tiny kaiju makes

this is my game dev blog

[tkgamedev]

The power is out at my house, which is annoying. But in my candlelight-fueled boredom, I wrote a board/card game about it. 

FUCK IT’S DARK (working title) involves candles, cards, some storytelling/narration, and trying to hide from a giant monster that might eat you. It’s a rough draft right now and I’m not sure how I’m gonna be able to playtest it. But I’ll post some resources here eventually.

I also have notes for a Night Vale-inspired tabletop game :3 If anyone is interested I’d like to hear feedback once I have that drafted too.

[tkgamedev]

I haven’t forgotten about this blog (for a second time).

I just don’t have as much time as I’d like. My IRL life is a bit hectic and I’m trying to find a steady job. So until I get that sorted out my updates here will probably be sporadic.

My goals for when I do have more time to devote this:

-Improve my parallax mapping -Learn a bit more about scripting in Ruby -Have a playable practice level

[tkgamedev]

I wanted to see if I could do something to reduce lag on my maps when i’m using a lot of overlays. It didn’t work out as well as I hoped, but I’m also kinda distracted this week. 

[tkgamedev]

Almost 2 functional floors. I say almost because using a layer to make the room look like a dim shadowy ruin made it lag again. And this is the smaller map so it probably won’t work out with the much bigger floor after this.

If anyone has advice on parallax mapping/lighting effects/minimizing lag, I’d be happy to hear it. 

[tkgamedev]

Yesss got the thing to work. Rat joins the party and it doesn’t lock up the whole thing anymore. Now I can run through the first room’s puzzle and get to the second map.

I’m also playing with adding images. I think I like art more than programming so drawing my own cutscenes and characters appeals to me.  

[tkgamedev]

Fixed some problems. The big map is a bit less laggy now. Then I made more problems.

I was trying to set up a little cutscene, which were never my strong point. Can’t seem to get timing right when I want characters to move around. Anyway this was supposed to work out as MC leaves cheese in front of the hole, rat comes out, rat joins the party. Event A is initiated by the action button and gives the player the choice to leave cheese. If yes, then it a switch (feed_Rat) is turned on and event B is triggered. B has the rat come out and join the player. Everything works up to that point. As soon as the conversation finishes and the rat joins, I can’t move the player or access menus at all. It might be an autorun issue, but I’ve checked a couple times and it should just switch to a blank event when everything is done.

The funny thing is I set up a ‘add party member’ event in like 5 minutes and it worked, but the cutscene involved a lot less steps. I might scrap these events and start over. 

[tkgamedev]

Spent some time today trying to get more practice with parallax mapping. It works (aside from some minor graphic issues I can fix) but it does lag terribly. I’m hoping to figure out a solution, but maybe that’s just the downside of parallax mapping. 

For the parallax map, I’m using Yanfly’s parallax lock script and Galv’s Overlay script. I’m trying to pick up some basic scripting for RPGM; I have some experience with coding but not with Ruby.

Also, i changed the screen size to 640x480 and it was cool until I looked at a smaller map and...I’m not sure what’s going on there but that’s another thing to fix.

[tkgamedev]

Holy hell a post

It’s been almost two years and I still have this blog so by god I’m gonna use it

The short version is that a while back I took on a lot of different responsibilities, and tinkering with game stuff fell to the wayside. Like...a lot to the wayside. But I’m trying to make time for stuff I enjoy doing, so here’s to picking up RPG Maker and coding again.

If anyone follows me and wants to talk about RPG maker stuff, my main is kaijuscreech (idk how messages work with sideblogs so if you get a response from that url it’s still me)

[kaijuscreech]

woo got it to work this time. it’s not terribly complex but i did find out how to keep the image fixed so i can have the character walk behind stuff. so no more books flying around the screen. 

honestly it’s nothing that that i couldn’t have done with tiles, but part of the reason i wanted to learn parallax mapping is aesthetics. the third picture has two sets of boxes made with the same tiles, but one i tweaked in PS to take away the empty space and make it look like little boxes are shoved closer to the giant stack. 

[kaijuscreech]

adventures in parallax mapping: i managed to walk into the void, and there’s a book flying around the screen. 

wondering if i should reboot my old dev blog for this stuff

[tkgamedev]

LDJ 27

I'm taking a break from my current project with another project. 

I'm not very good at this whole 'break' concept.

So far my friends and I have just been plotting but today I'm hoping to start building and maybe have stuff to show by this evening. And I'll post the finished game on Monday. 

To everyone else participating in Ludum Dare, good luck!

[tkgamedev]

Made some tiles for a bathroom. I've been nudging stuff around on the sprite sheet to find out how it fits best. I'll most likely keep doing this until because as demonstrate by the sink on the right, some objects just look really weird confined to the 32x32 tile.

[tkgamedev]

Sprite updates: things look a bit more like a kitchen now, and the clock is not ridiculously huge. 

Life updates: I'm home, and that means going back to my day job. Also, in the fall I'm going for either an internship or a second job (depending on finance problems/flexibility) so that may slow down progress. Or keep it at the present rate of sluggishness. Hopefully the latter.

[tkgamedev]

Added some new tiles, mostly decorative/environment objects. 

I really, really suck at sizing. 

[tkgamedev]

Progress has slowed a bit, to my disappointment. I've been having difficulties focusing and once I finished enough indoor tiles to make a very spartan bedroom, I started having trouble deciding where to go next. Yesterday I palette-swapped some of the more colorful walls/floors. The idea was that once the demon shows up color would be drained from the setting. 

Don't know if I'll keep it but it's what I managed this week.

[tkgamedev]

SadGame0.1

Demonstration level of Sadgame. Mostly to show the art style and...genre? Content? I'm not sure how to describe it but it's also really early in the morning and I'm bad at words. I want to know if it's worth continuing, I suppose.

Edit: Forgot to add that it needs the RTP to run or else I have to post a file that takes 20 hours to download. For 188 mbs. I do no know why. 

[tkgamedev]

Progress and problems.

I woke up stupid early today and since I have trouble falling asleep again, I figured hey why not make some furniture. So now I have some windows (palette-swapped the curtains) and an attempt at making the futon I usually sleep on at home.

The problem is the second picture. I discovered the character can walk on the desk, even though it's marked as not walkable in the tile part of the database. Still trying to figure this out. RMVX users, any advice?