A new game on the horizon

Progress on Contention and Switch HD (latest tentative title) has halted temporarily.

I decided to make a loose remake on a old game. It's called Birdy and the original version dates back to September 2005. This game is basically just a test to see how long it takes to make a relatively simple, but complete game.

Sporting some retro graphics, sound and music, this game is designed to look like it's straight out of the early days of games.

I've managed to program this game fairly quickly, no doubt all due to my new organization technique. Nearly every part of this game was planned in advance in a 6-page outline. Practically all that remains is level design. I have 8 levels made so far, I plan to have 20-30.

Switch 2 the eXtreme

It's about time I showed you what Switch 2 is looking like:

No power-ups yet, as you can see, but what you can't see is that there is some nice fading of the tiles as you switch colours; a nice visual clue that you need to avoid a different colour now.

Switch 2 the eXtreme is not going to be the title of Switch 2, but I'm still working on that. Doubtless I will have to roll with either Switch 2, or just plain old Switch.

Back off the straight and narrow

Well I knew it would't be long before I got distracted from making Switch, but don't worry I'm not exactly making an epic mmorpg.

I finally managed to fix the annoying 3D perspective bug in my 3D engine. I'm not sure what I'll do next though, I'll probably just switch between this and Switch 2, until I get back into the swing of things.

Finally, progress!

I've finally managed to fix the collision system for Switch 2. It works beautifully! Now I can't wait to get started on porting all the power-ups from Switch 1, and adding new ones.

Making progress

Progress on Switch 2 is going quite well. I've made a number of improvements to the tile engine (it now runs alot faster) and I have started with the collision system.

That's right, now you won't just die when you hit a wall, you'll hit into it.

Well atleast if I can get it to work. You see, the collision detection works perfectly, but my engine just can't get it's head around the whole stopping-when-you-hit-into-something concept.

In the mean time I have added a slightly slow camera to help add a sense of speed. It's great fun messing around with the variables that control how fast and slow the camera is!

So overall progress on Switch 2 is going good. But I still need a good name for it.

Back on the straight and narrow

After becoming rather frustrated at the balancing of the levels in Neon Swords, I messed around a bit with the tile engine I created for Switch 2 and created a time travel mechanic. I was going to make a time travel game out of what I made, but I decided I should stop project hopping and finally get back to working on Switch 2.

Perhaps I will add a reverse time functionality to Switch 2? Only time will tell! Nonetheless, there is no doubt I will return to making that time travel game after I finish making Switch 2.

Old = new

Well I'm taking a break from Switch 2, (read: I finished making the menus and got bored) and I decided to try fixing up one of my many half-completed games. Its name is "Neon Swords" and it may or may not be inspired by a popular science fiction franchise. As is probably evident in the above screenshot, it's hardly the most in-depth game ever created, but hopefully it will prove to be a cool, fun, quick game. Or perhaps one for the highscore junkies?

40 days later

My 3D engine went quite well. Unfortunately though a problem has arisen to do with the X-axis rotation which makes the perspective wrong.

3D mathematics can get quite tricky and sometimes I've had to resort to good ol' trial and error. So I don't think I'll be making a full 3D game any time soon. One day!

A have started designing the menu system for Switch "2". I'm not completely happy with how it's turning out, and I keep starting again. I think it's actually easier to design menus within the limits of 4k, because the completely garish is completely acceptable. I think I might just make the menu system exactly the same as it was in Switch "1", just with a little more style.

I suppose I should get to the actual programming, before I waste up all of my creativity!

Switch's Sequel

When I uploaded Switch to Kongregate I told myself that if it got a rating of higher than 2.0 I'd make a revamped version. Well it amazingly enough got a rating 2.43/5, and was played 456 times.

Considering the fact that I doubt half of the players even looked at the description to see that the game was made in 4kb, I think that was a pretty good success. So it looks like I'll be making a sequel to Switch as soon as I've finished my mystery game.