Diacritic Game Development Blog

Making things look awesome

2012-07-26T18:57:00.000+08:00

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

2012-07-21T07:55:00.001+08:00

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

New Site and new Game

2011-12-30T14:22:00.000+08:00

I've not had much time for game development lately (as I have not had a break from study for almost a year now) but I've done a bit here and there.

I just changed my site URL and moniker to Diacritic Games. I've checked this time, and no one has the name already!

I'm currently working on a new game that I drew the main character for a while back.

Figure 1. BSide in it's current state

It's called BSide, and it's a sort of top down platformer/RPG. Now when I say RPG, I don't mean those games that you spend hours on to make a number go up, I mean a game where you get to play in the role of a character. I'm really excited about making this game, hopefully I can get it done before 'the slump' where you lose all inspiration. If not hopefully I can stay motivated during the 'slump'.

I gave up on Brim because I couldn't get tile-based platformer collisions to behave correctly. I know it sounds like something that someone who has been making flash games for as long as I have shouldn't get stuck on, but I've tried everything. I think I will keep the basic concept and story for Brim until I think of a better way to implement it.

As for Birdy, I've all but gave up trying to find a sponsor...

Game Art

2011-07-09T10:00:00.001+08:00

I don't tend to post much about the art side of game making, probably because I don't consider myself very good at it. Nevertheless it's an important part of making games so I thought I'd make a post about it.

My favourite method of creating art at the moment is "pixel art". It's so named because it features no anti-aliasing (basically a fancy word for smoothing), and is often drawn one pixel at a time.

"Pixel art" images tend to look a lot like art from old computer games. In the past computers and game consoles had such small memory and processing power that only small pictures of game elements and characters could be stored and displayed.

Making games today we have enough memory to store huge images that are extremely detailed (comparatively at least), but because of the "retro" look of pixel art, you will see a lot of games using it.

Speaking of pixel art, here is a screenshot from my latest game, tentatively titled "Brim".

Unfortunately my blog and website need a new name, because another website has the name Ork Games.
Note to self: Always do a Google search before you name your website.

New Site Design and Imported Gamerator Posts

2011-06-29T22:32:00.000+08:00

I imported all the old posts from the Gamerator blog I ran last year. Now my game development related posts are all in the one place. Sorry if you were subscribed to the RSS and got 10 new items at once!

On a related note I'm thinking of bringing a similar thing back where I regularly post game ideas on this blog, so stay tuned for that.

I've also updated this blog's design to use Blogger's new themes and, even though I do say so myself, it's looking much cooler now.

In other news, my study has gotten more time consuming of late as I was accepted into a course to do a Post Graduate Certificate in Business Administration during my under graduate studies. Long story short, I now have to study when I would usually have holidays.

This means I'll have even less spare time, but I'm going to try to make time for making games and posting about them.

Birdy Trailer

2011-03-14T22:12:00.001+08:00

I have 100% completed Birdy, and I have uploaded a trailer which is available to view on Vimeo.

Birdy Trailer from John Okely on Vimeo.

It's been a year and 2 days since I was at 99% for Birdy, I've recently been focusing on university while waiting for a sponsorship opportunity to arise. Perhaps it's time to retry with the added benefit of a trailer?

Too many assignments

2010-09-21T12:22:00.000+08:00

This semester of university has had far too many assignments and I have had very little breathing space for thinking up ideas. So unfortunately this blog will have to be put on hold until further notice.

It may in fact not start up again until February 2011, as I have assignments going back to back right up until the end of semester, and once semester ends I will be programming games again, not just thinking up ideas! Here's hoping next semester will have less assignments.

Thanks for reading!

Refuge in the Skies

2010-08-23T22:20:00.000+08:00

After the success of the first nuclear weapons in the late 40s certain parties began extensive work in researching nuclear weapons technology. While trying to develop a fission bomb they accidentally discovered the secret to cold fusion, igniting all the ‘dormant’ nuclear material in the area. This caused such a catastrophic explosion that it flattened half a continent, taking the secret of cold fusion with it.

To make things worse, the explosion triggered a series of devastating earthquakes that opened up vast submarine oil deposits, dumping tonnes of oil into the ocean. In addition to this, vast amounts of radioactive debris from the initial explosion filled the sky. Pockets of helium escape from the ground and form bubbles in the thick oil. People hurriedly fled to the skies to escape the ensuing destruction.

Years later, large blimps fill the sky, adorned with multiple balloons hoist lightweight structures fit for living in and working at. Aerial service stations insure that no aircraft falls into disrepair. Greenhouses filled with flora ensure that children grow up without the dangers of oxygen deprivation from the thin air at high altitudes.

You are, like approximately half the population of earth, a pilot. Your mission is to collect oil for refining into fuel, helium for filling blimps, scrap metal for making planes and, if you are very lucky, seeds for growing plants.It is also your duty to protect your colony from the threat of rouge planes and the air force of rival colonies.

Planes cannot simply fly down to collect materials from earth’s surface. Because of the fumes from the oil, planes have a danger of causing an explosion if their engines are heated up and moving. Planes need to cold start at a dock high in the sky and simply glide down to earth with the engine off. Then they need to glide back up as high as possible before even using the engine.

As you progress through the game you can upgrade your fuel tank, cargo hold, resource collector scoop, engine and purchase a better model plane.

Specifiable end

2010-08-13T00:00:00.000+08:00

This is less of a full game idea and more of game mechanic idea. In multiplayer mode for any game, there is usually a definite objective such as getting to somewhere faster than everyone else, collecting the most of something or doing a specific task the most times out of all the players. For the latter two it will usually be coupled with a time limit to ensure that rounds are not too long or too short if the players are inexperienced or expert respectively.

This time limit, while sometimes customisable before the round begins, is a constant, allowing know when the round will end. If the players could end the game at whatever time they wanted (with a majority voting system) it could add a whole new dynamic to the gameplay. But rather than the game ending as soon as the majority indicates that they want to end, the game plays on for a certain amount of time afterwards. For instance, if the goal of the game was to collect coins spread out around the map, people could pretend to be bad at collecting coins, offer to end the game then quickly collect a lot before the time runs out, while the opposition is relaxing thinking they have it in the bag. This would almost allow for poker-like tactics of bluffing and double bluffing. This would be coupled with the score being hidden during the final minutes of the game, so as to not alert the opposing side to what you are doing.

Puzzle Platformer

2010-08-12T11:53:00.000+08:00

This next idea is a puzzle platformer. Or to be more precise, it’s a puzzle crossed with a platformer. A lot of puzzle games revolve around making combinations of coloured blocks or shapes and destroying them.

So imagine if certain blocks had elements from a platformer game, such as keys, doors and levers inside of them. So instead of trying to destroy coloured blocks to get points, you would be destroying blocks so that you could get a key or a door to fall down so you could complete the level.

It could even get more complex so that you have to create an entire section of the level on your own. Some pieces would have to be locked down so they cannot be move/destroyed so that you couldn’t inadvertently make the level impossible (for instance the piece with your character on, or the end piece)

Note: I posted this idea yesterday but it mysteriously disappeared after I made a small edit to it. I had to rewrite it and re-post it today. Not sure if the culprit was blogger, my browser or me but my guess it was the combination of all three. It was much longer before, but I think this new version is better written, so I suppose it’s a win!

Déjà Vu

2010-08-09T08:23:00.000+08:00

Picture this: you're playing a platformer game and you are walking along. You see a red button so you step on it, thinking that it will aid you in completing the level somehow. Suddenly a spike falls down from the sky. You 'die' and have to start the level again, but now you know not to step on the red button.

A lot of games require you to restart the level should you die. However the twist in this game is that restarting is part of the game, instead of a punishment for doing badly.

Each level would have a time limit, and if you didn't complete the level in under the time limit, it would restart, the same as if you 'died'. This means that if there was more than one way to complete the level, you may have to find the faster way in order to advance to the next level.

The real trick to this game would come after a few levels with just these mechanics. Probably in level 3 or 4, you would find a level that changes everything. There are two ways to go, one to a key and one to a door (and the end of the level). No matter how fast you run, if you go get the key, you cannot make it to the door in time. But if you do not get they key, you cannot unlock the door. There is a trapdoor that leads from the area the key is in to the area the door is in, but the lever for the trapdoor is down below, near the door.

If you pull the lever, the trap door only stays open for 3 seconds. And there is no way to jump up through the trapdoor. You may notice, though, that the lever is glowing blue.

Before you have a chance to work out what it means, the timer goes up once again and you restart. You walk down to the lever again and notice that it moves itself, right at the same moment you pulled it last time. You wait for the timer to go up, and then you walk back to the lever again, but this time you pull it as soon as you get there. You restart, climb up the ladder and get the key, walk through the trapdoor that seemingly opens itself, and simply walk through the door.

To cut a long story short, if you interact with a glowing blue object, then that interaction stays the next time you do the level.

Open World FPS

2010-08-06T00:00:00.000+08:00

If you've ever played a first person shooter you'll know that most of the time they follow a strict plot through strict areas of their world. Each time you play the game it will be exactly the same as the last.

Whereas if you play an RPG, it has what the games industry refers to as an Open World. This means you can choose where you want to go and to a certain extent, what you want to do. This has been done in a 3rd person shooter before (focusing around criminals) so what would make my idea unique is having it based around special forces.

You could choose what suspected enemy bases and safe houses you want to raid and when you want to raid them. But you can't just go raiding wherever because if you raid a incorrect house within earshot of the real base, they will be alerted and will pack up shop ASAP. When you are not on a mission you could be an undercover agent trying to infiltrate the enemies system to find out more information about where they are located. If you're good enough at going undercover you could even become a double agent, tricking the enemy into thinking you are on their team.

As the 'goodies' you could set up your own bases that would from time to time be raided by the enemies. The game would therefore have an element of strategy (where to set up base, when to move etc). As you defeat more enemies, the government could give you more funds to set up bigger bases with more ammo stocked and more soldiers to help you.

Consequences

2010-08-04T00:00:00.000+08:00

Okay, it's only the second idea and I'm already resorting to thinking up platformer games. I'm not really out of ideas, I just think that platformers are such a great game type because most people have played one before, and it's so simple to learn how to play even if they have never played before. Essentially then, platformer games are a blank canvas on which you can put new, unique features and mechanics.

So my idea: A basic puzzle platformer, where you have to collect coins and keys unlock doors etcetera. But the twist is that wherever you walk you leave a faint ghost-like trail behind you. The trail does nothing except look cool - until you die. When you die you have restart the level, but the trail turns solid. Every time you die the last trail you created disappears, in order to prevent the level becoming a tangled mess. There could be a 'self-destruct' button so that you can arbitrarily decide when to create the solid trail, and completely restart the level if you need to (by self-destructing at the very beginning there would be no solid trail next time, because you hadn't moved to create a ghost trail yet)

So, this trail system is great an all, but how exactly does it make the game more fun, difficult or interesting?

Well think about this situation: there is a bottomless pit of brimstone and hellfire and you just can't quite jump all the way across. By jumping in once, your trail creates a bridge that goes half way across the pit. You are then able to walk on this bridge and jump off it to the other side of the bridge.

My friend No-Eyed Pete does a better job of explaining below:

Another challenge could involve a platform high in the air that you need to get to, but you just can't jump high enough. By jumping up and then self-destructing, you have created a nice step on which you can jump to get the rest of the way up to the platform.

MMOCCG

2010-08-02T00:00:00.000+08:00

Today's game idea is a Massively Multiplayer Online Collectible Card Game. So basically it's a combination between an online multiplayer game and a collectible card game.

Players collect cards like any other card game, such as trading them with friends, buying them, getting them from cereal boxes etc. But the game is played by logging into a website. You scan in the cards using your webcam, or by writing a code down from the card.

The cards code would be checked on the game's database when entered. If you trade with another player in real life and scan the card into your account, the person you traded with would lose their ownership of that card on the website.

Games could be initiated on the website, and there could be animations of your cards fighting or being used. The game could even be played in real-time rather than turn-based. Cards could be leveled up from fighting a lot, making them more powerful and gain more abilities.

There could be alternate rules for the game that would allow you to play games offline with your friends and therefore gain their cards. Any abilities gained from the online xp system would have to be negated, as there would not be a practical way to verify this. For this reason it would not be a good idea to play with a highly leveled up card offline, as it would be easier for it to be defeated online

Cards could be bought online and printed out if you didn't want to wait for shipping. There could be less powerful free cards that you can download and printout from the website, so you can start playing either offline or online for free.

I have not played collectible card games much at all so I may assess the actual game play another day. But the online version of the game would probably work more like a Real-Time Strategy game (RTS) than a traditional card game.

What do you think of this game idea? Would you play it? Be sure to comment on or rate this idea using the buttons below.

How does this work?

2010-07-04T00:00:00.000+08:00

It's rather simple really. I post (hopefully) awesome ideas for games during my university semester, and you readers vote on how much you like each one. (See the buttons below each post) The highest rated one will be created by me at the end of the holidays

If you like you can also comment on the ideas, saying what you like and don't like about them.

What's this?

2010-07-03T12:51:00.000+08:00

Hey. I'm John. I'm studying Computer Science and Games Technology at university. Unfortunately university takes up a heap of my time so I don't have alot of spare time to do one of the things I enjoy the most: making games.

Yeah, I thought that studying Games Technology would be just making and playing games, too. But apparently not!

So to fulfill my need to make games during the semester, I'm be posting a game idea three days a week: Monday-Wednesday-Thursday. I'll be mainly focusing on gameplay rather than plots, but you may see some plots occasionally.

If I miss a day, go easy on me. It probably means I've got an assignment coming up.

This blog will launch on the 2nd of August 2010. If you would like a reminder when it launches, subscribe to the RSS feed.

Creating a universe

2010-06-22T15:52:00.005+08:00

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

2010-06-16T11:59:00.001+08:00

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.

Home Stretch

2009-11-19T08:06:00.000+08:00

I've completed 30 levels for Birdy, which is the absolute upper end of my goal. As well as that, I've fixed a multitude of bugs, and finally added a preloader. It's looking great and I could almost call it complete. As such, play-testing shall begin soon.

From where I'm standing, all that really remains after that is to add an ending screen/cutscene, and the level code compression system.

1000 lines

2009-11-11T17:46:00.005+08:00

I've added another item or two and 7 more levels, a complete menu system, and progress saving. The most exciting addition, though, is a level editor. That's right, you'll be able to create and share your own levels. The editor itself is great (even though I do say so myself), though the "save" and "load" sharing system leaves much to be desired.

A code for a simple level is this long:

0,0.4,0.8,1/0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0/0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0/0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,2/2,2,2,0,2,2,2,0,2,2,0/2,0,2,0,2,0,0,0,2,0,2/2,2,2,0,2,0,0,0,2,0,2/0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0/0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0

I definitely need to develop some sort of compression system.

Anyway, as well as the obvious advantage of having community created levels once the game is finished, the level editor makes it easier and quicker for me to make "official" levels. So, Birdy will probably be reaching that 30 level target in no time.

16 Levels

2009-11-03T09:39:00.002+08:00

Progress on Birdy is going well. I have coded not only some more obstacles to overcome, but also some new power ups to keep you going.

As the title says the level count stands at just 16, twice as many as there were 2 weeks ago. But now I'm fairly certain I have enough items to call it finished, I just need to make the remaining 4-14 levels.

In other news, my laptop (on which I make the games) now has a new hard-drive and Windows 7.

A new game on the horizon

2009-10-18T20:04:00.004+08:00

Progress on Contention and Switch HD (latest tentative title) has halted temporarily.

I decided to make a loose remake on a old game. It's called Birdy and the original version dates back to September 2005. This game is basically just a test to see how long it takes to make a relatively simple, but complete game.

Sporting some retro graphics, sound and music, this game is designed to look like it's straight out of the early days of games.

I've managed to program this game fairly quickly, no doubt all due to my new organization technique. Nearly every part of this game was planned in advance in a 6-page outline. Practically all that remains is level design. I have 8 levels made so far, I plan to have 20-30.

Portfolio Redesign

2009-10-04T17:51:00.003+08:00

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.

Switch 2 the eXtreme

2009-09-18T22:15:00.003+08:00

It's about time I showed you what Switch 2 is looking like:

No power-ups yet, as you can see, but what you can't see is that there is some nice fading of the tiles as you switch colours; a nice visual clue that you need to avoid a different colour now.

Switch 2 the eXtreme is not going to be the title of Switch 2, but I'm still working on that. Doubtless I will have to roll with either Switch 2, or just plain old Switch.