July Resolution

Phew! I’ve posted a lot of little games lately! These past couple of weeks have been a lot of fun – it’s exactly what I needed after the last few months. I feel re-energised!

It’s been kinda depressing, really: in February and March, I worked on Big Hero, then around the time I moved to Cambridge I worked an exploration game that I appear not to have bothered posting about, then I spent all of May working on a Negative Capability game, and then spent a lot of June on another RPG. One project after another, not working out. Probably serves me right for trying to make two RPGs.

As a result I haven’t finished anything remotely ambitious in ages, and I want to change that. I want to start fresh this month. So today I did something rather dramatic! I took all of the folders in one particular directory on my computer, and moved them into another one. The first folder is called current games. The second is called abandoned games.

Basically, I’ve abandoned all my current projects. I won’t be finishing up any more of the minigames from TIGJam, and probably won’t be coming back to Big Hero or any of that other stuff anytime soon either. I’m moving on to something new!

My new game is something for TIGSource’s Game by its cover challenge, and I haven’t really much to say about it yet except that I’ve chosen that cover above for it. Right now it’s kind of a jumble, but I’ve been working on it for the last few days and I’m hoping to have a clearer idea of where it’s going by this weekend!

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New Years Resolution

With VVVVVV’s release imminent, this blog is probably going to be all VVVVVV, all the time for a while. So I thought I’d take this chance to write about something else – 2010! I have no idea right now what I’m going to be able to do this year – a LOT rests on how VVVVVV gets on. But I’m feeling optimistic right now that things will work out – at least well enough to allow me to keep making games for another couple of months 🙂

I’ve actually known for months what I’d like to work on this year, if I’m able: Petri Purho and Gregory Weir and several other designers keep a monthly release schedule, and it seems like a lot of fun! I wanna try it! This year, I’m going to try making a new game each month.

I make no guarantees that I’ll be able to do this, and I’m not putting any real rules or restrictions around it – my “March” game may not necessarily be finished in March, for example, but I will at least attempt to keep moving onto new projects each month.

So, first question – what’s my January game? I haven’t a clue yet! My focus is going to be on finishing and releasing VVVVVV for a while, so I haven’t given it that much thought. However, I’m going to TIGJam UK2 on the 14th, so I’m hoping something grows out of that. Chances are I’ll be doing something pretty simple this month.

As for the rest of the year – well, I already have a pretty good idea what some of them are going to be…


Some more ambitious shooters

I tend to make shooters when I’m taking a break from more serious projects; they’re usually short weekend things for me (like Bullet Time, pictured above), which is a good timeframe for this sort of thing. There’s something about constructing a set of shooter mechanics that I really enjoy – it’s very different from the way I usually approach level design.

I don’t feel like I’ve really explored this interest of mine very much at all, so this year I’ll probably make several shooters.


Detonate

This prototype’s been knocking around for ages now (since the end of 2008), so I’m hoping to find a month to finally finish it up sometime early this year.


Big Hero

This was one of my favourite unfinished games from last year! I started this just after VVVVVV, and since at the time I was thinking about VVVVVV as a smaller project I thought I’d leave it until that was finished. I’m still hoping to come back to it as soon as I can, possibly as my February project.

I probably didn’t really get far enough with the prototype to demonstrate why I like this one so much, but I’m really quite keen to develop it further.


A Puzzle Game

I LOVE designing puzzles. I am totally making a puzzle game this year.

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VVVVVV at Eurogamer Expo 2009

BIG news – at the end of October, I’ll be at this year’s Eurogamer Expo in London with VVVVVV. If you’re planning to go, come say hi! VVVVVV’s part of the event’s “Indie Games Arcade” along with a bunch of other cool games.

It’s on the 30th and 31st of October at Old Billingsgate, just off London Bridge. Find out more here. (the event’s also in Leeds for two days, but unfortunately I can’t make that venue)

VVVVVV is pretty much done at this point, but it might be a while before I’m ready to call it “finished”. It’s very important to me that the game gels together properly. I don’t want to rush it!

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Coming Soon: A VVVVVV Trailer

I’ve been working on making a short trailer for VVVVVV, which, in all likelyhood, I’ll be posting tomorrow! In anticipation, here are some VVVVVV videos you may have missed:

First up, Tim. W’s very early preview footage of the prototype from back in June. It’s super mysterious and doesn’t spoil anything 🙂

Next up: Bytejacker had a quick look at the same preview on their June 18th episode. Anthony mentioned that it would probably be finished in “a couple of weeks”. “lol”

Finally, Increpare has something he would like to discuss with you:

Watch this space.

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Progress!

Papervision is a software mode 3D library for Flash, an environment which doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being very fast – so I’m pretty impressed with just how much this library seems to be able to do without hitting any slowdown!

I made a new prototype! Arrow or WASD controls, all it is is a 3D plane with random cubes and pillar models strewn about.

Tempting and all as it is, I probably won’t be making anything with this anytime soon, though. 3D in general is still very new to me, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff I’d need to learn how to do before I could make anything. I have a couple of ideas, but nothing I’m ready to start working on…

The next thing I’ll probably do is finish up Detonate, which has been sorta half finished for months. Will have more details very soon!

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What… is that?

Yikes, ok, so that’s not exactly a pretty screenshot, but it represents a milestone! For the last little while I’ve been idly reading up on and mucking about with a cool Flash library called Papervision3D, and I’ve only now finally got it doing something worthwhile – i.e. embedding and displaying a textured 3D object!

In a little while I’m going to start back into my next biggish project (which I’ll write a little about soon). In the meantime, though, I feel like applying this new knowledge to some small throwaway thing…

(Oh, also – decided to try out Twitter.)

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Way more than just regular disappointment

Extreme Disappointment is Josiah Tobin‘s third album as Swimfail, and his best yet 🙂 Josiah did the soundtrack for Squish just a few weeks ago; if you liked the music in that, you’ll love this.

Here’s a quick example of what to expect – the opening track “Kid”, for me one of the most memorable songs on the album:

Kid:

You can download the whole thing for free here. Or buy a copy here if you wanna support him! 🙂

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