Chilling With A Cold

This sickness may have weakened my immune system, but but not my pun-lust. I am really not sure if any cold could. Illness can, however, slow down progress on FIST CHAMPION. I've been trying to work all day, and all I really have to show for it is one mildly bitchin' Stage Select screen that is a total riff on my love for the NES era of gaming.

It looks less impressive without anything animating on top of it, but trust me: this sucker is going to flicker with all sorts of goodness when you see it in game.

This week I also finally overcame my old Scripting nemesis: the LERP. A LERP is a function inside of Unity that allows an object to Interpolate between two states. For example: it can make a cube move across the screen over a span of time, or make the color of a light transition smoothly from red to green at the push of a button. The LERP was a thorn in my side while working on Adventure Quest, and it became a nuisance here as well. I finally figured out what the problem was, though. Rather than calling a variable that holds the position of the object I am trying to move, I should actually be calling the object itself so that the position information can update over the course of the LERP. Sorry if that doesn't make sense, but I promise you i can now make objects randomly move across screens like drunk people leaving a bar after last call.

Speaking of drunk people, I am afraid that this cold medicine has left me a little wiggly; I'm sorry if this post has made less sense than they normally do. If it actually made more sense: I don't know what to tell you, because I'm not about to pick up drinking Day-Quil as a writing aid.

Until Next Week...

Let's Get Funky

Can I just say that sitting down and organizing a loose schedule for what I want has really helped to get this game moving for me? It's much easier now to look objectively at what I need to do and convince myself to not put so much effort into one spot when there is really a lot of work to be done everywhere. There is this week and all of next week left in order to put together something to let people interact with. Until then: I'll just leave this here...



See you next week!

BACK TO WORK

Sorry for the week of silence. I had written a whole post, but it was really just me padding out the minimal amount of work I had done while handling life events. I just went through a move at my house, and that meant clearing the whole place out and then unpacking it again. We're still not done unpacking.

Anyway, I had wanted to show off some art for this update, but that will have to wait until a slightly later post. I have yet to locate my stylus from where I packed it, and I didn't want to just show off more pencil sketches. I have, however been using this time for various other things that are not drawing related! My game now has a partially functioning menu system, and two generic dudes that shimmy sham when buttons are pressed! Good times.

Right Now the gameplay area is a sloppy mess...

But it does serve it's purpose for what I need. I also thought maybe people would like to just has a glimpse at what I have been staring at.

My buddy Tyler Woods is a pretty cool guy, and he makes some awesome music. You should check out his Bandcamp Page if you don't believe me. My personal favorite album is Beep Boops. I listen to his stuff a lot while I'm working on FIST CHAMPION. It got me thinking, actually. About how his music pumps me up, and that my game is all about that kind of thumping and pumping adrenaline vibe... So I asked Tyler to make some music for my game. AND HE DID.

If everything keeps moving, and the project stays on schedule, you might be able to hear some of it very soon. While playing a very early version of my game. I'm shooting to have something playable by the end of this month. Wish me luck!

Rubrics Cube... Err... Square, Really.

While working on this project, I frequently find myself just working on random parts with absolutely no focus or concept of what an end goal looks like. Luckily I have been reminded by a good friend that I have a set of tools at my disposal to help me stay organised and focused on the goal... And also to define what that goal is.

So I created a rubric!

This is something that I've had to do a few times in my life, but the version that I like the most was introduced to me in Rachel Rutherford's GAT 399 class at DigiPen. It is more free flowing than a timeline based rubric, and allows me to keep track of when I'm spending too much time in one area.

Click For Larger Version

If you've never seen this style of rubric before; let me tell you a little something about it. The columns are labeled F through A, and then T. F is nothing, where all projects begin. A is what I hope to achieve when I call this a released game. T is the dream: this is what I would want to happen if the stars aligned and everything just worked out perfectly. The colored bars are where I think I am right now. I keep them at red when I'm not very far along, yellow when I'm doing okay, and green when a section is nearing completion. There is currently nothing green. Let's work on that, shall we?

Next week! Next week, let's look at some artwork. I want to finally be at a point where I can show off some environment art and some character work. I'll see you then.

A Plot Must Simmer Before It Thickens

First of all, I just want to say that I've been following along with DoubleFine's Amnesia Fortnight. Watching them work has been really very inspiring for me while I work. I don't know if this sounds silly or not, but I have an easier time working when I'm being exposed to other people being productive. I'm listening to them having a morning SCRUM report right now as I type this.

ONWARD. I was doing a pile of sketchwork this week, and I became inspired to inject a story in to my game, FIST CHAMPION. Essentially, what I've come up with is pure B-Movie Bliss. In the world of my game, there is a company called Big YEN, and they're a mega corporation (Think OCP from robocop) that makes everything from No. 2 Pencils to Nuclear Warheads. The board of directors for this company are all evil, though, and want to rule the world.

I'll tell you more about it later, but if you want an idea: think Mortal Kombat meets The Last Starfighter.

Also this week, I've been thinking about the art style to my game. my initial thought was to do some seriously detailed pixel art, like what you'd find on the old NeoGeo/SNK arcade games. Completely ignoring that I am by no means the most detail oriented artist I know, and although I have a very strong passion for smaller scale pixel art, this is way beyond where I am at right now. SCOPE! Scope is what I keep trying to remind myself. So, I think I'm just going to go down some fun avenues, and try drawing and painting and 3D modeling with my game in order to see what I like, what I don't like, and maybe we'll find some things that we didn't expect, but will ultimately help sell the goal of making this "the most eclectic game about arm wrestling there has ever been."

Here's some sketchwork that I've been doing:

I really need to get a scanner...

Advanced Rules: The Difference Between Fantasy & Reality

When I first started talking to my friends about FIST CHAMPION we decided the controls for the game were going to be kept simple. Taking that to an extreme: I made the most basic form of the game be a single button masher. It took very little time to put together, and that was pretty cool. However, very early on, Brandt Andrist came up with the idea of a more advanced "2-Button" style of gameplay. We started talking about how that could open up all sorts of new strategies for play rather than just a straight up button masher.

It's kind of funny how just adding a second button to a game can make the game itself so much more complex.

For the final game, I decided, there would be the standard mode of play that the game would default to, and there would also be Advanced Mode. THE MOMENT I sat down to start scripting Advanced Mode, I hit a weird mental brick wall. I had spent a lot of time talking to my friends about how this would work, and it all seemed pretty straight forward, but the actual act of writing how that functions as a mechanic in Scripting (with my level of ability anyway) seemed like a suddenly very daunting task.

Here is the originally proposed method for Advanced Mode:

1. When gameplay starts, both players begin on the same button.

2. after a short time, when one player starts getting ahead: the losing player can switch to another button to effectively block all button presses done by the winning player on the original button.

3. The previously winning player needs to switch to the new button in order for any presses to mean anything.

The problem with this mode of play is that it runs into too many problems involved with how long it takes to decide who is actively winning or losing a round, and what happens when the originally winning player suddenly becomes the losing player without having switched buttons.

Right now I am leaning more towards something like this instead:

1. Both players have a stamina meter on screen during gameplay. The primary button drains the meter, and the secondary button replenishes.

2. If the player drains their meter: no button presses for that player are valid, and the player must now wait for a time for the gauge to replenish itself.

And yet, I also think that there could be another way of handling this... Maybe something more like the way that riding a horse in Zelda is handled? a highly limited gauge that encourages more of a rhythm than speed to keep going. I could picture this being really intense for people playing. Especially when someone falls behind, and the struggle to catch back up.

For those of you who might not know what I mean, here's a helpful video (applicable part is 57 seconds in) :



What do you think? I would really like to hear some feedback on this.

Fist Champion - Not Your ProtoTypical Game

This past week, I took a page from the book of passion and rocked out a prototype for Fist Champion. It is really nothing fancy to look at, just some text elements and basic test sprites, but I made it, and I am very proud of that.

This is what the prototype looks like in Unity before I run the game. A pile of GUI text Elements and a few basic sprites. 

Immediately after starting the game, the Time sets to 10 seconds and the scores set to 0. (I'm still thinking about if I even want visible counters in the final game.)

4 seconds left and it's a tied game!

The timer strikes zero and the player with the higher score wins! I know that this is all very primitive to look at, but believe me: as an artist, figuring out how to do this was a real boost to my day.

On top of my prototype, I've also started illustrating my first character for the game. His name is The Pugilist. Although there is a whole list of potential characters already lined up to be in this game, The Pugilist will be first, because his design is the most straightforward... and I have an affinity toward curly mustaches.

He is an old timey sort of fighter. The kind of fella you'd expect to see lifting comically large weights at a carnival or practicing calisthenics at the beach whilst waiting for his best lady. He's an old fashioned sort with a disposition towards winning.

This week:

• Wireframes for the menu systems
• Thumbnailing first stage
• Thumbnailing gameplay layout
• More control related scripting
• Playtesting!

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.

End of The Year, And What Have I Done?

A page of sketches that I did for kitchen props.

So this is the last day of the year, and I find myself looking at what I accomplished in two months on my project. Honestly I wish I could have accomplished more, but I also am aware that this is my very first project on my own, and it is going to take longer than I think in all aspects. I kept up the effort, and that's what matters to me right now.

MOVING FORWARD...

This project remains a part-time endeavor for me. I am working 30-40 hours a week for Starbucks, and I've been kind of loosy-goosey about the amount of time I spend on the game. This should change. It is time that I take the advice that is so often given to me and create a weekly schedule that I can stick to.

This should be my New Years Resolution. I am going to make a weekly schedule that is doable, and stick to it.

So what have I done this month for my game?

This whole month has been consumed by art. I've done a whole pile of concepting, modeling, texturing, and writing. The biggest hurdle of this project is that I keep wanting it to be perfect on the first pass, and too much time is wasted on details when I should be focusing more on the whole project.

What's next?

In the next week, I want to spend some serious time working on scripting. There are three different types of doors that I need for this dungeon: Trigger Activated, Locked, and Explodable. In order to complete this dungeon, all three must be executed.

Also, I need to spend some time on the character, and begin research on dialog boxes. This should be fun/grueling.

Look out January, here I come!

Christmas Week, No Updates!

While I am most definitely still hard at work on my game: there is nothing really to report this week. I had done some minor art work, played with character representation, and started writing dialogue; nothing major though. I hope that everybody had a fun and great Christmas. I'll be back on Monday with some major updates!

December Week 02 - Wherefore Art Thou?

This week I spent most of my time working on art for my project. In the past I had done layout drawings and sketches of what I wanted the environments to look like. Well, now was the time to start modelling out what I had drawn. The real struggle was keeping myself from sticking to one thing for too long. I have the bulk of my environment blocked in now, and next up it more refined modelling and texturework.

Instead of my checklist this week, I think I'll just post some renders I did today of the individual rooms. Please note that the lighting is all placeholder and the environments are all still very heavily under construction.

This is the very first room in the Demo. The feeling I'm going for is that of an abandoned subway platform.

This is the main room that connects all of the others. Please note that the dragon is ripped from the internet and is that completely as a placeholder.

This room is going to be a kitchen/pantry type of room.

This is going to be a bedroom. There's going to be a lot more construction done in this room.

This is a room with three teleporter pads. I wonder what happens if you step into the green one?

This game takes place in a world just like ours. Except magic was very much once a real thing. The bulk of mankind has forgotten about magic, but there are still magic places hidden around the world. This is one such place. At one point this was some sort of temple used to worship a long forgotten god, but now it is the humble home of an eccentric hermit. I will tell you more about him in the near future.

Until next time...

Game Project December - Week 01 (I Need Better Titles For These)

The first week of December has come and gone. I have been allowing myself a little bit of a break, so I haven't gotten as much done on my game as I had previous weeks. But there was still quite a bit of progress. This week was all about art.

What I accomplished:
 - More diffuse!
 - More Normal Maps!
 - Finally working on Prop Modelling
 - Layout sketches for all rooms in the demo dungeon
 - Lists of props needed
 - Wrote some dialogue

What I'm doing this week:
 - More prop modelling
 - Unwrapping and first texture pass
 - Finish Art Pass 01 on full dungeon
 - import all assets into Unity

For the first week of December, I spent time actually fleshing out what I want these rooms to look like. I knew what pieces needed to be in each room, but I hadn't spent any time thinking about what the layout of these rooms would be. Now that I have done some sketch work: everything is much more smooth and I have a plan of attack for my art.

This coming week is a continued effort on my art. More modelling, and more texture work. I want to finish a complete first pass on the environment and then move on to sprite work on Week 03.

On a side note, I want to promote two other projects that have been an immense inspiration for what I've been working on. First: my friend Michael James has been working on a web comic that needs more followers. It's called Aeon Valley and the art and writing is so phenomenal; you might not believe it was all done by one guy.

The second is a game called Paper Sorcerer made by my friend Jesse Gallagher. This game came out at the beginning of this month and he's been working on it for quite some time. If you like good RPG's that only cost $5.00 and have a bitchin' soundtrack... Then you should really already own a copy of this game, because it's right up your alley. If you don't, you kind of dropped the ball on that one, but it's okay: I wont tell anyone if you go out and buy it right now.

Until next week...

November Game Project Progress Update - Week 04 (My What Big Goals You Have...)

November is at an end, and here we are. What have I go to say for myself? Well, my project is still a ways off from showing off to the public, but that is more than okay. Considering that I have never really done this scale of project on my own before and the window of time I was doing it in: I would say that I should be pretty proud of what I've accomplished.

What I accomplished:
 - Prop modelling has begun!
 - Squashed some bugs with the way my block push works
 - spent some more time with the world of my game

What I started:
 - I am beginning to flesh out the environment for my vertical slice
 - Fleshing out of one specific mentor type character
 - Sketchwork for environment dressings
 - More work on Diffuse Maps
 - Begun painting Normal Maps

What I still need to work on:
 - Normal Maps need some more time
 - Need to work on Specular Maps
 - More prop modelling
 - Finish layout of dungeon rooms

This is the first of December! Wow. I finally got to start working on props for my game. This week is all about modelling and illustrations. I want to finish designing what all of the rooms in this demo are going to look like, then get to designing and modelling all of the elements. That should take me more than just this one week, but anyone who is following this should begin to see it paying off as soon as next week.
Did I say demo? Yeah, this game has become more than just a November NaNoWriMo-type project. Development momentum is steadily increasing for me. I have a great support team, and a schedule that I am sticking to. I don't always meet my deadlines, but I'm still sticking to this.
This week I'm going to post a picture of where my first screen is at currently.

This is the very first room of the dungeon. It is very far from finished, but maybe you can see what kind of vibe I'm going for with this. See you next week.

November Game Project Progress Update - Week 03 (Much Ado About LERPing)

What a beautiful pain in my backside...

What a week it has been! Life had attempted to intervene and distract me from my project, but I've still managed to get plenty of time in. I know this post is technically being made on Week 04, but I really wanted to have some things to talk about before I made a proper post.

What I accomplished:
 - Completely broke and then re-wrote my camera system
 - Implemented the bones of a push interaction for my character
 - Basic Title and Ending screen functionality
 - Music now plays in my game

What I started:
 - I began applying actual textures to my environment
 - Wrote a quick background summary of my world
 - began fleshing out the in-game story
 - character illustrations for side-characters

What I still need to work on:
 - Prop modeling
 - Character Sprite
 - Character Animation
 - Finish Texture work on environment (Diffuse, Spec, and Normals)

So this week I had the bright idea to try Interpolating the movements of my camera from scene to scene. It looked like using Unity's built-in "LERP" function would be easy. No-Dice. I actually ended screwing up my whole camera system and rewriting it from scratch. I'll be more careful next time for sure.
It was much more difficult than I thought it would be, but I finally have an object in my scene that gets pushed around when my character runs into it. Unfortunately it doesn't stop when it runs into walls though... Minor details, right? The good news about this, though is that I can now start working on building puzzles for my game and turning this into something that I can actually show off to people.
I do these weekly Work Jams with my friend Jenn Johnson at her place. It's really good for me, because it means that I get out of my house and away from my computer for a bit. This has allowed me to dedicate some time every week to drawing and writing. I hope that doesn't have to stop any time soon.
I still haven't really done any prop modeling, so I think that will have to be my major focus for this week. I already have some sketches and ideas for what I want to populate my environments with, and I hope that there aren't any other major issues or events creeping up that might hinder my progress-Oh yeah Thanksgiving...
Well, since this month is almost over anyway, I think this is as good of time as any to start talking about where I feel this project is going. I don't really think I am going to be finished with this by the end of November. I can have the whole demo together, but bad. That much is possible, but I don't believe it would be realistic to expect the whole project will be completed and polished. But that's fine! I am going to keep on working on this until it is done! The whole point of this for me was to see if I could work on a project for a whole month without losing interest, and at this point I am willing to call this a major success. I am not only still actively working after almost a month, but the passion for this project has only grown more immense.
That's all I have to say for this week. I promise I'll be back before the end of the month to do another progress update. Hopefully I'll have some really rad nonsense to show off, too.

November Game Project Progress Update - Week 02 (Electric Boogaloo)

Week 02! What a week this has been for my project! I may not have gotten all of the things that I had wanted to work on done, but the things which I have done and/or started are definitely a boost in the right direction.

What I accomplished:
 - Implemented a basic camera system
 - Character Exploration
 - Began painting and placing textures in the environment
 - First pass on dungeon musical theme

What I started:
 - Started working on character push
 - thumbnailing for the title screen
 - placement of basic lighting

What I still need to work on:
 - I had wanted to create a tentative character sprite
 - I need to finish scripting the character push
 - Implement a basic title screen for my game
 - I need to model some environment assets
 - Drawings drawings drawings...

Alright, This week I am proud to say that I built a basic camera rig for my game. It doesn't yet transition the way I would like it to from screen to screen, but it is functional for the purposes of usability. I wanted to rework the character sprite that I had started on many months ago. It was essentially just a caricature of myself. At first I was holding myself strictly to some proportions that Nintendo had used for Zelda, but now I am exploring in a completely new direction. There's no reason that my character needs to be rounded and cute. In fact: I feel as though the game itself might be better served by a taller and thinner character.

The texturing process for my game is going pretty smooth. I made the strategic decision to use 64x64 textures in a single 1024x1024 texture file. This has left me with a pile of space to work with. In a previous iteration of my project, I had used 32x32 textures which were fun to work on, but left me wanting for environmental fidelity. I now have double the resolution to work with and I can make textures that have a bit more grit, visual noise, and finer detail.

This week has been very busy, and even so I have found time to work on my project.  Week 03 will have much more free time for me. I hope that I can keep up this momentum, and push beyond my expectations.

November Game Project Progress Update - Week 01

Yes, what a productive first week for my game this has been! Let's get right into it then...

 - Created an outline of my monthly goals
 - Set up weekly meetings with my friend and former producer Joni Johnston
 - Began exploring the art direction for my game with sketches and tentative level layouts
 - Created a week to week outline for what I need to get done (Organization! Hurrah!)
 - Blocked in the level layout in Maya
 - Created a new Unity project with a working dummy character and imported the level
 - Character can move and is stopped by colliding with walls (hooray!)
 - Began contacting people to playtest my game

Now that the bullet points are over with, what exactly have I been working on? It should be no surprise to anyone that knows me that I have once again began working on my love letter to the Zelda franchise. I love Zelda games. I love everything about the history and aesthetic of the worlds that Nintendo has constructed for Zelda over the past 25 years, and it has always been one of my goals to create my own version of one of those games. This month is all about laying down the foundations for a bigger project. This month is ambitious, but it is actually just the first baby steps into what I hope will be a much bigger project over time. I will go more in depth with that sometime in the future, but for now let me leave you with some sketching I did yesterday:

 

I promise to post more soon. 

 

- Jonathan Gardner

My Own Version of NaNoWriMo

I've decided to do NaNoWriMo this year, but instead of writing: I'm going to make a game. I've already begun working on my project and have a few friends interested in helping. This might actually become a slightly bigger deal than I expected. I'm okay with that.

On Monday I have my first work jam and meeting with my producer to create milestones and flesh out objectives. :D

I'll keep my blog updated on my progress.