Doki Games Current State

About the games on Doki Games

Since the "conception" of the site I wanted  to have quality over quantity,  I had to play hundreds of games to pick the +-50 that I have right now.  I  think that I forgot just how many bad flash games are out there :S. Just that experience will help me a lot when taking criticism for my own games :p.

Anyway most of the games are from mochi media, that is mainly  because the parser that I made  only works with mochi games (right now...more sources to come). I also added some other games "by hand" that I know are great :) like Bubble Tanks Tower  Defense  O__O I REALLY LOVE that GAME!.

I noticed that the update rate of the mochi streams is kind of slow...so I'll be adding lot's of "custom" games in the near future :) and I'll try to add some more sources to my parser too.

About the development process

I'm using Server Groove to host the portal, and I think that it's the best hosting for my current needs :) THE BEST. If anyone needs quality PHP web hosting I would recommend Server Groove.  Besides the hosting, I think that I managed to make the site very fast, the website was done in less that a month, that in itself is a proof that I'm not the same developer...I might be a little better now :p

The small development time also could be explained by my launching approach....right now instead of launching a "complete" site I'm just launching a minimum viable product.The current Doki Games has just enough  features to be launched :S NO MORE. It doesn't even have game pagination...but it  doesn't need all that right now :). In a few weeks I'll be launching Doki Games 1.1 with some features to improve 1.0.

Why is Doki Games better than Juegos.com.sv

Wow...this post is really getting larger that expected...I'll try to be brief from now on...why exactly  is doki games better than juegos.com.sv? well....let me see....

1. The upload process is faster. I even made a program that helps me to review and upload games :) do you want to see it? here is it:
   

   The game info appears in the terminal...I'm lazy I know...

   I  made the uploader in C# and Mono, BTW the uploader is also a minimum viable product :p I'll upgrade the uploader along with the main site :)

2. Also :s I  know now what to expect about the development of a flash portal. Back when I started juegos.com.sv I expected huge loads of traffic by the first week....now at least I know that I have to wait 2-3 monts  to START seeing some results...and maybe even a year to start making profits. Also learned  that SEO takes time (lots of time) to work, but it works :) that's for  sure :) So My goal for this year is only to cover the hosting costs =).
3. Now I actually have a "marketing" plan for the site :) even if the plan very weak...is still better that my previous plan...which could be resumed as "hoping for the best"
4. I have a clear idea of what the style of doki games will be, and I'm designing the site and content to support that style :) If later I need to create some more portals (oh God...please don't :p) to incorporate more styles...I would be able to.
5. I made the site  from scratch using a PHP framework  as a base :). Since I know all the source code of the site I'll be able to modify it with ease ;)
6. Finally...all the plans that I had for juegos.com.sv will be used now in doki games :D :D ;)

The road ahead

What can we expect for the next versions of doki games?. I will be continuously adding small stuff like ratings,play counts, social buttons, etc, but the main updates will be related to the number of games in the site. My main concern is creating a site where you can easily browse and discover quality games. You will notice that right now the layout of the site is really simple, that is due to the lack of games.

I'll be adding  games to the site and when I have "too much" games for the current layout I'll change it to a more  fitting one :) that will be the process. I can't go crazy with features right now since all of the "big" features require a healthy amount of games.

That's all folks :p

In my last post I mentioned that most of the logic of the Pokemon maps is tile based instead of continuum. This is exactly why is so easy to use "look ahead points" to manage the collisions instead of going for a "pixel perfect" approach. I basically started doing this:

Instead of checking the whole avatar to see if it's colliding with some "solid tile" I just check the pink points n_n. Also I don't always check the four points. I just check the ones that are relevant to the direction of the player.

Later I noticed that having only one point per direction could lead to some wacky collisions don't being recognized...>_<. So I added two more relevant points.

And It was perfect ^_^...there is still room for improvement though. Here is a short list of things that COULD be done, but I wont now. (I'll probably do them in my first "complete" RPG)

• I think that the middle collision point isn't THAT useful now that I have 3 per side. It could be removed. But It must be tested
• Also, I noticed some bumps with the camera system when the player is colliding with a solid tile. Right now the camera want to ALWAYS have the avatar sprite at it's center.
  I could try to add a "smooth" value. So that the camera only moves when the player is actually moving.

That's all for now...the next iteration will focus on animated tiles. I don't really know how many iterations will take to finish the system...BUT there are only have 7 main features left :D so it MAY be 7-10 iterations :)

I'll just post the video...then I'll talk about something "interesting" that I noticed while programming.

So, logically I'm using Pokemon Fire Red as a "model" of the map system. Usually when I'm programming/designing something I play Pokemon and try to "reverse-engineer" the logic of the game and use that as a base for my own system.

After I finished the movement of the avatar I noticed that I couldn't exactly reproduce the "Pokemon movement". I basically walked over pallet town for about 15 minutes just trying to figure why. Want to know why? after the break n_O.

I noticed that the movement of the Pokemon games isn't continuum as I thought. Is tile based and just gives the Illusion of continuity like the Pacman games do.

The movement goes from tile to tile instead of from pixel to pixel as I thought

When I noticed that I started to check several RPGs just to realize that all of them have tile-to-tile movement which isn't what I have done this iteration. I kept testing games until I found a classic game that has the same movement as my system....drums please:

HELL YEAH! The Legend of Zelda!

Aaaaaaaand....that's all. I hope to write next week about the next iteration, which will involve (as said earlier) collision detection and some obstacles. :)

You see what I did here?. If you do you are awesome ;)

Even though right now I'm on the verge of launching my first flash game, my "global" plan involves launching A LOT more. Obviously I'm thinking about getting some kind of sponsorship for my games. But being as much of a perfectionist as I am, I really don't think that my first games will be "sponsorship worthy"...so, right now sponsorship is not an option.

<nerd parenthesis>
Surely you don't know about this, but one of my favorite games of all time is Starcraft, right now I'm a Zerg Starcraft 2 player (HELL yeah! zerg rush kekeke). Starcraft is a strategy game (you don't say o_O) and a lot of the initial game plan relies on building structures. 

Usually it's important to try to make your build order in a way that every building helps you to accomplish something specific, and IF a building helps you to accomplish more than one thing you will surely get an advantage over your opponent.
</nerd parenthesis>

With the "starcraft 2 build order strategy" in mind I begun to ask myself  "What can I do with this flash game so that launching the game helps me to accomplish MORE than just launching a simple flash game".

It's clear that I'm not the  first one to think that it is a valid strategy to create a flash portal (even with the monsters that are out there like kongregate) and that coupling your flash portal with flash games is a great strategy. And just like that...my flash arcade idea was born. BUT! am I doing this JUST because there are two random guys over the internet doing the same?....well maybe...I mean NO U_U. I'm different, keep reading to know why ;)
I actually HAVE experience creating and running a "mildly successful" flash portal. After templo de zelda I started making some other sites (although not with as much "love" as with templo de zelda...but that a story  for another time), one of them was a flash portal called juegos.com.sv  (yep, the portal was in spanish), here is a pic :

That was juegos.com.sv in all it's glory :D

To tell you the truth I would still be working in juegos.com.sv....U_U but I had a ""problem"" with the """""co-owner"""" of the site and we (mostly I) decided to shut the site down. But it was a really  good site, it generated enough money to pay the hosting bills AND also to buy a few Gamecube games now and then . Also I really had BIG plans for the site.

The site started as nothing more than a generic arcade script (AV Arcade I think) but after a few months I wanted to do some things than weren't supported by the script and I decided to "dive" into the code (After all that's what I'm a programmer right ;) not just the chicks n_O) and I ended with a custom made (by myself for myself) site.

I worked in juegos.com.sv more than 2 years and that was 2 years ago (give  or take). I am REALLY a better developer now than I was back then. Making "again" a flash portal really didn't seem a daunting task to me. I already have some experience and  I already have plans and ideas that I could (and will) use.

To sum it up (finally...right?), why I'm making a flash portal?

1. I will earn (at least a little) more money by launching flash games and having a portal to back them up rather than just launching flash games.
2. I can use the portal later to promote my flash games or to test them (with the help of my kind visitors :))
3. It really isn't something extremely hard for me to do. In fact the "first release" is almost done.
4. It's really  fun :D I love programming, I love flash, I love games :D I love flash games :D

Aaaand, that's it. Surprised by the long post? Well now that some of my projects are ready to be released I can start writing more. I'll be writing regularly from now on. At least until all my projects are again in a "top secret" phase. :D

I'm making a Flash Game Portal O__O

And I want to launch the flash game portal alongside the flash game :)...so....I won't be giving away too much information right now. I'll explain my reasoning behind this later. But don't despair :D, right now the portal is around 50% done ;).  Soon you'll be seeing it.

Finally, the RPG System. Since SFML doesn't have a class that can be used for animations. I created one from scratch. The class is complete right now :). And I'll start the next iteration next week :). Well....that's all for now :). I'll explain the reasoning behind the flash portal later :).

Since I had to start again from scratch... and  also since I wasn't feeling comfortable using Mappy to make the tilemaps. I decided to make a new map using Tiled and some Pokemon FireRed tilesets. I made the whole map in about an hour (counting the time taken to find/download the tiles and install tiled).The map is  really simple right now, but I'll be adding more details as I continue to work on the system. Here you have:

Then I wrote a simple C++/SFML program to explore this iteration requeriment : "Player can move in the map". To load my map I used a loader made by Quinns. I highly recommend the loader, it really is very easy to use and to extend :). I even made a few changes of my own.

The actual code isn't really that complex, it just deals with the scrolling of the map, and the player movement.Even though I can't say that the credit is 100% mine,some of the ideas an the "theory" of my code are from 8bitRocket's book.

Unfortunately since I'm doing the new system with C++ I can't just "embed" it. I'll leave a short video instead :).

(Sorry for the video quality...or should I say lack of video quality...it is my first screen recording...I'll try to improve that in the next video.)For the long awaited iteration 5 I'm going to animate the player's avatar, stay tuned :).

Ok it's time to write about what happened with the development the RPG System...I think that this will be a long (really long) post. Let's by reviewing the objectives of the system:

• Gain experience with Role Playing Games design and implementation
• Make the engine good enough to be used as the foundation of "complete" games

By the Fourth iteration I really started to notice some things:

1. I was doing a lot of work that really wasn't helping to achieve my goals. I spent maybe a week worth of work just making the overworld map. I learned nothing by doing that...just spent time in something that I'll never use again.
2. A lot of work on the RPG System isn't really "RPG related", menus and transitions really are "generic" and could be used in ANY game.
3. A lot of the things in the RPG System aren't really "game programming related", the "core" of the system is actually an information system...and information systems is what I have been studying for a long time...so I really wasn't having problems thinking about how to make the "core" of the system.
4. I realized that I was actually doing my LAST semester in the university....the moment of truth is really close. And by moment of truth I mean the moment where I will start trying to make a living out of videogame development...that is actually a scary moment :S and a scary thought.
5. I was actually coding BY HAND lots (really lots) of things that I could easily let libraries handle.
6. By doing a lot of "busywork" on the system I was actually delaying the true making of my first RPG.

Mainly because of point number 3 I decided to start testing the waters by doing some small flash games. Not too long after that I noticed that I was really learning a lot more by developing the small flash game that by working on the system.

It is clear that the RPG system wasn't helping me to achieve my goals...so...what will I do to fix that?

I actually have a plan (don't we always have one :p). The good news is that all the work done in the analysis and design phase will be used. I'll just make the next changes to the implementation of the system:

1 -- I'll move from Haxe to C++

I started tho system in Haxe to be able to re-use some of my code in my next projects. Sadly I've found out that developing in haxe is way more cumbersome that actionscript3/C++. I even think that I'll save more time writing my code in C++ and then re-writing my code  IF I have to. Also :S since I won't be programming anything for the university next year...the RPG system is the only project that I have right now where I can use C++. And I really love C++ :S...:S :S :S

I really have almost no code written in Haxe right now...so this is a perfect time to make the language switch.

2 -- I'll move the scope of the system from "complete game" to "spike"

Since lot's of the code that makes a "complete game" won't help me to achieve my goal, I'll just code the parts of the system that I really don't know how to do. everything else can wait or will be explored in my flash games. I'll make 3 sub-systems:

The Map System

The Battle System

The "battle map" system or "chess" system

I think that all of the systems are self explanatory...except maybe the "chess" system. Basically that will be the starting poin for  the development of a strategy rpg, think tactics ogre or fire emblem

3 -- I'll just do what's necessary for my objectives, nothing else!

That means that maybe a lot things will be pretty "raw", mostly the input, the menus and all the graphics. Again I'm trying to make this as useful as possible by coding just the things that are needed to complete  my main objectives.

4 -- Whenever possible I'll use libraries instead of coding everything by hand

This doesn't means that I'll let the libraries handle all my work. The things that I want to learn and explore with the system will me coded entirely by me!

And...........that's all :) I hope to I've already the map sub-system so I'll be posting more on that soon :D really soon :D ;)

Back to game programming :)

So my last post was more than two months ago,that is a long time...:(. I haven't checked the stats of the blog but I'm pretty sure that I have 0.0000 traffic right now...well THAT IS ABOUT TO CHANGE. I have some news :D

• My last semester is over :). Starting today I'll focus almost entirely on game development for a very long time ;).  Next year I'll just have to do my thesis to finally have my degree (Computer Science btw). I'm hoping that the thesis won't be as time consuming as last semester (Last semester really wasn't that time consuming by itself...I just happened to be working part time...and that is one of the main reasons that this blog was forgotten)
• About the flash game I'm making:  The game is really almost the same as two months ago. I think that I'll be able to finish the beta version of the game in two or three weeks. After the game is done I'll post here a full fledged "post mortem".
• About the RPG System games...actually A LOT of things happened. I'm making huge changes in the approach of the RPG System. I'll write a complete post with the state of the RPG System soon :)

I think that's all :)

• First of all...university is taking way more time of my life than I initially expected...that is mostly because I'm working part time as an "assistant teacher" (I may be using a non-related name...but I really don't know the proper one...maybe instructor X_X). Some days I don't have time to work on anything interesting (;)).It really is a shame that I can't work on my projects as much as I would like but right now I'm satisfied with my work. Now considering the last point please read the next ones:
• The core gameplay of the flash game is ready :). If we think that a game is like...a hamburger you could say that I have the meat ready :). Now I just need to do...everything else -_-.  In order to test and debug the game I've started to ask friends to play the game and to give me "honest" opinions. If you are a friend of mine you can expect to see the game soon.
  

  I just have the meat O_O

  I'm planning to complete the game by December, but I really don't know  when I'll be "launching" the game. That depends on the progress of a third project that I started yesterday. I don't want to have false hopes about all this but I think that saying that "the (game + secret project 2) combo will be ready by the end of this year" is fine.

• About the RPG system...the fourth iteration is really complex (at least comparing it to the previous ones). I managed to complete a small spike of the iteration. Right Now I can display a fraction of the map onscreen. I'm working on being able to move through the map. I'll post a quick screenshot of the spike but don't get over-exited, right now It looks...boring. I really need more time :(.
  

So...that's all I'll come soon with more updates :)

One of the hidden motives  that I have with this whole "flash projects" is to learn to create and manage a "game development team". So far it...has been a nightmare. I currently have two unfinished games "on hold" just because the designers that started the game can't/won't work, so far the main reason behind this kind of thing is the "lack of time" of the designers.

Being a college student myself I can understand that kind of thing.  I think that this rather than being about that graphic designers doesn't have time, is about "commitment"...allow me to explain myself ;)

Thinking about making games is fun....thinking about game ideas is...fuuuun. I think that most people that "want to get in the industry" are more in love with the idea of "making games" than the actual process of making a game. A process that is less like playing a game...and more like....how should I say this....ohh right...WORKING.

I won't work with anyone else without (at least) some kind of  experience making games. Actually for my next projects I'll go with freelancers.

But...I'm still working on a flash game right now O__O who is making the graphics?. That my friends will remain a mistery for now...Although I think that I gave enough clues in this post X_X