▪▪stellar-Ø▪▪

Projects news

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:58:00 +0000

Long time no see!
Okay, so i just want to inform you guys about our current projects and what's our current plan with them:

Linoveus Cube

Surprisingly, we plan to suspend this project, due to the stress of the design and code mess, hipon said some things about the game should be changed otherwise it will be a failure. But to make that change, means almost to redo all the code from the start, and we decided to not force the project to continue, at least for now.

This is the sneakpeek record from us, personally (it's me Laz) i think it's a beautiful project, but it lacks of balance in ...the design depth. Even though the game was intended to be a Ludum Dare (3 days dev) game, then it transformed to a week game, then to months game, it's feels so hard to finish. Why? Lot of features were being cut down, and we were actually planning to pack it just like that, yet hipon didn't feel right to continue it, so we decide to suspend the project and start something else more manageable.

Let's just hope this project could be rebooted sometimes later.

HA!

Grand Steam

Still suspended for now. Project has a good potential, but we need to prioritize something else for now.

just a little reminder for you of how the game looks like.

Montage Roux

Ongoing, slowly but if everything's going according to the plan, it's going to be an interesting project. ^_^

PIXLE mobile porting experiment (collaboration with blue_mc)

He said he didn't want anyone to know yet, but i just don't feel good to not mentioning this project at all. It's still an experiment, so he doesn't want us to expect much of its completion (maybe?). So far so good though. XD

So what now?

What we want to focus most for now, is bringing Koutack to IOS platform. Hipon's doing research on starling and started to prototype things. So pardon us for not showing updates from the time being ^^;

Cheers,
~Laz

Koutack viral release!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:01:00 +0000

Hey, another news from us. Koutack is now available to play at our own portal, and...basically everywhere else, lol. We also uploaded new version that has some bug fixes and optimizations, also more quotes!

We're glad people actually like its challenge, and some of them even made video and text walkthrough, haha, deep gratitude to you guys! *salutes*

Play at Null Game Center

Play at Kongregate

Play at Newgrounds

Play at deviantArt

Play at Armorgames

And yeah, a free soundtrack for you! ;)

Sell music on Amazon at ReverbNation.com

See you later!
~stellar-0

Koutack released!

noreply@blogger.com (Rico) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:57:00 +0000

Play the Game!

Finally, Koutack is released! It's my first #1GAM (One game a month) game and surprisingly, it turned out good :D

When I started to work on game design, I wanted to make a game that has "minimum design and maximum gameplay". It took me several days to find some inspiration, I got inspiration mostly from traditional game, I didn't remember how exactly the gameplay is, but the goal is to get rid of balls or something until there's only one ball on the stage. After doing some calculation, prototyping and stuff, I'm satisfied with the final result.

Clea also did really good job in Audio, I thought clea would make a bit cheerful music but it turned out really different, but I like it so far, it gives unique feel to the game :D

More screenshots:

Anyway, I'm planning to write a post-mortem of this game, if everything goes smooth it would be here soon!

Hope you enjoy the game!

~hipon

One Game A Month! Ready folks?

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:13:00 +0000

Actually i planned this (literally) back on 2012, yet after some discussion, we plan to NOT make games each month. We were planning to make more serious/deep games on 2012, which estimated would done in about 2-3 months. And TURNED OUT, we didn't deliver anything actually. Well, PIXLE, Wonderland Cosa Nostra and Late Lino were released last year, but two of them has already done on 2011, so i'd say, they don't really count.

So our new game at 2012 was Grand Steam, Montage Roux (suspended until this February), and Linoveus Cube. I keep apologized to not be able to pull out the deadlines we set on our own, but we keep on missed it. Grand Steam was firstly planned to be done within 2 weeks, Montage Roux within 1 month, Linoveus Cube within 3 days (extreme!). You can laugh now, i actually laughed a lot on this too, bahahah.

Main problem was, as we discussed together, the game design documents/ planning was not really done properly, it was bad, and some of them even didn't have game design document. Also, hipon's working availabilty was sometimes still unpredictable, mainly because of his college business.

Problems:

Grand Steam case

This game is a collab project between hipon & reijubv, this game started as a side-project but ended up being one of stellar main project, a lot of things has happened *we had the full story posted in our previous post*. This project is still ongoing though, we work really hard on this project, but since our main focus is now on Linoveus Cube, this project will continue its development process after Linoveus release.

Montage Roux case

This is a collab project with Enthrean Guardian (or soon will be changed to Prospera Enthrean), hipon's not on this project, so we didn't even posted a single post about this project, sorry. So much things happened on this one, like, programmer change, the guy has been busy for months and lot of months, and said he'll be ready on this February.

Linoveus Cube case

This game was planned as a Ludum Dare #24 entry, so it was executed the moment we decided the genre, also a little writings on google drive. Bad. Really bad. Workflows are messy too.

We didn't even realize what features we're gonna make, what kind of trouble, hardships we will face, potential bugs and gameplay failures. We were optimistic (much likely super cocky) like hell and it actually broken after we faced the reality, haha.

So, moral of the story: we need better game designing and detailed discussion before execution, less random move, and discipline (getting side tracked is way too easy).

But hell yeah, all of them are continuing, so look forward to our devlogs.

So back to our post title, if you're an indie game developers, you must know this event. One Game A Month, or known as #1GAM at twitter hashtag.

I, Laz, thought it was a serious event with tight rules, like we must enter a dozen of games (literally) to qualify, and it's wrong, this is just an event for fun, free indie gamedev party. So in the end, we signed in @Lazcht, @ricolemba (hipon), and @stellarNull account as participators.

What are we planning?

Hipon already started his 1st 1GAM project, it's a simple puzzle game, more informations will be posted by himself~

Next, we're gonna enter Linoveus Cube. This project's actually near finish now (we're not sure what to face later, but hopefully, it's on 80~90%).

We also planning on some collaborations with fellow gamedev in gamedevid.org community to help us deliver more exciting games on 2013. (hopefully for 1GAM too)

Late Lino released! and testimonies~

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 12:20:00 +0000

Howdy folks, this is our first post in 2013, happy new year! Had quite fun in 2012? We did. And this is another game for you, from us.

click here to play the game!

As mentioned before in previously, Late Lino was actually game for Ludum Dare #22 entry, 1 year ago (2011). We made some minor changes and actually publish the game for new year gift. Good luck for you, have fun, and let us have even better new year :)

Crew's testimony

hipon

This game is our first *post* ludumdare game, it was a fun event, I don't believe we could make a simple game in 48 hours although the development process was a mess.

Actually, I wanted to make a generic game since I didn't have much time for game design, but at the end I came up with an idea, It was very weird but I think it's worth to try, I made a prototype and see how it goes, It looked okay, but somewhat it didn't satisfy me enough. Since we only had about 24 hours left we decided to continue with this design.

I'm always optimistic about level design, but this time I only make simple AI for enemies, they all basically have same pattery. Honestly, I had gathered some materials for enemy's pattern, but implementing that would prolong the development time haha, so I decided to stick with only one pattern.

clea leshlick
It's a new experience for me, it's a genre I'm not familiar with. A simple survival action game, which ended up with a weird twist. Ended up tweaking the candy amounts, enemy stats, enemy distribution, powerups, mood per second changes, etc. Did a lot of revision and testing on those numbers, but I'm happy with the final balance, haha!

Inspired by the world setting & the graphics, I wrote 3 winter themed songs with comical/cartoon-ish feel for this game. The songs mainly use Piano and Strings, and is quite simple structure-wise. I think that they have a refreshing and childlike feel to it. Listening to them now, I feel that they are kind of rigid. I got to work on improving my fluidity of expressions lol.

As for the sound effects, they are light and simple. When I created them one by one, they didn't sound too great or special. But after all is put into the game, played and combined in a quick pace, they shine. The jump, stomp, candies, present box, ghosts, and powerups! They blend quite nicely with each other, and with the music. Did some revisions regarding volume balance, EQ, and a bit of Chorus effect ^ ^

Lazcht

I had fun making the worlds, characters and Santa themed game. I love Santa claus even though i never celebrate christmas myself. I simply picked Santa theme because it was December and i thought we could make it for christmas game. I merged santa theme with the Null on stellar-Ø symbol, if you noticed Lino's hat and the "moon" shape. Speaking about the world design, i plan to reuse the universe for Linoveus Cube project, which might has correlation with "Lino" name.

I also made the SFX for LD version (because we didn't think clea would want to join) which is pretty...rough in quality i could say haha, it was too loud! Actually i made a joke of myself being department store or --locally-- toserba (toko serba ada) because i provide almost of anything that time. I had to open Google docs, Adobe Photoshop, SAI Paint Tool, Graphics Gale, Exgen, FL Studio, sometimes Adobe Flash, Filezilla and Dreamweaver at the same time. LOL that whole 3 LD days were tiring, nuts and awesome days.

Side note: i love hipon's light-controlling game design concept and love how the musics turned out.

Oh, here is a bonus:

<a href="http://stellar-0.bandcamp.com/album/late-lino">Late Lino by clea leshlick</a>
~stellar-0 out!

Some greetings in late 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 18:27:00 +0000

yes, Rob is still working on holiday, except now with mercy.

Happy holiday, folks!
(we still develop stuff tho, lol.)
Late Lino'll be here THIS year.
~stellar-0

End of year news, anyone?

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Long time no blog folks. We're not dead or anything, haha.

I've been too busy lately (it's Laz) for even maintaining the Facebook Page. This is already almost end of year... I never forget our projects like Grand Steam, Linoveus Cube tho. But seems like time is running out for us to wrap Late Lino first for christmas and new year.

So most likely we won't launch Grand Steam or Linoveus Cube project this year yet. (I miss Grand Steam!)

Since hipon was busy with college lately which why i didn't update the log as often lately, i made some projects myself (lot of them still concerns stellar, of course).

I started a collaboration project for fun, Sword of August artbook project (i invited some guest artists to join), and a solo, Null: Artleaks I artbook project (compilation of art assets of our games). The Null Artleaks most likely will be free to download.

Here, for rainbow puking:

courtesy of Kurosaki Keroro de Arimasu fukyeah, all traditional arts.

I tried to open e-commerce shop with clea for us stellar to sell anything we want later. (not yet ready)

Coded mobile website. (try to scan the QR from your mobile device)

Produced a little amount of stellar-0 T-Shirt. (thanks guys for the orders! ^^)

Rebuilt illustration gallery, since we moved host service. (yeah, major pain)

Some outsourcing work project, Musica Sphere.

And i started a little game project myself, i'm not really sure i'll be able to even make half of this tho, but i don't really care haha.

Also i want to share one of my longest facebook status, i thought i like it very much:

"So you said you have ideal dream you want to chase. Let's say you have big ambition, and i heard lot of people beg for more hours to be added to 24hours/day. think you have done good enough time management for a day? Think again.

> how many hours a day you spend browsing at fb, twitter, youtube, 9gag, etc?
> how many hours a day you spend looking at tv show and its commercials?
> how many hours a day you spend on fanboy/girling something you love?
> how many hours a day you spend on hanging out/ chatting?
> how many hours a day you spend caring your physic/mental health?
> finally, how many hours you spend a day, working for (or walk the path toward) your dream project?

*reminder to self*"

Bahahah, that's all coming back to me now.

That's all news i could bring you guys right now. I hope to release Late Lino sooner, or later.

See you around!
~Laz out.

Late Lino

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 04:04:00 +0000

The start

Lino

It's been long time since we started to develop this game and actually finish it. So why now bother to share? Last year we weren't this active updating blog, so we didn't bother to post anything about any progress we made, nor gamedev logs/ diary, though we have posted some teasers to our Facebook page & twitter.

We noticed that we need to share a lot of things since we want more people to know what are we doing right now, what games will come out, even what do we think about life, jokes, etc. Above all, this way we can learn more to communicate with our potential players/ fanbase. As a small indie game developer team, without publisher/ sponsor we ought to promote and publish the game ourselves, so this is one way to gain exposure, as much as we can.

Alright, back to topic, this game, Late Lino, was started as an entry for Ludum Dare #22, 16th of December 2011. Thinking back, we were keeping an eye on the themes since theme voting, so we had a bit preparation of what theme will be out in the next day. We had little speedy game designing exercise a day before it.

What's this game about?

Well LD22 theme was "Alone". Had we created PIXLE, a little bit experimental game made us somewhat addicted to make something out of box again (lol), and something endless and score based.

Oh yeah, the original title was Saint Lino. (the title came out last though!)
The concept actually was inspired by moon theme. We control the moonlight and try to guide a little boy (Lino) who is alone in the dark. Main objective/challenge is to survive as long as you can, by scouting invisible ghosts (you reveal it with your light) chasing the boy, and in the end score is determined by the total of candy cane dropped from ghosts he jumped on--with your instruction.

So, naturally you need good timing, reflect, awareness to play. As you survive longer, more ghosts came to you.

The LD22 version of Late Lino finished just like the design above, with 1 music, 1 stage. You can play the game here.

We can't embed the game anywhere else because hipon had it sitelocked and lost the Ludum Dare version's project file (had it replaced with the extended version, look below) =_=

Ludum Dare judging result

Late Lino (formerly Saint Lino) ended up being one of best 50 of 891 Jam entries (woot!). We never expect that though so we were delighted!

yeah bad game description is bad :))

Extended version

now i forgot whether this is a mock or screenshot

So we decided to improve the game as the LD version is being too hard and not being fair.

Things added are:
1. Wish system: every fixed duration, there will be a judgement from mother of god, if mood meter shows good sign Lino will gain good effect (healing, instant enemy kills, etc), bad sign he will get kind of punishment (paralisis, decreased stomp range, etc).
2. Now Lino has 3 Lives, more types of ghost AI.
3. Level/stage system, precisely now we have 10 stages, more candies (each stage requires some lists of candies to be cleared) and of course stage selection interface.
4. Achievement badge each stage, submit score.
5. Some dialogues at intro and ending.
6. Almost forgot, jump cooldown, so now, no one can exploit the power of random jumping haha.

When the game will be up to play?

Last year we finished this game a bit late, and because it's seasonal game (christmas-new-year theme) we had hard time seeking sponsorship because we didn't get the right momentum. Think we'll save the game for the next christmas, (if we couldn't get sponsor as well, we'll go self-publishing), and hopefully on time this time! And maybe we need a few adjustment later to launch the game.

I think this will be a fun game for everyone who love to challenge themselves, this game doesn't need stats grinding like leveling, but player ability--response and concentration-- grinding, haha.

Okay, see you next time! Out!

Wut? Main website is down!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 01:11:00 +0000

Experiencing missing links and images?

We got some trouble regarding hosting service so www.stellar-0.com is currently out of service, you could contact us directly to stellar0.mail@gmail.com at the moment. Hopefully could fix this today. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Cheers folks~

Linoveus Cube ~part III

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 14:58:00 +0000

hmm now to think about it
he looked like Yuan Shao from DW7

Linoveus Cube has been developed for 1 month. SIGH... We missed 1 week deadline so hard guh. See previous devlogs/report here.

Last update/changelog at our facebook page was:

bigger screen dimension to 700x500 (old one was 560x400)
scroll-able overall map
bigger building/object grid
more system implemented such as day/night
animated buildings added

Hmmm, not much change for the assets since it's almost all done (still need to add some more new things though). Musics are 2/3 done i guess, more interesting SFX are coming too.

Here are our graphical spoils (some already there in Facebook photos /twitter)

testing testing

performance test, building spaaam

Systems implemented/updates :

building health /maintain
day/night action difference
much optimization
looot of balancing & adjustments
game design enhancement

We tested the game yet we thought something's missing then we brainstormed whole night to decide some things and cut some things to make things faster. We plan to add more features to fill the potential design flaws (some of them are being made):

NPC, the guy
macro management
trading system
new resource
guiding missions
random events for fun

And some fun pics to be shared gahaha, i hope you guys could enjoy it as much as i do.

early designs/concepts

placeholders at early dev stage,
see, Legend of Mana assets XDD

Actually i'm sleepy so i don't have much things to say, so bear with me this time.

OK, stay tuned folks! Thanks for coming. :)

~Laz out!

OH OH GUYS i should remind that we have subscribe box here (actually just beside the blog post) -- just in case you didn't noticed it.

How I produce my songs

noreply@blogger.com (clea leshlick) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 07:44:00 +0000

Music production?

Hi everyone, clea leshlick here. In this post, I will talk about my music making routines. I do it in my bedroom, which is soundproofed(although not perfectly). I use FL Studio as DAW and Tascam US-122 mkII as the interface. Sometime I'd use my midi keyboard, which is a humble M-Audio Oxygen61, and sometime I would only use mouse and the typing keyboard.

My speaker is a good old 2.1 Altec Lansing. Bought it around 8 years ago, and it's still in good shape! Headphone is Philips SHP8500, not too expensive or high quality, but it's decent. I use both of them as I play PC games, watch videos, listen to music, and of course, mix my own songs.

A bit about FL Studio

I've been using them for years, since FL 5. The distinctive GUI and the demo projects got me hooked. Liked the step sequencer, playlist-mode with pattern blocks, and easy to use mixer. If you are thinking of purchasing FL or any other image line products, you can use my discount link here. It will give you a 10% discount, and give me a small percentage of your purchase, I don't remember how much lol.

Ok, I'll break the steps/processes and explain each one of them. I hope that they are not too technical or geeky. I want to share the joy of music production to you, even if you are no musician. It's not as hard as you think, and it's crazily fun ^ ^

Idea/Inspiration

Most of the time, I already know what type or mood of the song I'm going to write, so I play/fool around with instruments, sounds, chords, or sequences until I find something interesting or 'cool'.

There are also times where I lay down, turn off the lights, and just listen/imagine. Usually I will hear something nice in my head. From there, I can observe passively and let it go free, or I can actively change or alter that song. Song tempo is decided here, and yes, I always use metronome/fixed tempo.

Song Structure

Most of the time, I start with a sequence of chords. 2, 3 or 4 chords in 4 or 8 bar. After that, I would add the bass, the beat(drums and or percussion), then finally the lead. For me, the lead doesn't have to be a melody. It can be rhythmic. It can even be an ambiance.

As I add or try out instruments and samples, I assign them a different/new mixer track each. It will help me to maintain volume balance, use effects independently, control panning and so on.

After that, I lay out the structure for 30-60 seconds of song length, consisting of 2 or 3 parts. Intro-Verse-Riff or Verse-Riff, usually it's one of them. The song genre and style is decided here.

Filling in the holes

Holes, yup. There will be holes everywhere in the song structure. Fills at the end of a bar, accompanies, sound layers, harmonies, intro, ending, looped/not looped. If you have good sense of musical details, you will know or feel where these holes are. Sudden changes, rough passages, bad sounding instrument, squeaky treble and muddy bass are what you'd normally want to avoid.

Usually I will add several new instruments or sounds to fill in the areas where I feel is lacking. Could be a synth, piano, guitar, percussion, even a drumloop or an effect. If I were to record or insert a recorded live performance track, this is the time to do it. Could be a vocal, guitar, or a bass.

Polishing and Finishing

Here is the stage where I do lots of balancing and mixing. Volume, panning, EQ, compression, automations, etc. I listen to them repeatedly, often isolating each mixer track with solo function, and make sure that each track sounds good as a solo. This method, I find to be rewarding because it will save me much time from digging/finding out who sounds bad, at later stage when the song will be full and crowded.

Song structure and arrangement is also revisited in this stage. Removing boring patterns, adding variations, improving and smoothing expressions.

When I feel that everything is good, I stop for a bit. Then I listen to the song from start to finish, checking if there are any artifacts/problems, checking if the song was enjoyable, and checking if it flows or loops smoothly.

Meanwhile, I turn on my mastering plugin and tweak it around. I aim for a clean and polished sound, setting it to be loud enough without participating in the loudness war. I want every instrument to have their own place and be heard clearly without eating up each other.

Ending

Finally, I render the song to a wav, mp3 or ogg file, check the graphical waveform on FL and play it on winamp. Why bother checking the graphical waveform? Because it's a fetish of mine. Not only the song have to sound good on ears, it must also be good looking, waveform-wise! Look at this:

If you ask me, track A looks so much better than B. The highest peaks do not touch the bottom/ceiling. Now look at track B, ewww... so brutal, so inartistic. These days, there are many songs with even higher gain/compression than B. Not only they look fat and ugly, they SOUND fat and ugly as well.You can hear them getting crammed in a place that's about to explode.

I once heard a saying: "If I like the music I hear and I want it to sound louder, I will turn up my speaker."
This, is a striking truth for me. Music should be an art, not a sound pollution. Same goes to audio/video advertisement.

Well, this concludes my post about music production. If you have any questions, requests, or comments, feel free to express it below. Thanks a lot for reading, clea leshlick out~

LudumDare#24: Linoveus Cube ~part II

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Continuation of Game development process

screenshot taken at 26th Aug, the second day

See previous part here!

Laz: Okay actually we should have noted what we have done in separate 3 days, because they (clea and hipon) already forgotten what was going on =_= Why the hell i am the only one who remembered the development process?

hipon's part

The development process went smooth, and i was very optimistic that I could get this done before the deadline. I made the core system ( tilemap, basic input, HUD, etc ) without any problem.

Side note: I really liked the art concept, laz took a lot of references from surrealism painter such as Salvador Dali and Vladimir Kush, and the result turned out pretty cool.

Anyway, that reminds me to my side-project “Dream Cube” my entry for GameJolt Contest, the art concept was inspired by Joan Miro, which is also a surrealism painter. What’s with me and surrealism these days? x_x

The problem came out when I was working on Road connector system, it’s kind of a connector of each building, where the workers walks. The road determines the distribution of the worker to warehouse, and amount of workers in the warehouse determines the efficiency of resource collecting. Things got complicated when you connect multiple buildings, I had to check a lot of possible combinations. Well, I think it’s not that hard, but in 2 days. I don’t think so. Besides, I still had a lot of things to be done! In the end, I managed to complete about 60-70%.

Lazcht's part

What i have done in first day (as i remembered):
1. gathered references for surrealism theme, fonts
2. got a mock main screen done so we can get the grasp of it, at least.
3. temporary HUD, map has been made and cropped for placeholders
4. a character designed for *potential* citizen

I was optimistic of my drawing speed (afterall i am the one that always finished my tasks first lol), so i don’t really worried about graphics, instead i got bad feeling about the code and game design, but since hipon is still optimistic, i didn’t really care.

characters in case needed

Second day:
1. wrote random story concepts behind the theme (hate me but for me this is a necessity for designing)
2. designed some more characters (ended up unused in LD version)
3. designed buildings, started to make them into sprites.

Was getting confused on what to draw because of some part of game design still not fix. Later i was started to think animated sprites is not possible within the remaining time left, so i better to focus on anything else (at least everything are looking nice first).

Last day:
1. revised story
2. designed and made temporary icons
3. title screen design
4. enhanced interface assets, sprites

I was getting tired because of dropping stamina (lol i was catching cold & cough), and found some bugs but hipon still struggled with his road connecting stuff so i just continue my stuff as i can.

clea's part

........clea forgot almost all part of the process, so i'm gonna write it instead =_=a. (it's me Laz again) So first day the formula/ parameter/ database spreadsheet was being made. Second day, we made sure of some game design, filling out the spreadsheets with details and dummy numbers, last day, 2 background musics came out.

Knowing that we have to bail out of LudumDare #24

It was already 3 o’clock (deadline was like 1~2 more hours to go) and we still have looot of things unfinished and less likely to be so in the remaining time. We thought rather than submitting something unplayable/ full of bugs, we accepted our failure sincerely. In 4:44 AM of 28th, we finally ikhlas (lol) it's like we stop to deny that we failed, and start to think about what to do with the project (see below). Then we went to sleep in peace.

Next LudumDare is still right there, in case we want to get revenge or something.

Future plan of the project

Overall, we, like hipon mentioned above, have done about 70% of the progress, and we can still enhance the aesthetic a bit more and most likely game design revision, then testing, polishing, balancing, balancing, and balancing.

We have discussed it that day, that we’ll challenge ourselves to finish the game within a week, and now, Linoveus Cube IS an official distraction of Grand Steam project, we’ll try to have fun with this project as much as possible.

Evaluations

What went wrong

We were a little bit too optimistic (cocky). Some veteran game jammers suggested to make the game you’re best at, but we still wanted to experiment and trying new things...~~owait, they could be wrong because we’re the best at trying something new yet we failed. :V~~

We didn’t expect the game would be that deep and we also had no experience in making this kind of game, so we tried to do a lot of trial and error, and it’s really time consuming.

No preparation, unlike last year, we were actually plan to join even from the voting days, this one was too impulsively being made, we designed it on a whim and developed it anyway.

What went right

~~One step closer to Sid Meier!~~ Tried a new genre we never had done! We always try every new things possible for new project, it’s very interesting and fun. We always wanted to make more simulation/strategy games like Outsmart! yet we didn't get the chance yet, but we got it now.

We also quite satisfied with our accomplishment, we managed to complete the 70% part of game in 2 days. We thought it’s something to be proud of. This is a failed LD entry, but from that, we know better of our current capabilities in game developing.

Ok, that's all for now, and see you on the next blog! ^^
~hipon, Laz out!

Grand Steam leaks! (a sneakpeek video)

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 20:42:00 +0000

What is leaking ?!

In case you haven't noticed, we have uploaded a sneak peek video of Grand Steam during the combat playtest!

Check this out folks! ^^

Sorry for the lags (i are an amateur screen recorder ;^;)

~~Please~~ Don't forget to subscribe our Youtube channel so you can stay updated with our new videos!

LudumDare#24: Linoveus Cube ~part I

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 22:09:00 +0000

Opening

Hey everyone, we’re here again to report something. You know LudumDare right? You will know it anyway after you visited the link so i'll save my time on that.

LudumDare #24 was held on 24~28th of August 2012 (Compo mode ended in 27th, Jam/team mode is 28 which is yesterday). Yeah we were SUPPOSED to submit our game as Jammer and we FAILED, gracefully. So rather than sharing success story (as we were getting asked to) we prefer on making this, our fail story.

Why join LudumDare?

hipon's story:

It all started a day before ludumdare, I was sitting on my crappy chair, working on stellar’s latest project, Grand Steam. It’s been 8 months since the project started and I started to get bored. I checked my twitter and saw a lot of people talking about ludumdare, all of them were really excited to join.

I was caught in ludumdare’s hype and a dilemma...
I was in a middle of a big project, i wanted to complete this project soon, but ludumdare’s hype was too strong. After a hours of thinking, I decided to join.

Next day, I told laz about my plan to join ludumdare compo, yeah compo, I was planned to do a solo this time. After some conversations, we decided to do a jam. It was around 2 o’clock when we decided to join Ludumdare jam. which means we’re already late about 6-7 hours.

Laz's story:

Some days before LD#24 started, i was getting a feeling that hipon will want to join, and i was right, lol. As hipon stated that he would join the event (for compo at least he need 48 hrs) i think, that’s not going to speed up our progress (for Grand Steam) anyway, so why don’t we all join it like we did last year? I guess we all need to do something different for refreshment.

Another thing i want to achieve here is to train our project management skill, working effectively under a short period, so mainly is discipline exercise. Not that i didn’t get tempted at all to join LD, because the theme is interesting haha.

BTW actually i was going to ask if clea agreed to join as jammers but clea was not waking up yet so hipon and i decided it by ourselves. :v

clea's story:

When I woke up, they told me we're joining LD, and we're making a Simulation game. I was like oh well it will only take 3 days so no big deal. After discussing about game details, I'm convinced I'll be able to finish the audio in time, and I was right. But the hard part is somewhere else, it's our first RTS game, there is much to learn and experiment. A pity that this game ended up not submitted, but it was a good effort and experience for me.

I look forward to see where this game will go, as usual, I'll try to make sure that it's balanced, interesting, and unique. So, you guys can expect something good soon.

So what was the game about (supposed to be) anyway?

a successful teaser hahah

Title: Linoveus Cube

A simple real-time strategy, economic simulation/ time management game. Cube/box and surrealism is the art theme so we made a joke about new genre called RTS: Real Time Surrealism.

Main challenge:

Reach higher score than anyone else (scoreboard system) within certain time limit.
Scoring system / what to score is not yet fix, but highest chance to get implemented is: counting from the growth rate of a certain building (an evolution indicator perhaps).

Gameplay:

1. Player is given a century (60 minutes in real time) to make evolution, for that, player need to manage resources available on the map and convert it to something else needed to balance the economy.
2. City management consist of Planning, Building, Setting, Linking.
3. Each building has to be linked to other certain building to make it functional, for example, player need to Link a Forest to Workshop, to gain Lumber.
4. Building evolution (just like upgrading) can be triggered by meeting requirements.
5. Each action/command takes time to be executed, so player won’t just put something randomly and cancel anytime they wish.

Development diary

Day 1

Firstly, we decided what genre will we develop, hipon suggested not to make action games (hipon: “I’ve had enough of that!”). Laz suggested simulation genre or economic game like Anno series. Hipon don’t know much about that genre, since he only played few simulation games, but it’s still better than making another action games, so, it’s a deal.

So the theme is Evolution. We were aware that most of people will think about Darwin’s evolution theme, so much likely survival game, or breeding game like Pokemon/ Digimon, so we avoided (potential) mainstream themes as well.

The game design was *mostly* done by Lazcht & clea, they’re both have more experience in simulation genre, hipon could only gave some suggestions and limitations.

Laz started to brainstorm something like:
1. evolving building (maybe something like Gaeus from Legend of Mana), triggered by ???
2. evolving God, godgame type (Laz want something desert themed, you don’t want to know why)
3. evolving food, God of food
4. planting game, waiting something to grow, time investment

title screen mock

In the end we picked 1 and 4 and started to develop the real game design. Within around 2 hours, the core game design was done, hipon thought it looked simple and doable... (hipon: "Well...I guess, I couldn’t decide whether it’s good, but at least it’s doable"). So, we agreed the design, then started to work on it!

.......to be continued

You will know why we failed, whatwentright whatwhenwrong on the next post :P

Grand Steam log ~04

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 15:35:00 +0000

Howdy everyone, counted from January 2012, Grand Steam project has reached 8 month development time, been long time but we ain't stop progressing, and here we are, Lazcht, clea leshlick and hipon, informing you folks, on "What's up Grand Steam?"

Click here to browse previous Grand Steam logs!

~Hipon reports:

Last month, we did a lot of gameplay and interface analysis. We really had a hard time deciding some elements in combat system, like Rival system. But i won't spoil that for now, since we haven't reached a decision lol.

Development progress :

Level select menu redesigned.
More depth to combat system.
New upgrade system.
A lot of new sprites and effects implemented.

1. Combat system update : Usable items!

From our discussion last month, we noticed that the combat system was a bit bland, there's not enough action the player could do. From the discussion, we decided to add more features to the combat system. What is it? Usable items!

So basically, you only have 3 inventory slots in this game, only 3. You could get items from killing certain enemy, you could also get items by beating the Rival, this one is pretty tricky, maybe i'll explain this on the next log.

Different kinds of items are available like SP Potion, HP potion, and some destructive AoE items like Bomb, Poison grenade. These items work pretty well in the combat system so far. What's better than throwing bombs to a group of enemies?

yeah, eat that bomb

2. New Upgrade System.

We made new upgrade system for this game, basically it's like this, you are given limited chance to upgrade, and each upgrade you choose what do you want to upgrade, for example Dash skill, you can choose whether you want to upgrade the cooldown, or the dash range. Interesting isn't it?

before --after

3. New Menu Design

We did some redesigns to the Level-select menu, we felt that it lacked intuitiveness and a bit messy, so, Laz redesigned it, and it looks better now. Here's the comparison :

~Lazcht reports:

I want to report some graphical stuff has been made/ progressed, aside from GUIs hipon reported above.

My main progress since last log are:

New sprites (lot of it)
New HUD, GUI designs, icons
New illustration for title screen, clouds background for menu
New special effects, optimized assets for better performance

New character concept spoils

Some times ago we said to redesign the characters so here are them.

Poker F. Ace

Her costume design influenced by steampunk + tribal + casual wear. This was randomly picked because story is not yet written by clea hahah. I wanted her image young, arrogant/cool looking, unique, not forgetting that she's a sword fighter so i didn't try to make her feminine/cute. (yeah girly girl is not even my forte -.- )

Jack Potter

His design influenced by Victor (Devil Summoner), and Sneff from Chrono Cross. XD I want to make him look like a gambler, slightly annoying, and a bit narcissist. His costume theme is the same as Ace.

Their names are card/ gambling related, though we impulsively named them, we aimed to make catchy memorable names and easy to pronounce.

~clea reports:

Development has been going quite long, lots of trial and errors, lots of experiments, lots of decision making!

1.Music

Since I have lots of time on this project, I can take my time to research and try out new things concerning music composition. Electro drums, light synth, heavy synths, violins, glitch effects, and lots more exciting stuff. There will be more music coming, expect around 5 new tracks.

New tracks will be quite different from these two, as I will use different/new technique and approach (duh, several months have passed). I think it will be really cool and outstanding.

Bossfight; tactical destruction

Menu/Intermission; i think a lot, do you?

2.Sound Effects

Sword slashes, gunshots, UI sounds, skills, impacts, explosions, and many more. I'm getting better and better at sound manipulation, thanks to game project like this one! I always aim to make them nice sounding, unique, and memorable. I have to carefully maintain the volume and frequency balance between them, to make sure they sit nicely with each other, and be able to blend nicely with the music, of course.

So when i can play this game?

To be honest, we're still not sure because this is the second complex game we've made so far (first one is Sword of August XD) yet (of course!) we're the first ones who want Grand Steam to be done.

We'll keep you informed by writing logs like this. I hope you enjoy reading them, stay tuned for the next log! That's all information we got for now, have a nice day, thanks for your time being here! :)

~stellarNull out!

Gaming Guilt | can i play? no, go to work!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 22:34:00 +0000

Hi there guys, hours ago i got an interesting topic for blogging, so i decided to write them out right away while i still remember.

sprite taken from Outsmart!

It's about guilty feeling and gaming. Haha i bet you can't guess the relation between them (or not). This is second time i write blog about productivity, previous one is here. It's a bit personal, however, as usual, this might be inspiring for some people with similar/relevant condition, i don't know if it's rare, or it's common feeling that many others feel. But if you ever find that you had experienced it, let me know what do you think and maybe we can share stories! XD

Let's get rockin'.

The title

"Gaming Guilt?" the fuck is that? Actually it's more like "Having-fun Guilt". ~~but gaming is more catchy so yeah~~ It is my self made term, of getting sort of guilty feeling while having fun. What? But HOW and WHY? My inner self said, "because you're not being "productive", you're useless, you're wasting time playing.

How and why i came up with this "guilt" idea

I dont think i have said this, but i am a High-Schooler drop out . I didn't graduate high school, that's my own decision though. (~~I killed a classmate~~ nah, i ragequit because i couldn't digest any more knowledge given from school :v)

In our country (or maybe yours too), a minimum of 'accepted working criteria' (uh i couldn't find the right word i guess) is High School Graduate, so naturally, i'll be having hard times looking for FORMAL jobs. I never wanted a formal job though, but parents were worrying what would i become in future, almost every parents do, right?

I have been acknowledged by around family members, schoolmates, or teachers as a "decent" or "talented" artist since my childhood (although i don't think so -_-). I am very lucky to be blessed by their support, (thanks to them i have enough self-esteem) but, they also gave me (implicitly, or indirectly) sort of "responsibility" to be a great, success, famous artist, or at least to get enough money to live happily, someday. So, with my current drawing ability that time, i was able to convince parents to write a confirmation letters to school; let's call that drop out permit, haha.

I remembered one of my homeroom teacher said when i was about to leave: "I believe you will be a successful artist." or something like that. Touched by that i begin to burden myself even more.

I've been living with that responsibility and expectations, and possibly (unconsciously) until now. And as soon as i dropped school, i thought i can play as much as i wanted just like in school days' holiday, but wait... Something felt different. While i was playing games, or do other stuff BUT drawing, i felt guilty. I felt like i am supposed to move faster than anyone else at my age, i grew ambitious, i need to be more "productive" in every way , be smarter, to cover my "High-School Graduate degree" loss.

In past, my mindset was: dropping out is so bad and my future will be gloomy (or locals known it as madesu lol) if i'm not greater than anyone with "safe route". ~~Pfft i was an idiot.~~

Then i grew traumatic with a moment of having fun and "not working" state, that sounds serious and actually is. I begun to reduce my consumption of entertainments, such as gaming, reading manga, watching TV, hanging out with friends, etc. My "productivity" level is biased, which is like, i am = productive only if i am drawing. I kept on drawing, though. But guess what? My creativity was dying! I didn't feel as productive and inspired. I didn't get good ideas to create stuff even i didn't know what to draw anymore. I felt so blank. It stressed me more than reducing self-entertainment itself. -_-

I wondered why? It's simple, of course i didn't get inspired by locking myself in you-must-be-greater-than-your-friends and don't-play-too-much mindset. As a graphic artist is commonly used in media & entertainment, at least i need to know what is entertainment itself, right? I was dumb. And that was what i realized years later.

So anyone has the same or similar problem? haha.

How i am now, how can i get over it

Back to present time, to be honest, i'm still having that kind of guilty feeling sometimes, like when some friends come to hang out or play with me at weekends, i felt like "Duh, unlike you guys, i have no weekends...".

Formal/ common officer who gets paid monthly has their fixed work time, so they (usually) don't have to worry about anything outside of their work hour. So naturally they can go have fun all they want on weekends. But what about me? If i don't work, i don't get money, if i don't make progress, i am slowing down the projects. I have no free weekends either, why? Because i can have fun the time i wanted on weekdays, (lolol) so having days off at weekends makes me feel so unproductive and often gives me "productivity guilt".

However, i quit thinking that high school graduate is important long time ago. I don't even care about it as i've been using my abilities instead of formality stuff i hate, and i think i'm doing very good at least until now. I might get biased whether i am burdened with others' expectations or this is (being quite ambitious) my true passion, but i don't think that's important anymore, since i know that i am grateful of my condition, and living a fun life now, game developing with people i treasure. Working time is not always fun though i won't lie, but i enjoyed the process of them as well the long term reward, what is? Satisfaction, morale, pride, money for living, etc.

Though, I still get too picky sometimes to just begin playing games. Sometimes i think that i'm a workaholic, but i think im still a lazy person, and big procrastinator (even in gaming).

It's funny that i grew too observant while playing games. I was supposed to forget about working at my have-fun times but i can't. I kept finding game design flaws, observing graphics, audio, technical things like "Oh, wow! So that's how they made it, hmmm..." then i noticed that i was distracted, but i always do that again haha.

How i overcome it? Actually since i noticed that "if i never get entertained (which is crucial part in game development too) i can't entertain others either" i decided to loose myself a bit and let it experience lot of fun i or it wish to produce. And i was right, i get my fresh ideas back and my skills, knowledge developed more quickly, and of course, i had more fun.

"Fun" is something you can change the trigger anyway. Fun doesn't always mean to play a game, forget about working, eating something nice, hang out, etc. Well, some people said i am a bit masochist, but i can stand working whole day if i am in the mood, and that's FEELS somehow...more fun than playing game.. :| When the "gaming guilt" comes and i need a refreshment, i could have fun by the intention to observe games, however during the play, i usually distracted and have "fun" anyway! XD I called this work while playing, play while working, or play=work. So it seems like the "gaming guilt" can be tricked.

Lately i've been giving myself a day for break and go play a game whole day, and stop to do work too much which usually makes my creativity go dull. But many times, i can't stop to play all day because of game immersion level's being too high, hahahah. My gluttony level is high, so i can have fun with eating something nice too, besides, i can also cook myself nice meal. Note to self: exercise your body and get yourself outside more often to get inspirations.

I noticed that exercising my body regularly will cut off negative energies before it affects my head and behavior, laziness or unnecessary worries, including the "productivity guilt", "gaming guilt", "expectation guilt".

I know that "guilt" is something sounds negative, well...if i can't overcome or remove the root (people expectations, ambitions) i guess i can make use of it as my motivation or reminder as well. :) I won't let the "guilt" steer my life easily! hahah.

Conclusion/ Solution

These are solutions i used on myself, if you find these useful, good for you, if you disagree with these, it's okay, then maybe it's just can't work for all people. ^^

As an entertainment related professional (or even hobbyist), you need to know how to entertain yourself first.
You won't be good to lock yourself to work whole time without having fun, don't work too much, get some days off to entertain yourself too!
'Generate' fun with different way to fit for your "Guilt".
Quit think about work, or multitask a work while you're supposed to have fun, or you can change the fun trigger itself to suit your condition.
"Gaming guilt" can be tricked with 'playing' the gaming intention ;)
Get yourself out sometimes to get different air and atmosphere, greatly boost creativity.
Body exercise to burn negative energies/ feelings like worrying too much, envy, guilt, hatred, sloth, disappointment, etc.
If you can, convert the "Guilt" into something more motivational and useful.
Make to-do list/targets for a month, each day with each milestone/achievement target, and please, please, please... make them realistic and doable! This usually can ease your "Guilt", especially when you mark your finished target.

Well that's it, a long but i hope you find these words inspiring, motivating, or at least entertaining! Feel free to put comments below :) Thanks for your time reading folks!

~Laz out!

Death will: clea leshlick

noreply@blogger.com (clea leshlick) — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:31:00 +0000

Hello folks, today I'm going to talk about my death will. It's things that I want to be done to my body/corpse and my 'heritage', after I die. I might do a revision/update sometime in the future, assuming that I still live, of course. But before that happens, this will here is good enough. So let's get started...

Why so serious/so soon?

Better safe than sorry. It's not an exaggeration to say that we can die anytime, even without a slight symptom. At present, I'm completely healthy, and I don't have any intention to die anytime soon. But if things go the way I want it to be, I think it would help my 'soul' to feel better. Much better than dying without any will and got random things done to my remains.

Why make it public?

So that anyone who knows me can testify about it in case the need arises. Legal shit and all. I'm sorry to bother you with this, ahaha.

What to do with the body?

Organ donation. Make the most of it. Why? Because I think that I wont be needing them anymore, and most probably I won't be coming back to this body after my death. Might as well use them for those still living here on earth. However I'd like to warn the future recipient of my organs: careful it may affect you to become a weirdo, LOL.

After that?

Please throw what remains of my body into a nearest deep sea/ocean. I like water more than fire, and I like blue more than red. Don't bother to bathe/clean/decorate it tho.

What to do with your assets(if there are any)?

Make the most of it. Sell, give away, whatever is useful to you or the others. This is addressed to my family, relatives, friends, and those who think/feel they care about me.

What if I got into a coma?

I leave it to my family to decide what to do. Don't ever spend more than what we have, though. If I manage to recover and work to pay off those debts, it's all good. But what if I can't?

If you think I'm not going to make it, better to not spend a cent on me. I won't blame anyone, seriously. You know me, I don't like to be a burden more than I already am.

Oh one more thing: please make sure they don't leave me topless just because they think I'm a male. I'll make sure to punch anyone who does disrespect to my body, lawl.

Do you want any prayer/wishes sent to you?

If you don't mind, please wish/pray for my happiness, courage, strength, and wisdom. I have some plans for myself, like: exploring the new world, planning the next course of action, or just completely vanish. One thing for sure, I don't plan to be bound to my earthly life and suffer for it, but I don't plan to forget it either.

Do you have any prayer/wishes to those people you left?

Yes. I'm sorry if I'm not being nice/useful enough to you. Sorry if I bring painful memories.

Thanks for being nice to me all the time, thanks for being the best family, best spouse, best relatives, best friends, best co-workers, and best gaming partners.

Btw, I expect stellar-0 to continue producing cool games even without me. (Would be pretty shitty if they stopped/broke up, don't you agree?) It may not be easy, but I'm sure you can find a new audio director/game designer to fill my post.

Our body dies, but our dreams do not. Keep on shining brightly as yourself!

clea leshlick

Why gamedev? -my story-

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 02:59:00 +0000

Hello guys, Laz is here \o . Not a Grand Steam log, sorry haha.

Prologue

I've been thinking to share my old gamedev stuff since that's too good to be wasted or just gone without even being noticed by ppl....*writes blog*....... i was wanted to post a post mortem of an old game project but ended up writing long story of mine before i decided to dive gamedev industry, lol so okay.. *changes the blog title*

I will share my own story--how i become a professional game developer. (my pro meaning = make games as living, just in case ppl refer it as 'veteran').

What makes me into games/ game development

1. Childhood interest

Back years, under age of 10, mom bought us (me and clea) NES and i can only play 30 min every weekends, weekday is a no for video games, we had to study she said.

As sibling we have to share stuff like console, TV and anything, so we both have to wait until one finished or a timeout to play, or we sometimes just play 2P games to avoid quarrels over a console.

I was envious of other ppl out there who can play whatever time they want, but later i noticed, if it was easy to get like that, i won't be craving out for video games like now haha.

Until now, video games means so much to me, i grown up and live with them.

2. Asset making games, RPG Maker

At PSX era, i played some games involving "drawing in pixel" such as Wild Arms, it allows us to draw skill icons used in battle, it was so fun (though my drawings were so bad, still it's my custom creation lol) and anyone remember how Saga Frontier, or even mainstream games like Tales of Destiny, Final Fantasy 7, can change the layout menu color/ fonts by personally setting the RGB? And some mecha/robot games allows us to draw our own crest by pixelling it out. I kinda love games with a little trivial details like that haha.

At the same era, we both played RPG Maker in PSX, we start to figure out how RPG can be made, eventing, building maps, database, managing assets, even drawing assets. These experiences made me (in present time) feel familiar with game making process, though it's too little comparing to reality, but it has similar essence, just like an appetizer before dealing with the main thing.

3. Chance meeting the first game development team

I kind of forget how i knew RPG Maker in PC, but i was addicted to it, A LOT. I was only pure a hobbyist and curious youth (yeah i was a teenager back then haha), i wasn't thinking to make a serious project or even being a pro game developer. Uh i don't think i ever said this, but i was a comic artist and had dream to make an animation film of my own story-- LiaL. WAS. haha. I ended up distracted by making RPG Maker project with the characters from the comic project, it was so too i couldn't help being distracted, shame that the project is gone =_=.

Until i was introduced by a friend from j-band community-- ghur, with Blue Destiny Arts team, working for a project called Destinia with clea. If i didn't happen to know this team, i don't think i will write this blog here now, haha, perhaps i am still a cover band member, or maybe i'll be a common office worker, who knows.

4. Experiencing teamwork and knowing its effectiveness

That was my first time working as a team for 'serious thing', beside band activity. My school days was so mediocre that i never joined up into project in a team, or maybe i just didn't interested back then.

Moments in Blue Destiny Arts was amazing, we had basecamp, even though it was at the team leader's home--Harnatz, and i met some artists who are nice and fun to befriend with and we hang out lot of time too.

Here, I realized teamwork power was so OP, we can make things we don't even know, and because we can let anyone else be bothered about part what we don't like. I realized i am lazy, plus, i have bad determination to finish what i have started alone. Another power is, we don't need to decide EVERYthing alone.

I learned how to manage team even, how to communicate effectively and make schedule, to do list, etc, i never knew it would be as complicated.

5. Passion breakdown and 'dream change'

We (me with Blue Destiny Arts) made 2 RPG games, then the team got suspended due to some reasons, and the whole team walk their own path, including me, i was being a commission artist/ pro freelancer, clea too, as composer.

I didn't think i'll ever be a game developer anymore, then continued to chase my dream as a comic artist. I got invited to a comic project (I Want to LIVE) with Kentasenin, also with some people, i felt kinda frustated and felt like giving up my dream. Why? The comic was one of top sellers they said (i don't really care about selling details =_=) , but i lack something in them. Financial is also one problem, but now i know making money from game is not easier than being comic artist, lol.

Second reason, knowing i couldn't reduce gaming time (which if i want to be pro comic artist, i need to seek reference by reading comics or at least watching movies, but i prefer playing video games, i wonder why), i was also feel that my ability to make game assets will be wasted if i pursue this path. With some thoughts, I decided to change my dream to game development, to conserve time to look up references which suit my hobby as a gamer, lol.

Thanks to Bai-- he invited me to another game developer team named Rebornz, knowing kodoktua, then trimutation team, which i got acquainted with hipon, and worked for Sword of August project.

Edit--- and gamedevID.org community makes me grow up and learn much things gamedev related, even until now. If you're an Indonesian and into game development, you can't miss this community!

A little story of my game development team (and former)

Blue Destiny Arts

First reasons why i joined the team, at 2007, i didn't know any game development team in my country even exist in my country so i was like, "WOW really? Now we could own the world!" lol. Members are interesting persons to work with and befriend with, they're full of passion, skillful and so willing, though we weren't get paid, but we were doing the project happily.

We gave birth to 2 project DESTINIA alpha, and Destinia ~White Crest~. Both of them are RPG Maker XP games. I'll share story about them next time since i don't think Destinia project has website or articles to read to.

Unfortunately the team got suspended. However, BIG thanks to this team for introducing me to game development world!

Rebornz, 3M/ trimutation

I joined on a whim at 2008 or 2009, because i still wanted to contribute my arts for video games, but later i was serious on growing up the team and focus my life on it as a pro. At the same time, i worked with KABABONKEN Comics /kentasenin (but i have left) lol i was such a project whore.

I contributed in Rundown from the Jail project (RMXP) in avatar faces, Sacred Seed (RMXP) in character design and illustration, Sword of August (Flash) (at some place it's still credited as trimutation but most of us are now on stellar so we claimed the title, and looks like the rest of the team are okay with it) in almost whatever haha. Actually Wonderland Cosa Nostra originally are trimutation's project, but we're the one ended up finishing it.

We had good times together without meeting in person (most of the time). But in the end I left the team due to lack of productivity, initiative and communication.

Enthrean Guardian

I joined up at early 2010, originally i was just the quality control/advisor of Eternal Grace project, but later i got invited by Jasprelao to enter the team as main artist, i agreed because i still had "hidden passion" in RPG creation, and i felt i can help it grow because of my experience with Blue Destiny Arts.

We made Eternal Grace -episode I-, i contributed in art, story, level design, event programming. This is also an internet powered team lol. I learned much more about teamwork power, mainly i level up my communication skills.

stellar-Ø

This is the team i founded with clea and kodoktua, as an asset provider service, at late 2010. Actually we never thought about making games, but ended up made another game project--Outsmart! haha.

Seems like i couldn't help but continue to make games, invited hipon in and here we are now.

Epilogue

So that's my story about how i became game developer until now, i hope i can inspire people with sharing little stories of mine. (OMG so much links, ppl might thought they're ads rofl) Anyway thanks for reading and have a nice day. :)

~Lazcht out

Distributed!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Hi there folks! Lately we have been distributing our flash games to varous portal such as TigDB and GameJolt, even deviantArt, when we have time maybe we should list those over here so everyone will know. We also plan to send game packages to some portal so they'll put the games on their sites.

If one of you folks own a website, game reviewer site or free game portals and want our games to be added/ reviewed, we're more than glad to allow it. We have already prepared game packages/ press kits to download for reviewers' convenience. (As you can see we just added "Media kits" tab above).

Also, if any of you wondered how the games will make profit for us, it's the ingame advertising, sponsorships (if possible), and non-exclusive licensing/ sitelocking offers (feel free contact us for more info). In any case, we desperately need so much exposure for our games, aside for financial matter, we need feedbacks from as many player as possible to make us even better game developer!

So you folks, if you care, like, love our games, please do tell your friends about us and our games, it means to us big time! XD

That's all i want to cover today, thanks for reading, have a nice day and cya around! Grand Steam dev log is coming out next i guess, heheh.

~Laz out

Wonderland Cosa Nostra released!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 15:52:00 +0000

At last, Wonderland Cosa Nostra is out yayyy. Play now! (it's free, of course.)

This is a game we've been developing for almost 3 years (not full-time though), exactly started between Sword of August Project and Outsmart! . An idealist project-- i can say, from us and Elventales Games.

We hope you liked this game, so enjoy and if you help us to spreading this to your friends, you're SUPER and we'll be so thankful. We welcome any feedbacks, and we even gave you the proper place for it haha.

Some screenshots you might want to see first:

Sidenotes: we wrote some stories about the moments we made this game, you might be interested to check it out! Might also add more later in this blog! Stay tuned folks!

Cya~

Cooking Journey: Special instant noodle

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 07:20:00 +0000

Hello folks, Lazcht here. This is obviously not a gamedev blog, nor cooking game article, it is actual cooking recipe sharing.

Like i said in my introduction blog post, i love to cook for myself sometimes for family too (if the menu is tolerable enough for them lol, parents aren't into western menus). I browse much recipe on internet and watch Youtube cooking videos sometimes to get inspirations, now i think this time i'll try to share a random recipe, not something really unique but oh well i hope it's helpful anyway. :P

I cook a lot of instant noodles when i feel lazy, and it's the BEST LAZY MENU for midnight meal, agreed? ;D Anyone can easily cook them, but ever try to make it a little bit..."special"?

Loving instant noodle, aren't we all?

Most people said instant noodles are unhealthy, so then let's try a little bit to make it less-unhealthy, haha.

This is how i cook instant noodle when i don't really into plain instant noodle (this is laziness level 1; when i still bother doing some effort to make non-mediocre meal). I won't tell the portion/measurement in detail on each ingredients, coz people have their own preference.

Special Soup Instant Noodle

Difficulty : Too Easy

Ready in: Approx. 15 Min.

Ingredients and preparations:

Corn starch

Instant noodle (Soup)
Some white mushrooms (?), or can be replaced by shiitake mushrooms, rinsed, break into some pieces.
Beansprouts (as needed) rinsed.
Garlics. (1~3 cloves)
Corn starch, mixed with some water.
Green onion, rinsed, chopped, fried onions. (optional)
Sweet soy sauce, salt. (optional)

Directions:

1. Boil water like usual, put noodles in when water already boiled.

2. While you wait, get some garlic, peel, and chop them into little pieces.

Learning from Cooking Mama, this is how you chop/cut garlic, easy way haha, it works plus it's fun, careful though.

chopping result

3. Don't forget to pay attention to your noodles, when they're ready, drain them and split fairly~ (if you cook for multiple serving), add vegetable oil then stir if you don't want it to stick together.

thicken soup

4. Now prepare the soup, put (desired amount for soup) water on pot, add the chopped garlic, add mushroom or if you like to add carrots, you'll want to add it now, boil with medium heat. If you put lot of water, consider to put some salt too.
5. Put instant noodle's seasoning to the pot, stir until the soup boiling, SMELLS GOOD ain't it?

6. Beansprout time now, add to pot, stir until it goes a tad transparent, add some sweet soy sauce now (amount as necessary). Taste the soup, make it a little bit more strong because your noodle is unseasoned.

7. Lower the heat, now time to thicken the soup. Stir the corn starch once again before you put it to the pot, and remember to keep stirring it while you pour it to the soup. If you feel it's not enough thick, repeat the process until you feel it right, don't be too thick or it would be too sticky, yuck. I usually aimed the thickness like curry's thickness.

8. Turn off the stove, pour the soup to the noodle, yup, almost done.
9. Put green onions to make it more fancy, or if you like, fried onions.

Result!

Yesh! Time to eat.
Posting this... kind of make me drooling. Damn.

And that's it folks, thanks for visiting and reading!

~Laz out!

Grand Steam ~log03

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:42:00 +0000

So it turned to be me again who is blogging here haha. Thanks for coming here to read, and i am Laz (and later this Grand Steam log is edited by hipon). I tweeted about making sneakpeek video of Grand Steam but ended up to another failure because of some serious mess, so uh... next time, okay? =_=;;

Recent development progress:
- Skill cooldown system implemented
- Battle result implemented
- New character designs, some sprites
- New enemy designs

Grand Steam newest screenshot, name is dummy btw

Let's continue on where we left off last time, about gameplay flow was it?
(See list of Grand Steam's logs here !)

Main Gameplay Flow (part 2)

1. Battle Phase

Basically, this game is arena hack and slash, the heroine will be facing tons of enemies here, summoned by a Rival ( the names will be revealed soon :p ).

Each tier/stage will have several waves you have to beat and your rival won't stop keeping you busy until you've reached the last wave. In short, this will be an endurance test between you, the heroine and the Rival!

We are working really hard to make each wave variative, balanced, and fun to play, we took some references from Beyond Oasis and Legend of Zelda, we hope we could make it as good as those games! :))

Beyond Oasis screenshot

2. Win/Lose Condition

The rules are still the same as most of games, you lose if you die, you win if you stay alive until the end of stage. In Grand Steam, once you enter the stage, you can't go back. Really?? Then is it a fight till i die?! Well, the easiest way is just die lol, but you'll receive penalty as a punishment.

Is there any way to go back without penalty? Yeah, of course there is, by killing the Rival during the Wave Battle phase. Here, you can kill the Rival anytime you want! When he dies, there will be a door, uh...or you can call it.. Portal, coming out of nowhere, then you'll able to go back safely without penalty! It's your choice to kill this guy sooner or later, if you want higher reward, you should endure until the last wave and kill him at Boss Battle phase! :D

3. Roulette (?)

This one is still an idea, it might not be in this game at all, it's an idea about how the Boss allows you to "skill shot" a roulette to choose Boss's AI patterns, at the beginning of Boss Battle.

4. Closing. So what's the game about?

The game will keep continuing until you beat all challenges available, and those are the REAL stages! That wraps up the full gameplay flow/cycle of Grand Steam.

About reijubv

News about stellar-0, reijubv is no longer with us, and no longer working on Grand Steam project, it's so sudden i sometimes can't accept that he's gone. Lol j/k, no he is still safe and sound around the internet.

So, why?
I worked with him since 2010 for Eternal Grace project, then some we did some collabs for stellar's commission work, Trinity Sofia project (pending), Paladine (pending), then lastly Grand Steam (on development). Working with him was very smooth for us, then we recruited him in. Not long ago he said he don't want to be a professional game developer anymore, he wants another job for his main occupation, and some reasons we had discussed days ago, so okay, good luck and wish all the best for you, reijubv!

Changes to Grand Steam project in future:
1. main character/enemy designs
2. all character sprites, icons
3. illustrations, HUD
This will be A LOT of work for me, i don't expect this will be easy, but this surely would be fun. >:)

Not a good ending huh? Oh well we'll see you again in the next blog, or gamedev log! Thanks for spending your time reading this and have a nice day!!
Pstt...expect hipon's introduction blog will be here soon! :P

~Laz out!

[Tutorial] Game Flash Menggunakan FlashDevelop & Flash IDE

noreply@blogger.com (Reijubv) — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:56:00 +0000

Part 1 - Perkenalan & Setup

Halo, reijubv di sini akan mencoba memberikan tutorial bagaimana caranya membuat sebuah game berbasis Flash, dengan menggunakan FlashDevelop sebagai software utama untuk melakukan coding dan Adobe Flash sebagai visual IDE untuk membuat dan menaruh aset-aset yang akan digunakan nanti, sekaligus sebagai compilernya.

Saat artikel ini ditulis, software yang digunakan adalah FlashDevelop versi 4.0.1 RTM dan Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5 apabila anda tidak memiliki versi yang sama, tetap bisa mengikuti tutorial ini tapi mungkin harus ada sedikit perubahan yang dilakukan.

Selama proses tutorial ini, versi ActionScript yang digunakan adalah versi ActionScript 3, dan untuk mengikuti tutorial ini setidaknya anda sudah mengerti dasar-dasar ActionScript 3 karena saya tidak akan menjelaskan secara detil setiap bagian code yang nantinya akan diberikan.

Part 1.1 - Instalasi

Pertama-tama pastikan anda sudah mengInstall FlashDevelop terlebih dahulu, apabila belum, silahkan download di sini, setelah ter download silahkan jalankan installernya dan ikuti instruksi yang diberikan. Pada salah satu bagian installer akan ditanyakan apa saja yang akan di install, 3 diantaranya adalah Flex SDK, AIR SDK, dan Flash Debugger, ketiga pilihan itu akan otomatis di download apabila instalasi selesai, jadi pastikan koneksi internet anda siap untuk mendownload. Apabila anda sudah mendownload Flex SDK / AIR SDK / Flash debugger sebelumnya, silahkan jangan dicentang pilihan-pilihan tersebut dan bisa di setting nanti.

Apabila anda sudah menginstall FlashDevelop dan mendownload ketiga file diatas secara otomatis melalui Installer, lewati bagian di bawah dan langsung pindah ke Part 1.2.

Disarankan untuk bagian ini, apabila anda mendownload file-file yang disebutkan di bawah untuk di simpan di lokasi yang mudah dicari nantinya.

Untuk mendownload Flex SDK dan AIR SDK secara manual, silahkan download Flex SDK di sini dan AIR SDK di sini. Setelah mendownload kedua SDK tersebut, extract Flex SDK ke suatu tempat, lalu extract AIR SDK ke folder yang sama dengan hasil extraksi Flex SDK. Overwrite jika ditanya.

Untuk mendownload Flash debugger, silahkan di download di sini dan cari versi yang bertuliskan Project content debugger, download sesuai dengan OS yang anda pakai.

Sekarang buka FlashDevelop anda dan navigasi ke Tools > Program Settings lalu pilih AS3Context pada list disebelah kiri, setelah itu cari Installed Flex SDK, klik icon yang ada dikanannya untuk mengedit dan saat terbuka window baru klik path di bagian kanan dan ganti jadi path dimana anda mengekstrak Flex SDK tadi. Apabila path nya betul maka list dibawahnya akan otomatis berubah sesuai versi Flex dan AIR yang ada.

Masih pada menu Program Settings, pilih FlashViewer di list sebelah kiri, dan set path pada External Player Path ke lokasi dimana anda mendownload Flash debugger sebelumnya.

Sekarang FlashDevelop anda siap digunakan :)

Part 1.2 - Setup Flash IDE

Buka Tools > Program Settings apabila anda belum melakukannya dan pilih ASCompletion dari list di sebelah kiri, lalu ganti Path to Flash IDE ke lokasi dari Flash.exe dimana anda sudah menginstall software Adobe Flash.

Sekarang buat project baru untuk testing atau sebagai template anda dimasa depan nanti. Klik menu Project > New project, meski di situ ada pilihan untuk menggunakan Flash IDE Project, tapi kita akan memilih AS3 Project untuk template project kita. Flash IDE Project tidak dipilih karena itu hanya template kosong dengan settingan compile yang diarahkan ke Flash IDE, sedangkan kita menggunakan AS3 Project karena sudah disediakan folder-folder dan main class yang berguna untuk kita gunakan nantinya.

Jadi pilih AS3 Project dan beri nama kepada project ini melalui input box dibawah, silahkan apabila anda ingin memberi nama package, package berguna untuk menjadi folder dimana nanti code yang anda buat akan di simpan di dalam folder src. Jadi apabila package anda bernama reijubv, maka semua code actionscript yang dibuat nanti ditaruh di src/reijubv.

Pastikan checkbox Create directory for project tercentang agar project nantinya dibuatkan folder sendiri.

Setelah selesai akan muncul 3 folder utama yaitu bin, lib, dan src. Folder src adalah yang akan paling banyak kita gunakan nantinya.

Sekarang buka Adobe Flash milikmu dan buat project flash AS3 baru dengan memilih File > New > ActionScript 3.0. Set resolusi ke 640x480 dan frame rate 30. Sekarang langsung saja save dengan menekan Ctrl + S atau File > Save, dan simpan ke tempat dimana tadi project FlashDevelop-mu dibuat. Beri nama sama dengan project FlashDevelop-nya. Bila sudah, lihat window Properties, bila tidak ada, klik Window > Properties atau tekan Ctrl + F3. Klik Publish Settings dan pindah path dari output file ke folder bin yang ada di folder project kita agar lebih terorganisir. Klik OK bila sudah selesai.

Masih di window Properties, apabila menggunakan Flash CS5.5, klik icon wrench di sebelah kanan dropdown Script. Pindah ke tab Source, dan klik entry pertama pada list yang hanya berupa icon folder dan titik (.) lalu klik Browse to Path lalu browse ke folder src di dalam folder project kita. Cara lain adalah klik 2x entry pertama tersebut dan ketikkan saja ".\src" tanpa tanda kutip.

Cara kedua ini lebih baik karena apabila nanti project anda pindah ke folder lain tidak perlu melakukan setting lagi path untuk source. Setelah itu kembali ke window Properties pada box Class ketikkan "Main", tanpa tanda kutip. Apabila anda tadi sudah meng-set nama package saat membuat project FlashDevelop, maka ketiklah seperti ini : "namapackage.Main", pada tutorial ini karena nama package saya adalah "reijubv", maka saya masukkan "reijubv.Main".

Setelah selesai Save lah kembali.

Sekarang kembali ke FlashDevelop dan buka class Main yang ada di dalam package tadi, apabila anda menggunakan package. Sekarang ubah function init dari

  private function init(e:Event = null):void 
  {
   removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
   // entry point
  }

menjadi

  private function init(e:Event = null):void 
  {
   removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
   // entry point
   trace("project berhasil dijalankan!");
  }

setelah itu klik Project > Properties , ganti dropdown Compilation menjadi Other IDE dan di bagian Test Project ganti menjadi External Player.

Sekarang save lagi dan coba run project ini dari FlashDevelop. Apabila berhasil maka dari Flash IDE akan muncul window flash player dan pada window outputnya muncul tulisan "project berhasil dijalankan!".

Selamat, sekarang anda telah berhasil melakukan setup FlashDevelop agar bisa bekerja sama dengan Flash IDE !!.

Sekian part 1 dari tutorial ini, tunggu part selanjutnya dan mohon maaf jika ada kesalahan tulis :D

File akhir dari tutorial part 1 ini dapat di download di sini.

To Do :
Sekarang setelah mengikuti tutorial part 1 ini, ada beberapa hal yang mungkin berguna untuk anda lakukan, cari tahu, dan pelajari, diantaranya adalah :

Mengganti theme dari flashdevelop agar sesuai dengan yang anda sukai
Merubah resolusi dan warna background dari project flash kita melalui code (bukan dari IDE)

5 Reasons people can't blog, and tips

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:35:00 +0000

Hi everyone again, Laz is here. This time i'm not here for game development stuff. Last night i was insomniac that i thought about posting this stuff and today i managed to write a blog.

Taken from Outsmart!

Actually this is more about productivity, but more focused on writing or blogging. I also put some personal experience or story below as "study case". And once again, my English is not good yet not too bad for you to understand, but i hope you can pick something by reading and don't forget to comment and let me know what you think!

These are purely from my thoughts and opinion, and observation of lot of people's behavior, so mind you if i'm not accurate.
So why people are actually can't or "doesn't feel ease" to, hesitated much -edits- even they're actually wanted to blog?

1. Fail time management.

Problems: You love to write but have no time to even open a text editor. This occurs to many people including me. My daily routines are game developing, freelancing graphical arts, (a lot of) playing games, web developing (only this web) browsing and social media networking, composing music, body exercise, a little house chores. I don't work in office or anything have fixed time, so i should be having more freedom than others? Meh, i still struggled a lot. 24 hours won't be enough, i even have tried to be awake 36 hours to raise productivity. Did i succeed? NO, i get dumb and die faster instead. I have experimented on which hours are best for my productivity, that's between 4AM to 10AM, 7PM to 10 PM. Working half-asleep will lead to bad quality (i've done it very much so trust me).

So what now? Start to tidy up your schedule and raise your discipline level. Haha, i cannot say much about this problem, since i am also still fail at this.

Tips:

Make daily, weekly, monthly target to accomplish, have it visible.
Fail targets get corrected and moved.
Discipline, even in sleep time (it's hard to do though =_=a).
Play at playing time, work at work time, don't do both.

2. Hate English.

Problems:
For people who speaks non-native English this can be a big problem. We speak local language everyday and have no time exercising English, or maybe in some big country every information they need are available in local language without needing English, so they have no problem even if they don't understand English.

Not doing well in English can lead someone to confidence loss, but there are lot of people out there are still writing regardless how Engrish they are, but they persist because they want to share something important to others, this is FAR better than not trying at all.

I live in Indonesia and fortunately English has been taught to students ever since in kindegarten, but that's not the main point, my English skill improved a lot not by studying from school BUT playing video games, reading mangascans, chatting in MMO (massively multiplayer online) games, reading film's subtitles LOL, and last but not least is blogging exercise. Main point is : whether one needing or not needing English, then liking or hating English. The later one is your choice. For me is I need English so bad so i better like it.

I never say i myself good in English, but as long as i can communicate well, that's enough for me. XD but i won't stop to improve my English.

Tips:

Play games, watch movies (ofc with English language) and read all of the words carefully, look for words you don't know at dictionary (my favorite is this), or sometimes you find English proverbs or urban words, i usually used this.
Try to write a story or any writing (diary blog or such) in English, or translate some novel or writings you like to English, and let people read if they understand it, even better, ask if your phrasing is effective enough.
Go in English chats, get to know more people talking English, if you're that bad, some generous people (A.K.A. grammar nazi) might correct your spelling or phrasing, don't forget to say thanks. :P
Let others know that you need feedback about your English.
Even better, read books, articles about grammars, example sentences, etc.

3. Lack of confidence.

Problems: I think this is the most popular reason of the (potential) bloggers out there. I never really have problem on this though, thanks to all supporting people around me :). But i can think some of thoughts. Some people might think like, "Who am I to speak?", "I'm just ordinary human", "I don't have anything interesting in life to share.","Whatever I write, no one will care anyway, so why bother.". You need to overcome of these mind trashes, i found this everywhere: if you don't even interested in your writings, who else will?

Some people might even think "Hey this kind of information I want to write are not important at all, people wouldn't need it." Meh, sometimes what you think "not important" are so helpful to anyone else, just sometimes you don't notice how important is your knowledge.

This is also related to self-esteem, in past i don't have confidence to even talk to shop owners when i need to buy something in store, and my voice was weak, i was so afraid people don't like me or my works. But you know what, as i blog and write, express my interests (arts and other forms), my self-esteem grows without me noticing. You'll find it awesome, how people thankful of you, even makes you their inspiration, that's really enjoyable.

Tips:

Try to express your interest, chase your aspirations.
Share what other people don't, be helpful.
Write honestly from yourself, don't ever fake something up to look good or cool.
Read inspirational articles, you might come up with something you good at and share. (My writer inspiration was Steve Pavlina and elsevilla.)
Get out of your comfort zone, i never say this is always work, but if so, this raises your self-esteem.
Everything you do, write, NOTHING can satisfy ALL of the people in the world, there're always haters and likers, so don't bother too much that makes you unproductive.
Always welcome good critiques and feedbacks, expect to get trolled as you get popular.

4. Insecurity.

Problems: Privacy huh? You don't feel safe enough to post your writings, why?

I have a little of these problems myself, but i've been trying to overcome this and these are how do i deal with them.

Problem A: You're afraid people stealing your articles.
LOL, this is likely won't happen until you become an idol or something. Stealing is so bad and annoying, but they already paid for it, such as? Their self-esteem. Even people will adore them for their stolen works, but deep inside their mind, "It's not my work, and how I am supposed to let them keep believing me? If I posted something bad next, they'll be disappointed." This makes them even more stealing, or work hard to match people expectation toward him, the later one is kinda good actually, haha. Okay we're getting sidetracked lol, my point is: thieves won't advance as fast as the real one, they'll always be other's shadow, so what? Just focus at your own things.

Problem B: You're afraid people can know your inner too well from the way you write and express.
This might be another barrier for you to write freely. It's a choice though. For me, i don't care if people get to know me or not, if i have nice personality, some people might interested in myself or find me inspiring, that's a good thing, i might get fans. I have background at being a band member, i was looking at my favorite band's website, looking at their profile, biography and such, wow i want to be like them, haha. Those informations (likely trivial for ordinary people) are important for their fans (or they make it important because they 'brand' it) , as they want to know well who the hell you are. I think blogging is kind of the same, writing "too safe" is boring, like only share good news, formal things people share, formal style of writing, for me expressive and controversial blogs are more interesting to read, that's for me though. You choose what you like.

Problem C: You're not comfortable to share your private life as other's inspiration.
This is similar with B actually, honestly i have this problem but how to overcome this, first is to accept my condition, then build my courage to share so people won't fall into the same pit. You might think this is like "selling yourself like a slut". See it as different perspective; you're giving people important knowledge to learn, moreover if you're the only one having that experience in the world (or you're the only one brave enough to share). This is also your choice, you can still write anything non personal though, if you're not willing. :)

Problem D: You're being too critical (or even an a$$hole) to others that you're afraid people are being critical to you, or yourself are.
You reap what you sow. I think everyone have experienced this, let's say i complained on how your writing sucks, lacking this, that, or even swearing on that. Then i try to write an article, here comes the thought of myself about how should i write to not be sucks, lacking this, that, so not be sweared by anyone, those thoughts makes me hard to produce an even simple things. See my point? They're all backing to you. Mind that being an a$$hole is different from being a constructive critic, but remember, not everyone wants critique so don't judge or assume everyone will accept your good intentions.

In past i don't even want anyone to comment at my drawings nor writings, i felt something lack and i was progressing way to slow, i wonder why i was afraid of people's impressions toward my works... Then i realized i was cursing other's drawing and story, i even scribbled (SO BADLY) on their comic paper to make them ugly and made up the story of it (haha you can ask my cousin Yenie about that). What did i get from that? I couldn't make a single page of comic strip well, and i keep on wondering if this is already okay to let people look at, over and over. Some years later i realized i was totally jealous of the artist i cursed, and start to be open and publish my works at public, i get feedbacks, good, bad, and it was awesome and make me FAR more productive, and now i made funny of myself because i was being a fool haha. Sorry long story but i hope you get my points! XD

5. Too much expectation.

Problems:
This is related to number 4 a lot, maybe you're expecting to be good at first try, this not happened to blogging only, but other forms like game development, drawing, composing, etc. You expected your works will be adored and awe-ed by people, but you're afraid they won't. You're afraid no one will come or even reading your post. Then you're keeping the work yourself, and leading to another barrier for your productivity. Some people might handle this problem themselves, but some will bail or even give up without trying because of this MADE UP expectations.

Tips:

Start small, take a littler step is better than bigger but fail or nothing at all, you make progress little by little by lot of trial and errors.
Don't presume too much, stay positive, do your best.
Don't expect you'll get readers/ visitor instantly, but if you do, then awesome!

Okay thanks a lot for reading and visiting, i hope you find this useful, i've been writing this half day lol. i'll see you again next time!

~Laz out!

Grand Steam ~log02

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht fou) — Tue, 01 May 2012 12:06:00 +0000

Hey folks, guess what? Second log for Grand Steam project is here! At the first log we said that beta version will be there a month ago, and yeah it failed due to our PIXLE re-launching business, and some other things, our apologize for that.

Game development progress

I can't say much about how we have progressed so far, maybe half, or less, or li'l bit more from half, i dunno. We still need to decide which features need to be changed or added, because we gambled much things into this game, whether it will turned good or bad, we won't know until we try.

Sprites for hipon to grab and use.

We mashed up things into the project, our previous game inspirations, random ideas, 5~6 spreadsheets page filled with game parameters, formula and other things we never think of on our previous projects.

"WHAT effin' game are you guys developing actually?"
Haha, long story short, "arena hack and slash with strategical aspects, like, money management and character building". Still long huh? (well my Engrish is just that bad i can't find better phrasing). I wonder which genre i should put the game in when it's released O_o However, Fanfan (from MINTSPHERE circle) said it's STILL an action game anyway, lol, yeah right.

Now i'll cover about the core structure/ game flow, since the game is kinda experimental and more complex than our past games, i think sharing these (rather than making them secret) won't hurt anyone. Moreover you can get the idea when you play later without getting flooded with all the information at once.

Starting game

Actual screen capture from current Title Screen!

1. Character Creation
Huh? Yeah new player creates new profile and there is reset character button for certain replaying purposes.

2. Pick skill
Pick or learn a skill for starter, 1 of 3 options. In certain levels above you'll have to pick between 3 skill again (they're all different and no turning back, so pick carefully or you'll have to reset your character, muhoho).

Preparation phase/ Main menu

Current main menu screen, pardon the debug texts! I can't remove them myself lol

3. Skill shop (Upgrade)
An option to upgrade owned skill like a boss. With money of course. This upgrade is permanent even after you started a new character.

4. Rent weapon
WTF? Yes, renting, you're that poor you don't have your own weapon! This is the weapon you'll use per battle session (or we'll call this "Day" in future or something else), you'll have to pay the rent fee once you get back to the main menu. But hey, there is always a free (and sucked) weapon in case someone gets real broke!

Each weapon gets its special activated by reaching certain number of combos. We have total of 16 weapons currently available.

Rental menu

5. Select stage tier & Handicap
What is Tier? It's as simple as "Select Stage" but... No, this is different, each tier has its challenges set, higher the tier means more waves to clear.

What about Handicap? More handicap means higher crowd level on each wave, and of course selecting higher handicap gets you benefits.

6. Take challenge (Wager)
These are challenges i mentioned before, taking one of the challenge cost money, each challenge completion you'll get double amount of money you waged. Therefore this is why we called this as "wager" or "bet" too.

And finishing these challenges are your main mission to beat the game.

7. Go to battle already!
Yay we have reached there! Sorry but i'll blog about battles later. :P

What's that? Booing sound? XD

Below are article sections for battle so i won't forget what to write later.

Battle

Enemy Wave
Retreat & Result screen
Level up
Boss battle
Roulette (?)

Okay this concludes our second log of Grand Steam! Thanks for reading this long (and sucked) writings and see you next time! XD

~Laz out!