Then it becomes secrets, and no one knows secrets

Terry Dec 30, 2007 0 Comments

Thought I should make some sort of official deceleration that I’m scrapping one of my projects – Indie Brawl. My theory was that nobody at TIGSource really cared that I’d put it on the backburner given that there were so many other things going on over there, but that clearly isn’t the case. Someone brought it up again, and it’s obvious that there are a lot of people over there itching to get started at it. Seeing as I’m the bottleneck here, I asked if anybody else wanted to code it instead, and Alec Halowka (of Aquaria fame) volunteered. He’s even going to use the spiffy Aquaria engine as a framework, so we should see something playable relatively soon!

Honestly, as much as I liked the project, I’m glad to be rid of it. I didn’t really have the time I thought I’d have for it and I’ll have even less in the new year (more on that later). Plus, I was just feeling responsible for holding it back, which I hated.

Oh, I’m also shelving The Tower temporarily. I want to come back to it later to explore some graphical thing I’m doing, but basically, I’m starting fresh in the new year with none of my old projects around my neck. I think I’ve spent long enough experimenting. Time I did something a bit more ambitious, no?

Leon: “This is no ritual; it’s terrorism.”

Terry Dec 18, 2007 0 Comments

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve talked about any of my projects, so I thought it was time for an update.

Aside from the usual coding and all that, I’ve been busy with a business issue which I haven’t talked about here till now.

Essentially, I’ve been looking for funding to continue with what I’m doing next year. My local county enterprise board have turned me down, but there’s something else that I’m looking into which currently looks quite hopeful. Applying to both programmes meant putting together a proposal, which actually ended up taking a lot of work. Essentially, I wrote up a document talking about Independent Gaming as a business, showing that a market existed by demonstrating some success stories, and proving that I had the ability to make something that could compete. I thought it was pretty good, but the first group I showed it to didn’t – they weren’t able to support me because I’m not far enough along. Which I guess is fair enough; after all, I haven’t made a cent at this so far, and it looks like it could be a while before I do.

There’s a European National Development Plan funded course with some financial assistance that I’m going to apply to next, but failing that, my next action will probably be to apply for a loan. But that’s next year’s problem, I guess.

Now. As for my projects!

First of all, I haven’t abandoned Indie Brawl – I’ve just set it to one side. The engine driving it is basically finished – I just need to add enemy AI and any game specific stuff that we may end up needing in the future. Once these other things are out of the way, I’ll revive it. Anyway, there’s a ton of stuff happening on TIGSource at the moment, so I don’t think it’s really being missed.

Secondly, I’m also still working on my November contest entry to RPGDX (tentatively titled “The Tower”). Lots of things have been added (including a cool state based AI system and some stealth stuff). However, as I’ve expanded the project a bit I want to completely redo the graphics – and I’m afraid I don’t want to post any more about it till then. I’ve decided that it’s definitely worth developing, though.

Lastly, I’m working on a new project – a text adventure for TIGSource’s Text the Halls mini contest. Right now it’s kinda up in the air, and I don’t know if I’m going to see it through to the end. The big problem I have is that I can’t settle on a tone. At the moment it’s like it’s two games – on the one hand it’s quite a serious spy drama with lots of political intrigue, on the other it’s a ridiculously silly over-the-top secret agent story with Resident Evil 4 style dialogue and explosions every couple of steps.

I’m going to give a few days before I decide what I’m doing with it.

Cool, this thing has tags now

Terry Oct 28, 2007 2 Comments

If you visit the frontpage of the site from time to time, you might have already seen this: I’ve finally updated my Articles page. I realised that I’d had a note saying that I was going update it for over a year now, and it just seemed a bit silly.

Seeing as I’m writing for TIGSource and Indygamer Blogspot now (don’t sell the site Tim! 😥 ), I thought it might be nice to keep track of what I post there. Probably only interesting to me, really, but at least it gives me something to put on that criminally bare articles page. I also took a few random posts from the blog and called them “articles” for the hell of it. So now there’s lots of stuff on the articles page, heh.

[Edit: Furthermore: ARTICLES]

I’m not finished mucking about with the site. There’s some other stuff I’m looking into that I’ll post about in a few days once I’ve had a chance to think about it a bit.

Oh, I also updated to the latest version of WordPress. Apparently it has tags, but I’m not sure how to get them working.

Anyway, work on Indie Brawl is ongoing; right now it looks like a multiplayer version of Cave Story… 🙂 hmm… that’s not a bad idea actually…

More Concept Shots

Terry Oct 23, 2007 2 Comments

Some more concept shots from the as-yet-very-early-concept-stages indie brawl project:

Character Selection (with Naija, Quote, Akuji and the Death Worm): by Oracle

New Mockup (with N, Nikujin, Noitu Love and Victor): by Pita

Wow – this idea is starting to take off! Sorry I haven’t written much about it in the past few days. I keep getting distracted by other shiny things. Currently, I have five… no, sorry, six short projects that I’m thinking about. That’s a good thing. Probably.

OMG CAVE STORY RIP OFF

Terry Oct 16, 2007 4 Comments

Yeah, I’m sorry. With all the free time I have these days, I should really post more about what I’m doing. If nothing else it’ll keep me focused, heh. Anyway, it occurs to me that I haven’t actually explained what I’m doing these days on this blog. I’ve just posted some vague stuff about a platform engine. It’s about time I explained myself fully, I think.

I’m still looking for a job, and my search isn’t going all that well. I’ve been applying to shops, bars, and places like that that are advertising part time work. They’ve all smiled politely and taken my CV, but nobody’s contacted me as of yet. Maybe my CV puts them off a bit? I dunno. I’ve also been in contact with a office temp agency, which looked promising at first – but I haven’t heard from them in over a week.

This part time job thing is essential to my grand scheme – so from now on, I’m dedicating all my time during the day to finding one. There are a lot of places that I still haven’t applied to, that, to be honest, I was kind of avoiding. Tescos and McDonalds, and that sorta thing. I guess I shouldn’t be so picky. My savings won’t last forever, after all.

On the game development front, I’m more upbeat 🙂

Essentially, I decided that before I start working on a shareware title, I want to take a month to adjust to indie life. And instead of mucking around with engines and demos that don’t go anywhere, I want to finish a short game (something which I haven’t managed in the past five years now). I came up with an idea that I never got around to discussing on this blog, and started adapting my platform engine from the B-game contest to work for it.

That idea is decent enough, and I may come back to it at some point. For now though, something more interesting has caught my attention… (sorry, Josiah 🙁 )

That “project I’m thinking about getting involved with on the side” from the last post is generating quite a bit of interest over at the TIGSource forums, and I’ve basically decided that it’s more interesting than my kitschy platformer. So I’ve decided that instead of working on the platformer, I’m going to work on this. My first milestone is to have a little arena with Quote from Cave Story jumping about in it, and that’s practically done – check it out:

Once that’s done, I’m going to add another character that can shoot and make something that’s basically playable. Then I’ll start a proper thread on TIGSource about it. Wish me luck! 🙂

Yet another project

Terry Oct 12, 2007 4 Comments

A proper update is coming! I haven’t been progressing as fast as I’d hoped, and I want to get my engine to a certain point before I say anymore about this little platformer I’m working on.

In the meantime, here’s some “concept art” from another project I’m thinking about getting involved with on the side:

What’d’ya think? 😀 Working title for now is simply Indie Brawl. Check out this thread I posted about it over at TIGSource!

[edit: Higgens posted some more concept art in that thread to go with Pacian’s!]

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