Spudnik Games

Home of "Cyborgirl Kero"

[spudnikgames]

Devlog 1 - Designing Kero and collecting ideas.

So I think I am at a point to start the Devlog proper. Moving forward everything from here on out should be new production, new ideas, and new work. What better a place to start then with the design of the main character, Kero!

As mentioned before her original design was built entirely as a sprite with no actual reference art. I just started with a mock screenshot and came up with the design seen here.

I didn't really draw anything as I had a pretty good idea to go from right from the beginning of what I wanted. This time, however, because I am planning to be working in the 3rd dimension I felt it was appropriate to test out some designs on paper to model from.

The first one I went for a more detail focused approach based off of Mega Man Zero and Mega Man Maverick Hunter X. This style uses longer limbs that have exaggeration to them in key places such as the head, forearms, hands, and feet.

You may also notice that the original sprite's armor is a bit different than the new concepts. Originally she was going to have a breast plate and more underwear like marking on the suit more reminiscent to Mega Man's design. Since then I have opted for a design more inspired by Protoman and I think it looks better and less goofy than the undies on the outside of the spandex look haha.

While I am indeed happy with how this turned out, after plenty of meditating on it I decided to go ahead and try a different approach that, anatomically, is closer to the proportions of the original sprite.

This design pulls much more from the original sprite but is also HEAVILY inspired by Mega Man Powered Up (Rockman Rockman in Japan) It features a more "chibi" like design with a large head and smaller body with exaggerated proportions.

This design is not only much closer to the original sprite design in terms of body proportions but also has the benefit of a much more stylized look as well as an opportunity for much more exaggerated facial expressions which I believe are important. One of my favorite aspects of games like Wind Waker were the fantastic facial designs.

Overall, I think that the latter will be the design I want to flesh out and work on more for the game and moving forward. Mind you it's still just a sketch even if a colored one.

The next thing on my agenda is to work on some variations of the character. One of the things I am not happy with are her freckles and I would like to re-work them. I also want to mess around with the design of her pupils a bit.

With that said I feel like it's at least a good start design wise and provides plenty of room to expand upon.

I am also working on learning C# through Codecademy for use with Unity and I also need to pick up blender again if my ADHD riddled attention span will allow it.

At the very least I am happy to have gotten something done and I hope you all enjoy the designs.

[spudnikgames]

Devlog Prelude 2

So nothing has really started so far aside from beginning to learn C# through Codecademy and learning more about unity. With that said, I am currently looking into an engine called Corgi Engine (Apparently it was used for Rogue Legacy 2 which is neat)

In my time learning Game Maker, way before yoyo games was ever a thing, the community really drove into me that using another persons engine was akin to cheating and it's kind of a bad mind set I need to break because it couldn't be further from the truth. So many studios use engines so I do not know why there I feel so much shame around that idea even though logic dictates there is nothing wrong with it.

Bummer mindset aside it honestly looks really powerful and has a lot of tools that I may or may not end up using! The gravity options especially look fun but currently I have no plans for an area that would make use of them. Still, tons of cool features.

In terms of stuff relating to the game I actually found an old sketch up I did of the main character, Kero, and figured I would throw it up here. This was sketched when I was toying around with GBStudio so she was drawn with glasses here but you get to see her freckles again. I plan to relatively soon re-draw her so I can get some good references to work with. (Note, I am not an artist XD)

Aside from that, currently sick with a cold (So far Covid Negative, knock on wood that does not change) and so will have plenty of time at my desk to work on stuff as the Work from Home workload of my job is pretty light right now.

Anyway, not much of a large update but just wanted to get a little bit out there. Catch you for the next Dev Log. I plan to continue to do "Preludes" until actual game development starts.

[spudnikgames]

Devlog Prelude

Honestly did not expect to be back on Tumblr since the great Tumblr Sundering of 2018! (Actually I think I left tumblr back in 2014-16, somewhere around there haha) I wanted to find a space to blog about my development, a public devlog/diary of sorts. My hope is that this will hopefully help me keep motivated on what I am trying to do. I always seem to do this. I always seem to start something and never see it through to completion so I am hoping this devlog will help with that.

So I guess I will jump right into things.

So this was my original mockup for the game idea I had been kicking around in my noodle. It's a side scrolling Action Platformer Metroidvania that takes place in a futuristic environment where most people live under the iron first of a mad scientist and yet it's not a dystopian future for many. People do not suffer, they are not slaving away, in fact most people live pretty pretty good lives aside from a few freedoms missing. However there is a group who refuse to be subjugated and as such are labeled as extremists and constantly being hunted. The story is a pretty big WiP but I have the general idea of where I want to go with it. Where as my game play ideas are a lot more fleshed out.

I also very early on knew exactly what I wanted the character to look like. In fact, I have been wanting to create a character like this for a while even having done so in an old game I lost the files to a long time ago called Magic Meg. Something about a darker skinned androgynous character keeps calling to me. I don't know why, maybe it's just because I don't see it often enough? Regardless, I was pretty fond of how Kero looked and her design was pretty clear to me from day one in terms of what I wanted it to look like. The only thing you can't see due to sprite size limitations is that she has freckles under her eyes. Mega Man and Metroid have always been my favorite of games. Something about the side scrolling platforming genre always did it for me. I always seem to gravitate towards such games. In addition, I have been heavily inspired by the amazing work done by the team of Mega Man X Corrupted.

For a while I had made pretty good progress on the game engine. I was no stranger to Game Maker Studio and had been working with it since Game Maker 5 so making my own engine from scratch wasn't that hard. The basic concept was there for me. The more interesting challenges for me was figuring out the UI. Things like animating the Health Bar similar to Mega Man X Corrupted and figuring out how to do a Minimap without any references was both fun and challenging in a good way.

But... as always, I drifted away finding myself distracted with other things... like Skyrim... and then my SSD died... so yeah... Thankfully I learned quite a bit from my previous project and backed everything up to the cloud. Long story short, before this game I was working on a game called Magic Meg and my SSD died and I lost EVERYTHING. So lesson learned, always back up your work. Saving just isn't enough anymore haha.

Anyway, after a hiatus of about a year I discovered something called "GB Studio" which allows you to make Gameboy Games that can be played on actual hardware. That re-invigorated my motivation for a while as I started toying around with making the game as a Gameboy Game. It was a fun diversion but ultimately I drifted away and lost focus as well.

This rendition took more of a Zelda II style approach to deal with the limitations of the Game Boy. Honestly, in its own way I really liked this version also... but once again I drifted away.

At this time I couldn't take it anymore, I had always had focus issues but it had become so frustrating that I could never maintain my focus. I wont go into details but I have since reached out to my primary care and after almost a years worth of waiting I believe those issues may soon be a thing of the past.

So that leaves us with "Where to go from here"!

At this point I want to try to revive this project but with some changes in mind. I want to go back to the original concept with Game Maker but want to try and move from Game Maker and GML to Unity and C#. There is nothing wrong with making a game with Game Maker, in fact there are some pretty great games that have been made with Game Maker, but the new direction I want to move in makes me believe that Unity will be a much better route.

I want to make the transition to 3d, er more specifically 2.5d! I have meditated on this a lot and I feel like I would be able to do a lot more making the move over to 2.5d and working with 3d models. At this time I want to aim for something akin to a mix of Mega Man Powered up and Metroid Dread. I want it to maintain is very bright and vibrant look from the original mock screenshots but using 3d models.

I think that it could be a fun look to work with and gives me a lot of new things to learn. Switching to C# and Unity from GML with Game Maker, learning Blender, etc. It's a lot but I am excited to embark on this journey.

Anyway, I think this is a good starting point. Hopefully this Tumblr will help me maintain motivation as well as get my erratic thoughts put into word. Here is to 2023 being a productive year!