#smallgaming

[smallgaming-blog]

Proud dad making a video game

This week was all about creating assets for The Battle for Eersim and a ship for you, the players. The Battle for Eersim is staged underwater. For the first stage 5 different parts were drawn which can be linked together to for the stage. This is still in a test phase, but the result in Unity3d is good enough for making the first test stage. Also there are enough placeholders which can act as enemies for this test stage. Next week the first version of the stage will be ready for testing and data gathering. Getting data out of testings is important. Pacing of the level can really make or break these type of games. The level definition makes it really easy to play around with different placement of the 5 assets and other elements which for the complete level. The final version of the first level will need a lot of development iterations, but that is great part of game development in my opinion.

My son was inspired and started to design ships for The Battle for Eersim. He really took his time for designing a few enemies and ships. His teacher at school told us he was working for 2 hours straight on his designs. This I think is a real accomplishment for him and it makes me really proud of him. Of course I honored his efforts with using his design for making the Underwater Robot Cat, not sure about the name. I am happy with the current version of the Underwater Robot Cat. Making the cat face was a challenge, but tackled with the help from google. There is the result of our hard work.

This week was a great week for game development.

[smallgaming-blog]

Preparing for 2014 and beyond!

The last month of 2013 started and I am already look forward at 2014. This year, 2013, is as a transition year in which I learned and still am learning a new way of working. 2014 feels like a new start for Small Gaming. I will try to explain why this is. 

One year ago I was working on a design for an action/adventure game. The plan was to create this game with Cocos2d-x. During this time I was asked to join One Game a Month. So I started in 2013 with much enthusiasm with my game for Januari. This game was released on the app store, but I pulled it a few months later. Never mind that, it was during the development of this first game I realized it took too much time to write the needed code. The game was rushed, but still released on the app store. I reused a big part of the game on the next game, not wanting the time I spend on this game go to wast. As the months came and go I worked on a twin stick shooter. The setting was hell and you where a hit man who was sent there to kill the devil himself. This twin stick shooter needed lots of animations. Someone pointed out Spine to me and Spine was the tool I was looking for. Cocos2d-x is good for mobile, but not so good for Mac or PC. I started to hack away. I created a few hacks for keyboard support, getting Cocos2d-x to work on Ouya and a few other things Cocos2d-x does not support on Mac and PC. After a few months into development I stopped the development of this game, because it was not fun to play enough. Also I just did not want to write so much code before I really could develop the games I want to make and the platforms of my choosing.

I took some time off from development and I started to read my twitter feed again. The tweets by Byron Atkinson-Jones a.k.a. @Xiotex and a few others were and still are interesting to read. The best thing happened to Byron, he became a WiiU developer. From this I gotten a motivation boots, but I needed to rethink how I make games. So I started to look around to other options like different tools for developing games and other game engines. I always ended up at the website of Unity3d. After the tools for 2D gaming were announced for Unity3D I was convinced I should start using Unity3. Since I started using Unity3D I find myself saving a lot of time. I created the basics for The Battle for Eersim within a few hours. The 2D tools and Unity3D are almost a perfect fit for my needs.

For now the website is empty, but I will work on beautiful new website and continue to work on The Battle for Eersim. 2014 will be a productive year because of Unity3D and the tools it brings to the table. I hope 2014 will also be a productive year for you!

[smallgaming-tech]

#1GAM the first 3 months

After 3 months I can say One game a month is a great stimulant for building games in the most optimal manner. Also the use of best practises helped me a lot and still is. I am having fun with one game a month and I sold a few copies of Bouncing Alien Pixel. Not bad for a little game which mixes a few classics into one. Also this game was featured on the iTunes store within the Arcade, Action and Game Center sections. For coding this means reuse of code. At the current time I am working on 3 new games which all use the Cocos2d-x engine. Using an not in house made engine saves me a lot of time of course, but the engine did not come with the social media integration I wanted to have. So I wrote a small code base for this purpose. The code is not done yet, but the finished code will ship with the next update of Bouncing Alien Pixel. Also I have to redo a small part of this code so I can use it in on Android also. Another issue which hold back Bouncing Alien Pixel up until now is how collision detection is done. The ball now does not go really fast, well it is fine for beginners. I want to make this game a real challenge for every gamer out there. So I wrote a collision grid which uses the inner workings of a ray caster. This grid really helped with speeding up the gameplay of Bouncing Alien Pixel. The grid will also be used by two upcoming games. Also I could use the grid for all kinds of collision checks within a 2d space. Some of the other code from Bouncing Alien Pixel is also reused by the three games which are in development. Code for settings and saving high scores are all reused without redoing any of the code itself. I did not only wrote games with Cocos2d-x. I wrote two games or tools for helping out my son with his schoolwork and I used Javascript. The first game was to make an easy to use game for learning to read a analog clock. The tool is really easy to use, but the parent must also be actively involved. Since the parent must check the answer and must handle the input. The reason why the parent must be involved is I believe a kid should learn as much from the parents as possible. The parents shows they care about their offspring when the parent is actively involved. The little math tool/game is written with the same mind set as the clock game/tool. Still there can be some improvements to this game. Like an overview of all (in)correct answers after all questions have been answered. It only shows how many correct answers are given. I did use both tools and made games out of them. My son learned his maths and how to read a clock, so for me those Javascript games were perfect. Check my profile of one game a month here: http://www.onegameamonth.com/SmallGaming And remember: "You can do it!!"

[smallgaming-tech]

My first week of One Game a Month Part 2

Jan 9 2013 The other part of One Game a Month I totally forgotten to mentioned! The social media part. I really like to read the tweets of others on twitter. I try to stay positive when replying. Giving positive energy and receiving positive energy, it makes me energetic. McFunkypants is really good at it and I try to follow by his example. The IRC chat room is great! There are always people to chat with or helpful people. I hope the good spirit will always be on IRC. For more information about One Game a Month or the IRC room go to http://onegameamonth.com/      Wish it, dream it, do it If you want to know how the game will next week, follow me on twitter @smallgaming and I will let you know when my next blog post is online!

[smallgaming-tech]

My first week of One Game a Month

Jan 9 2013 It was a good start for me. Besides working on the game for this month, I also written a basic tutorial for Cocos2d-x. The code can be found on Github of OneGameAMonth. The second tutorial is almost done. The progress for the game is good enough. The first game will be a Pong clone mixed with elements from other games and it is for the iPAd. There is a single- and multiplayer option. The single player is a combination of Pong, Space Invader and Arkanoid. The player moves around a paddle, can "shoot down" Aliens with the ball and there are power ups like Arkanoid. There are no lives, the player just collects points until the ball hit its maxed speed. When the player pick ups a power up there be multiplier going up. The multiplier is for the points of course. The ball will go faster over time. When it hits the screen behind the player the multiplier will go down until there is no multiplier is left. The same will happen when a bonus hits the same side of the screen. The multiplayer is not via Wifi, but a local multiplayer on the iPad. There is still lots of work to do to finish this mode. The basic is just like Pong. I hope to finish this week the gameplay of the multiplayer and start beta testing the game. Today I played the multiplayer game with a kid during the Kung Fu lesson of my son. The kid liked it, so that is extra boost for me to finish it. The kid also played the single player game and looking at him seeing his reactions was really nice. It told me the game is on the correct way to become a full game. Next week during beta testing I will finish the menu and redo all assets of the game. Wish it, dream it, do it If you want to know how the game will next week, follow me on twitter @smallgaming and I will let you know when my next blog post is online!