Nicholas Rubatino Is Up To Something

Some of you may know my friend Nicholas Rubatino. For the past couple of years, he's been working on a graphic novel which is based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I've been keeping up with him while he's been working on it, and I have to say that I think he has something really special in the works. Right now, though, I wanted to share his Cafepress Shop where he's been putting together prints and wearables for people to collect and/or wear on their bodies. This storefront is for him to make a little extra money on the side while he continues to make his graphic novel. You should check it out if you have a spare moment. http://www.cafepress.com/saintlyleftovers

Also, he has a blog at http://www.nicholasrubatino.com, where he regularly posts illustrations and paintings that he's been working on. If you like original art or have a macabre sense of humor... You should really check his work out.

Some Very Big News

Let me start off this blog post by apologizing for not posting last week. In the future I will be better about keeping up posts every week.

So I managed to do a lot of scripting for my game. Triggered doors now function. Pushable blocks can now function as a weight for triggered doors. Treasure chests work to hold items. I have the skeleton of an inventory in place. And my character can place bombs. To top that off, I learned a great deal more about how the input manager functions in Unity.

That being said... I am going to put this project on hiatus. As much as I love this project; the whole thing is just way too over scoped for where I am currently at as a game developer. However, considering how long it's been in the back of my mind stewing already, I will probably return to it some day.

Have no fear though, dear reader, because what's that I see over the horizon? Could it be some sort of new project? Something that I can keep passionate about while also remain inside of a doable scope? Well, yes. That is exactly what it is!

As I already stated: my old project was far too large of a project for me to work on by myself with my current level of experience. I needed to switch to something that was much smaller, but was also something that I could get passionate about. Something that would keep me excited for my work, but would also not be as mechanics heavy as a Zelda inspired puzzle adventure game.

It was like lightning. While on a walk with two of my good friends, we found ourselves talking about making a ridiculous arm wrestling video game. I found a video that properly explains the core of the idea:

Needless to say, it wasn't very long until FIST CHAMPION was born! FIST CHAMPION: Champions of the Fist at its heart is a game about multiplayer competition. Two champions duking it out in an all out grudge match in fantastical and often ludicrous scenarios to prove once an for all that they are the greatest arm wrestler in the universe.

January Week Two - Giving This Game Some Character

This week was spent on developing the character. Rather than a smaller, almost chibi-like character that I had worked on in the past, it was important that I branched out a little and explored something that spoke to more of the mood that I want to create with my game. Thumbnailing and sketching ensued!

Thumbs at pixel scale (64x128)

It wasn't too long until I went in the direction of a taller and more slender character.

It was important to me that beyond games like Zelda, the character also drew inspiration from the old Sierra adventure games that I loved as a child. This is just the boy version of the main character. I hope to spend some time in the near future working on the female iteration of the character. For now though, it is just nice to not be staring at a white block anymore.

Along with art I also spent time learning about sprite animation in Unity. It's been really more intuitive than I  would have originally anticipated. I look forward to showing off what the game looks like in engine with the character.

This next week I'm back on scripting. Also, I want to finish up some modeling in my spare time. It's time for this game to start coming together.

Project update January Week One - A Serious Post for the new year

Welcome back! We now have the first week of January under our belt, and I've spent the week seriously working on scheduling and planning. As much fun as I was having working on my project, I was lacking some serious organization to keep this project on track to ever be completed.

On the very first day of January, I wrote up a weekly schedule for when my actual blocks of work time every week would be. This means that every week it can be expected that I will work on my project for about 20 hours. I would like to do more, but I need to balance out the other commitments I've made to my job (where my money comes from), to my band (Rocket Summer, we have our first real show coming up on the 28th!), and actual free time for myself so that I don't go insane.

This morning I have been working on my Task tracker on Trello. The list itself is still small, but there will be more added to it most definitely, and the tasks already on there are some pretty major items that I cannot put off.

Everything that you see in the "Doing" column is something that I have already started working on and will continue with this week. By next Monday I would like to have my character sprite up to show off on here and I would also like to have functioning triggered doors.

As of this morning I started seriously looking in to Kickstarter as a way to push this project forward. I have helped to fund several projects through Kickstarter, and feel like crowd sourcing is an excellent avenue to get a project like this accelerated. Look out for more info on that in the coming months.