Andy's Game Dev

I'm just an aspiring indie game dev, posting some stuff as motivation to finish it!

[andygamedev]

After a couple of weeks of hard and boring back-end set up, the game now understands the concept of taking a turn, and interacting with objects for selection purposes. Definitely not the coolest bit of progress, but the biggest bit of framework is set up.

This means I can start actually implementing interesting things like damage, combat maths and interesting effects.

[andygamedev]

I’m here!

So, it’s been a while, eh? I dunno if anyone on here is still around to read this but looking back on this blog, a lot has happened. In the last however many years, I managed to snag myself a job in the games industry! Not quite building games, but coding backend services for them. Still!

This does mean I’ve been practicing and had my fair share of projects since then. I might go through them one day if there’s interest.

However, I did come back to show what I’m working on at the moment.

What started out as this at the beginning of the project...

...is now looking something like this.

I’m currently in the process of building a bit of UI and to actually allow you to control this little thing. But overall think of a cross between an SRPG like Fire Emblem and a classic RPG like Pokémon.

Any questions?

[iodinosaur]

I think my menu system is channelling Crash Bandicoot a bit too much…

[andygamedev]

Meet my first character!

[andygamedev]

Hi everyone!

It’s been a long time, eh? This is actually a completely different project than the one previously mentioned on this blog (but to be fair it has been like 3 years).

This is the start of a turn based racing game! I’m excited to see where it goes.

[andygamedev]

I'm getting moderately okay at 3D modelling now. It seems that practice really does make a person better at things!

This is a ramp for the secret project. Fairly low poly, since I'm new and I don't really want to overwhelm anyone's computers. Plus it doesn't really need to be too detailed! 

Its a shame the shadows are a little bit weird.

[andygamedev]

I had my last exam yesterday, which means I'm finally free to get back to work on the SUPER SECRET PROJECT. 

It pains me so much to not be able to tell you what it is, but it has quite a lot of potential I feel, and a lot can and will change due to the nature of it. I can't even hint at it!

So today I've been working on my 3D modelling and my texturing. I'm not sure if my method is the best way at all, since I had to self-teach that, but hopefully it works okay and doesn't fuck too much up if I get it wrong!

[neilmakesgames]

If lowrezjam wasn’t enough, there’s going to be a lowpolyjam in August.

[andygamedev]

I'm seriously considering giving this a go! It's at a nice time after exams and I can do low poly models much better than high poly. I wonder what I should make.

[andygamedev]

Again, I wanted to apologise for the lack of content here over the past month or so. As everyone knows, it's kicking into exam season at University so there's no time for making games really. I have to revise making games, but making a game to do that would be a little too focused I feel. 

What is strange is that one of the exams is on a deprecated engine, XNA. Luckily it's not too tough but it's pretty useless considering how it's no longer used. Also why would anyone want to use that when Unity exists?

Anyway! The point is that I'm sorry for not being around and I hope to get back to game dev and posting here soon.

[andygamedev]

While not exactly game development, I had to do an assignment involving AI and agency. All the practice with Ma made writing this very very fast, and I'm glad for that. A fun assignment indeed that taught me a fair amount about AI and how small little bugs can affect a lot in a randomised environment. 

I'd say it's good for all game devs to take a break sometimes and do a small and unrelated project such as this. It really lets you feel how much you've learnt from doing the large projects and also teaches you some more to be used in it!

[andygamedev]

I really wish I could talk about the next project after Ma. 

However, it's 3D, and me and my friend aren't really the best artists. He's more of a programmer than me so I'm having to learn to model and stuff. Here's some practice and it also serves as a nice mystery picture!

[andygamedev]

So it's been a busy couple of weeks, but sadly none of it (bar about and hour) was actual game development. First of all I had to do that project day and show my game to people from business and lecturers from the uni. Sadly there wasn't too much interest (most of them weren't games people), though some of the other students that played it loved it. One even came back with a friend so they could play together! Since then I've simply been working on the 10 000 word report on the project. 8k is already done so I'm getting there! What was the game dev I hear you ask? It was simply making a model for the first post uni project. Needless to say I'm very excited but can't really afford to announce anything yet, sadly. A clue however, kart racer.

[andygamedev]

So I have to give a massive presentation / tech demo of my final year project tomorrow to people from industry. Sadly only one person is actually from the games industry and the rest are just from IT, but I'm still nervous. 

This was the first slide I've prepared for a powerpoint that I'll probably mainly only use if the internet goes down at Uni. However, it looks good enough that I could reuse it as a title screen. Have buttons on the left and right staircase things for Host Game and Join Game. 

Plus my friend complimented me on it so I'm posting it here as something to show off. 

[andygamedev]

I picked up RPG Maker on Steam earlier this week when it went on sale. While I don't even intend on making anything remotely interesting in it, I did play around for a while and made a spritesheet for my character, Sixteen. 

Of course that's ignoring that I should have been working on Ma at the time, but no one cares about that, right?

[andygamedev]

Two player is officially a thing! (I think it's possible for the white player to kill themselves accidentally but whatever, we can fix that later, right?)

[andygamedev]

Since progress on Ma has been slow recently due to a lack of motivation, I’ve been wondering what to post. Then it occurred to me, you guys don’t even know what Ma is at this point!

Ma is a competitive 2D platformer, inspired by games like Awesomenauts but also Minecraft and other such dig-em-ups. There are two players, a white character who finds black surfaces as empty and white as solid. The other character is the opposite, meaning they can’t interact directly.

They can dig with explosives and explosive weapons, to expand their playable area. In order to kill the opponent, you simply need to flip the area they are stood in, though death is only a temporary state. In order to win the game, you must disable the opponents respawn point, by converting some of it to your colour. This prevents respawns and therefore crowns you the winner!

Simple, right?

[andygamedev]

So this is Ma so far!

Not a lot, I admit, but it's finally starting to feel like it should now.