2014 starts with a... game?

YES!
Not with a BANG but with a GAME!

Go ahead and click the image to go to the Game Jam website!

Yet another game jam I thought I'd try out just for the fun of it.
Yes, I have spent all night at New Years Eve to create a game!

What I did accomplish in this short timespan

I did come up with something!

It's quite a personal game, very narrational (at least in my head), and something very different.

It's a point and click / escape the room game inspired for example by 999, or other games.

Unity2D

For this I have used Unity's 2D options and I am quite happy with it, really!

So without any further ado, heres my New Years Game Jam Submission!

Out of my mind

Please note that this is just the mockup-art, and just the intro level. So theres not alot of playing involved.

But still, it was alot of fun to work on, and will be in the future, because I want to expand this game to be my 1GAM January submission.

@watacoso will be doing ALL the arts stuff which I am very thankful for and I can't wait to pep this intro up with his beautiful art!

Game in Webplayer

Linux Build

What is the game about?

The game is about something everyone of us has in our minds, something unexplored, and once you start exploring this part of yourself, there is no going back. Once you have found a place unfound, you cannot forget about it.

In order to "get out of it" you have to explore it further and understand every aspect of this.

So exploring this game will eventually teach you to explore something yourself about yourself. Or maybe it's just fun to play point and click adventures!

I will keep you updated for this game! Happy new years!!

It feels like I have to relearn everything I know about programming

April is tough people!
And don't expect a finished game this month, k?

Why?
So long story short, I am in my second semester of computer science now, and I basically have started programming with beginning of the year (first semester was so noobish, I don't count it in) with Java and Haxe.
@tobiaseriksson and I have decided to make this game now with C++ in order to learn something from it. And people, you know, C++ is tough for a beginner!

We're using SFML (Simple Fast Multimedia Library), and we're basically writing our own engine, using a component and factory system. I am super excited about how it will turn out!

The game concept is still very vague, it's going to be a vertical jump and run containing a very evil greek mythology figure in a new light! I don't want to spoil more, in case we change our minds haha!
And with some luck, we are able to release a prototype for this month!
Please stay tuned~

The End of March (or: Why I didn't write any blogposts in march)

Beginning of March

Until the 6th of March I was snowboarding/skiing in the Alps, yeah! So I had a little disadvantage, dun duun. Nevertheless, I have decided to learn a new programming language for March:

Click to visit haxe.org

The one who convinced me to use this is my 1GAM partner and mentor @tobiaseriksson

This is the engine I use

So armed with these weapons, I started to learn Haxe, which is quite similar to Java. I think it was fairly simple to adapt this new language and learn the new engine, so thats good!

Progression of March

So first off, I want to tell you something about one of my favourite things in my life. It's a forest youth recreation home of Heilbronn (the city I live in) and I know, that sounds kind of boring. BUT ITS NOT! It's one of the best things happening in my life and I am proud to be part of it. In the past I have attended to it as a kid, in the meantime I am a counselor myself. It's a colorful, loving place, a paradise I would suggest, because it is a very accepting. Passion is what drives everybody there.

So during March there was a ot of stuff going on about this! It takes up alot of time, and I am happy that we barely have electronic devices up there, so I was not able to haxe on my game at all during the time there.

Anyways, during the progression of march I did some progress! The people who follow my tweets have seen all my progress posts and were able to play them hands-on.

But, oh wait, I havn't even told you what kind of game I am making this month, have I?

Crazy Lava Taxi Game Thing

That's the quirky name of my march game. It's a topdown 2D taxi game, where you have to dodge Lava in order to get the people you pick up to the desired destination!

Go ahead an play all the little steps of progress I made, right and simple in your Browser!

March 0

March 1

March 2

March 3

March 4

March 5

March 6

March 7

March 8
You can read the attached changelog, when you scroll down in the "newer" versions.
Heres the newest version!

End of March

It's a few more days, and I am still not close to finishing the game. But I am getting there! Maybe even with the extended deadline of 4 more days into april. But I am looking forward to finishing this game, it was very fun creating it!

Jetpack Pants!

Well here you go!
Sorry I didn't provide any further info, because I crunched through it and I am going skiing until March and oh gawd no time left!
It works the same way as my previous game, you can check it out on "Games" at the top.
Just download it here!
Have fun! And let me know in case you actually won the game, because it gets pretty rough at the end... Yay!
My post-mortem post will com in March, bye bye!

#1GAM Feb: Gameplay video #1

I made a short gameplay video to show you guys my progress so far!

As you can see, my bad collision somehow works alright, and two different jumping features are implemented, as well as scrolling and ending and dying (which just resets the player).

The next thing I have to work on is a concept actually. So I have this jetpack thing going on, I will probably stick with this. So next step would be to build a concept around this feature, and maybe a little story so I can get some graphics on this thing!

Btw, shout-outs to all the fellow game developers and proud members of the OneGameAMonth-Community! I hope you have successfully climbed "the wall"!
For all the ones who are interested in Game Developing: Take the chance and try to make a game this month! It will truly help you out and experience something new. It's an amazing acomplishment once you stick with it!

February Game!

You have probably not noticed, but... I havn't been updating my blog lately.. and guess what, yeah, I have an excuse. It's finals time here in Germany, and you know what that means!

Yes! PROCRASTINATION! On my February Game!

Wow. I know, there's alot to say about this... black... pants? Rock with legs? I dont really know actually. Anyway, this is going to be my super simple tiny February game of OneGameAMonth.

For those who have not heard about OneGameAMonth yet, just click the link and check it out, really!

Alhough this blog post sounded promising, I will just leave you with these two screenshots, mkay? Gotta go back to studying, and knitting socks (for real). Go ahead and guess what kind of game it will be.

It's #screenshotsaturday after all.

SO CLOSE, SO DAMN CLOSE

Wait. Have a look at my new header! This whole blog is still super prototypy, but I will add some more colors and fun on the left and right side, so check every now and then, mkay?

So today, I have probably made one of the last bit of finetuning on my game.

As I said in the last post, I balanced the rupees again. The golden one being worth 50 rupees, going down to the green one which is worth 1.

The black ones are now worth -3, so it actually is worth it to avoid them.

But way more interesting is the following thing I have implemented. So I was thinking about, how I would be able to make it more interesting for the player to take more risks, in that I mean, trying to reach the very top in a very small amount of time. So I have implemented a new highscore system, where you receive other points by bringing those rupees to your wife AS FAST AS YOU FROGGIN CAN!

//Highscore Berechnung!

highscore += (long) ((timerBar.getWidth()/1) * frog.getRupeeaInBag());

It's basically: Time that is left * Rupees you collected.

Whereas the time is a number between 1 and 100. I tested it a little bit, and it is reaallyy worth it to take the whole course to the other side and then bring it up to yo wife.

Here's what the score page looks like now:

Yeah its kind of not aligned but whatever.

Especially when you did a bad job! Okay! I think I am done for today (5am in the morning...).

I hope I am going to release a browser capable game soon, hang in there!

Almost at the finish line!

Ever heard of the 90-90 rule?
It's like the slap in the face when you start to wrap up your project. Yes, by using the word "start" I imply, that this is again a whole different story.
The Ninety-Ninety Rule simply means, that the last 10 percent of your project takes another 90% of your time. That makes a total of 180%.

So in November (yep.) I started to work on frogger. So when I made some progress (like a few cars or when my frog was able to walk on the logs in the river) I felt pretty good, because I thought there would soon be an end. So then before Christmas break, I have probably hit the 90%.
And right now I am just hoping theres not another 90&% time for the last tiny 1% of my project!

Yes. I.. made some progress. Okay, I was very lazy the last few days. But I have added alot more rupees. The whole idea is, that rupees will spawn more or less randomly, worth less at the bottom, and going up high at the top, so the further away you go with your frog, the more you get out of it!
Let's see how this looks so far:

Okay, theres a couple things to say here:
1. The title is wrong at the top. Just noticed this. Putting it o my todo list right now!
2. there are 2 new rupees! The red ones ar worth 5, and the golden ones are quite rare and worth 10 rupees!
3. There are 4 segments: Number 1 the street. Alot green rupees (+1) and lesser black ones (-1), the spawn alot. Segment 2 is the middle thingy, they always spawn, alot of green, very few black ones. It's like a little "Yay you've made it across the street!". The third part obviously is the river. Not alot spawning going up there, but theres ones and alot blues there! And the top, where you get alot of blues (+3), a few reds, and on occasion a golden one. Yeah you want that one right? Yeah you want it.
4. So there are different strategies going on here, I know. Basically you can just go on the street, go back, easy money! I have not yet found a way to not let people do that, or let's say to discourage them to do that. Maybe I have to put up the money at the top. Like golden ones are worth 50 (but super duper rare), red ones are 20, blue ones are 10, and green ones really are just worth 1. Yup. Put on my todo list!

So anyway. Yeah. That's basically my game! I know. It's NOTHING close to be great, I totally know. I am still a little proud of it, it's my first game after all, and I am SO close to be done with it and then store it safely in my portfolio. (wait. I need to make a browser-capable version of it so you guys can play it!)

Anyway, I know this frogger thing is basically a big piece of shit, the game mechanics suck, the menu is kind of overworked, and overall it's not a lot of fun.
But I am a beginner.
This is the very first step in a new direction.
Please read this.
http://zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beginners/

Music, Menu, How To Play, Credit, Game Over w/ Score

That's a big update! YEAH!

Happy new years everybody!
Finally, onegameamonth launched, so I worked a little extra hard on my January entry!

I have 5 things I added this time:

1. Music
2. Menu screen with selectable items
3. How To Play screen
4. Credit screen
5. Game Over screen with Score

1. Music

I added different awesome tracks for the various screens, all made by Kevin Macleod from http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free//! Please check him out, he is an awesome artist.

I used all the songs from this collection.

The menu screen is probably my favourite, it's "Spazzmatic Polka" (on the 2nd page) and it's  such an oldschool annoying soundtrack, you are happy to skip the menu and just play the friggin game.

Somehow this track reminds me of the old Bomberman game, so it appealed to me very quickly!

The actual game has the track "Theme for Harold" Variation 1 (the slowest one). It's an easygoing track, and I thought it would fit the overall look of my game.

The gameover screen features the track "Dungeon Level", which is kind of depressing, maybe it motivates the people to play the game more often. Or it just depresses them too much. We'll see!

2. Menu

3. How To Play

Note: the sentence "press enter.." is flashing!

4. Credits

The sentence "press enter" is flashing as well here. I tried to  give credit to everybody the right way. Please let me know when I did something wrong!

5. Game Over and Credits

"Press enter.." is flashing

And yeah. it's kind of empty here. But still, I love how the Counter worked out! First time I was using a spritesheet. Well I have rather used an Image with all the numbers and broke it down into SubImages. Then I break down the rupeecounter into an array of the numbers to render the every score-number individually! I'm proud, because it has worked out right away!

I'm quite slow these days, ...

... but here's my little progress:
- Added a very long tanker at the last car lane.
- Added a little guide at the top of the screen for the beginning of the game, so you get a little idea of what you're supposed to do
- Did some cleaning in my code again.

Progress on Frogger

Changelog:
- pause game on escape
- soundeffects added on events like death, gameover, collect rupees, give rupees to the woman, and I added a sound for selecting thing in the menu. Yeah, the menu is still on my to-do list.
- some new artwork, check it out!
- did a little cleaning in my code, implemented a constants class where I store all the paths and constants like the speed of the cars and the coordinates of the rupees, have a look at my code!

   

Some people maybe remember those: I remade them off of GTA1! I did not like the original ones, so I made them a little more pixelated.

The soundeffects
are 8-bitty and made with this website I've found!
http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/
Real fun to make some awesome nostalgic sound effects with that, you should really check it out, and it took me like 5 minutes to make 6 sfx with it.

This is it!

There!
I finally jumped on the GameDev Blog train, let's set course to my very first project!

Frogger

In school the "Digital Games" exam is basically a game, our "own version" of the old school Frogger.

I can't really give you any previous progress steps, but I can give you THIS!

Some notes:

- You see at the top: 0.75 I am almost done with it, what I definitely have to add are sounds, some more Rupees (I plan on putting them all across, the further away the higher value they are and so on) but my prototype is definitely done

- I still have to replace lots of GFX, all the moving objects except the frog actually

- And I have to add a "manual", the menu and an game over screen, so there is still lots of work to do!

And now I would like to tell you about my favorite thing about new years:

One Game a Month #1GAM

This is my new years resolution and the reason I started this blog. It's basically a collection of people, having the same personal challenge to finish one Game every month. The idea behind is that normally people start games (projects in general actually) very enthusiastically but then there is one point you just can't get through and you forget about the awesome project.

If you are interested yourself, of course you can start early, or late, sign up! It's an awesome way to keep you busy and actually get things done, so hop on the GameDev boat and get rockin'!