Goal: Never happens

I really over estimate the amount of stuff I can achieve in the free time between working, university work and general socialising..

But I will get this game done. I WILL!

Goal: Get things out the way

Well I posted something about a project that I was kind of experimenting with the approach to actually completing the game, by getting a few people to read over my design document before I started anything. Therefore I could improve the game without it actually been made yet. Well quite few months have past and the game has now been pushed into the corner with all my other unfinished projects. So I've decided that THIS WEEKEND IT WILL BE COMPLETED!!! MUHAHAHAHA!!!!! Well started over and just made. Crappy, unfinished or what, it will be made because I owe it to myself and the other people who were kind enough to give me feedback those months ago.

What you think?

Let's pretend..

... I posted this the other week. Hopefully you will see what this has turned into soon...

The Fourteenth (Fourth)

Nineth (Third)

Uh oh...

Finding time to do this challenge is very hard.. Damn you Uni work!! *shakes fist*

The Fifth (Second)

Seems like I've failed

Sadly I was ran over by a double decker bus on Friday and have been in hospital for the last few days. Today they let me go home. I've lost both my legs, my left arm and have dislodged my spine in such a way that I can't turn to my left, I can move pretty much 90 degrees. I will get back to the promised drawing a day post thing as soon as possible, but right now I think I need some rest.

The First

Quite happy with my new style then...

...I realise I'm copying ben304 :'(

This a little old now, but its pretty much the latest thing I've worked on.

A little rant

A good game doesn't have impossible puzzles.

A good game doesn't need difficult and complex programming. 

A good game doesn't need "Cock-in-your-face" graphics.

A good game doesn't need live recorded, orchestrated, professional music.

But.

A good game needs to be playable.

A good game needs to be enjoyable.

A good game needs to be rewarding.

A good game needs to be satisifying.

Opinions on this maybe subjective, but if you disagree with any of these points then I think you are just a fan boy. 

Collection of old inventory items (1)

One navigator's head.

Man my brain is weird...

A few spritejams ago it was Robinhood themed and I couldn't get an entry to look right. Now this week is superhero themed and I draw Bobbin as the Green Arrow. Man my brain is weird..

Although it shows that I improve :P

Background(1.1)

Well I have done a little bit but not too much to show. It doesn't look like Im going to get this done this weekend :(  Damn you social life! Damn you work! Damn you life!

Either way I am driven to get this done.

So I haven't failed.......yet.

Background (1)

Well here is what I've been doing for the last 45mins or so:

A background! 

Man those stairs took forever, but for the few pixels each step is at least they are all in perspective. :D

Once I finish this, then I might get some sort of game made with it, eventually. Man I hate backgrounds. 

I thought I would post it so it will push me to finish it :D

AGS, the Future, Awards and Games!

Well after watching the Puzzlebots trailer it just came to mind that this year is going to be great for AGS games! I mean you have Time Gentlemen Please and shifter's box which are both just awesome, the new Blackwell is coming out this month and now Puzzlebots says it will be out soon too. I think the awards in 6months time will be very exciting. I know Progz is working on something and that might be out in the next 6months, and let us not forget Ben Jordan 8. So if all the games mentioned are going to be out by the time of these awards, man it will be truely exciting. 

If great games are being made with AGS then this will attract ore game designers to use AGS and will make even better games! Aw man I think I'm going to piss my pants.

Just a thought, what if Reasonance is out by then! AHH! 

[/fanboy]

Jelly!

I'm taking over

Well I've always wanted to enter the animation competition at the AGS forums and well I've never seen I've been able to. Either the sprite is a bit too complex to animate, or I'm competing with a full animated short with explosions and and WTF!! written all over the place. It made me think is this competition meant to be an animation competition that will benefit the entree by improving thier animation skills or is it an excuse to to make a new avatar? I would rather the animation competition to be a sort of sprite jam esk, but more object based. So I did what I thought I should do and post int he competition suggestion thread, and well Gilbot kind of handed me the competiton... 

Well so I've done it! I've re-invented the competition. 

LINKY LINKY

What you guys think? I think its a step in the right direction. You have your writing competition, so that you can improve your adventure game plots. You have your BG Blitz to improve your background skills. You have your Sprite Jam to improve your character design and your spriting. You have your Tune contest to learn how to make some awesome adventure musics. And now you have your animation competition to learn how to make some awesome animations for your game. You can't have too many animations :P

I want some interest and some entries guys :D 

Ug UG Ug UG!

Ok maybe a little post would piss some people off, but Im proud of my oxymoron in there :D

So recently I've been crapping myself with uni stuff. First it was exams, then it was getting the results and now it is moving on and finding out WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO NOW>??!?!? So after I had my panic attack I decided that I wanted to do a business course. It uses a lot of skills, and will be fresh and exciting. So after writing a lot of bollocks about myself and choosing where I want to apply, I sent my application away today! YAY! So that means Im free to do some work for a change ¬¬ 

Oh well once again pointless post

AHH

MORE  LESS POSTS THIS MONTH!

Window Updates

ARGGH I've lost a night's work of walkcycles due to windows restarting!!

:(

Well I'm in a bad right now. A lot of stuff, but I'm annoyed with myself more than anything. I've let people down. Een though they haven't said anything, I do know I need to be better.

Anyway, on a more happier note, I must thank my lovely feedback givers I PMed recently. All your comments are very useful, and some made me laugh. There were a few trends in areas to fix and I'll send everyone a copy of a list of points with my own input too. Some comments have really inspired me, and I've got a wealth of new ideas now. Which so far I've added 3 NPCs, a backstory and more of a plot, a better ending.. ish.. (more of disapointing and yet unexpected ending but maybe a little enjoyable to the player) and a tonne of extra logical puzzles. It's the same format for the kind of "shopping list", but a lot more depth and still all in one room. So I should be able to make this game (with good quality) very quickly.

YAY! 

I'll hopefully post more than last month. What a crap posting month!

The only thing is that I'm picturing this game in high res or at least hand drawn. I don't know why. Although I'm going to pixel it, at the moment. Right now I need to finalise the puzzles and plot and the rest is just some hard work and EFFORT! 

Project over 3 years in the making

I was going through some of my junk the other day and I came accross some old school books that I used to write some game ideas in. Well in one of my english jotters I found one A4 piece of paper, which had on both sides basically a walkthrough for a OROW idea I had years ago. The puzzles are very rubbish, they mostly involve picking things up, which are pretty obvious and borning. However I've decided to actually make this game. 

Here is the typied up version of this piece of paper:

Link to file 

So I'm planning to make it all open source and well just post the files on here. Hopefully it will be useful for someone else than just me. But I think it would be interesting to see the original planing stage to the demo to the improved and final version. 

Already I can think of a few ideas to revise some of the puzzles and how I can approach this game. 

Game Idea (4)

When is the worse time for the zombie Apocalypse to arrive? When you are getting laser eye surgery? How about a first person shooter zombie game with only one good eye? A blurry/hazy screen on one side and a clear image on the other.

Is that blur a zombie or a priest? Is it a zombie or a scientist with the only cure to this outbreak?

Remember: LOOK, then SHOOT.

304-i-ng

EDIT: Worked on the colours more.

Well I decided to give this shading a go again, limilting my pallete to 4 colours, but then I thought he looks a bit green so I added another 4. So what you think? I like the 4 colour one as it's more contrasted.  

What! IndieBoy made a Background?!

Yeah well its not perfect, but YEAH I have!! Sorry I'm just gloating that I've actually finished(*cough*) a background. And where else can I do it without looking bigheaded? MY BLOG :D

I'm well pleased that I started this and actually finished this bad boy. And I entered it into the BG Blitz. I really doubt I'll get anything, but I am really happy that I entered and "on time". Well it depends on your timezone really. I might actually make a CL post and get some help finishing this to the best I can. And it might get me in the mood to make some backgrounds for a change.

Also (since Ghost posted a youtube vid in his blog):

 

Watch Out!

Well I keep turning round and seeing 3 headed monkeys. Why can't I focus! Damn! One things is that I need to study cause I have exams soon, but also now I have a project but I'm just avoiding working now. :(

Is there no way to win?

And I need to work on my backgrounds. Meh! I need a holiday.

Photoshop is fun but I can't use it to make backgrounds. 

BALLS!

 

Deja vu!

Here is an update and to honor Ben's double post I shall double post about the same thing! YEAH!

So I took Ben's advice and tried to think about how I walked so I noticed I don't really lift my legs that much as he said, but I estimated I didn't lift my feet really higher than my foot's height. So I took that as a reference for my revision of the walkcycle and upadted the poor fellow. 

I noticed the guy's shoe size changed nearly every frame so I tried to sort that out too. Also I added the bob, but it makes it look more stampy ¬¬

Plus I tried to show some movement on his shirt and things. So I'm pretty pleased with him now. 

But saying that...

Gah Big is Better?

Well guys I thought I shal post something that I spent a while on. I don't think Iv spent so long on a walkcycle before, maybe 4hours tops. And I'm still not happy with it but a the moment its done. So I woner whatyou  guys think? I tried to make him ratio wise correct hence the size of him, but still comical and my own take on  the human form. 

Now Im wondering if I should try to reedit this guy with Ben's shading, but still he is a big 100px guy in a 320*240 world. 

Well this guy is mean't to be evil, and there is a reason behind why I worked on this guy for so long but that can't wait for another post. 

Ben Shading Not working

Well my random animal drawing for today was a Rhino which went ok. I'm trying to go to the limits of my new style, with the number of pixel system. Anyway, my ben304 shading wasn't going that well with this fella. So I stole the palette from Ben's example. Because, well Im struggling with blue as the main colour. I mean I tried green, yellow, orange, red, pink and purple as the secondary colour but it still didn't work. So with ben's colours it looks a bit better, but still its Meh!

I dunno if it is my shading, but I don't think so. 

Monkey Island

Today at work I could swear someone had the MI theme tune as their ringtone. But I only caught the first 5 secs of the tune before it was answered. And I couldn't see who answered it. 

There was my chance. A possible Adventure Game Nut who I could of possibly hugged today. Cause basically that made my day, because that ust showed to me that people who like adventure games aren't just on the internet. 

Aw, what if they dreamt of making thier own adventure games, what if I spoke to them and told them about AGS they could of made some aweosme games. Aw man, I feel sorry for them now. 

With any luck they will return to the store, but the chances of them returning and their phone going off again near me are slim, but it could happen. 

Aw man totally gutted :(

Unless, I've got a stalker....

ARGGH Why does this annoy me so!

So over  the last few years I've read the AGS forums, the General Discussion Forum has gotten worse and worse. If it isn't that a thread is updated too often and people were annoyed that it was always on the top of the list or that someone hasn't heard of Google. And finally, well not finally I'm sure it has came up before, but there is now a thread by a mod about such threads. shaaa-link

Now, if you have spoken to me about the forums on stickam/tok box/irc or whtever you would of heard my view of the forums. But for you lucky story virgins I will post my metaphor here:

(in terms of threads)

• General Dicussions - The Shite
• Popular Threads - The Toilet 
• Games in Production - The Polishing of Turds
• Completed Games - The Corn
• Competitions and Activites - The Soiled Toilet Paper
• Critic's Lounge - A Collection of Different Poo types

(ignoring the technical, RON and the hints and tips fourms)

Now don't get me wrong, I like the forums, and I like to think I'm a contributor. But this is just my impression of the threads I read today. 

There is a time and a place for everything. Hence I'm posting this when it is in disscussion in the forums and in my own blog, not on the forums. 

Ben304's Shading (2)

So I had another shot at it, trying to use more of the colours and edited some of the colours. I dunno if it is anything as good as ben's style, I think the yellow just makes it look muddy.  

Inventory Item compass?

As I kind of previously posted, I've been thinking about use of inventory in a game. And well I came to the conclusion that the more surprises you can give the player in game play, the more enjoyment the player will have. Now set that in adventure games. I'm thinking about items. 

The one thing I hate in an adventure game is looking for the missing inventory item or having to pixel hunt to pick up an item or have two items in the inventory which would do the same job, but you can only use one for bla and the other for another. I think these flaws only appear when game designers are just being lazy or stupid or both.  

Well the best designers try to incorporate items previously picked up into more puzzles. And well the average adventure game designer will just avoid the whole having to pick up and use a pair of scissors when you already have a knife in your inventory.  

So I came to some more conclusions about what are the most common items in an adventure game:

• A key
• A bucket
• A screwdriver
• A rope/string
• A knife
  

A key and a screwdriver, although different items, sort of do the same job. They allow access to something locked. However a key only fits one slot, while a screwdriver is pretty much universal. So I treat them as separate items. Such as the key is a limited item and a screw driver is a more universal tool item. 

Buckets! Or some kind of storage device, if it’s a bag or an idol missing some jewels. They hold another item. Buckets are pretty much universal, they can carry water to gravel, but do the same job each time and pretty straight forward.

A screw driver (again) and a knife, I treat these as tools. They can be constructed in a game to serve a purpose. But they are universal. Once a knife is in hand, you can stab as many people as you want. However I would avoid the whole knifing idea :P 

A rope or string. These items are used to hold/attach things. Either if it is a new inventory item or something environmental like a rope to swing across a gorge. 



One other type of inventory item is the Information items, which are only used to progress the story through dialogue, Such as a note, article, a photograph or blueprints. They are usually to tell you what to do or who to speak to etc but these are also basically your limited use items. 



So I came up with the idea, why can't you have main items in your inventory and just keep re-using them? My idea was the inventory compass. I made it into a compass because there was only 4 main items you get, (the limited use item, the tool, the "bonder" and the storage device). My idea was that what if these were your main and possibly your only items in the game. It would be a lot more realistic for someone to be able to carry such items around and for me the best puzzles are the possible in real life puzzles. 



Anyway I thought I would briefly share some of my thoughts on puzzle design in the last few months. And it might explain some of my previous blog posts :P

Also, can you think of any other items that wouldn't fit under on my headings? I would be interested if you can think of any, because I think my generalisation is sound proof :P

Oh And Other News:

Here is a proper go at Ben304's shading :P

Rawr its a dinosaur. I kind of failed on the shading point but it did make me think about shading. Anyway Im quite happy with this little fella. Also I drew him with a system. Basically when I have one pixel, next to it would be 2 pixels, and a 2 pixel line would have a 3 pixel line next to it  and so on. And I beleive it makes a more rounded and cartoonish and 3d shape.

Thats a little IB sceret :P Note that this system was only applied to the outline. 

Pure Evil Personified

If you have all of the following you are pure evil and must be killed:

• Moustache
• Black Cape
• Top Hat
• Long fingernails
• Wears ankle socks

Sorry

I hope Ben304 takes my last post as a joke :P 

Cause his tutorial is awesome

ONLY 7 colours!!!

Limited palettes are difficult to master, but the results you see are worth it :P

But the master has given his secrets away here.

Friday 13th..

Well my grandad passed away this morning. An extra 3 weeks we got, from the one week the doctors said he had left. So I beleive I have understood that his time is up. It is weird, I feel sad, but I don't have any grief. I'm just happy that his pain is finally over. 

RIP John Ritchie 

LBP(2)

www.tokbox.com

www.tokbox.com

LBP

Where littlebigplanet meets real life...

Things to do in university...

What can I do with a bucket?

Well

• It can hold liquid
• It is a portable stool
• You can roll it across the ground
• Could be used as a hat if it is small
• It could cover something
• It can be weighted down
• It can be used a weight in a pully sort of mechanism
• Can be used to scoop up things
• It can be bent into shapes if it is made of metal
• Could be used as a portable toilet
• Plant pot
• Impromptu charity collections
• Rubbish bin
• Can used to make sandcastles
• Could be turned into a drum if a skin is streched over it
• Could be used to amplify a sound source contained inside
• With a plank of wood could be turned into a See-Saw/catapult
• Filled with ice, can keep things cool
• With a hole in the bottom could be used as a post surgery vetinary safety device for an animal
• With serverals holes in the bottom and filled with water could be used as a shower
• Temporary goldfish bowl

Any more?

What can I do with a screwdriver?

Well:

• You can unscrew screws
• Carve/scrape things
• Lever open things
• The handle could be used as a hammer
• Could be used as a weapon/projectile
• You could puncture things with it
• Can reflect a small amount of light
• Could be used as a letter opener
• Could be wedged into things to keep them from moving
• It can rust
• Could be used as a paper weight

Any other Ideas?

Game Idea (3)

Staring Contest

Game Idea(2)

Text Based Hunt

Game Idea (1)

Fuzzy Felts

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Well I forgot about this place.... I haven't been here since last year... 

Heh

Well folks this is a year of change, I am setting myself targets. I am targeting myself to complete at least 3 games this year, learn everything you can about scripting, try my had at some "musicing making" and generally improve my skills so I can be a jack of all trades YAY!! 

AGS news:

It has been a year since I have been a really active member of the forums. So yeah new years resolution of last year DONE! So Ive made a few friends and contacts now, so I can start to properly work on something. I still think I need to make a few more games individually but I am aiming to possibly have a bigger project in the works or completed by the end of this year. Bigger as in length, quality and people working on it. 

AGS working News:

Presently I'm working on a mags entry. Well I finally came up with a plot and stuff now I just need to work out puzzles and locations now. I need to flesh it out but I'm working on the overall look of the game so I can concentrate on the puzzles and scripting next week. 

Additional news:

Stickam is dead! Well at the moment it is as tokbox is the new thing. No lag, no kick just pure ags gold! Still need some work as a site, but it does have its priorities correct, fun fun FUN!