Dog Days – Dementia

http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,46509.0.html

RMRKs “Dog Days of August” contest has begun, with three guilds competing, one of which I am involved in.  We have decided to make a survival horror game as our month-long project entry -named ‘Dementia’- and have a video teaser created by one of our people.  Although I usually take up a heavy interest in story/writing and creating the progression in my projects, I’ve taken a more laid back role this time and just letting the story be written by those who have created it, giving me time to just focus on creating art.  The game will be set mostly in a hospital; not only have I yet to make horror graphics, but modern/hospital horror is especially new to me, so I’m excited about making and finding stuff for this!

So, have been working on blood and dirt stains mostly for now, as well as various walls and floors, but have plans for more stuff later on.  I would post up some images about it, but I think right now I’d get into bother if I made any of our resources/plans findable, especially by the other guilds!  I don’t know what else I’ll be getting into yet, but will be getting as much done as possible over the month, especially with the three secret “Challenges” we have ahead of us, so I’ll keep posting; it’s great fun so far!  Looking forward to getting more created!

Steam Summer Sales (+Dog Days)

Oh dear lord, the good and bad news piles on at once.  I’m a total game addict, I live for playin’ games and havin’ fun; so steam’s summer sale and introduction of both the flash sales and community choice sales has flooded me with games I want and reckless abandon for overspending.  The good news, at least, is that with the bank fuck-up over the past month, they’ve reimbursed me with enough money to buy up a fair few of the games I want; and what better time, when most of them are beneath a fiver!?

Of course, this means that I’m focussing on making a bit less and getting in some playing, since I’ve hardly played a game all summer, although I still want to participate in RMRKs Dog Days of August guilds event!

http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,46380.0.html

Exciting stuff!  Get gamin’, people!

Dungeon Crawler v0.0.2

http://rpgmaker.net/games/4195/

So, after receiving a number of reviews thanks to RMNs August review drive for the NaGaDeMo event (of which Dungeon Crawler was a part of) and had expected feedback (after all, it was a game I made in a day, it’s really just what it says on the tin!) but there were some issues that shouldn’t have been in there, mini-project or otherwise.

I’ve gone over the game and given it a polish up in an effort to keep it a smooth, non-annoying playthrough (I accept that it’ll be less exciting than a heavily worked on game, but whether it’s fun or not, there should be no bugs or grievances).

These changes include:

• Removing lighting effects from floors with fireballs, to help reduce lag
• Going over the enemies stats and increasing the overall difficulty of the game
• Made the “cutscenes” on the final floor flow better and end quicker
• Balance-checking on the final floor, to make sure it is possible, but challenging and requiring high-end gear
• Fixed a problem with the Dog boss so that he’s not direction fixed and can attack from all sides now
• Changing the skeleton group on the final floor so that they chase you, instead of just mull around
• Fixing the bug with the boss which crashed the game before you could fight him
• Added lv2 Skills as well as the lv10 skills
• Added a new class – Mage, who has a lv1 skill as well as the other two
• Added “tutorial” textboxes that explain the three control buttons

Hopefully this will keep the game more exciting for now until as and when I work on it again.  For the time being, there should be no bugs at least.  (If there are any more bugs found, just let me know and I can fix them).  Have…fun, I guess!

http://pixelbrady.wordpress.com/demo-list/

Quest Journals Script – Demo

http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,45127.new.html#new

The Quest Journal is a fantastic script written by modern algebra, and I’ve been using it in most of my projects so far, including DotI.  It catalogues your quests and allows you to reveal and complete objectives individually, as well as add your own categories and even change the appearance of the menu.  It’s easy to run, with simple script calls and extensive instruction within the script to explain every last option available, and is one of the first scripts I used after getting VXA.

However, a lot of folk have been asking for a demo (and truth to be told, I wouldn’t have minded one myself) but as modern has been too busy to get a demo made (since, as I said, there’re quite a lot of options) I offered to make a short demo to cover the basics of it.  It’s a quick, non-combat, five minute run through covering the simpler things such as receiving quests, revealing and completing objectives, finishing quests off and repeating quests and objectives.  It only covers a small flower-picking mission in a tiny wooded area, but should explain well enough how to get started with the script until modern manages to make up a full demo with the more complex aspects.

http://pixelbrady.wordpress.com/demo-list/

Trying new things – twitter

So, after being linked to PeterMolydeux’s twitter line to read some of the abstract gaming ideas, I realised that it was the first time I’d ever actually been on twitter.  Now I’d heard about it plenty before, but never actually been on the site in my life and have virtually no idea how to work it.  Buuut I thought fuck it, might as well give it a try.  Should allow me to have a wee blether without waiting till there’s some more substantial content to make a full post for!

So, let’s see if I can’t work this thang and make it interestin’, eh?

https://twitter.com/PixelBrady

http://danceoftheimmortals.wordpress.com/

Colonist Alpha Success!

(just realised how daft some of this all might sound, but I’ve taken a double dose of my painkillers today and I’m a bit spacey, so forgive this post for sounding totally stupid, if it does)

So, putting the Colonist Alpha out nice and early turned out to be a smashing success, despite its many flaws.  A lot of people have given substantial feedback, both covering known issues and things that I’ve utterly just overlooked with the ole’ tunnel vision.  Some of these problems will be tricky to fix or have some fundamental problems (such as a problem with getting the ABS to refresh upon stamina depletion) but fortunately most of the problems so far will be easy to fix and should lead to a far improved game.  By the time the game is polished up enough to have a “proper” demo released it should be a much sharper and more flowing game.

One thing that will be getting largely improved is the dialogue, as right now it’s dead basic (as we punched it in just so we could get all the eventing done) and with that, the instructions and story to the game suffered greatly, leaving a large tutorial gap for players, with much of it expecting the player to already know what to do.  The instructions, at least, will be redone completely to allow players to know completely how to play; the game itself is quite simple, but at a first glance it’s a bit complicated and requires some better tutorials.  Hopefully the caves will be improved with this as well.

Also, on top of this we have a new team member, Levi W, who is drawing up some music for us (damn good music at that) and is firing down the right path very fast, so the demo should also sound vastly improved as well, with getting rid of the RTP in favour of some pretty ideal new soundtracks!

Colonist Alpha Demo

Colonist Alpha Demo!

Right, so after switching between playing TSW and working on Dance and Colonist, we’ve finally got an Alpha Demo put together for testing to see how people find it, so we know what to do to improve it before we go too far.

The demo isn’t that long, probably a half hour if you just get straight to everything.  It will end after you’ve built the forge, but you’ll be able to still run around if you want, you just won’t be able to craft anything yet or build anything else.

The demo includes the new Fog of War script as it’s final version, although not all the features of it are shown within the demo; there’s more to come!

Not much to say about it, hopefully all the instructions are clear enough and the game is understood enough for me to not need to explain much, but I’ll be checking to see if anyone reports any problems.

Have fun

Some screenies!

Build your village from scratch!

Fog of war obscures your dungeon crawling, but lets you always know where you’ve been!

Open exploration where you can fish, hunt, collect materials or just go for a wander

Equip all the best tools you can get as well as modifications for your tools and ammo charges. All stats are used within the game!

Survival Horror MiniProj…empty!

I’ve had an inkling of a want to make a survival/horror mini-project, but am preoccupied with Colonist and DotI, so I said I’d keep it simple.

Problem is, I spent an hour making it and so far there’s 2 types of enemies (Zombies and Skeleton) with the skeletons with 14 different graphics.  They all have respawn points, as much health as you, come in groups, high attack (but move slowly, of course!), but there’s only the one map (gridlocked streets) (well, two if you include the intro room that lasts for three seconds) and no point, purpose or anything fun to do, except look for the face-smasher weapon that can help you fight…barely.  There’s also an option to turn on a torch (it is daaark) but it only lasts so long and the recharge is longer.

That’s it!  I would love to put more time into a survival/horror game, but I don’t think it’s beneficial to be focussing on three large projects at once, so will keep this as a mini-project for the time, maybe add some stuff over time when I get bored doing other stuff; who knows what it might become with small edits here and there!