Making things look awesome

I've made some progress on the aesthetic of the game, and as a result everything's looking slightly less square. "The Flip" is looking particularly nice (especially compared to the previous screenshot I posted)

BSide Progress

Changelog of sorts:

• Objects in previous levels now no longer magically show up in the next level
• Backgrounds of levels no longer need to be black (although the level in the screenshot is black anyway)
• The main character's hat now comes off when the player throws it.
• Added more tiles including sand paths, walls, doors, and special surfaces with specific properties
• Keys can be picked up to open doors

Creating a universe

Recently I've been making a lot of progress with my 3D engine, and therefore the game utilizing it, Contention. Most of it is stuff that you won't notice like tweaks in draw distance and focal length. Notably, though, it has crosshairs and a zoom button (the beginnings of a HUD), planets and these rings:



These rings (which may be a space 'road' to major places in the final game) are currently the most complex object in the game. They're great for testing the upper limits of my 3D engine. Also, the zoom view has a night vision effect, as shown below, and the AI can now shoot.

Spare time materialises

I have recently finished my first semester of my study at University. I am doing a degree in Computer Science and Game Technology. This means that I will have some free time to do the last touches on Birdy and get it sponsored.

Portfolio Redesign

I have recently redesigned my portfolio website.

The aim of my portfolio website is to display my work, so I'm trying to keep the website's design relatively non-distracting.

In the coming weeks I will be adding some more flash examples.

Alas; a screenshot

Well, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I could show you a screenshot of my 3D engine, but I think it's to early for that. So, here's a thousand words:

Ah, never mind. Feast your eyes upon this:

It may not look like much, but I'm making great progress now! It's got Z-sorting, backface culling and 3 axis rotation for the camera, models, and meshes.

As I mentioned last post, there is a lot of contention as to which project I work on, but rest assured I will return to Switch 2 shortly.

Well, at least I hope so.

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.

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?

What now?

Soon as how I'm no longer making my mystery game, I guess the question is: what am I going to do now? The next game I'll make will probably be Switch's sequel game, but I haven't started work on that yet.

Instead I've decided to experiment with 3D. I've already got some xml model importing (using my own proprietary xml model file format) and the 3D positioning is brilliant. Still no rotation yet, but rome wasn't built in one day, you know.

My mysterious game

I have decided to stop making Confused, the game which I have been so aloof about. Unfortunately it was no fun at all. I guess that's the bad thing about making puzzle games, I don't find them as fun myself, so how can I expect to make one that's fun?

That said, perhaps if someone who loves block puzzle games plays it, they might find it heaps of fun! So I'm not gonna delete it, just leave it how it is, and perhaps one day complete it.

For anyone curious, the game basically consisted of finding a certain combination of four blocks, then clicking on them, making them disappear.

For instance, imagine this is your playing area:

[1][1][3]

[3][3][2]

[4][1][2]

And you are given these blocks to find:

[3][2]

[1][2]

I think it's boring-ity speaks for itself, now.

Switch

I have just uploaded Switch, the game I made for the Game Poetry 4k Game Competition, to Kongregate. As you can see it's not very complicated, due to the size limit. Regardless it should be alot of fun! ( I hope! )

So why no play it and rate it? As I said on the game description, if it gets a good enough rating, I'll make a new, better version.

PS: Playing Switch may give you some kind of an idea of what my new game might be like.

Foreshadowing

I have just recently begun work on a fun little flash game that hopefully won't take me too long to program. The only clue I am giving about it is the little teaser image that you can see above.