Inspirational Indie Success

I've been inspired by the amount of money Grey Alien Games has made, being an indie developer, $145,000 from 3 games in 6 months.  You can read about the success here:

http://greyaliengames.com/blog/143000-from-3-casual-download-games-made-in-6-months/

I find very interesting that most of the money is from the downloadable casual PC and mac games market as opposed to the mobile market.  Which as improved my belief of trying to target both pc and mobile targets with my game.

I'm currently trying out monkey, which is a nice games programming language from the inventors of blitz3D and blitzmax which I love. It makes porting the game to different targets, such as (windows, mac, mobile targets) very easy.
So, I'll be testing it out in the next few days and consider whether to continue the development of GPSM (Grand Prix Super Manager) in that or to stick with Processing.

Now, I've got a lot of free time, so will really get back into developing GPSM and hopefully try and finish it in the next couple of months. Fingers Crossed and Start your engines....

GP Super Manager home screen update

I've been playing with many different ideas for the home screen, some displaying a lot of data from the game and some more simple.  Anyway, for the time being I've decided to use the following style for the Android version (whether I'll also use this for the Windows and Linux PC version is still undecided).  The colours and theme could change in the future, but for now I'm happy with the layout.

Grand Prix Super Manager

Due to the fact that it was pointed out to me that there's another game in development with similar initials to mine, I've decided to change the games name.

It will no be called Grand Prix Super Manager

In development news, I've been mostly fixing bugs and reducing the memory footprint of the game.

mission: infiltrate - enemies cone of sight

Here it is, the beginning of a working cone of sight, obviously from the screenshot, a future fix will to make it that the guards can't see through walls.

If the player does walk into their cone of sight (or their view/sight range), they are set to the alert mode 'kill' as discussed before.

Still hoping to finish this action/stealth game for Android phones/tablets by the end of this month, but it will be tight.  And then I'll try and optimize it for Linux and Windows PC's because the current basic control system works best on a touch screen, so for PC's I'm thinking of introducing keyboard control.

After this game, my plans continue to be to restart my Android F1 management game and also make a small space shooter game.

mission: infiltrate. The Start of enemies.

Today, I've started the difficult part of the game, the enemies.

Right now I've got the enemies being set to 'kill' if the player walks near them.
Currently, when an enemy is set to kill, he just turns to look at the player and shoots at him.  This has been implemented today (as shown in the screenshot below):

Eventually, the guards will follow the player, and will only be set to alert or 'kill' mode if the player enters their line/cone of sight.

I've also fixed some bugs such as an incompatibility between the editor and the game that messed up the players starting position and the initial screen 'offset'.

Finally, I fixed a problem with the size of the 'level select screen' where the mission boxes/buttons weren't adjusting properly to the different screen sizes.  This can be seen in the two screenshots below, which show two different resolutions (one for PC and another which is a typical android screen size).  Obviously, it needs more work to make it look more visually appealing, such as images for the different levels.  But that will be left for the end of the development stage.

mission infiltrate: Video Update.

I've made a lot of progress in terms of what makes the actual game today.

As shown in the video below, the game is now playable and the level is winnable, in that completing the objectives (in this case finding secret documents and secret plans)  let's you finish the level when you reach the escape/exit point.

Also, the computers now turn off the alarm for the lasers, and you need to get the correct security key card to be able to go through certain doors.
Also, messages are now shown to the player in terms of what's happened at each 'action' point.

 I've also added a temporary title screen and basic level/mission select screen. Although I still need to improve these and add mission briefing/debriefing screens.

NaGaDeMo 6th June. Small Updates

Today, I've added tiles, so it looks a bit better, and in the editor you can set the start position of the player.  Also, fixed one of those really stupid errors (AGAIN!!), which seems so obvious after you've corrected it.

It does look like the game is going towards an infiltration type game, although I'm still unsure of the theme (as discussed here)

NAGADEMO - Day 2. The Idea, The Tools.

Ok, for my game for the National Game Development Month, I've decided to create a overhead shooter for android phones, where the user controls a man (I haven't decided on the theme yet) and has to complete missions.

For my development tool, I've done some tile map demos using both basic4android and processing.org, but am leaning more towards processing.org, as basic4android just seems completely wrong for an action game engine, making things such as drawing sprites in the game loop over complicated and more resource hungry.

With processing.org, It's a really fun language, and ofcourse it means that with a bit of editing the game will be able to run on Winodows, Linux, Mac(although I won't as I don't have a Mac), browsers as well as my main target ofAndroid.


For controlling the player on the phone, I have to make some tough desicions, whether to super-impose a small control pad onto the screen (thus, compromising the playing area), or work out a easy yet fun control method using tapping the screen to perform actions.

The world will be made up of tiled rooms, (indoor and outdoor) that connect.
The two themes that I'm thinking of are either a classic Star Trek inspired game, or a Mission Impossible, Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, etc.. spy game, where the objective is to infiltrate somewhere without being seen.


As, this blog and my apps in the Android market show, I've often failed to finish bigger games, and all of the games that I've finished have been silly jokes, or very small games.  But hopefully, with NAGADEMO, I'll be able to finish a bigger game that satisfies me.

Some Ideas:

glbasic++, but double disaster

In total, I've only spent a small time trying to reprogram the Pixeloids game using glbasic, I'm impressed.  At the start I had a few bad feelings towards it, getting used to the way it sets up a screen among other things, but now it's feeling more natural and I've nearly got to the same stage I was before using Processing.

However, I haven't been able to test it on my Android phone to compare the performance, as I've had two setbacks, the first being that the cable connecting my laptop to the android has been crushed, and then my laptop died completely in the middle of programming.

So, now I'm trying to continue using my small netbook, a little harder, but I think I'll continue to use glbasic for the moment, and  unless there is a performance drop compared to my existing code when I can finally test it on my phone, I'd like to use it to complete the game, as well as use it's multi-platform abilities.

glbasic

After many years, I've returned to glbasic to test it out, when I've got up to the same point with the game in glBasic, I'll compare it to the Pixeloids game made in processing, for speed, development ease, and other factors

Pixeloids, getting there (& video)

I haven't had time to work on the game during the week, only a few hours at the weekend, so this game is coming on slower than I hoped. Anyway below is a video of current progress from yesterday (I've since fixed and added some things). I hope that this gives a general idea of the game.

Pixelods Day 3

Today, I've done a lot of maintenance on the website.  No, I'm not a web designer by any means, but I'm happy with it at the moment.  I've also started to make an individual webpage for the Pixeloids game: sionco.com/pixeloids.html , which will be improved by the time I finish the game.

On the game, I've tried to make the game more modular, so the code can be understood easier and for future updates to be easier to add.
Also, I've added two in-game buttons (as shown in the screenshot), which will be some of the weapons that the user can use.

Pixeloids - Day 2

Here's my first go at a title screen. I'll probably try and improve it. But I want to try and keep the 8-bit pixelated look.

Compared to yesterday, it doesn't look like I've got far, but the game is finally starting to be playable, and a good sign is that it does look like it will be fun. I've also been playing around with graphics, the title screen, and learning the language a bit more.

 I'm currently concentrating on an Android version, and if it does turn out to be as fun as it's starting to feel, I'll adapt it for the PC(Linux/Windows) version.  Which, is something I have to keep thinking about when coding, so that it'll be easily ported.  (such as the PC version should be able to handle more graphics on the screen (the Pixeloids - or green men).

Pixeloids - Here Come the Infectoids

Teaser 2:

I'm quite pleased with the first days development on my new Android/PC game. I'm using a new language that I'm not familiar with and I've made some good progress. I've been stress testing the game on my mid-ranged Android mobile (samsung Galaxy Ace) to see how many of the Pixeloids (the green people) I can get on the screen at once while doing collision detection. I've also decided to make this game available for PC (Linux and Windows) which will be able to have more Pixeloids in the game, 1000 on the screen is working well on my 4 year old laptop in Linux.

Android Game 3: Pixeloids

Here are the beginnings of my next android game, there are 240 objects moving smoothly on my average android mobile phone.

I'm currently trying out Processing as a language to make games.