The Official Bounty Runner Blog

Bounty Runner is a fast paced action packed retro-esque style Bullet Hell indie game that will challenge even the most hardened gamers. Take on the role as either bounty hunter Ark or Fridan and chase down the strongest and worst of criminals, but be ready, you will be outnumbered and outgunned at every corner. Download at: http://dragon-walker.itch.io/bounty-runner

[bountyrunner-blog]

Ok, someone with more experience tell me, what in the name of gosh darn frikkin’ heck does this solution work? I have spent waaaay to many hours just to figure out that the only thing I had to do was to tick a box for 3D (Not my first thought when I am making a 2D game) just to make v_vTexcoord give me the value range I expect.

Obviously I have a lot more to learn about shaders than it seems. At the very least I can move on to gameplay mechanics for now.

[bountyrunner-blog]

Got drawing multiple layers to work! Was a lot more straightforward than I thought. Now navigating the map makes a lot more sense. There are a few kinks left to work out, such as the head clipping through walls since it is not part of the hitbox (The green square). This is an issue I will deal with later, as I have not settled on what the protagonist will even look like (Though I am certain I do not want it to be humanoid).

I have also just started to learn how to make my own shaders, and there is a lot of room for exploration in that field. For instance, in the picture you can see a work-in-progress see-through shader. Still glitchy though. I have also a prototype heat-distortion shader working. Might be a good idea to study shaders now early on, as I want to make a game world that feels alien/otherwordly and they can certainly help with that.

I have also studied a bit about how to  use drawing surfaces, but ended up not using it for now. That knowledge might come in handy later on though.

[bountyrunner-blog]

A long overdue update!

Remember me saying that collision detection was working? Hoo boy was I wrong. Once I changed the size of the hitbox (Which was tiny) I realized that my collision detection was busted on so many levels that it was not even funny. I have thus spent a lot of time making it scalable for different hitbox sizes, making sure it works between different height layers, testing specific scenarios to avoid clipping through walls, etc. This of course included editing the “sliding of cliffs” code (The white dotted trail in the picture). Sliding into a crater with no way out was especially troublesome, since that could result in either a soft lock, massive shaking or something completely illogical like always flying of to the right. In the end, in such situation the player simply bounces in place, making it possible to move out of the situation. While I should not design that kind of terrain when making maps, it feels safer to have code in place in case I mess up.

...And apparently I had forgot to actually have any air time when falling, so I hit the ground instantly. After experimenting with many different and increasingly complex solution, I ended up cheating and forced the player to do a tiny jump, since jumping already works. Plus, it solves the issue of having a visual  cue. It could use maybe some polish, but otherwise it should be fine.

And finally, you can go in under a plateau if there is a hollow space under, and hit your head into the ceiling if you jump.

Next thing to fix: All layers are drawn in the background, behind the player. This makes it confusing to navigate to say the least.

[bountyrunner-blog]

So, after spending two or so weeks settling in in Japan I finally got back to working on the game. Feels like I am making good progress. Since last time I have added:

Support for rendering and handling multiple height layers. The green area on the picture represents a plateau above everything else. To reach it one must make a high jump. Otherwise one collides with the green area.

Actually working collision detection. Walking into a wall makes you stop, jumping on a slope (In this case the “frame” around the green plateau) one will slide of the surface, the system takes into account what layer you are standing one, etc.

Some graphical cues to help the player navigate a 3D space with a top down perspective. For instance, a shadow that grows/shrink depending on the distance to the ground, and a jumping arc that shows how you the jump is progressing. This turned out to be more difficult to do than I thought, due to geometric and perspective shenanigans.

In short, adding a simple jump in a top down game with multiple height layers adds quite a few programming challenges. But hey, now I can do puzzles with verticality.

[bountyrunner-blog]

Short update!

Finally decided I was tired of studying Japanese all day long, so I set aside some time for the game project. I got the map parser to work, so I can now import maps made in Tiled directly into the game, as seen in the image above. I have also added simple controls such as walking, running, crude jumping and VERY crude collision detection.

And oh, those tiles are borrowed assets from my previous game used for testing purpose. Subject to change.

[bountyrunner-blog]

Devlog: Ideas on what to do with the engine

I have been brainstorming these past few days various different types of games I want to do with the engine I am building, which has so far mostly focused on building terrains/maps that have highly interactive environment in a top-down perspective. It is quite an interesting approach, first build some main features and the see what kind of game you can make out of it. I mainly got three competing ideas at the moment.

Combat-oriented:

A game that focuses mostly on fighting strong enemies and bosses, using the terrain to one’s advantage to dodge attacks, attack from higher ground, electrocute enemies standing in bodies of water, destroying terrain to limit footing, etc. A focus would be to create one or several play styles that leads to interesting combat choices, when to fight at distance/up close, when to use stat-boosters, special/heavy attacks, when exploit the terrain, and in general make cathartic combat that flows well and feels not too repetitive. This approach is heavily inspired by games such as the Monster Hunter series.

Pure exploration:

A game that focuses on exploring and interacting with a world, changing it as one progresses with powers one finds along the way. For instance, one could use water-based powers to douse fires, fill holes so one could swim across, etc. This not allows for puzzle solving, but also a way for the player to directly affect the game environment, which would be a driving force of the game. For instance, one could over the course of a dungeon revitalize a desert into a lush oasis through solving the puzzles in the desert dungeon. In short, explore every corner of the world and directly affect it to improve it. This approach is heavily inspired by the game Terranigma, and also titles such as The Story of Thor (Aka Beyond Oasis) and a little by the Zelda series.

Top-down Metroidvania:

A mix of both the previous approaches. Use the game engine and the interactive terrain for both combat and exploration. This one is the loosest defined and is very much a work in progress. There are ideas of making enemy encounters pretty tough, for instance by borrowing bullet hell elements from my previous title (Or heck, just set the game in the Bounty Runner universe!). Furthermore, the player could be a glass cannon, powerful and fast, but very frail. Thus, one would have to explore the areas to find equipment, special ammo and tools to tip the scale. The terrain could be used to set traps and get the drop on the enemy, kind of in a predatory stealthy way. And of course, one could use brute force and gaming prowess to get through. Alternatively, one could try to explore and find alternative ways to reach the goal, for instance by breaking walls or solving puzzles using skills acquired over the course of the game. While all ideas are rather ambitious, especially for a single dev, this one seems like the most demanding by far.

Most likely I would need to do scaled down prototypes of the ideas, test them out and see what is the most promising. In the meanwhile, if you have any thoughts or questions about these ideas, I would love to hear. I know, not a lot to work on, but this post is already becoming a huge wall of text. I can always try to clarify if anyone wants to.

[bountyrunner-blog]

Devlog: Started working on a prototype

Decided to start doing some coding today so I got motivated to actually work on the project and just not dream about it. Found the program “Tiled” that I could use to create game maps with, speeding up my plans with several weeks, maybe even months if I had decided to make my own map editor. The output is very easy to work with, and I also managed to make a crude game engine that can take some map data and render it properly on screen. All I need now is a way to convert Tiled’s output to something that my game can use. Should be trivial, so soon I might start working on some collision detection and tile properties.

Long story short, looking good so far. Hopefully I can get some images up in no more than a week.

[bountyrunner-blog]

Devlog: Writing design documents

Started writing down some ideas and goals for my next project that I have had in my head for quite a while. It is especially challenging to trim all the fat and non-essential features so I can get a working prototype ASAP. Considering what I want to do in the end is a really big endeavour, I would like to be able to test if the basic concept is realizable and any interesting to play before dedicating several months to complete it.

[bountyrunner-blog]

Thinking about returning to indie game development

So a little over a year ago, I released Bounty Runner to the public which was a great milestone in my life, even if the game never really took off. That is really only my real regret with that game, as I felt I did not do an adequate job promoting it.

After I finished Bounty Runner, I decided to put all my focus on college. I was starting my fifth year at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, I had quite a handful of leftover courses, I was sick of studying and just wanted to finish the whole darn thing and never enter a classroom once more in my life. Game development had to wait.

Last Thursday, I did my final remaining exam, and given that I passed it (my gut feelings says I did), I will have a bachelor degree and be halfway to a master’s degree. I have also secured a final year in Japan where I will study some language courses and write my master’s thesis. I passed more courses this past year than what I would normally study, instead of being left with a leftover or two as I have in the past. Years of anxiety and stress are finally being put to rest.

Now I finally feel like it is time to return to making games. I have neither coded a hobby project, designed anything (Unless you count Super Mario Maker) nor done any sprite work in quite a while, so I have probably rusted quite a bit. I got about month before I go abroad, so I can probably whip together a prototype of some of my ideas. I also want to do something about my one regret for Bounty Runner and try my hand at reaching an audience once more. If anyone has any good tips or want to help, I would be very grateful.

Once in Japan, I plan to find some group or club that dabbles with game development. Make some new friends, practice the language, learn to work in a team. I probably will bring this blog back to life, maybe rename it to better fit my next project, and so on. Be a little more active.

Well, this text certainly got longer and more rambling than I intended, but it felt necessary to tell what has been going on behind the scenes while I was gone. Feels good to be back!

Also, shout out to all who supported me for the past year, especially my girlfriend!

[bountyrunner-blog]

Bounty Runner free download at IndieGameStand

Bounty Runner is a fast paced action packed retro-esque style 2D Shoot 'Em Up/Bullet Hell indie game that will challenge even the most hardened gamers. Take on the role as either bounty hunter Ark or Fridan and chase down the strongest and worst of criminals, but be ready, you will be outnumbered and outgunned at every corner. Features: 4 difficulty levels and 6 stages Plenty of innovative and challenging boss battles Colorful pixel art Multiple different subweapons to select from for each run You can cut down robots with a sword while on a surfboard

Bounty Runner is now available for free on IndieGameStand, so feel free to grab a copy if you haven’t already!

[yrys-mikoni]

So I’ve been drawing today. First from the left is Miku append. The rest is Indestructible from the game Bounty runner.

[tacopizzacats]

Trying to Create a Game While Juggling Depression

It’s HARRRRRRD. You have to change your mind state on a daily basis.

As some of you may know I have CRIPPLING anxiety as well as depression. (Clinically diagnosed)

Some days, or should I say at the beginning I’ll be super amped up, and after the first week, I’ll start feeling like none of my games will ever be successful. My past failures will haunt me, along with my inability to find a career propelling position in the field, and I’ll start thinking that it’s because everyone realizes i’m inept and I’m the only delusional person who keeps trying to pointlessly chase my dream.

Some days I get defeated. It is a part of the process I think. When you face fear and potential disappointment in ways I think it allows you to keep your vision realistic and critical.

Some days, if I’m not having a good day, I’ll convince myself to finish a single sprite- and remind myself that any progress is good progress. I don’t put limits on myself, nor do I put deadlines. Creating the game I want should be made at the pace I want.

People encourage me to and that always helps. It might sound silly to you, but that one stranger that donated $1 to my Patreon was enough to make me feel like I should finish the fuck out of my game :D

[indiegamestand]

Steam Key Resellers are Assholes: New Stolen Key database for Developers

This is a follow-up to my previous article about How Steam Key Reselling Killing the Little Guys.  I posted that Article on Monday, March 7th and it should be no surprise to anyone that thieves and scammers are predictably vindictive.  Here’s a look at our Cloudflare Threat Management from Monday March 7th into Tuesday March 8th:

Does anything stick out to anyone?

Remember in that first post how I mentioned IndieGameStand had $30,759.42 in fraudulent credit card charges and transactions. Well since our post, we’ve been hit with another $7,101.72 fraudulent charges in the last two weeks.  90% of these came within a week of Tuesday, March 8th.  This was somewhat expected since thieves are children and tend to lash out when you try to tell them they are wrong, so I was prepared wasted time while everyone else was at GDC voiding orders and reporting suspicious activities to our credit card processors.  While I do think they wrestled a couple of steam keys away from us, they certainly did not get $7k worth. I’m very happy with the traction that my first article got and appreciate all the tweets and support that we got. TinyBuild was nice enough to tweet this out on March 8th:

Great article on why you shouldn’t buy keys from @G2A_com, written by @IndieGameStand — https://t.co/gckhuWC0Yg pic.twitter.com/JJHZ1JEgOa

— tinyBuildGAMES (@tinyBuild) March 8, 2016

Guess which games were pirated / falsely purchased the most in the last few weeks? TinyBuild was almost exclusively targeted on our site in the past few weeks (sorry guys).  TinyBuild actually wrote their own article about Steam Key piracy and how their game Punch Club has sold 330k copies and been pirated over 1 million times.  This all really really sucks for indie developers and indie sites.  Luckily, our article spurred some excellent talks with indie developers and other industry folks and inspired me to create a tool for our developers to easily track (and CANCEL) their stolen steam keys.

All our developers can now visit https://indiegamestand.com/developers/stolenkeys.php to check which steam keys were stolen and report them back to Steam for deactivation.  I hope developers that have been taken advantage of or hit hard by this problem will take the time to cancel these keys so that people learn to avoid reselling markets.  Right now our Stolen Keys listing is still a little conservative meaning that it only displays keys that we are 100% sure were stolen and related to a voided fraudulent order, but we will continue to improve it’s features for developers. I will also be emailing G2A a complete list of all the keys that should be deactivated on their marketplace.  I will update this article or let you know if I hear anything from them or any other reseller market.

Steam Key Resellers are Assholes: New Stolen Key database for Developers was originally published on IndieGameStand Blog

[tacopizzacats]

It’s time to write and blurb more about Finale and the man behind it. For 2 years pursuing independent dev was a choice. I didn’t want to QA Test or have my ambitions overlooked by corporations, I know, or at least I felt I knew I had the potential to make great games. I think a lot of the things I made were fun, or at least better than many of the mindless major hits on the App Store. I learned that marketing and reach, were just as important as actually having a good product. Even after working insanely hard, and creating Subterrestial, a game that got a good amount of attention, was greenlit, and still continues to garner follows despite initially declaring its hiatus, I didn’t manage to get any major gamer press.

By the time Subterrestial wrapped up, the interest rates on my credit cards were far more than I could keep up with. I was getting desperate. I finally made the tough decision to max them out in order to continue working on games, believing in myself and consciously ruining my financial standing ground. Well, I began working on a new game, but now more seasoned and experienced, I knew enough by now to know that whatever budget I carved out the begin working on a game, would probably double by the time it was done. Realizing this I had to pull out. Think smaller, but bigger at the same time. I needed to work on a product that I could do most of the legwork for, because well, I only charge myself a total of $0 and meals to get work done… whereas, everyone indie, is still trying to make a buck.

I decided, I’d make a minimalistic pixel art world, draw some inspirations from poke’mon, and keep things simple and charming to ensure a semi-productive rate for a one man squad. The story would be something deep, a rich story could offset the more simplistic graphics that you see in most pixel art indie games these day. It would be about trying to chase your dream with all you have and failing in a world that wants to do nothing but obstruct your path, it would be about the realities of depression and despair, and one more additional kick, you’re dying, rapidly. This would put a whole new level of urgency and seriousness to the game.

There are two types of people at most game companies. Grunts, and Employees. Grunts, are either Testers or Support agents, and almost ALWAYS get paid $10HR, friends have told me that even Playstation pays this amount to their testers, whereas any other job generally makes a Salary… like, a large one. This is unacceptable. Testers ensure that the games major companies release are bug free and fun to play, this is not some trivial job, and is a core part of any software development. I sought to learn more about making games to rise above this level but have yet to be acknowledged.

This year, I started off with a handful of hopeful interviews, and things were falling into place, after 2 ½ years at looking for my break at a non-grunt role, it still hasn’t happened. And I got a response back from a job I really wanted today after a 3rd round interview. I was told:

“WE ARE SKEPTICAL YOU WILL ENJOY LIVING HERE”

And something that alluded to me not answering a question I was NEVER asked. It almost feels like people are looking for reasons NOT to hire you than looking for reasons that they SHOULD. Do these people want to see me fail? I have to admit, most game companies are predominantly white (and when I say predominantly I mean like… 90-95% white) and I’ve wondered how many times I’ve been discriminated against.

That’s one thing I like about Finale. The protagonist is a black male, you don’t see that enough in video games and I’m glad I’m doing it. I’ve never had an issue with majorly white washed game leads, but I also think this damn industry needs more diversity in more ways than one.

So the monster smashing and gun blaring is taking a bench on this one, Finale is a story I need to tell, if there’s anything good I’ll do in a game ever, it’s this.

I have currently exhausted all resources so if you’d like to support me that would be amazing, but I will prosper through this all regardless!

Thank you all as always,

Tristan

Support me for $1!: https://www.patreon.com/thefoolishbrave?ty=c

[justingamedesign-deactivated201]

Wings of Aetos by Other Artists

I wanted to share all of the art of my characters I’ve received over the years and promote the artists who were created each piece. Whether gift, exchange, request, or commissions, thank you to every artist who’s ever rendered one of my characters.

Please check the links below to each piece view more of its creator’s work.

Aetos makes a cameo in a game by @desordenamplificado

 Aetos on an SNK-style pixel card by @supajackle

Aetos and my birthday cake by Sparrowspell

3D Aetos by @kami-wasa

Deacon by Ambivorous

Aetos by Drameloch

Mini Aetos by Drameloch

Deacon by @blackhookpixelart

Aetos by @haroldkrell

Aetos by @freemanthefreeman

Deacon by @freemanthefreeman

Wings of Aetos logo by @cannedturkey

Disco Aetos by @bountyrunner

Aetos by @_Gabrielfer as part of his 1000-follower special

Aetos by @Sparrowspell as part of his 1000-follower special

Aetos in wax by @sidhenderson

[tacopizzacats]

STORY Finale is the tale of Tristan’s life after learning he only has 7 days of life left in this world. After spending the last 3 years of his life trying to produce a hit indie game after getting fired, he is faced with the reality of his dream fizzling before his eyes and his own human mortality. Everything he knows has become a blur, the rules of life have become grey, and his only remaining purpose is to find out where he belongs in the next 7 days. How do you make a lifetime of inadequacy count in just 7 days? TLDR: You’ve got 7 days to live. A terminal illness is making sure of that. You’re 28. You’ve done nothing remarkable with your life. No children. No wife. No job. You can do just about anything now, it won’t matter. How the hell are you going to make your life matter? Finale isn’t the action adventure AAA RPG FPS MOBA of the year. It’s a game about facing your own mortality, and the fact that not everyone who happens upon misfortune has led the life they’ve wanted to live.

Stage: Most of the demo assets have been finished and now I’m working on bringing things to life via animations! I am a very poor indie dev so if you like what you see please consider pitching $1 to my Patreon! :D

https://www.patreon.com/thefoolishbrave?ty=c

You can also follow me and the game on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/TheFoolishBrave

Thank you for supporting me in this project! Please reblog and spread the word!

[tacopizzacats]

so does anyone have any questions for me, maybe something about the game? :O

[bountyrunner-blog]

Obviously I could simply have missed it, but I have absolutely no idea what the game is supposed to be. All I have seen are some art assets without too much context, and that makes it hard to get excited about it. What is the underlying idea theme or even emotions? What genres, mechanics and ideas are you exploring? Is there some game design philosophy, coding tricks or art techniques you are trying out? Some general idea about what the game is all about could do a lot to help to catch my interest.

Looking forward to your sales pitch, or maybe even a design document! Best of luck with your work!