from AS3 to HaXe for my own use, and that’s always going to cause trouble.

I’ve been putting off talking to sponsors for a while, spending my time with the game on minor bugfixes and tweaks instead, so I decided to just go through with it today – but then I hit some trouble with the deployment. I decided to put a sitelocked, secureSWF’d version of Vigilance online (so it can’t be leaked across the Internet) before sending the link out to potential sponsors.

Now, I’ve used secureSWF before, and it introduced a random crash into the project I was working on. True to form it did it to this one, as well. That took me a few hours to track down, and while testing that I noticed a few other bugs. Now I’ve fixed those, the next step is to fire off those emails!

Right after I fix this bug.

Jul 22 2011

EDF

There are two reasons to get Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon.

The first is taking on fifty or a hundred things larger than you, each of which will take half a clip or a few clips to dispose of. All of them advancing at such a pace, you’re forced to retreat while firing wildly into the crowd and hope you don’t run out of room to backpedal until they’re worn down enough to make it a remotely fair fight.

The second reason is, after minutes of dodging and frantic salvos of gunfire… winning that fight.

EDF:IA isn’t a particularly sophisticated game. Hundreds of ants – or spiders, or flying robots, or wasps, or whatever – run at you. You try to not die. Occasionally there’s a giant robot with them, or you’re given a mech, but the principle is that you’re given city-levelling weaponry and then set against an enemy force epic enough to laugh at that weaponry.

It has two player split-screen co-op and three player online co-op. It’s also fairly cheap, as games go. It doesn’t seem like it’s got the same grindy, levelling-up endurance as its predecessor EDF 2017. But then I’m not sure I have the patience to collect over 6000 armour drops again before I can survive the last level of Inferno, either, or hunt that last exclusive weapon with a less-than-1% drop rate. So maybe that’s a good thing.

Eurogamer’s review here.

Jul 20 2011

TRIPLE THREAT

I’m torn between finishing off three different projects at the moment. It’s a little hectic!

This contract project keeps going – the client’s requested a few minor changes over the past couple days, which is cool and they’ve been accommodated. Still, I think it’s done now.

Reels of Steel is progressing slowly in the gaps. Much of the game’s feel comes down to the physics of the rope, which needs to work differently when it’s cast and when it’s pulled taut and so on, so I’ve been tweaking that. It’s coming together!

As for project number three, I haven’t even looked at Fear is Vigilance yet this week. Still, I know it’s waiting for me to go in, fix up the analytics code and start pitching to sponsors.

The main thing is, I’m recovered from last week and the jam and I’m getting back on track. ONWARD.

Jul 18 2011

JAMMIN

TIGJAM TIGJAM TIGJAM TIGJAM

The weekend was ace! I made a few games, met lots of cool people, somehow got enough sleep…

Alistair put some photos up on Google+. Most of the weekend was spent feverishly dev’ing away upstairs in the CB2 café, but after they kicked us out in the evenings we headed to The Tram Depot, possibly the only pub in the world to have Grolsch Blond on tap. It’s all the better for it.

Stephen Lavelle (increpare) kept the whole thing running, walking round every few hours to issue themes for another three hour jam. Hardly anyone did a game for each three hour jam, of course – that way would lie madness – but each new jam was a fresh project. As the weekend wore on people began to stick with their favourites and develop them further.

I fell in love with the second project I started, so stuck with that to the exclusion of all else. But before I talk about that, here’s the first. I made it on Saturday in about four hours, and it’s an arcadey game about ants and bears and cherries that explode:

It’s an unbalanced mess, but it’s fairly dynamic. Dragging a cherry trail to an ant hill (hive? lol) brings a friendly ant out who’ll follow the trail and pick up other cherries for you, and if a bear finds a trail it can follow it to find ants to eat.

Here it is: BugsNThings

A few other jam games you should TOTALLY CHECK OUT are

– Inside a Starfield Sky by Alan Hazelden and Phillip Webster

– Untris by increpare

– line bender by increpare

The second game I started – the one I spent most of the weekend on – was a collaboration with a fantastic artist, so it’s much prettier. It’s a game about fishing with magnets, in which you hunt for robot fish hidden amongst the normal fish. It is REELS OF STEEL:

The art’s by Adam Vian of The Super Flash Bros, who is every bit as professional as he is talented. This one’s maybe half done, so you can’t play it yet but it should be out soon 😀

It’s been a busy few days so I took the day off. Back to work tomorrow!

Jul 15 2011

TERMINUS

I know I haven’t been updating this site the past few weeks, but I can now! See, this contract project?

DONE. Finished.

Money. 😀

With that out of the way I’m OFF TO TIGJAM to make games and music and stuff and hang out. Back on Monday, perhaps with some rubbish prototype games nobody will like!

Jul 08 2011

MODEM’S SONG

Another new track!

modem’s song

Next week is the last week of this contract project. The weekend after that I’m going to TIGJam UK 5, which should be fun! After that I’ll be back to work on my own stuff full time, which will be nice 🙂

Jul 06 2011

THE SHIFT IN INNOVATION

First, some music! It’s a lovely evening, so I wrote some lovely evening music.

– whales of the west

SO. I’ve been thinking about landmark games recently. That is: games which have introduced new ideas, made a huge impact, and gone on to inform dozens of later games. And you know what? These games I feel comfortable pointing to as influential have shifted over the years.

Jul 01 2011

ANALYTICS

Today’s quick Vigilance adventure was in analytics. Specifically, playtomic.

This is a very cool (free!) service for Flash, iOS and Unity games that lets you track how long people spend playing your game, how long they spend in each level, and so on. Apart from sheer engagement (how long people play the thing) the best use is of course to identify difficulty spikes on various levels.

Then something else playtomic supports comes into action. You can set values on the server which your game will automatically load whenever it’s played, meaning you can instantly change the difficulty to balance out levels people are finding unwinnable. How cool is that?

Anyways, I’m implementing this stuff right now for Vigilance. Hopefully I won’t need it. I’d like to think I’m already balancing the game sensibly… but we’ll see!