Category: Game Development

I’m starting work on a new game, so will detail my progress through this blog

Twixel has been Greenlit!
It’s happened!

After almost 2 long gruelling years, Twixel is going to be made available on Steam!

While this is cause for celebration, it’s also a time for introspection.

I admit, I have not been a good developer. Given how lacklustre Twixel sold when it was released on PC, and again on iOS and Android, I kind of gave up on the idea, and started working on other prototypes. But here I am, a year later, realising I was a fool and regretting the fact that I should have continued to work on Twixel well past it’s release date. I knew it still had problems, and I had feedback others recommended. It was just easier I suppose to look forward to the next project rather than support the one that had already made it.

Thinking about it, and looking back, it seems that in not updating the game I actually done myself a disservice. All that time and effort working on the game, only for me to not follow through on it’s potential. Suffice to say, I will not be making that mistake twice.

The next couple of months are going to hard as I go back to Twixel and port it to Steam, but it’s going to be worth it. Having the game in front of a potential 125 million customers is a huge incentive, and one that should keep me going until I manage to get the game fully ported.

Once this has been done for Steam, I’m going to work hard and bring every improvement listed below back to mobiles, as I know there’s a few bugs on there too!

Until then, Thank you all for voting, and please see the list of things I’ll be working on bringing to the Steam release:
- Improve look of game (shaders across whole game)
- improved music reaction (obstacles will now bounce up along with level)
- Tweaked control system
- More obstacle variations to avoid
- Better procedural generation of obstacles
- Improved control scheme
- Changing of save file system (have since learnt how to serialise data, so will be putting that to good use!)
- 4 new songs added to hyper levels
- Improved GUI presentation
- Improved Scene Management/transition
- Full Xbox One/Xbox 360 controller support
- Steam Achievements and Cards
- New Achievements Pictures
- Steam Leaderboard integration
- Better Twixel Trailer (Once improvements are made!)
Thank you all once again, and I’ll keep you updated on my progress!

-Dan
24/07/2016

2015 New Years Resolutions: The Conclusion

So, with half the year officially over and done, I wanted to take a look at my new years resolutions and see how far I’ve come towards accomplishing them so far. Without further ado, the list below will be crossed out or numbered depending on how close I am to completing it:

~~Get a new job~~ – Success!

Success! I managed to get a new job (Product Specialist & Project Coordinator) with a nice pay rise 🙂 Hard work certainly pays off eventually.

~~Put Twixel on iOS & Android~~ – Success!

It took a while, and still has a few bugs, but Twixel was ported to iOS and Android! It was hard; having to work out how to fix performance issues was certainly hard, but helped me in tidying up my code for future updates.

~~Read 12 books~~ – Success!

I’ll list them all now:

Halo: The Flood

The Science of Interstellar

Halo: First Strike

Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

Service Games: The rise and fall of SEGA

Halo: Contact Harvest

Halo: Saints Testimony

Look Who’s Back

Console Wars

Halo: The Cole Protocol

Embed with Video Games

WTF is Wrong with gchartideo Games

Next year I’ll read twice as much, as I’ve gotten the reading bug now!

~~Watch 52 new films I’ve never seen before~~ – Success!

The Interview

Life of Pi

Men in Black 3

Capote

A million ways to die in the west

The Campaign

Gravity

The Watch

Cars 2

Due Date

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

The Double

Parker

The Fifth Estate

The Hunger Games: Mockingly Part 1

Argo

Horrible Bosses 2

Porco Rosso

Big Hero 6

Seeking a Friend for the end of the world

American Sniper

Birdman

From up on Poppy Hill

The Imitation Game

X-men: Days of Future Past

Pompeii

Identity Thief

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ruthless People

Divergent

Pitch Perfect

Book of Life

John Wick

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Wolf on wall Street

Grave of the Fireflies

Kung Fury

After Earth

Frank

Good Will Hunting

The Promotion

Jurassic World

Terms and Conditions May Apply

In the Loop

Whisper of the Heart

Chappie

Inside out

Antman

Paddington Bear

22 Jump Street

Before I go to sleep

The Theory of Everything

This was awesome, but a little too bloody easy to fulfil. I’ll need to do this in future, definitely next year, as it doesn’t take much to do at all. Everyone can bare to spend 2 hours a week watching a film they’ve never seen before.

~~Write 52 games reviews (Or could be worded: Complete 52 games)~~ – Success!

Forza Horizon 2

Battlefield 4

Kingdom Hearts 2

Ori and the Blind Forest

The Novelist

Hotline Miami 2

Race the Sun

Metal Gear Rising: revengence

The Unfinished Swan

Hektor

Life is Strange Episode 1

Game of Thrones Episode 1

Borderlands Episode 1

Peggle 2

Game of Thrones Episode 2

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The Deer God

Olli Olli 2

Monument Valley DLC

Sunset

Game of Thrones Episode 3

Borderlands Episode 2

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare

Convoy

Life is Strange Episode 2

Metrico

Not a Hero

Life is Strange Episode 3

Project CARS

The Silent Age

Catherine

Tachyon Project

Game of Thrones Episode 4

Titan Souls

DMC

Dragonborn DLC

Beyond Eyes

Life is Strange Episode 4

Rare Replay

Everybody’s gone to the Rapture

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition

Volume

Grow Home

Rocket League

Smash Bros for 3DS

Desert Golf

Super Toy Cars

Halo 5

Shadow Puppeteer

Life is Strange Episode 5

Mario Party: Island Tour

Poncho

Just as with the previous 3 years, I’ve managed to do it again! It was difficult this year considering how much other work I took on in my spare time, and the extra work load in my normal work day. But I will continue to do this, and document my journey as I manage to play through all my back catalogue and upcoming releases for Caesoose and VGChartz.com.

Make a second game for iOS + Android – Failed

Whilst I haven’t written about this game at all on twitter or here, I have been working on designing my second proper game. I don’t want to reveal too much just yet (I’ll write more in the following weeks), but the Design doc and background story is finished, with a very early prototype working on my phone already.

Write a novel – Failed

The cunning plan, to write the backstory for a game idea, never came to fruition. I may work on this next year, but I’m currently working on another game idea at the moment.

Do a Presentation at Event – Failed

I never managed to do a presentation this year. Weirdly, the second half of this year my mind hasn’t really been all here… I haven’t been as motivated as I have been in the past. Hopefully I’ll feel different once the new year comes round.

Attend 4 games conventions – Partial Success

Whilst I have only attended EGX Rezzed so far, I already have press passes to Develop in Brighton once again, and will be attending EGX in Birmingham this September. This only leaves one final event to attend, to which I’ll most probably attend one in Liverpool or Manchester towards the end of the year.

~~Attend E3~~ – Failed

This was more my own fault than anyone else’s. I managed to say to my team at VGChartz.com that I would like to attend the event, and proceeded to email the relevant team member with my details. Unfortunately, I never heard back from him, and so never chased it up. I should have pushed and asked more, but my thinking is that it’s not like I’m going to stop games writing anytime soon, so there’s always next year.

~~Visit Cardiff~~ – Success!

Managed to visit Cardiff after spending the weekend camping. My thinking was that I’ve been to (almost) every other UK city, yet had never visited Wales properly. Such a weird thing to technically still be in your country but see a completely different language everywhere.

~~Visit Dublin~~ – Success!

This was awesome! Dublin is gorgeous, and easily one of my favourite places (next to Edinburgh and Berlin).

Get a Second Tattoo – Failure

Whilst I have a few ideas, as with my last tattoo, I didn’t want to chose anything I wasn’t 100% sure on, so this is going to be postponed until next year.

I hope all of you managed to keep up with your New Years Resolutions! and here’s to a fantastic 2016!

Next week I’ll reveal next years resolutions, but in the meantime, have a fantastic new years eve party and get so wasted you forget about the things you missed out on!

-Dan

31/12/2015

Weekly Update: The Hell That is Steam Greenlight

After 5 days on Steam Greenlight, these are my stats so far. I’ve got a long way to go, and I feel my trailer certainly isn’t helping.

Hi all,

I do apologise, but I think for the first time in almost 2 years I am not going to be writing a review for this Friday (SHOCK HORROR!) due to the recent release of Twixel on Steam Greenlight. Because of this gargantuan undertaking I am putting myself through, I thought I’d share some thoughts and feels on the whole process, and what I hope to do from here.

So, on Sunday I done it, I pushed the button to share Twixel with the gaming community that is Steam. I had been considering doing this for a while, but was concerned about the state of some of my promotional material and whether the game was actually finished enough yet to apply for greenlight. In the end, I decided that the sooner I get my game shown to millions of potential customers the better.

Alas, as you can see from the picture at the top of this post, I may have made a mistake. My trailer for the game (which can be viewed below), was one quick draft to at least show each level and 1 obstacles in each level in both 2D and 3D perspective. As it currently stands, I feel this is my greatest downfall in all of my marketing material, with the trailer making the game out to be really simple and all symmetrical. This isn’t the case, as I’ve spent the last few weeks working hard on over 50 new obstacles that will be completely random on both sides of the screen to push players to the max when it comes to difficulty.

In the coming weeks I really need to redo this trailer, as it really doesn’t represent the game well.

Since the launch of the Greenlight campaign I decided it was time to release a beta of the game, one that could be played by many testers so that I could get as much feedback as possible on what they felt were the shortcomings. I’ve given the game out to 30 people so far, and out of those 30 I’ve had a fantastic response of…. 6. Whilst this isn’t amazing, I’ve had some great comments from those testers, with 2 of them asking for in-game volume controls (which I’ve now implemented), as well as highlighting many bugs on the obstacles themselves (some weren’t aligned correctly causing “glitches” to appear in the level). I also asked these testers what would be the price they feel would suit the game, with the average price so far sitting at £2.99, exactly the price I was looking for. Needless to say, I’ll continue sending out test builds of my game to these testers, and will take their feedback seriously so that I can make the best game I possibly can.

I call Steam Greenlight hell because no one ever warned me of the amount of arseholes on the internet. Not only does my no votes continue to increase at a worrying pace compared to my yeses, but some people decide to go out of the way to put you down for even working on something. I’ve had some commentators say things like “congrats you learned how to put cubes and squares on a screen thumbs down”, or “This took 10 months of development? Are you kidding me?”. Whilst harsh, they don’t compare to one person making a group of games called “The trash of Greenlight” where he’ll sort through the trash of greenlight so you don’t have to. In every instance of these comments I think the end commentator forgets that there’s a person behind this project, someone who is currently doing this all in his spare time whilst also working a 9-5 job and writing reviews at GamrReview. It hurts, but I’ve also had a lot of positive comments, so I must push through and ignore the haters. how can I improve this and hopefully get less haters? The trailer needs to be redone so badly, I feel it’s the thing people watch and then instantly judge the game on.

Over the coming days, and hopefully by the end of this weekend I should have a second test of the game available, one that will actually increase the speed of the stage on harder levels, as well as adding 3 additional levels for randomisation (rather than the obstacles appearing all in the same stages, so one stage can be seen as a practice stage and another the real test of skill).

Thanks for keeping updated with Twixel!

Dan

31/10/2014
Latest Build of Project Dandelion (play in fullscreen recommended)

[unity src=”1239″]

Hi all!

Over the next few days/ week I’ll be working on making sure my player doesn’t go off screen (still a bug I haven’t fixed yet) and also adding enemies and pollen to collect (for points).

Once the above is done, the game will be complete in a simple state, and will just require to be polished on top. Polishing will require remaking the menu’s using my own art style rather than the built in unity code, making stages other than open field and forest, and making lots of animations for the player.

I plan to have this game finished and released before Christmas, and will continue to support it afterwards with updates that improve functionality. (such as online leaderboards rather than local high scores.)

Either way, enjoy the latest build!

15/10/2013
Its Been a While…..

This image was taken from my iPhone, that’s why the text and buttons are so small.

It’s been a while since I updated my Game Development section, so I thought I’d post my latest build:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55177814/project%20dandelion%20site.html

I’ve now made a main menu, which will be updated to be more polished when the game is complete and done. I’ve also added a score system, which isn’t currently saved, but will be in due time.

Let me know what you think and by all means give feedback. This is very early, and I’ll soon be adding enemies and items for you to collect and get more score with, so keep coming back for more builds.

03/10/2013
What I spend my Saturday doing.

This is my main player. It’s I’m pretty pleased with it and feel it could really start to make my game look more professional.

So today I spent the whole day watching The Wire (A fantastic TV show from HBO) whilst also working on my main playable character. The screenshot above is the outcome, which I’m quite pleased with. It’s now just a case of working it into my project, which will require me learning how to properly export the player so that my character collides with the world like before (Previous attempts at importing objects always led to physics and rigidbodies not properly being implemented).

24/08/2013
Help and Advice from Reddit
This is a screenshot from my iPhone running iOS 7. The game can run forever and is indeed a endless runner.

So the other day I asked the great community of Reddit for help and advice on where I should go next in terms of optimisation for my current project; Project Dandelion.

If you want to try the current build, click the link below and install the Unity web player:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55177814/project%20dandelion.html

I do apologise on the quality of the current build. There are 2 different types of level to be generated, one with trees and one a open field, but due to the frequency of the instantiating, it may take you a while to see both levels. Everything also needs to be tweaked, so try not to hit the booster too many times. The one great thing about this build though is that most of the core mechanics are there and working, they just need to be tweaked and expanded upon, so bare with me as I continue to progress in the making of this game.

So just to explain whats currently going on in the scene:
- I have a player (the cylinder) that constantly moves forward in the world and consistently moves down using gravity. The players model rotates left and right when the player moves left or right. I at first was only going to play an animation making the player rotate, but this wouldn’t rotate the model, and would screw up any collision detection made by the player.
- When a player collides with the white boxes, the gravity variable is increased to 20, meaning the player moves up 20 metres. This very quickly runs back down to -0.5 as the update function is called every frame, and every frame the gravity is made sure to be pushed back down to -0.5. These are all variables that can be adjusted in the future to make sure the feel of my game is spot on. (The white blocks are randomly generated across the scene, and are generated 3 metres below the player so that in the 3 seconds it takes to reach one, the player has descended that amount to hit them.)
- In order for the world to generate, I have a separate gameObject that rushes off ahead of the player and generates the level piece by piece. This was fine in testing, but as I incorporate better 3d models in the future, I worry the performance of the game will be affected due to too much being rendered at once.
It was the last point I was worried about and decided to ask the question to fellow redactors about whether I was heading in the right direction or not.

The overwhelming feedback was that I should keep the player stationary, and instead get the level itself to move backwards to give the illusion of moving forwards. Now I had this idea a while back, but decided it was silly and would be too taxing on the system, but something clicked in my mind when most people agreed this is what I should be doing: By having my objects forever instantiate at a certain distance away from the player, I would only ever have to worry about 4-5 objects max, meaning no need to worry about performance!

I’m currently in the process of making this work, but I’m certainly glad I reached out to the community for this feedback, it’s fantastic and hopefully is a step in the right direction for my game.
03/08/2013
One of my biggest strides in a long time

So I’ve been working on my game today, and I haven’t made any progress in a while, until today that is.

I’ve finally been able to make my level randomly generated. I mean it’s rudimentary at the moment, and looks like crap, BUT it’s just a case of art assets not being up to scratch. In theory the logic behind the level generation works and is perfect for what I need.

I currently only have 2 levels to choose from, a open field and a forest. My game object travels at a set pace in front of the player, and generates content far enough ahead that the world looks like one continuos level. Once this content is used and goes off screen, it is destroyed and frees up space in the ram.

Next I’m going to work on getting the physics of my player set up. Currently the player can travel anywhere they want, I need to change this and just allow them to move left and right, not up and down. The game ends when they touch the ground or a obstacle.

27/07/2013
Shadows!

As you may or may not be aware, I’m using Unity to make my current project as I have experience with the platform from my university dissertation and it’s very easy and fast to get a working prototype up and running. It’s always been my thinking that once I get to a certain point in my game, I would pay for the pro version of Unity, to allow my game to take on a fidelity level similar to that of a PS3 or 360. It seems that’s no longer the case! With unity 4.2, they’ve included hard shadows for free! Take a look:

SHADOWSSSSS!!!!!

This is fantastic, and allows for my game to finally start taking shape. Every day that I work on it, I get a little bit closer to what I want to produce. It’s amazing.

23/07/2013
Screenshot Monday

So I’ve decided to show people what my game can do so far and what I’ve implemented, so here it is:

Here’s project dandelion working on my iPad mini. The timer works well, and accelerometer is ok, but needs a bit of tweaking.

The only problem I’ve ran into so far is working with the iPads accelerometer. When the app first loads up, it grabs the iPads current accelerometer speed on the y-axis, and subtracts that from all further movements. This works fine for allowing the user to keep the iPad in the initial orientation they had, but means moving down on the y-axis is very slow, as it has less room to choose from. This should be fixed soon.

16/07/2013
Gaming Tutorials

It’s not much, but it’s something

So recently I’ve been working on gaming tutorials to get me back into game programming, which has been great. My recent project is below, it’s a space invaders clone, where you use z to fire and the directional buttons to move left and right.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55177814/SpaceInvader.html

It’s not much, but it’s definitely helping me find my way again when it comes to game development.

19/06/2013
How Thomas Was Alone has changed my thinking on platformers and emotion in games.

Thomas was alone is a strange strange game that I’m falling in love with in a weird and wonderful way. Its a game about some programming errors (represented as squares and rectangles) that each have their own personalities, and are trying to find their way through this strange and confusing world. Each character has his/her own opinions on the others, and each have their own motives. It’s really quite crazy how much Mike Bithell has made me care about a mere set of squares and rectangles. He stripes away all of the pretty graphics, and shows that in order to care for a character you need a story/personality, not fancy art.

This has really changed my mindset in regards to my own game, and has got me in turmoil at the moment as to what I want my game to look like. I mean, you don’t need a gorgeously realistic character to feel empathy for a character, you just need a good backstory, and a good distinctive personality for the player to relate. It’s amazing how I remember each of the shapes names, but genuinely can’t recall anyones name from something like Game of Thrones.

I’ll post more in the coming weeks of character design, and let my imagination go wild. I want to take all my gaming habits into consideration for this project, and everything I’ve ever read, so here’s to hoping I come up with something pretty original.

07/05/2013
The problems with game mechanics

Hi all,

So recently I’ve been thinking more about the structure of my game, and considering whether I want levels in the traditional sense (Like Mario, or most other platformers in the world.) or whether I want one linear long journey (similar to limbo).

Thinking about this comes up with a lot of problems most people wouldn’t dream of when considering how a game is made. I want my game to feel like the player has gone on a journey, that they’ve accomplished something, and I feel breaking the game down into levels would destroy that feeling as there’d be chunks of the journey the player never experienced. There are also disadvantages to having one long, continuous journey though; players can get very bored very quickly, especially if there isn’t much difference in the scenes.

My idea for ending the levels was that Jacob would have to board a train in the future dimension, which would carry his journey along. That’s where I came up with the snag that the player would miss out on a lot of land.

I discussed this with my friends, and one suggested I still break the game up with end of levels, but I do so in a intelligent way e.g. Jacob comes across an abandoned camp site where he can then sleep the night before transitioning to the next level. I like this idea a lot, as it means I can make levels separate and independently of one another, but can still keep a journey going, allowing players to feel like they’ve accomplished something.

This is definitely the way I want to go forwards with the game, I just now need to start thinking about level design, and actually implementing these levels.

23/04/2013
The ideas behind project TimeShift

Hi guys and gals! Hope everyone is all good and fine. I decided I should explore my concept more, and give it a proper working title, so that’s it! Project TimeShift! (working title)

The project name gives a lot of the game away, but I hope to still keep quite a few secrets to keep the game fun and new for most people. If you don’t want any spoilers in this game, then I suggest you stop reading, as I’m going to be revealing a lot of the plot devices about project TimeShift.

Firstly, I’ve named the main character Jacob McCarthy. He’s an 11 year old boy who’s being evacuated from London during World War 2 (much to his dismay). The year is 1940, and the Nazi’s have invaded and conquered France, so Britain initiates its second evacuation.

Jacob comes under the care of an old, abusive man called Jack Prophet, where he has to work on his farm. Slaving day and night, and being hit at every opportunity, Jacob wants and needs to get away, no matter what the cost.

Eventually, Jacob will stumble across a portal, which’ll teleport him to another time (The future) where the world is burnt and baron. After finding a device that allows him to teleport to a time period he’s previously visited, Jacob sets off on a adventure to get back to his mum in London, hoping that she’s alright along the way.

The game will play with these time shifting abilities to mess with the player, making sure that they explore every time period before finishing a level. Some puzzles could include a canyon that can’t be crossed until Jacob plants a tree in the past, allows it to grow in the present, and die in the future to become a bridge. All these mechanics will feed into each other, and allow the player to explore all time periods whilst also gaining information about the world Jacob inhabits if they so wish.

I want this game to be subtle, so I’m trying to be intelligent about all the decisions I have to make in design. For example the main menu. I don’t want to hold the players hand all the way through, or be so blatant about the controls that I stick a diagram up, I want to player to unconsciously learn the controls/mechanics just by playing. So the main menu will be a platformer (like the rest of the game) and selecting a option (like new game) will make Jacob teleport, telling the player that the button they just pressed makes Jacob teleport. It’s a clever way to portray the controls, without making the player feel like a 2 year old.

I’ll update more on this in the coming days, I’m finally starting to get some concrete ideas that are definitely sticking, and would like the world to know. Any comments then please let me know, any feedback is welcome 🙂

14/04/2013
Expansion

I felt I needed to expand on my idea I put forward to other day, as I didn’t really put across any of the specifics of this project. (mainly because I don’t have specifics yet, just a bunch of ideas!)

But here are some pics of what I have planned so far:

The initial ideas of my platformer

So my initial idea was to switch between realities so that the world changed, and maybe the physics was different (so the character could jump further/higher). I liked this idea, so decided on 3 different worlds that you chose between; Normal, Future, and 3D. (Which for the moment, don’t have any different physics, but this may change in due time.)

My thinking was that you could come across stumbling blocks in one dimension, that would be solved by jumping to another dimension. An example of which I’ve provided below:

Here, a player jumps between dimensions to get past obstacles

In this example, the character needs to get to the other end of the level, but the gap between the platforms is too large, so they switch to the 3D dimension and rotate the camera, enabling them to see a hidden switch, like the example below:

The switch to 3D camera allows the player to find things that wouldn’t usually be seen

Using this switch, the player then extracts a drawbridge, which allows the character to continue across the level, until they reach a new gap that has no switches and is impossible to jump across. The player then switches to the last dimension, the future, where everything is destroyed and desolate. Here, a tree has fallen in place of the gap, and allows the player to advance. Finally, in this example, the player can only advance in the normal dimension, since debris and a black hole are blocking the paths in the future and 3D dimensions. The player then finishes the level.

Although these are very simple examples, I feel that using this game mechanic can present a lot of challenges to a player, and give my game a unique twist on the platforming genre.

I’ll update more over the coming days.

21/03/2013