#roaring fangs

[punkytowngame]

A brief retrospect and more

This is meant as a brief look back on how the last (almost) year of development on the game went. It won’t go into specific events or details, but it is a gist of what happened in that time. Details about how come we have so “stop and go” will likely have to wait until a “postmortem” retrospect.

Where things went

As a company, we had been working on the game project at varying paces as one big team and several smaller ones. Just as we were all about to kick it into high gear and knock out more work than we had before, we ran into some big problems. The whole thing came to a screeching halt, and what happened next was a lot of backtracking and unfortunately our longest period of downtime, during which nobody was able to keep moving. It has taken a while, but we have been making our way into the groove of things once again!

Why the wait?

Chizi and I want to focus on fleshing out critical aspects of Punky Town just as much as getting a presentable game demo ready to show off. Currently we have an off-kilter imbalance of nearly-finished work and roughs we need to even out. Because of this, the juicy details about Punky Town aren’t ready to show off with a polished and playable game demo just yet. We have wanted to have one ready for over a year, but we feel it is very important for us to time its revealing carefully, along with a rock-solid campaign to have it succeed.

So what now?

We are adopting a slightly different approach now. While Chizi and I think it is wise to present the most important aspects of our game accurately and with sufficient completeness, we want to start showing off as much as we can without spoiling it as much as possible. For anyone wondering, yes, there are a lot of spoilers we can’t reveal.

Setting things straight

From here on out, we are making it a top priority to keep our fans and followers updated on the game’s progress. This also means we’re gonna start posting some teasers online of what that may or may not be completely polished: concept art, screenshots of game elements, tidbits of lore (and there’s a LOT of lore), etc. In the past, we failed to keep our fans in the loop with the meat and potatoes, let alone a have a stew ready for you. Expect these after the convention, since right now we are putting 100% of our effort into preparing for our next convention, BLFC.

To our fans: you are everything to us, and we want to express our gratitude by showing you what you probably came here for in the first place.

-Tarocco

[punkytowngame]

It's been a year already?

Fun or no fun, time sure does fly. It really doesn't feel like it was long ago that we first announced we were excited to be be at Biggest Little Fur Con in Reno. One year later and we're doing it all again, in less than a week! Only this time, it's a bit different. A lot has changed in a year since then, and there will be retrospects plural coming later.

Our personal theme for this year at BLFC is going to be about working on the game with the resources we have and having some interesting works in progress to share more than anything else. We will be in the convention Dealers Hall for every day it's open (June 2-4), so stop by table #85 and check it out!

More information about dealers is available on goblfc.org. There will be more information to come on our current events with the convention, so stay tuned. We look forward to meeting you at BLFC!

[crayonchewer]

Something cool is coming and it’s making its debut at Further Confusion in a BIG WAY (literally!) with a 6ft tall banner with artwork made by me and typography by @dazuresky!

Meet Vat the Bat, main character and up-and-coming rock star with big dreams in a game called Punky Town, a rhythm sidescrolling platformer game featuring a huge story (with tons of character art drawn by me)! If you want to see this banner in person and hear more details about the game, be sure to stop by Roaring Fangs’ table at FC (marketplace, #3). They’ve got prints for sale by awesome artists and cool free swag to give away too! Visit RoaringFangs.com for more updates and future content!

[askvat]

Punky Town

Video Game Development Blog

[punkytowngame]

Image Source

It's time for another update, and not a moment too soon. We've been hard at work here at Roaring Fangs, getting ready to go into full-tilt production with copious amounts of prep work we wish would do itself. In the midst of our busywork, GDC 2015 happened, and a few miracles happened. If you keep up to date with the latest video game development news, it's likely that you've heard by now that Unity 5 is available for free (gratis), along with Unreal Engine 4 and Valve Source 2 respectively. As a sort of mixed blessing (mostly a blessing), we're redacting our statement about moving away from Unity due to the fundamentally different licensing and capability of Unity Personal Edition. We were prepared to drop unity altogether, but almost too-conveniently this happened. Instead, we will continue building on our existing work. It's an enormous boon to everyone involved with this project because It means we don't have to migrate or start from square one. Less downtime, more action. We get to have our cake and eat it too.

That's the long and the short of it. We're going to have some pretty exciting updates soon. Stay tuned.

-Tarocco

[punkytowngame]

Hi, Tarocco from Roaring Fangs here. In addition to my post about starting a company, I think it’s necessary to give a rough overview of the project I’ve been working on for about a year now. We’ll be sharing how our game is coming along shortly. In the meantime, here’s a summary of how things went.

Before Chizi and I started Roaring Fangs, we were just animator and a programmer. The whole thing started as an ambition to make a video game and soon became one of Chizi’s class projects. It grew over time, especially in the animation department where we had several animators join in to help us flesh out characters and scene elements for a playable prototype.

We had been using Unity and other animation software to make our game. I did nearly all the Unity stuff by myself, hard-pressed to make sure the majority of the code was not cookie-cutter “copy pasta” from the Unity forums or unserviceable nonsense spaghetti code. That extra help in the animation department helped enormously, and so we were able to finish our prototype on time.

But each of us had other college classes stacked on top of this project. Things were moving really slow. At the time, I was taking nothing but major-related classes for Computer Engineering at San Jose State University. I had to make time to work on the game, and since lots of important meetings took place near California College of the Arts in Berkeley (I was not enrolled at CCA), I was essentially adding an extra class and a 50+ mile commute on to my week.

Occasionally, Chizi was able to make it to SJSU Game Development Club meetings. We demoed our game, showed off concept art, and made a lot of fans (spoiler alert: kind of like how the game works). During an expo at CCA, we received feedback from early playtesting and got to hear what people think about the game’s mechanics, theme and overall feel, like difficulty or specific things that might need improvement. Based on the feedback we received, we decided that we’re ready to take this beyond a school project.

Things are better now. All of us have more time available to put into the game and we’re making it happen. Chizi recently graduated and I’ve decided to take a semester leave from SJSU. But we’re not ready to hit the ground running just yet. We’re looking for support, workforce and funding. We’re building a fanbase, finding people to help out with the game and figuring out the financial side of things right now.

What’s even more challenging is that we’ve decided to move away from Unity due to licensing restrictions. Some people might see this as a setback, but I see it as a great opportunity to take advantage of the fact that we will have a great amount of licensing freedom with our products, and the M.O. of our products will be under our control and not just a black box.

So there’s the gist of a year of highly-staggered development. We’re ready to fix that, and we have what it takes. We just need to get some things in order and get down to business.

If you want to hear more about our game and how things are coming along, follow our blog and stay up to date. More information about our studio can be found at RoaringFangs.com.

[roaringfangs-admin]

Welcome

This blog is here to announce updates and activities taking place in our studio. We are currently a small team of dedicated and experienced content creators, working to create new and original products. Currently, our focus is on making video games that demonstrate artistic talent, creative skill and technical abilities. Right now we have two main goals. Because we are working on our first game, we want it to have impact. That’s our first goal. But along with making games, we want to inspire others to do the same by producing tools that enable people to do the same.

At Roaring Fangs, we plan to make video games and tools to make them. It’s an ambitious endeavour, but entirely worth it considering how important it when you want to set a trend. Independent video game development has been gaining exponential popularity for years. With such a large competition and so many people trying to express their ideas in games, it’s time to make game development more accessible to everyone.

If you have an interest in video games and game development, consider following our blog. We’ll share and discuss creative and technical aspects of what we make and how you can be involved. Any feedback is welcome and encouraged; thank you.

More updates coming soon, so please stay tuned!

Roaring Fangs - Development blog for just about everything we produce.

Punky Town - Progress, status updates and notices for our first title.