Developing Ramblings

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Pater Alf
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by Pater Alf »

Wow, that art-style looks amazing! Really looking forward to see a complete game with it.
[quote="eMTe"]I dont think trying to pass the screen in computer game once per 500 tries makes you a geek. Rather a dangerous psychopath.[/quote]
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

Gah! Apple stuff is doing my blinkin' head in!
I finished up the BlastTrax update about a week and a half ago, but every night as I go to compile it for iOS, I find yet another stupid little iOS7 based quirk, making my game break in unexpected ways.
People oughta be really thankful for all the extra work I'm putting into this update, because.. Gah!!!

Meanwhile, Sheep Goes Right is coming along slowly.
I haven't yet started building any levels, but have managed to get the basic level progression, scoring, and other general "shell" stuff working nicely.
I seem to be working on the expectation that the game will have oodles of levels, in which case my next big job is to start creating oodles of levels.
d'oh!

Aw well, it's a lovely looking game.
Sneak Peek
.. but I have a long long way to go until it's all finished.
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by eMTe »

Kudos. You managed to unite computer game and marionette theatre.

How creative one must be?
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

The original Sheep Goes Left had a soundtrack by AL O'DARE.
Complete Soundtrack available here.

AL has forever been my musical inability. The part of me that creates stupid sounding music for the sheer Sillyness of it all.
This time around, I decided that AL should also get to draw the graphics, too, and although it's taken me a long time to decide on a way that it would actually look interesting on the screen, I think I've finally found a decent style.
Doodle stupid art, slap it onto sticks, then wiggle it around on the screen.

It really is as stupid, cheap, and inartistic as it appears, and yet.. Somehow... It's oddly compelling!

Lazyman's art continues!!
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by eMTe »

Leaving Sheep game aside for a while, since my throat infection lasts longer than expected this autumn Ive been mindlessly surfing through various retro sites and also youtube and accidentally YT suggested me this video of yours.



Fabulous music. Is it from a game or was it created specially for this compilation? It would be instant hit on chiptune sites.
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

"Closure", originally created as the closing theme for JNKPlat07, but unused since I never really ever DO endings in JNKPlat games..!
Lay about mostly unused until I did JNKPlat 2010, (I think!!!?) where it got used in the background, in random places.

When I did NeonPlat Adventures, I opened it back up, added extra sections, and put it right back where it was originally meant to be, as the end credits music..
The music in the clip above is the newer, remastered edition.

You can compare and contrast.. The original with The Remastered (with it's lovely end credits screen intact!)

A nice tune, and one of my favourites.
More recent tracks can be found here.
I'm also trying to figure out how best to plop ALL my music onto YouTube, without resorting to bog standard "splash screen" static things.. *shrugs*
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

So...
I bought an OUYA..

I wasn't going to.
I kinda wanted one, but I know how little time I spend playing games, nowadays, and the idea of spending £100 on a "console" that I might never actually play, seemed a bit silly.
But then, I CAN make games for it, which is a wee bit tempting..

Months after it's release, and with a whopping £52 from BlastTrax sales (seriously?! Is that it!?! It had, like, 8 proper rave-reviews and everything!!!) I decided to finally pluck up the courage, and pick up one of the devices.
.. I say "pick up"... I mean "order from Amazon".

So it arrived on Thursday, and I got it hooked up.
The "Big Main Telly" is the only TV in the house with a HDMI port, so it's either the main telly, or nothing, which isn't exactly a great device when there are other people in the house, and it's also used as the main "radio", too. I'd never, before, considered how much functionality we get from our TV. Even though I barely ever actually watch much TV, it does seem to be "in use" pretty much all the bloody time! Which makes "Develop games for this new console which you can only plug into that TV" all the more difficult!

.. Anyhoo, Thursday was spent hooking it up, getting it online, and playing a few random games from the marketplace.
Friday I did a test-compile of a "Android game with Controller Abilities", and that seemed fine, except the OUYA->TV brings with it an old friend from the mid-90's.
Overscan!
I have to deal with sodding Overscan now!!

I've only ever had to deal with Overscan on my Amiga.. My Amstrad had a monitor. My PCs have had monitors. My handheld/mobiles have their own screens.. So, over my entire course of Homebrew-Dev, Amiga was pretty much my only experience with Overscan..
To suddenly have to rethink your GUI and Scoreboards and things, so they don't hang over the edge of the telly, seems really odd!

I spent most of Saturday working a simple Overscan-Protection system into my framework, but due to my framework being "per-game", I now have to copy and paste those tweaks into each and every game. *nnngh*
Not that I mind, though. It's fun to hop back into old projects, tweak them to fit the new control schemes, and get them all nice and "OUYA"'d up a bit.

I've polished up NeonPlat-Raw a bit, and submitted it to the OUYA Review-Board. Give it a couple of days, and I should know if it's safe to carry on making more games in that fashion.

Meanwhile, since I've been fiddling with the OUYA controller stuff, it finally gave me a chance to get playing with Android Controllers.
So, if you've got a controller built into your Android device, I'd very much appreciate you giving this a go.
It's a simple little test which may or may not support your device's buttons.
I'm not sure.
It seems happy with "HID Compliant USB" gamepads, but whether it's also compatible with "on-device" buttons is beyond me, since I still haven't found a nice device to test it on. (d'oh!)

Thanks for any feedback. Much appreciated.

....and apologies for the lengthy waffle!!
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by Zyx »

jayenkai wrote:I have to deal with sodding Overscan now!!
Welcome to the modern world of console development. All console manufacturers have in their technical requirements that a game must not show any menu/HUD elements outside the "safe zone".

If anyone has ever wondered why in modern games all the scores and health bars are so freaking center in the screen and far from the border, it's because most people can't configure their TV sets properly. (Although most "old" TVs with HDMI don't even let the user to disable overscan.)

So, because of hack of the 1970s for CRT televisions, modern "Full HD" games only utilize 85% of the screen.
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

A couple of weeks on, and I'm kinda falling in love with OUYA.
Sure, it's kinda quirky, and I really can't be bothered messing about with Tax Forms and the like, but as far as flinging freeware games onto a console goes.. This is pretty much as good as it gets!

Over the past couple of weeks, I've posted NeonPlat, Hoppy Bobby, BlastTrax and Blockman Gets Hungry all onto the OUYA marketplace. They're all up on there, and you can swiftly and easily grab them from your couch, with your controller in hand, then play them immediately.
My games.
On a console.
On your telly.
In your hands!

Awesome stuff.
I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I do!
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

I currently have two projects on the go.
Sheep Goes Right is the "Big" project, but everything that I need to do is little minor bit-part features, so I'm more or less letting that take a back seat.
I need to make oodles of levels, add new "objects" and create a few background styles, but everything else is in place, from the level select to the load/save, and even a minor level editor which will remain a developer-only feature (mostly because it's frustratingly difficult to share levels!!)

Still, it's coming along nicely, and I've gotten into the habit of lying in bed with my iPad making a couple of little levels each night. Kinda handy, if I'm honest!

The other game is NeonPlat Extreme. I've decided to take NeonPlat Raw, and bulk it up a bit. (/a lot!) I'll be adding different gameplay modes and new enemies, and hoping to make it a nice enough complicated game that it's worth a buck on the iOS/Android stores.
.. maybe..

Loads of stuff to do on that one, but .. oddly, I seem to be spending much more time faffing about rebuilding my older games for OUYA!
I've now got 5 games on the OUYA, including SpikeDislike2 and BlastTrax.
Honestly, it's great being able to play my games on the telly, like that. And it's SO easy to port the stuff, too.
SpikeDislike2 took about 2 hours, total, to convert from normal Android to fully fledged OUYA. True, it's a bit simplistic, and barely needs any controller work, but I also implemented the new Overscan stuff, as well as adding an "A Button!" icon to Super Spike Dislike's fire button thing!
.. Nothing major, and only took a couple of hours, but.. Nice that I was able to get everything cobbled together, and up on the screen so fast.

It seems odd to think that my main focus is no longer Windows. In many ways, Win.exe's are now merely an afterthought. A "I can, so I might as well" add on.
Over a decade of Windows Games, and suddenly this little tiny £100 box is taking over.
It's weird..
.. But, hey, the Windows stuff's still working, and I'm getting out HTML5 versions, too..

Yeah, It's all good :D
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

JNKPlat
Yesterday I randomly decided to bring the classic JNKPlat back out of retirement.
It's been a good 3.5 years since the last proper JNKPlat game. The main reason for this is that I don't like touchscreen controls, and JNKPlat needs oodles of buttons!! The two don't mix.
Since I'm trying to be all "multi platform", but couldn't quite figure out how to do it in touchscreens, I've instead opted to simply not do it at all.

But this week, I'm moving on. There will probably not be an Android or iOS edition of this game, but I thought it might be fun to let Platdude have some fun on the OUYA.
I'm going to start off with a Xmas special, and see how popular that is.

Image

Woot!!

(And yes, I know I have other games to finish off, too!!!)
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by Pater Alf »

Always nice to see good old Platdude again.

How's progress with "Sheep Goes Right"?
[quote="eMTe"]I dont think trying to pass the screen in computer game once per 500 tries makes you a geek. Rather a dangerous psychopath.[/quote]
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

NeonPlat Extreme's first proper release just popped up on OUYA. Now I need to fix up the iOS and Android edition and get those online, but with Apple-Review in the way, that means at least a week before that happens. Hmmm.. :\

JNKPlat's coming along nicely, and I've spent most of today working out a nice way to build a few test levels. Plenty more to go on that, though!

Sheep Goes Right is still sat on the backburner. I know I should do it, and I know it could prove popular, but. .. um.. urrr.. dunno! It's just kinda plodding along.

It currently has about 30 levels, with only 4 or 5 "objects" swinging about.
I really oughta get that done!!

.. *slaps wrist*
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

NeonPlat Extreme is now on OUYA, iOS, Android and Windows.. YouTube Trailer/Rules!
With all that going on, a Sheep Goes Right OUYA Mini-release, and a struggle to get JNKPlat's Xmas Adventure finished by Xmas, it's been a somewhat hectic couple of weeks.
.. and I ain't done yet!

.. Good job I gave up on that Advent Calendar idea, or I'd be pulling my hair out, about now...
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by Tormuse »

So, today, I happened to start up a game of Lucky Dice and I got a Yahtzee with five sixes! :o (Pretty sure that's the highest possible scoring roll) Even more luckily, I happened to be near my webcam, so I could record a picture for posterity. :)
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

\O/yeay\o/

Congrats :)

I'd really like to do a proper Yahtzee game, but trying to fit everything onto the insanity of different displays on Android has been putting me off, a little!!
Maybe some day..!

Meanwhile, NeonPlat Extreme is now out on iOS, Android, Ouya and Windows and is selling.. Um... Badly!!
It's a lovely little action platformer, with oodles of gameplay to keep you entertained.. For a bit...

And then there's the JNKPlat Xmas Special which popped up on OUYA last night, and Windows this morning. To be honest, as much as I've been constantly saying "and Android and iOS!" I still haven't found suitable touchscreen controls for the thing.
Grrr!!!!

In other news, I recently attempted to recreate SpikeDislike on the Amiga...! It didn't go very well. .... I'm out of practice!!
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

Happy New Year. *cries* I have to do all this AGameAWeek stuff again, now, don't I!?!

Rightyoo, let's kick things off with a MiniRPG!
Greenie's MiniQuest : Available on Windows, Android, Browser and OUYA
I started this one about a week ago, playing "Let's make a random dungeon generator", and seeing where it took me.
Not a bad little game, really.

The Android edition's a bit dumb, though. Control-wise it's not the best I've done. I made the game very grid-centric, and that doesn't seem to work too well with touchscreens. Silly me!!
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by Pater Alf »

The Windows version is quite a fun game. Exactly the kind of stuff I need for my night shifts.

Will give you are more detailed oppinion after next week end (when I work night shift again).
[quote="eMTe"]I dont think trying to pass the screen in computer game once per 500 tries makes you a geek. Rather a dangerous psychopath.[/quote]
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

I got this week's game started after a dream of a tunnel and some aliens, and figured it'd be a nice task to tackle such a tunnel style effect.
Just a few hours later, I'd managed to get a neat looking 3D-esque tunnel, and popped in a player craft and some bad guys.
That's pretty much as far as it's gotten, and over the course of the week, I've struggled to add anything else to it.

As such, this week's game is just a Work-in-Progress, unfinished thing.
It's not a great game, and it's far too repetitive.
I don't like it.
:(

Nice tunnel effect, shame about the gameplay.
Unfinished Vortex Blaster
(Wow, I really know how to sell my games, don't I!!!)

Next week's will be better. I started it a few hours ago, and it's already up to a nice playable state. Even Mum's had a play!
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Re: Developing Ramblings

Post by jayenkai »

OK, back to the good stuff this week.

I stripped things down, right back to Pong, and then redid it all from scratch.
Want to play a fancy new Pong game that's not entirely like Pong at all?
You came to the right place!

Retroball takes everything you thought you knew about Pong and shoves it all up in a giant vat of multicoloured soup!
Powerups, Combos and more.. (well, ok, not more.. pretty much just powerups and combos if I'm honest!!)

You can Download Retroball here for Windows, Android, OUYA or HTML5! Woot!!
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