VBHh Cave Progresses

The cave is taking a considerable amount of time to get done. I say done and what I mean is to progress. It is hard to get it just looking right enough to be publishable. So I spend a lot of time trying to get various bits right. Now I also realize that as I complete sections of the cave they can be reused or reworked fairly easily in other sections of the cave scene.

I also have to admit that there are a lot of pieces to the caverns within the whole cave scene. So many GameObjects. They take time to place and colorize correctly and so most of my last week was spent working on this. I must admit to quite liking what I have completed so far though. Even if I am only about 25% through it, gah! hahaha!

Leilani has been very busy working on the main story arc and it is now about fully spec'd out and she is nearly ready to write it all out. I am very excited to have that done. It is late in the game development to really be getting it in, but we did not want to rush it... so instead we worked on all the other stuff to surround it. I believe the result will show we made a good choice.

I have fixed up the Watergun mini-game and it now looks exactly like I wanted it to, phew. Done!

Rockfall has also has some tune ups by adding some animations it needed. Along with several bug fixes to mini-games now. It feels pretty amazing to say I now have 10 finished mini-games, the right number for this title.

So onwards as we add in more graphics and complete more sections of the game.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

New Minigame - Rockfall

I am a bit late for writing this weeks wrap up, up. That is because I have been suffering a Migraine this weekend and it really knocks me about a lot. I hope to be fully functional by tomorrow. However me and Leilani did already have a fully productive week before the weekend migraine arrived.

This last week we got through a number of things. As I am not working on a quest chain at the moment I got to work on something else and that is my Final minigame. OK, I say final as it is my 10th minigame. Though technically I call this one an Arcade Task, as it allows the player to fulfill an in game quest by completing the arcade minigame.

This image above is the title page for the minigame. Not the most interesting ting I agree.

The game is a simple timing game where you tap the screen at just the right time. Depending on how well you time your strike you will generate more power and smash the rocks faster. Faster of course equals more points! This is a unique style of game for VBHh and so fits in rather well. Now I have to hook it up to the Quest system and finish it off with a new animation of Jack swinging his Sledgehammer.

I also really finished off that Bermuda Love Triangle quest line and so much more.

Well on with the next week, where I shall be working on many a varied task.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Cave Mon

We have been working hard on several aspects of the game this last week.

The image above is my first layout pass for the Cave system that I mentioned in my previous blog post. As you can see I have some detail already on the far left as that is the entrance. The rest is a major work in progress. Just sorting out the collision areas is taking me some focus and time. Still it will be awesome when done. This is one of my side jobs as I move the rest of the game forwards.

Another aspect of the game is the placement of the Quests.. or perhaps now I should call them narratives?

While I have been inputting some of the quests I have run into several things that were needed to support them, such as more Items in the game, and even the Baker Trader needed to have her inventory refresh set up correctly. This was an interesting piece of code to write.

We also in Fridays meeting got to discuss the Arcade Minigame Task we sort of had designed. It was not quite right. So Bam in only about 5 minutes we had all the extra bits sorted out and the design is done. Now the creation of that game is waiting on my todo list.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Fridays Meeting

Each Friday lunch time me and Leilani meet up for lunch and discuss our current task list, we also get to discuss important things that have turned up in the week since the last Friday meeting. Important things can include reworking ideas for things not quite working out well this week when I am trying to implement them. This is also the time when we discuss any big ideas that have come to us during the week.

Friday (yesterday) we had one of these meeting and I had several items on my agenda... yeah, I always like an agenda when doing meetings, for my day job as well as this kind of development.

The image above is the major notes page we created. Notice at the top (ok, as I ran out of space on the page I ended up using a few extra lines at the very top).. I digress..... So near the top is the major meeting agenda, and it has three items. We pounded through these items pretty well making notes for what we decided on along the way. So we now know how the Trader inventories are going to be restocked... now I need to write that code.. haha

We also got down a new minigame task, which I felt like we needed to round out this area of the game. Well this new Arcade Task will go along with something else we came up with.. more on that later. The last major thing we discussed is the Trader UI.. as I have been feeling frustrated with part of it just not matching other parts. So after a good discussion we analyzed which bits I dislike and then re-designed them to match the parts I did like. Just gotta code it now of course. Leilani also came up with another modification to the Trader UI, so that was good.

Lastly we touched on the aspect of tools and needing more in the game, along with the fact we have a Gem trader who has no gems AND we need a bit more in game area to explore and hide stuff in. We ended up with this answer...

You can perhaps see that this is a new scene, or set of scenes to be more exact. These scenes are all 2D and are a cave system with various levels. This also opens up two new tools, a Lantern and also a Pick. The Lantern to light your way in the caves and the Pick to collect precious rocks with for the Gem collector. This area is now also designed to be opened up later in the game after you have gotten the Sledgehammer, and yeah, the new Task is related to the opening of the cave system.

It all came together and it is interesting that we discussed a Cave and Pick 18 months ago at the start of this game design. Everything has come full for this I reckon.

Laters

Da Voodoochief

p.s. I will try and update the blog at some point with why I have not blogged in quite a while, just a lot of frustration with some aspects of games from the past. At some point Ill be ready to write about it.

Screenshots improve your game #gamedev

Something I don't think I have discussed before is the way in which Screenshots can help with getting the art for a game completed, or moving along a much more complete path.

There are a couple of elements to this.
1. You want your screenshots for your game to be as good as you can make them. Most people only see a few screenshots before making a decision on buying the game, be them on the back of a box on a web page in a review. So you really want them to be as good as you can make them.... (they will Never be perfect!).
2. Screenshots highlight a section of your game, or level or scene or whatever it is. This highlight does not always show context. It is unlikely to show as well as if the level is scrolling, moving etc. This highlighting can be a bit of a shock to view. It will tend to be plain. And we don't want plain in our pictures. #1 has already stated how important they can be.

OK, so you can alleviate some of the screenshot stress by only putting the ones you like into your press pack etc. Simple...

BUT
There is another great use of screenshots that most people do not bother with, or have the time to use them for. I am talking about Sprucing up the area of the screenshot. Giving the area a nice working over to improve the look, and even perhaps make an average screenshot look good enough for the press kit.

I have just done this to a very limited extent to show Leilani how this works and how beneficial it can be. So I took several screenshots, then one lunch time we sat down and discussed what we liked and didn't like about them. Good fun and the food was great too! (Thanks Brick Oven).

 The image above is the original we discussed. Our negative points we came up with were:-

1. The Sky is missing something, it is too bland.
2. The trees look all the same color wise.
3. The front log is a bit over bright.
4. The shadows under the trees is a bit small, and is over the roots.
5. The area does not look dark enough for a forest.

In the image above we addressed the previous issues by:-

1. I placed some clouds in the sky, it was easy to pull them from another scene and place them.
2. I used to have a routine that gave the trees a variety of color. This was broken by me in the prefab. I actually moved the re-colorizing code to another class. So that was an easy fix.
3. Easy to darken the front log of course.
4. I spent most of my time working on the shadows for the trees. I had to get a good angle and also a good size for the trees. Now I think it worked out great, only I do believe I will darken under the trees a bit more, but the lengthy shadow is good.
5. With the extending the shadows for the trees it addressed the darkness of the forested area quite well.

I hope you like the example above. I now believe that this screenshot is much better than the first and also good enough for the press pack!

Good luck fixing up your game :)

DaVoodoochief

Alpha Demo is Ready - #gamedev

It is Amazing, but finally I feel the Alpha Demo is ready for people to view. Only...

Yes that's right. It means I now need to do a lot more work to support the Show and Tell I am planning for this Demo.

Let me explain a bit.

This Demo is going to be mostly for showing off the game to potential voice actors. I want them to see what the game entails and make sure there is some enthusiasm for their parts. It will also be a great way for me to get practiced at presenting the game and seeing what works and what does not. This will be a big event for me and Leilani, oh and the game of course. Also we have discussed having some associates here who have a large social following, as it would be silly to miss out on any promotional opportunities while doing something this big for the game.

I am currently working on a list of people I want here for the presentation. It will include Actors, friends who I hope to convince to help me test or finish some content in the game (create new quests etc). People to help promote the event (social media associates).

What's Needed?

So now I realize that if I am going to get the word out that the game exists, then I need a proper landing page and information on it. That must include at least a press Kit, and a way to have people sign up for an email list for more information. I will then be able to use that list to find Beta testers and get people to buy the game when it comes out. I am not sure what else, but I suspect a lot more!

Time to work
Laters
Da Voodoochief

Eye Catching Marketing - The Gif

However you pronounce it, the Gif is an eye catching element to any web page.

It can bring any Web page to life instantly. Generally they are very focused visuals which should make them even more inviting, noticeable and engaging.

This image above is my first Gif. Yes really! After more than 30 years in the industry this is the first Gif I have actually created myself. This one above is a test... can I do it, does this kind of thing work... or will it? Ok, so I cannot answer all those questions obviously at this time.

Why?
I am an avid reader of Gamasutra  and all the blog posts especially that appear there. A few days ago I came across one that was new to me, original and informative. It is titled Marketing in Motion: A Year of Making Gifs and it an excellent read. This got me thinking that I could spice up my static web pages with some exciting animations. Hopefully bring some of the initial connectivity to my casual visitors to the web page.

What?
The image above works ok, and for a first try I am quite happy with it. I used a tool called GifCam. This made it pretty easy to create and the tool seems pretty good. Once I have gotten to play with it a bit more I will have to donate for sure.
My only real issue with the Gif is the fact that this one is 354kb. Which is quite large for a small image and is due to the fact that the whole image is updating/moving. I will try to make more that are a little more static so they do not overload the web observers bandwidth.

Whats the point?
I am always looking for things that could help me promote the game. I do not however at this major development time want to spend hours on social media each day. That time will come and is not now. So poking things into the social media awareness is what I really need. Then I will have links and thoughts all across the internet for me to pull on later (I hope).

So something else I have never done though I have been aware of it in some way is a place called imgur. This place is awesome I have to say. I could easily spend a long time looking at stuff on this site. Anyway the point is that I could post my images to this excellent discovery web site and hopefully one of them could possible go viral, which means on this site that it could get half a million views.. yeah! Imagine my game getting half a million eyeballs on it.. Woah!!!!

Now imgur is an interesting place and I believe it will take practice to get the title of the image correct as well as the image itself. It looks to me like an art form I have never previously seen. I hope I can pick up some of the skills quickly.

Conclusion.
Marketing needs to be done, using Gifs on a site like imgur could be a good addition to a campaign.

Laters
Da Voodoochief