In a few words or less

  Maker of 🎵 Music & 🔊 Sound for 🎮 Games

[pyremonk]

Working on the player character for my team’s entry in the Godot Wild Jam.

She is a happy little cactus named Prickles who just wants to dance and have some fun.

[pyremonk]

Final product for the shirt. Had to make some adjustments for the iron-on transfer, but it I’m happy with how it turned out. It’s actually a navy blue shirt, but it’s late and dark in here.

[pyremonk]

Made a t-shirt and poster design for my kid’s birthday party next week.

[pyremonk]

Mushroom High by pyremonk

A local two-player endless jumper where Player 1 jumps to collect mushrooms while Player 2 places platforms.

I finished a game today! Please check it out. You’ll need a mouse and keyboard. You can play by yourself or with a friend.

This is my first “complete” and solo game.

It was made using Construct 2, Affinity Designer, DragonBones, and free sounds and music.

Enjoy!

[pyremonk]

Got a ton wrapped up on my prototype and published to itch.io today (https://pyremonk.itch.io/mushroomhigh).

- Achievement/progress tracking in place - Track how many mushrooms you collect and how high you reach - Saves to browser and you can reset your data - Menus work Also...I’ve “rebranded” the game, yet again. This time I’m going with a mushroom, gnome, slug theme. Players climb up a tree or hillside using slugs as platforms and direct a gnome to collect mushrooms on the way up. It’s goofy, but I think I can pull of the art for it.

Check it out! Leave a comment on itch.io and let me know what you think (and by “you” I mean the empty chamber I’m writing this to).

[pyremonk]

Finished up so fun new things today.

Managed to get a UI element going to show how long of a platform you can place and how much length you have left. A preview shows in realtime as you click drag the mouse.

Playable here: https://pyremonk.itch.io/platform-er?secret=cPF1kCEm7WnMWEeXp5959HWZ7lM

[pyremonk]

Platform & Er by pyremonk

A local two-player endless jumper where one player makes platforms while the other uses them to jump to the stars above.

More progress! I got the new platform mechanics into the main branch of the game and I’ve uploaded the prototype to itch.io. I have a few more things I want to add before making the project public, but the link here is the secret URL for the few of you that follow me here to have a look.

Based on the feedback of my Habitica party, I’ve reframed the game as a two-player game (played locally on the same computer) with the option to play it single player. I have no real idea whether this is fun for two people or not, but I’m running with it anyways because it feels like it would be fun. :)

Anyways, once I have the core mechanics finished, it will go public, I’ll make a Google survey for anyone interested in giving me feedback. If there is enough of a response, I’ll spend more time polishing it up (which will probably take me longer than the gameplay has taken thanks to Construct 2...have I mentioned how much I’m digging that app?).

[pyremonk]

Trying a new version of the platform mechanic for my game. I wasn’t liking my original mechanic. This one is actually a lot of fun to play with, it might be the winner. Now to throw this into the main project and add some more details to this mechanic.

I think I may have had this “drawing platforms” idea before and skipped it because it wasn’t something I thought I could figure out in Unity fast enough. I managed to get this working in about 30 minutes looking at some example projects in Construct 2. I cannot express how much I’m loving this tool

[pyremonk]

I’ve not passed the functionality I had in my Unity version of this prototype. A basic obstacle and stars now randomly spawn as the player progresses higher in the game.

I’m also running Construct 2 and Windows 10 in general via Parallels and while I can feel a little bit of a hit in performance, my work environment overall fits me better. I can now use both Affinity Designer and Photo in my macOS environment and that makes my toolbox pretty complete and happy.

Next up:

- Add alternate control scheme and platform mechanic for desktop and mobile - Add menu/title screen to select control type - Fine tune the random spawn stuff - Add more obstacle types - Add another star type (for invincibility) - If I’m feeling inspired, make some new sprites - Call this prototype done and post to itch and move on to the next project

[pyremonk]

Managed to get my Construct 2 version of Platform & Er up to the same amount of functionality as my Unity project (minus some non-working menu screens I had dog-earred to work on later). I even managed to figure out how to throw in some particle effects (something I haven’t taken the time to figure out in Unity yet). So far C2 fits my workflow pretty dang well and I’m not totally confounded by how they’ve implemented stuff that I would normally script. The event system is impressive.

Here’s a very choppy gif of today’s progress. If I manage to follow this same level of productivity while using C2, I might even finish the little game sooner than later.

I’m off for the weekend for a show in Victoria and then the Book of Mormon in Vancouver!

[pyremonk]

Now that I have a good Windows 10 setup, I’ve decided to build Platform & Er in Construct 2 as a way to learn the system since I’ve already solved a number of the design and mechanics in Unity. Figuring out their implementation in Construct 2 should help me learn a lot, quickly.

I’m hoping to use Construct 2 as a rapid prototyping tool for my game concepts.  I managed to get the basic platformer movement in within a minute or 2. I really like the event sheet scheme. It seems so simple, but I can already tell it can handle a lot.

Additionally, I’ll be posting daily progress (as daily as I can anyways) as part of a Habitica challenge with my party there. If you’ve never checked out Habitica, go have a look, it’s great. My username is pyremonk there.

[pyremonk]

I’ve returned to the little endless jumper/platformer prototype I started awhile back that I was calling “Stars Above”. The basics are still there, but I’m going to theme it in this sort of “Thomas Was Alone”, simple shape stuff. I’m also going to change the name to “Platform & Er” for shits and giggles.

With this update I’ve done a basic re-theme, cleaned up some code, add some platform logic to reduce the width of platforms in play while increasing/decreasing the width of the cursor platform to indicate the size of the platform you’d be placing. The hope is that this would add a little variety and thought to platform placement rather than a single uniform width as well as creating sense of urgency to keep moving and to place more platform pieces.

I’m planning on getting all the menus working, adding some obstacles, doing a little more with the graphics, giving it a simple title screen, polishing/tweaking some gameplay stuff and then throwing up the game on itch.io and github w/source.

After that I’ll be moving back to a new game project I’ve started the notebook-design phase on that I’m really excited about starting a prototype for to see if what I’m thinking is any fun.

Platform & Er is kinda-maybe fun for a few seconds (once you get a handle on the controls - which feel like juggling), but it gets pretty boring quickly. I could probably come up with a bunch of stuff to make it more interesting, but the mechanic doesn’t feel all that exciting or accessible. Regardless, I’m finishing the damn thing.

[fozmeadows]

concept: a TV show with a dark, tragic, fucked-up beginning that steadily gets happier and lighter and more hopeful as the seasons go on, the narrative arc premised on healing and growth instead of a “gritty” downspiral, the challenges faced in each season finale leaving the characters in a progressively better place. nobody queer dies, and the worst things we ever see after season 1 all happen in flashbacks to events preceding the now. 

[pyremonk]

I would love to watch this show. I'd still want some roadblocks and setbacks, but rather than working toward happy endings or bittersweet endings the story would focus on happy beginnings and resetting when things need a new direction. I love this idea.

[pyremonk]

Abandonment Issues

”Art is never finished, only abandoned.” - Leonardo da Vinci (maybe, probably, I don’t know, it’s your internet you believe what you want...)

Two years ago I set out to rekindle my long-standing-but-intermittent game development and design hobby. I don’t have much to show for it, just a bunch of small prototypes in various platforms (mostly Stencyl, Love2D, and Unity) and a couple journals of sketches, notes, and ideas. Children left behind on the shores of imagination, crying as I wave farewell aboard the ship of life.

Generally, I think of all my efforts as experiments that have hopefully given me enough skills to pursue full works that I will complete and make public, but unfortunately I think I’ve fallen short on even that.

I’m no more knowledgeable about game development than I was years ago, especially since I jump from engine to engine and hit walls early on that contribute to me bailing on a project sooner than later.

I’m no wiser than I was back when I would pursue each idea as if they were the best thing ever and quietly work on them in private, coveting them until someone else does what I thought of and in a much better way than I had envisioned. 

I’m no more humble than I’ve ever been in the past where I’m positive some new idea or project will be huge and amazing and I’m going to be neck deep in a warm bath of praise, floating in ecstasy until I unleash my next great project that’s even better than the last.

My expectations are not realistic and my intentions are suspect.

I’ve been spending the last few months trying to process this and what it means and what I can do about it and I’ve not really gotten far, but I do know that I love making games, communicating ideas through play and designing interactive experiences. I’ve realized that my approach thus far has not been working. Working alone in a silo, keeping quiet about my ideas and desires, has been the opposite of productive and practically the opposite of what games are.

Anyways, here goes. Another start, another day.

Thanks for listening.

[pyremonk]

Work in progress acrylic painting.

[pyremonk]

5 Types of Fan It's Okay to Be (Despite Popular Opinion) 1. It is totally fine to start listening to a musician's work only after they've died and find...

This is a great post about being a fan and fandom.

[ariverisariver-deactivated20160]

So far, 2016′s biggest lesson has been that money, fame, and influence doesn’t insulate any of us from death, but being true to your weirdo self and acting on your creative instincts makes life worth it.