Hectic at Work, Postponement Definite

To say that work has been crazy lately would be a gross understatement. Due to this craziness I'll officially be pushing back my 1GAM game from February to March. This is ultimately going to be a great thing. I've already brought someone else on board to help take some of the visual asset creation off my hands. This brings my team to three people. Me, a person on music and sound, and a person now sharing the art load. I've already rewrote the schedule. Initially, I had it organized as a conventional schedule with everything arranged based on dates. Now I changed it to be more goal oriented. It now lists milestones. As soon as we complete a milestone we move on to the next. They still have due dates but I feel like they can be more flexible with this sort of scheduling flow. Anyway, I'm on my lunch break and it's coming to an end. I'll be updating all throughout March until I submit this game.

Screenshots and Art

Here's the screenshot I promised the other day. As you can see the persepctive of the isometrics has been changed, the player sprite is in and walking... down (only down animates for now), and the enemies have code in that allows them to fire oblong bullets in the correct direction.

Things like walls, health bar, ground tiles, etc are much easier to make but I'm having time issues with the player sprite and soon the enemy sprite. I plan on finishing the player today and the enemies this week. Weekend 4 will be for menu art and other static art. Hopefully week 4 will be polish. The closer I get to the deadline the more I think I should definitely push it back to March. The art is taking much longer than anticipated and things have been getting crazy at work. Really crazy. I'll keep anyone reading apprised of my schedule as the deadline approaches. Anyway, here's the walk animation for walking down and the idles for each direction of the player (the second sprite still has my palette on it).

Lots of Changes

Right now I'm at work on my lunch break. I was going to make this post last night but I instead decided to get some sleep before work the next day. Anyway, I've made some progress and a bunch of changes. I also fear that I won't want to submit at the end of the month.
First things first, the changes. The perspective I was using, the "top left" lean of the sprites, was too difficult for me and my limited spriting experience to handle. So I changed the perspective to traditional isometrics used in a lot of old school rpgs. It makes spriting less of a headache which is extremely important because of the amount of time it's taking to make the sprites.
I don't usually make games that require a lot of spriting mostly because of the time factor. In a weekend long game jam it's near impossible to code and sprite an entire game all by my lonesome. This time I figured I had a month. Well, I was supposed to do all the basic spriting this week but it's Friday and I barely have the player done. It's also because it's been hectic at work but whatever the reasoning behind me being behind schedule the fact remains. I am behind schedule.
Last night I was contemplating pushing the game back another month or two. To me this seems like the only course of action available to me in order to complete a good 'first level.' I still believe that a month or two more may be the best option but I'm going to continue as if I'm releasing at the end of the month. I thought this past week was week 3 but it was in fact week 2. This is important for a few reasons. Firstly, I have more time to catch up to my schedule. Secondly, I'm only halfway through and if I had an actual level designed it would be a playable game. Finally, I don't feel as pressed for time if I am going to submit the most basic version of this game.
I don't wanna submit the most basic version. With a little effort and maybe one months more time I can create enough assets and features that from there I could just build levels. I could work on actual cut scenes and/or dialogue. It wouldn't have to be a bare bones run and gun game but can include the roleplaying elements I wanted to include such as skill trees, inventory, hacking (maybe mini games), true menus, and all the polish.
This game is in a state not unlike Schrodinger's cat. It is going to be done at the end of the month and it's not going to be done at the end of the month. I'll upload screen shots when I get home from work. Time to eat :)

No TAG, More Progress

I decided not to participate in The Arbitrary Game Jam and instead use this weekend to complete more work on my 1GAM game. Here are some things I've accomplished since my last update.

• bullets are now created at the center of the hit box and not in the top left corner (the origin point)
• enemies and the player now have health. Enemies still die to one shot but this framework will allow me to build other tougher enemies on top of it.
• the health of the player is displayed in the upper left hand corner of the view
• enemies now spawn by flying saucer

Before the weekend is out I hope to get the saucers coming from random locations, make it so the enemies can't spawn in walls, add in player death and a game over screen, and randomize certain variables in the enemy AI in order to give them a more 'organic' feel. What I mean is that if I randomize their speed (within a range of say, 2-3) then the enemies won't all move at precisely the same speed. I can also randomize how long they'll give chase, how far outside the view they have to stray before they're destroyed, their site range, how often they shoot, etc. This way the enemies won't be 100% predictable.
Finally, this upcoming week I'll be doing almost exclusively art work. As always I'll start with the basics and then do the more extravagant stuff after I have the bare minimum done.
Anyway, here's a screenshot.

To TAG or Not To TAG

In about 7 hours The Arbitrary Game Jam #7 begins. I'm currently in the middle of my One Game A Month project and don't know if I should participate in TAG this weekend. I still have a bunch to do to meet this week's milestones for 1GAM and so I feel I can either do both and my 1GAM game can suffer or I can ignore TAG #7 and have an even better game for 1GAM. I'm flipping it over in my head but I think I might not participate in TAG #7 this weekend. I'll let you all know in 7 hours.

Simple Artificial Intelligence is Complicated

So for this week I've been working on adding enemies with AI that die when you shoot them and that sort of hunt the player and shoot at him/her. So far it's been really difficult. In previous games I've only really made enemies chase the player (Rainbow Waves) and enemies that have followed a predetermined path (Gene Pool Defense). This time around I wanted enemies that would do a little more/appear slightly more intelligent. However, my inexperience programming AI and my tight deadline really forced me to think about making the enemy AI very very simple. Well, I've been programming since my last update and have finally got my enemies moving around and performing their actions.

They...

• move randomly when not in range of the player
• move in one of the four cardinal directions towards the player when they're in range
• turn around if they hit a wall
• shoot  in the direction they're facing just before they choose a new direction if the player is within range
• are destroyed if they leave the designated area (slightly larger than the screen)
• are destroyed upon contact with player bullets

Just getting them to do all of that was a huge challenge for me that I'm glad to say I overcame. Before the end of the day tomorrow I'd like to give them health, give the player health, make it so that if they touch or shoot the player then the player's health goes down, make it so that if they touch the player the player bounces off of them and is invincible for a second or two, make them spawn, make them spawn by having saucers fly in and spawning them, and finally I'd like to randomize a lot of their variables within a range to give them a more organic feel. Even though that list is pretty long I don't think I'll have a problem with it. The framework for most of it has been laid out. In fact, the framework for this game is nearly laid out. I'm pretty excited. Here's a screenshot of an enemy firing a bullet in my general direction.

Mo Monday Mo Progress

Today we had state of emergency conditions in NJ and I had to drive to traffic court in them. What should've been a 45 minute drive was over 2 hours long. The reason I mention this is because by the time I arrived home again I felt I had wasted most of the day. This made me sit down and get some work done. Here's what I got going today.

• created enemies that pick a random direction upon creation
• pseudo-coded my basic enemy AI
• added shooting (shot times, bullet speeds, bullets destroyed when they collide with walls or go too far out of view)
• I added a white dot to my player sprite in order to indicate which direction it's facing
• The sprite changes based on which direction it's facing
• took out all hard coded numbers and replaced with variables

I think that's a pretty good list for a few hours work. Tomorrow I aim to have the enemies die when they're hit with bullets and maybe even health for the player. I'd like to fit enemy AI in as well but I have work tomorrow and straight after I'm meeting with a potential team member that will take care of all the audio for this game. I'll end this post with some screenshots demonstrating that depth works, the player's ability to shoot, and the bullets being removed upon wall collisions.

First Weekend and First Milestones

So this weekend I decided I wanted to take part in the One Game A Month challenge. I enjoy participating in game jams and I wanted something a little more long term. February as it so happens is a short month, kind of a stepping stone between weekend long jams and month long jams. Sure, it's heavily weighted to one end but it's still somewhere between. Anyway, during this month I'm going to make a game.
I've had this idea kicking around for a while, a game that's much like one of my favorites, Zombies Ate My Neighbors. It's an isometric run and gun on the SNES that featured tons of B movie horror villains and lots of fun game play. This game, working title Space Invaders Horror, will also be an isometric run and gun although I plan on putting in some roleplaying elements as well. I would like a more robust story than "save your neighbors from various creatures" among other things such as an inventory of some kind (health, keys, weapons, tools, etc) and  a couple of skill trees (exploration, hacking, and combat).
The story I have so far in my truncated design doc is as follows...

A group of energy aliens travel back in time to when you were a young nerd really into science fiction in order to kill you before you discover their weakness. You start as a suburban nerd in the midst of an alien invasion. When the invasion starts you salvage a power glove type device from an alien android that allows you to hack on a level you never dreamed of before. With this new found hacking ability you learn to fight, hack even better, and move around faster and more efficiently. The aliens drive you into the forest where you discover a top secret facility. Once through the facility you discover Albert Einstein in cryo stasis whom you decide to wake up. He becomes a home base talking head. He’ll talk to you throughout the rest of the game as you travel to visit the president, save the celebrity hottie, and ultimately unite the world in order to bring down the mothership.

Now, a few things. During this game a month challenge I might only get the first level done. In fact, that's what I'm shooting for, a polished first level. However, upon finishing my design doc I discovered that taking an idea you've had for a while and turning it into a game is super difficult. It's like a baby that I've been nursing  for a year or so that when it comes right down to it I'm gonna have to cut features from. It's easier to cut features from a traditional jam game as I'm making it on the fly but this isn't an ordinary jam game. I'm seriously hoping this first level turns out great. If it does, who knows, maybe I'll keep building a level each month.
This past weekend has been pretty productive for me especially since I've been a little under the weather. I managed to get a little isometric block running around other little isometric blocks in Game Maker (my favorite jam engine). This is the first time I'm making an isometric game so it felt pretty good that I've got one of the core mechanics ('run' from run and gun) already working. I had some depth issues but I managed to figure it out. After I got the block running around I turned to design work. I figured that since this wasn't a 48 hour jam but rather a month long jam I'd need a guiding force to keep me on task. I actually sat down and thought some things through. I wrote down a concept, a story summary, a game play summary, a control scheme, some notes on art style, an asset list, and finally a general schedule (week 4 is polish).
Well, that's it for weekend 1. As always there will be minor updates throughout with more significant ones posted after significant progress. I might consider writing a postmortem after this but I don't find them to be that helpful. I'll be posting again soon.