Blogs - IsaacNichols

Hello, I'm in a better mood now that the issue is fixed. Pretty frustrating but maybe it was meant to be. After fixing it I decided to add a level select option for those that may want to replay past levels - figured that might important. I don't feel as much pressure now. The day before the 30th release was a bit rough for me. You will be happy to know that I got some sleep too!

So why isn't the game available you ask? Well I'm going to do one more wellness check of the game and see if I stumble across anything like the volume issue we had yesterday. So if everything is good, I will release it tomorrow.

Strange thing about this game being done is, I don't feel like it's complete yet. Maybe because no one has played it in it's "finished state" yet. So that is where you all come in. Hopefully most people will enjoy it and I can make plans for the next project but still support Drone Zero Gravity - my baby :)

Talk to you all tonight or tomorrow morning.

Have a good day!

Isaac

Like OMG, this game is almost done, Release date 9/30/2015. I have maybe a handful of transitions/cutscenes to do and place music/remaining sfx in the game and it's completed. I will still be playing the heck out of the game trying to find any problems but other than that, it should be good to go. I was very happy to add a few more quality settings to the game which is nice.

Speaking of quality and settings, I tested the game on my lower end pc and it runs at 720p 60 - 30 fps (there will be dips). Here are the specs

Windows 7
Pentium 4 Dual Core Processor E5800 @3.2ghz
8gbs of ram
Nvidia Geforce GT 640 1gb

I wish I could make it look better but it does run. I figured if I can get it going on this machine, it should help with all other systems out there overall.

Special thanks to a friend out there who sold me that E5800 processor about 2 - 3 years ago to make my second pc build and got me into pc gaming, look where it led me :) And a couple other friends who cosigned :)

Ok thats all, I believe I skipped a progress update post last week. The giveaway kinda overshadowed it for me. So to all those winners, keep an eye out for your keys. Maybe at midnight. Here's what the spreadsheet looks like now :D
Dronezerogravity.com

The last bit of talk is about steam achievements last. I hope to be able to incorporate this but I have been struggling to integrate them. If not on the campaign, I will have them implemented with the free dlc with the additional gametypes. I provide a hefty amount to make up for it :)

Talk to you all later.

Isaac

Is this game done yet? I am starting to feel the pressure again but in a good way. Working hard on this game testing and doing my best to get everything together. I kind of abandoned the spreadsheet that I made a while back that has a checklist going, I will update it soon. Getting the series of levels at the end of the game together is a challenge, it has to be worthwile. The gameplay varies a bit here and there at the end hopefully to spice things up. I'm officially in crunch mode. Ideas to fulfill the story are flowing to me a bit easier now. Although there is still a lot to do, I feel I'm in a better place to launch the game and fix issues that may arise along the way than before. Still looking forward to adding DLC content, at no cost, in the coming weeks after launch. There are some game modes I want to play around with.

I guess this is more of me talking than a progress update. Pretty much all that is left is fine tuning the levels and finishing music tweaking sfx and optimizing a bit more. Oh and the text based dialogue, ah! :)

Bye,

Isaac

I figured that I would work on SFX this past weekend since I had some extra time off from work. I thought to myself, this shouldn't take more than a day or two and then I can work on some other things. Well, being a newbie, I underestimated how much time and effort is required to get sound fx done. After four days, most of the SFX are in the game just might have to tweak levels here and there or swap a few. Here's a link so you can hear the game and see some gameplay at the same time.

I updated the loading screen and squashed a few more bugs. Also got multiple save slots now which is nice.

Thanks again everybody for joining the group and adding the game to your wishlist. You all make me push harder to make the best game I can provide. Please continue to spread the word, I look forward to making more games in the future hopefully with some multiplayer.

Lastly, some of the extra content like other modes and levels I may release as DLC if I can't add it all. I have a lot of ideas for extra content but I shouldn't focus on that right now. But don't worry this content will not cost you any additional money.

Well that's it for now. Throughout the week I'm going to keep cleaning up the levels and finishing the transitions between levels. Talk to you soon!

Hello,

So this past week, I did quite a bit of play testing to fine tune some things, added some transitions between maps and reworked the players hud. Added a new enemy type, I guess it would be considered a mini boss.

The wave mode that is in the works will have mini games so it's a bit different. Looking forward to showing footage on that soon. Next weekend, I will have a good amount of time to work on DZG. I might be able to finish the game minus the music and all of the sfx. It's very close which is making it more difficult to complete. :)

That's it this week, didn't have as much time as I like but still on pace.

Chat with you next week!

Isaac

Hello,

It's a beautiful Saturday morning, hope everyone is enjoying there cereal and Saturday morning cartoons. I personally enjoy Capt'n Crunch, Fruity Pebbles and Reese's Peanut Butter Crunch!

Anyway, progress with the game.

So this is week two and more progress has been made :D. This week I worked on things like separate sliders for music and sfx (even made a tutorial about it), gamma settings slider for brightness and finalized the ship in the game that you will interact with a little bit.

Here's an image posted on twitter for #screenshotsaturday
Twitter.com

Lastly, I worked on some of the soundtrack. I found someone on the internet that can take care of mastering the music once I create and mix it all. Great investment and time saver.

That's it for this week, talk to you all next week.

Bye,

Isaac

Drone Zero Gravity Progress Update (Post Delay) Post 1

Quick update, I am very happy with the progress made with the game this week. The excel spreadsheet and knowing everyone can check it out has motivated me even more. Everyday I can just take something off the list and focus on that. Something as simple as a list is very effective.

Anyway, I feel the best progress was made with the rock optimization. The polygon count is much lower so that should help. I also took a look at some of the particles and cut back on that too. Checkpoints and "collectibles" are done. Both of these are treated a bit differently and how you interact with them. I will provide more details about that later. Fixed some physics issues and had to get creative with the moveable rocks. It was very buggy and I couldn't get it working but a happy accident happened. Ended up becoming a more interesting object for the player to interact with.

That's about it, I will most likely post once a week giving my progress report to you all. Once again thank you for all of your support and continue to spread the word.

Isaac

Spreadsheet of progress
Dronezerogravity.com