I’ll do it on monday!

Apparently there were some issues on my host that caused the whole web server to be taken down.  From what I understand they’re going to upgrade stuff.  But the admin was kind enough to put my blog back up temporarily.

In any case as far as my game goes.   I was putting in extra hours which I had counted 6 so far.  But I didn’t feel I was making any progress yesterday because I was simply rewriting the same text.  At one time I thought it was novel to write the bios (or rather a limited backstory up to what happens in the game) in their own words.  But I found out that rewriting these wasn’t very fun.  I did create two new characters, and got the bio down for one of them.  I should have wrote down their bios in point form so it could quickly be used for making the game, but I didn’t I did this.  So i’ve opted to cheat a little, and not include most of those hours.  I could probably count 1 for the new bios maybe, i’ll have to see when i’m done.

You’ll get the idea of the characters later when I actually post about the game.

Just a quick note. I’ve finished reading all my notes. I’m still stuck in the dilemma of how to handle the fact that there are seven good guys and 6 bad guys. As I’ve not told you the characters or their stories I guess you wouldn’t really be able to help me decide. However, I will tell you, that I have two dragons one good and one bad, and the good one helps free the rest of the dragons from an evil enchantment they’re under. Essentially the good one was going to reconcile with the bad one and find out they are long lost brothers. As I mentioned I don’t actually have an arch-nemesis, or even just a counter character (in other words one that has nothing to do with the other but is sort of the opposite in character) for Count Roy a misunderstood vampire. So an idea I’m thinking of, is ditching the good dragon, and just having the bad dragon as the counter point. Then I may add two more characters, the cowardly werewolf and Evil Red Riding Hood. I already have some ideas here. Red is recruiting werewolves for the Evil One’s army. She seduces them and then bags them when they’re about to eat her. Our cowardly werewolf however is basically a coward, he attacks no one, and is afraid of Red. I’ll figure out how he overcomes that one later :-).

Okay well the next time I work on this which will probably be tomorrow Wednesday May 02, 2007 — I’ll actually be putting in hours on the challenge.

If you’re interested at all please stay tuned :-)

Keith

Previously: Back on [Enchanted] track!

Well here we are again. I started re-reading my old blog posts for Enchanted Lands, and also re-reading my character bios, and other things I hand wrote related to EL. I’m still not done yet. I’ve still got to read the character bios for the bad guys, and the plot lines for the good guys.

I’ve decided to start up the 100 Hour Challenge again, but i’m not including today or even tomorrows “catching up” as part of the challenge.

So once I am all caught up, I will be starting on the bad guy plot lines.

I’m also considering some changes. For one thing I have only 6 bad guys instead of 7. And there’s no sort of arch-enemy type person for Count Roy, at least not really. You probably don’t know who Count Roy is, let’s just say he’s a misunderstood vampire manager of the Bats-In-The-Belfry Hotel. But I will tell you about the characters in later posts.

I also might be over-reaching. 7 player characters seems like a lot. Should I attempt to pull it off or should I continue?

Some names might have to be changed, and a few things might have to be rewritten. But we will see how things go.

Thanks for reading (you three ;-)
Keith

Previously:Enchanted Lands: 100 Hour Challenge Update #5

I’m going to get back into Enchanted Lands, and probably finished the 100 hour challenge, since it’s documented i merely pick up where I left off.

I figure I need to finish one of my projects, and this one I feel strongly about.  Oh sure i’ll still work on some animation and stuff for hypno-joe, but i’m going to focus mostly on EL.  In the coming weeks i’ll try to blog about character bios and such.

Basically unnamed contract job (at least pc version) is almost done and ready to ship.  But still might be a few weeks.  In any case, I should have a little more free time later.

I haven’t completed any games in over 3 years now… so I figure I better get my act together and release something.  Maybe EL being so big, means that if it’s successful it’s all downhill from there.  Or maybe it will be so shoddy I won’t want to show my face in any game development circles ever again.

I guess we’ll see.

Okay finally got off my duff and decided to work on Hypno-Joe — All I did is a simple walk animation, and in fact doesn’t look all great. But it’s giving me some great motivation to work on it. This is only the beginning. As soon as I get decent animations i’ll start working on how to put them into a game using Seth Robinson’s Novashell.

So without futhur ado here is — Hypno-Joe’s walk right animation which will probably be redone.

Okay well there you go, hopefully it shows up alright.

Keith

There probably nobody reading right now, and I don’t blame you.  I don’t post you don’t read.  Well my top secret project is almost done now.  The contract jobby that i’m under NDA for.  And i’m going to try to get back to some regular schedule.

You know me, always trying the schedules.  My new one consists of me working 4 hours for my contract stuff, and then 4 hours on my own stuff.  Working one 1 project a day, except for friday which is “roundup day” — no wait that’s the mickey mouse club (the old 1950’s one) — I mean gameplay day, i’ll explain.

On monday I work on starcatcher — this is because it is a small game, that I choose monday to start my week up with a warmup game.  On tuesday I start developing RedZone, which will be a scrolling shooter, where each zone is generally monochromatic for a particular color.  Then wednesday gets my Hypno-Joe day, you remember, the little brain with eyeballs and legs and feet.  Thursday gets my adventure game epic Enchanted Lands working.  When I last left off with that I’d written up the plot lines for each of the “good” characters, now I need the story arcs for the bad guys.  Finally friday gets no project cuz I haven’t been working on 5 projects… sheesh a guy can only work on so many, 4 is enough I think ;-)  Friday will be game play day… so for 4 hours during the day I get to play games.  Don’t know if I should just play a bunch of different ones, or work on one and try to play the graphics out of it (if you think i was talking about graphics, think “pants of it” but since games don’t usually have pants, I figured playing the “graphics out of it” suited the saying better)

welp i guess that’s it… if you’re still interested in reading my goings on, leave me a comment, otherwise maybe i’ll just neglect this a bit more.

Keith

That’s right, i’m sort of at a standstill.  It’s tough trying to make this thing fun.  It was more fun when there was only one type of star.  Now there is 3.  The larger it is the less points you get but more energy, the smaller it is, the more points but less energy.  And if you hit a shooting star in flight you get a big score bonus.  However, now it’s not as fun because you could just sit and wait for shooting stars.  Granted in the higher levels it gets a bit fast and you do have to move around.  But there’s no real reason for any of those other stars to be there, execept decoration.  Anyone out there want to give it a try and give me some pointers?

Click here to get the latest incarnation:

Keith

Okay but seriously.  I finally got around to working on starcatcher again.  I added two new types of drifting stars.  I got rid of any mouse related support.  So now just arrow keys to move. (up/down thrust left/right rotate) –  I also enhanced the star graphics a bit.  Although they probably won’t even look like this when done (or maybe they will it all just depends).  In any case.  the small stars are faster and give you more points, however they give you less energy.  If you wish to go for the high score go after these.  The medium stars probably look bigger than the big stars, however the medium ones (sort of look like a fat plus sign) are slower than small, faster than large, and offer you less point than the small and more than the large ones.  The large ones are the ones that look like the medium ones, you can tell them by the fact that they appear to be more “round” than the other two stars… umm don’t know how to say it, you can play it and find out.  Note that the larger the star, the more energy it gives you, but the less points.  I’m mostly looking to see if there’s any way of improving the gameplay as is… i want to tighten it before adding black holes and super novas (which will probably be pretty nasty ;-)

Anyhoo here’s the screenie, and you can download the program by clicking on it.  As usual, even though I try to make sure my system is clean of viruses you should always scan everything you download.

thanks.

Keith

I’ve been struggling with mouse input for some time now, trying different things.  This latest version has you moving in 4 directions using wasd, and then allowing aiming the catcher with the mouse independant of the movement.  I want your feedback.  Please let me know if this works at all, maybe some of those fps people would have an easy time using this, because I don’t.

Starcatcher - click - HERE - Thanks.

Keith

Well after discussing with a few people, I decided to add a few graphics. Probably what will be closer to the finished game (yes blocky for that retro look). In any case I made some tweaks. The gameplay is the same as the last time you played, only this time it has graphics :-) — In any case, you can use the mouse to rotate the ship, you can also use ‘wasd’ keys for move/rotation, you can also use the mouse buttons to move forward or backward (left and right mouse buttons). The usual arrow keys will work as they have been, so if you’re used to it, i’d go ahead and use that. This mouse stuff and wasd is a pain in my opinion, but I wanted to try it out.

Click the image below to download. Play it at your own risk. While all attempts have been made to assure that this software is safe, don’t ever assume so. Please virus check any and all new programs you download.

Keith

Update : The mouse in this one is a little jerky. I had uploaded it to get some help on the mouse stuff, and the mouse control is almost fixed. If you haven’t downloaded it as of Tuesday October 17th, 2006 then don’t worry about it until I get the next version up. Thank you.

Newer update: Well I got the mouse stuff working agian, but still doesn’t seem right.  You can’t rotate the mouse if you’re holding down one of the mouse buttons.  Turning should be better now.  But i’m going to use this to decide if I’m going to keep mouse input.  Please download again!