Blogs - jnhill

The single player Infinity Pool game mode is totally ready to go and hooked up to the central game - except the leaderboard keeps replacing the player's high score with whatever their current score is...so if you got to level 5 last game and you start a new game, the leaderboard now reads you're on Level 1...not good. So, tryna get that working

1) The Infinity Pool segment of the Taffy Cove game should be live by next week. This section is a single player level based game with a bragging leaderboard (pictured in the screenshot) Collect the shells, level up - don't drown or get stung by a jellyfish though!

2) Initially this game would only be reachable through the Taffy Cove game as a whole, but it'll be stand alone within Roblox and have teleporters to each game.

3) The last section of Taffy Cove, a multiplayer game will be in the works, although I may create the game in Fortnite Create mode first

My second week working on Taffy Cove. I'm not going to go too strong on this here at this juncture because the amount of time spent on the game is not enough to elicit serious attention and as such, does not deserve a deep dive sort of blog post and try to gen up any interest.

So, as stated last week, the game is a 3 mode game - a single player mode, a multi-player mode and a collection/open world mode.

This past week I have been working on the single player mode, getting the basic mechanics down. It's a 2D game in Roblox.

While its not ready for any sort of presentation, headway has been made and I'm hopeful that the open world level and the single player mode will be largely complete by the end of 2 weeks and afterwards implement a currency system and begin working on the multiplayer mode.

Many moons ago I created a small game called Swimmer. I've always wanted to remake the game, I felt it was a good game, and I even started creating a mobile version of the game several years ago. It was originally created in GameMaker and I was looking to make it in Unreal Engine for mobile and PC, but networking and other aspects prevented me from perusing it...additionally, I had other features and concepts that I simply could not implement on my own.

I ran several models and walkthroughs for various projects using Unreal over the past few years and conceptualized a different platform - ROBLOX. With ROBLOX I have a game with networking and server support already in place, and so have decided to remake...fully make in ROBLOX.

Having learned from my past games and mods I have made, such as Clyde Hopper's Trajectory (XBLIG) and Swimmer (PC); undertaking an entire game...all aspects myself, will be overwhelming and will see features lacking across all disciplines (art, animation, effects, programming, design, gameplay)...so inasmuch, I'm going to create the game with in mind as being solely the Designer. In prior efforts, I made all the art, animations, programming...etc. The game suffered for it, it was just too much for a single person...a single person who can barely program the microwave let alone an entire game. So I will be using market art, market scripts...it will still require some coding, but if the initial launch happens and people have interest, I will gladly bring on dedicated programmers.

So the differences...

The original Swimmer was a campaign, with a story. The new ROBLOX version will be an open world level with side worlds. Upon initial launch, the main center world, Taffy Cove, will be a collection world where you can collect shells and get items (basically a giant lobby where the monetization happens). Then there will be a single player world with global leaderboard. And finally a multiplayer match mode players can teleport to. If all goes well here, eventually a campaign mode will be added.

From here, if the game goes well, I intend to remake my other release, Clyde Hopper's Trajectory, though rather than fully code myself in C#, I will use the Unreal Engine.

So, here we go, as long as the project is afloat, I will update weekly

-jan

Over at Dogmatic we took something of a little break. Played some games, did this and that. We completed an app for the Windows Phone. Its called 'Bible Pieces - Animals', it's a full list of every animal mentioned in the bible, with image, relevant scripture, and a contextual note. It's free and should be available on the app market in the next couple of weeks. Depending on the reception and interest that garners, I may do a couple more.

Jumping back on Trajectory today. I havent been around talking about it here and there constantly because, for one, I realized the past couple of weeks that I am not a PR person in the least. I could'nt sell a bag of blow to Charlie Sheen if I had to. This is how terrible my marketing skills are. Secondly, I don't have much more progress than the demo I posted last month.

I will say that I have been working on it today, and I am excited and re-energized. Things at the moment are running smooth!

The slight traffic glowtrance.com got is now further halted, as Glow Trance Games is now Dogmatic Game Studios. So now dogmaticgames.com is where the fun is.

Things have slightly slowed the studios development process over the past year since Outlands was published here. However, they have not stopped. A new game featuring Clyde Hopper will be near beta testing phase by mid-November. The game is called Trajectory, and is a Windows Messenger based game. There is a snippet in the video below about 2/3 the way through of what it looks like in game. More up soon :)

Clyde Hopper - The Outlands was an enjoyable experience to have worked on. It is a piece of IP that I had come up with a couple of years ago and I was pleased to take a piece of the story and make it an (un)reality.

In developing the level, I found a few things that worked for me. One off those was working on something I was familiar with. I live in a woodsy area with a nice sized backyard, mostly grown up and natural, and I see little frogs, turtles, bugs and birds; and I give them storylines of their own.

The process I used to create the level was that I created the whole level as an outline and worked on areas in incriments. Breaking it down part for part made it much less overwhelming.

This was a learning process and not everything was accomplished and not everything went as visioned. There are several reasons that I can see for this. A the top of the totem is that this was a virginal effort at designing and creating the demo. Most everything I was doing, I was doing for the first time; no matter how small a task, if I had no idea how to do it, it wound up taking days to figure out. This not only pressed back personal deadlines, but also cut into the Moddb release.

Secondly, the process was spontaneous..perhaps a bit too loosey goosey. There was a very flexible guideline for the level and had it been more than one person working on the mod, it would have just been unorganized chaos in gridlock. In working with the original plans for the map, I would discover halfway through that I preferred the gameplay went in a different direction all together at points. Other times I would come to the conclusion that with my resources, knowledge, and time frame; certian features would be more likely reached than others. Then there were the feature creeps...and they were creeping and crawling all over the place. Many of which were not implemented into the demo. (perhaps I will revamp the demo for a v2.0 including several of these creeps that were not featured thus far

Next time...

1) KEEP ORGANIZED - By the time I was at a point which I felt pretty good about the level, I had files all over the place. My desktop was covered with icons everywhere

2) DOCUMENT EVERYTHING - There were a few cases that I had done something within the engine, but I couldnt remember exactlly how I did it and blew hours trying to figure out exactlly what I did.

3) SET SCHEDULE - Working from home, you've got a house, pets, kid, wife, car...life to keep up with and they dont stop. Work out a defined schedule of when you will work on the project.

4) GO BIGGER - Going into developing a game, I don't want to be over ambitious, but each new project should display improvements in skills, confidence and ambition.