Hello All,

Been doing alot of thinking and planning for my latest game development project. In particular, I have thought about how to keep a game interesting while keeping the accessability high, so that more players can enjoy the game without feeling that the game is too easy, too hard, too boring 😛

Now, I am not saying that I found the perfect way to do this… However, I will say that if I can look at my game, play itself, without my interference… for more than 2 minutes, without getting bored… then I am pretty much on the right track, because I tend to get bored very quickly with games that arent skill based.

Having looked more into the concepts of Pachinko (a japanese gambling pinball type game that dates back to… i think… the early 1900’s … I’ve seen Pachinko machines from 1920) and become quite fascinated with the Pachinko-game itself. I have tried to use some of the aspects from the Pachinko game and incorporate them into the game design of my own game. Also, when you see the Pachinko, and then try out Popcap’s game Peggle, you will see immediately where they got their inspiration from.

There is just something oh so mesmerising when it comes to watching little steel balls bouncing around inside an enclosed area with nothing but your own outbursts of ‘GO GO GO LITTLE BALL!!!!‘ to guide it on its way to a successful point-booster! 😉

Anyways, for those of you who havent actually tried out the game-demo-display thingy that I have here on my page, I’ve made a video that you can watch, and it will give you a rough idea where this game is headed 🙂

As you can see, the game now has 4 different colour orbs which I’ve decided to name Fire, Earth, Water, Air. Hitting these orbs will add points to your score, and later on, they will also add Mana (a sort of fuel or energy for powering certain special abilities) to your player.

For example, hitting 3 Water Orbs will add Blue Mana to your player, thus allowing you to use some of your Water Based abilities (I admit, everything is just on the idea stage currently, but I have a feeling this could prove to become quite interesting once i figure out how to code all of that :p )

So… basically what I am aiming for is a kind of Peggle-Clone with Fantasy/Roleplay elements in the shape of gaining Experience Points to level up your player-avatar. Gathering Mana while completing a level, and using said mana to cast spells and abilities that will allow you accomplish your goal of completing a level easier… Think Healing spells that give back lost balls, or throwing fireballs that allow you to target a specific area of the screen and blow up any Orbs in that area of effect. 🙂

A bit confusing in text, perhaps… but rest assured, It will all make sense once you try it… that is… once its done… that is… when its done… that is… ah well… Stay Tuned! I’m thinking and tinkering!

This game will rock when its done! and if you disagree, then by all means, chip in and add your comments and constructive critisism! I would love to hear your opinion on this concept and on my game ideas 🙂

Thanks for reading!

Hello All,

Still havent added any actual control-mechanism to the bumpndrop2 game concept. However, I have a much more (in my opinion) solid design for the actual play. Its less spazzy and more enjoyable to watch. At least thats what I prefer to think 🙂

http://netherclift.net/eli/bumpndrop/

Feel free to check it out, but keep in mind, as it is now, you’re merely a spectator. So enjoy the peep! 😉

  • Completely changed the colourscheme and layout
  • Bouncing properties for the ball has been tweaked to make it more realistic
  • Added a more customizable code for the Bouncers which now has a random factor, allowing a bouncer to knock back the ball with varying degrees of power.
  • Score counter to keep track of… well… score 😉
  • Lives counter, which I reckon will be changed soonish, to display the number of balls left. Rather than displaying number of lives. But thats merely a cosmetic thing 🙂

Some of you may or may not see the resemblence to the Popcap game, Peggle … I am of course quite heavily inspired by it, but I will try to add my own spin to it as well… and lets not kid anyone here, its not like this game will ever reach the godly quality level that is… Peggle Extreme 😉

Hehe, check it out at http://www.popcap.com/games/peggle its quite a fun game 🙂

Anyways… More to come in the near future! so stay tuned for my updates on the Bump n Drop game 🙂

Hello All,

There’s a technique or method, called ‘Kill your Darlings’ .. or at least something close to that. And essentially what it is refering to, is that a creator should be prepared to rethink, or tweak… or even KILL something in his creation that he is fond of… (that is, if it is not working… of course 😛 No reason to remove something that just plain rocks! unless you can replace it with something equally rocks-worthy! 😉 )

Basically I have played around with the Bump’n’Drop mechanics for the past few days, and it just doesnt strike me as being as much fun as I originally thought it coulda/woulda been 🙂

I cant quite put my finger on it, but I think it has to do with the way that I am trying to enforce steering on the ball, with something that is not visible… as in.. clicking the keyboard keys to somehow push and shove the ball, but the shoving only goes straight left or straight right… and it just doesnt seem ‘fun’ or sensible to me…

So I did some thinking and ended up with a different control mechanism that I THINK might turn out to be more fun. But of course, being me… I will have to implement it and try it out before I can really sense wether or not this is a fun way of controlling a ball or not 🙂

My thought is that I want for the game to be something similar to this description:

  1. game takes place on a single screen, a level constructed with gravity in mind, and multiple bouncers as well as bonus objects
  2. a bouncer will make the ball bounce and rebound, so it can both help and hinder the ball in doing its job
  3. a bonus object is needed to complete the level. There will be more bonus objects on the level than needed to complete a level. allowing the player to try for different paths to finish a map.
  4. The ball starts at the top of the screen at a location selected by the player.
  5. the player cannot control or touch the ball except for the following:
  • At the start of a level the player uses his mouse to position the ball at the top of the screen, and then lets it drop/fall
  • After the ball has dropped the player uses the mouse/pointer to create either a push (think of an explosion/shockwave type of push) by tapping the mouse somewhere near the ball.
  • or a Pull, kind of like a whirlpool, vacuum sucking the ball towards the mouse, by holding down the button.

The game concept has been done in many different various before… ranging from breakout/arkanoid back in the early days of computer gaming… to Peggle and Sushi Cat in modern day gaming. So dont worry, I know im not exactly inventing the wheel here 🙂 However, I still feel that I can bring something new to the genre, and even if I dont do that… then at least I’ll have fun making a game 😉

And when I say fun… I’m actually refering to seeing my friends, family and testers try out the things I am working on, and providing me with feedback and their thoughts! Cause the actual programming part is about as much fun to me as trying to climb a glass wall with silk-gloves 😛 … meaning its probably more fun to watch the silly faces I make when I get stuck with the code 😉

Feel free to comment, leave your thoughts!

Thanks for reading! 🙂

Ello All,

Not really time to play, as the Bump n Drop project doesnt really have much of a playable element to it yet, unless you’re into bouncing a pill-like object around in a little enclosed area whilst listening to a monotone bump sound (which I made with my mouth and then butchered in Audacity, an audio editting program :p )

Try Super Early Bouncy Endless Test Version of Bump n Drop!

Remember that you will be needing the Unity Web Player download (dont worry, its quite small and completely harmless) to test the Bump n Drop game. When you click the link, it will ask you to install it, if you havent already (Chances are, if you’ve played the 2d platformer… then you have the Unity Web Player already, and that means I love you a lot already! Welcome to the wonderful world of being able to play everything that was made with Unity, right there in your browser! hehehe 😉 )

Changes in this version:

  • Added keyboard controls (left and right keys) which allow you to steer your player object left and right while falling to your doom… or… well in this case, just falling… and then bouncing some… and falling some more… 😛
  • Increased the size of the player object by 250%
  • Tweaked the Colours… cause I was bored and will most likely tweak them every single update from now on and until the game is finished, by which time the game will look like it was mugged by a rainbow and left to bleed 😛
  • Added code to make the player object revert to its original spawn-point if it hits the bottom of the level, so that the game never ends… Hooray for Eternal Bouncation! , which is of course much prefered over Eternal Damnation 😛

Hello All,

Whats ‘Bump n Drop’ you might ask?

Its a silly name! … actually its a bit more than a silly name. Its the name I’ve decided to call my next game project, which is going to be a fairly simple minigame with the aim of dropping your player down a tube. As you’re falling through this tube, your goal will be to try and pick up as many Bonus Items on the way down, while trying to bounce on as many ScoreMultiplier-bouncy-thingiemajiggies and avoiding as many Combo-Killer-Obstacles as possible 😛 You’ll be able to affect your player by pushing him left or right, with little nudges of the keyboard-right and keyboard-left 🙂

When you hit the bottom, the game ends, and you can try again, hopefully beating your score 🙂

What you’re about to see is a very very very very early video showing roughly the concept of the game (albeit, without any score, any bonus objects… or… well… any gameplay…)

Let me know what you think, and as always, feel free to comment with any suggestions or criticism, but keep in mind, this video and the game took roughly 1½ hours to make… so its a long way from finished 🙂

Ello All,

Chapter 8 in Will Goldstone’s book: Unity Game Development Essentials is about making a GUI, graphical User Interface… meaning the buttons and menus and thingiemajiggies to press onscreen in the game or in a program 🙂

So far i’ve only worked through the first half of Chapter 8, and this is the graphical way of doing it. The next half of the chapter will show how to do menus that are similar to the menus i have in the 2d platformer game… They are more managable and can be faster and easier to make once you get a hang of the system 🙂

But anyways, here is the texturebased button menu system in action.

Hello All,

Been doing a bit of painting and some coding the past few weeks… but as they say, pictures speak louder than words… or something… so here goes 😉

Chapter 7

Latest Faeborn Music

The Mourning Knight
mourning-knight

Weapon Concept Silhouettes
weapon-concept-silhouettes

UltraVoidOlet
ultravoidolet

Place in the Sun
place-in-the-sun

So yeah… there ya have it… about a week’s worth of creativity summed up in a blogpost 😉 More or less 🙂

Hello all,

Recently I’ve been having a bit of a dilemma… You see, creating games requires alot of different talents, ranging from Sound Design and Visual Arts… to Programming… and just plain old fashioned creativity…
So with all these options or paths in game design, I’ve had a bit of a hard time focusing on 1 thing… Do I practice drawing every day to get better ? Or should I focus 100% on programming… and what about music ? and 3d modelling!
Decisions Decisions… Makes me wish the day had more hours… preferably 50+ hours pr day, that would be ideal for me 😉

So for the past few days I have focused on the programming, and tried to get at least 1½-2 hours worth of drawing in as well. I reinstalled my tablet on my new pc, and started looking for all the digital brushes that I had gathered in the past for my old pc.

And by the end of the night, I had managed to paint a concept art (its not really that useful, since I dont see it being used in a game or anything… but it was still a satisfying experience to finish a piece… even if it is relatively basic painting of a mountain scene… with a bunch of magic thrown in for effect 😉 )

Mount-Raven-concept-01

I also did alot of work in Unity. I’ve now read and understood up until the 6th chapter in the Will Goldstone book called: Unity Game Development Essentials. 🙂 I highly recommend this book for anyone new to Unity.

Chapter 1 to 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

I am off work for a week now, and I will be focusing strongly on drawing practice as well learning more programming in the next 7 days, so stay tuned for updates 🙂

Hello all

Super busy week AND weekend this week… Christmas and Chanukah is drawing nearer, which means a little less time to spend on my game project… but on a more positive note… it also means more time spent with my family and in particular my little niece Sara 🙂

10-12-2009

My Brother is coming home from Ireland where he has been working since last year. Another great reason to spend time with the family 😉

Anyways, enough about me and my family, and more about the game, right? 😉

I tried adding in a PAUSE function for the game, but sadly that just lead to me crashing my Unity3d… over and over and over and over again… So I decided to grab a little break from THAT feature and add in something else instead.
Something that I know some of you have requested. The Level-Select feature. Yep, now you’re able to pick which map to play on. The list will automatically update itself as you reach new levels, and add those levels to the list of available levels on your Level-Selection screen in the Main-Menu.
As some of you may or may not have noticed, sometimes the +50, +250, +500 score feedback would fly off in the wrong directions after you grabbed their respective gemstones… The reason for this was that I am still very much a beginner with 3d modelling, and as such, I had the rotation wrong on my gemstones… which also leads to the gems being rotated wrong after they spawn from a trap. This has been KINDA fixed. Meaning I didnt fix the actual rotation on the gemstones, I just made sure that everytime the Score-Feedback spawns, it will have the right rotation. So yeah… It will now always fly straight up, as it should, instead of going all woogy and flying left or right 😉
The Gemstones still end up woogy though 😛 But that will be fixed eventually when I figure out how to do it properly 😉

Also, today, you will see a new thing on the blogposts, something which I will be striving to add onto all my posts from now on. Thanks to TecFail for the suggestion on having an easier overview of what was added to the game in each update.

Fixes and Changes in today’s update:

  • “Select Level” menu option added
  • fixed the score feedback flying in wrong directions
  • drew a crap ton of Concept Art and wrote several pages of story and mechanics the game… none of which you can see! leading you to believe I did nothing in the past week 😉

Hi All,

Here is a little video teaser to give you guys a feel for the current state of the game, without having to actually try the game… because according to some of you, its oooh soo hard to spend 1 second on downloading the Unity Web Player Plugin and test the game ;D (Lazy gits I say! 😉 )

Something went wrong with my editting so halfway through the vid repeats itself in slow motion with non-slowmotion sound… bear with me and poor video editting skillz 😉

I hope you enjoy! 🙂 And dont hesitate to spread the vid or the url to my blog, its always good fun for me to hear what people think of my project, and to get some feedback on what works and what doesnt 🙂