I'm still alive

Hey, it has been a long time since my last update. I have been working a lot in a project I can't share at this time, it is related with 3D stuff but it is not a game. I think I can write a lot of programming topics about that once I have a little time, maybe about multi-threading, network sockets, Android, or maybe about Unity shaders. In fact, I just understood I don't know anything about shaders and I need to learn lot, so I could share some things while I'm learning.

I won't have any updates for like another month because I'm traveling to Japan :D, they say traveling broadens one's mind so I hope to come back full of energy and new perspectives to continue working on my projects.

This is just a small update so you don't think I'm dead or something. Aaand... maybe it's too soon but, merry Christmas and happy new year!

Game progress: Ninja climbing and jumping

I shared this in Twitter but I forgot to put it here as well :)

I improved a little the animations since I uploaded this, and I also had some good progress in programming the missing parts.

I will share later more progress, now I need to tweak some actions to help the player don't lose much speed when moving from a corridor to the next one. I have some ideas but better to go back to work and test them!

Ninja Game progress and Twitter account

I have been working on this -still unnamed- small game, let's call it Ninja Game for now.
I created this simple minimalist red ninja in 3D, its animations, and worked on the wall-jump programming. Everything going good so far.

Now I need to program some of the most difficult (and bug prone) parts of this game. Based on the section of the level you are, the gravity will change and controllers will change with it. Let's say the gravity is going from right to left (instead of going down), the controllers must now change so the player needs to use up and down directions for wall jumping (instead of left and right). If it was not clear don't worry, I will upload a video as soon as I get it working :).

Going to other breaking news, now I have Twitter account @ForestGameDev!
I know what you are thinking, but let me clarify that I had a personal Twitter account I never used (I just didn't find it interesting). But now that I'm being a little more "social" about my games and projects, this account has a little more purpose and it's interesting to follow some other indie game developers and projects as well.

Also I'm working on some changes for this site, but there's no point in talk about that, better continue working on them and eventually you will see ;).

I will share soon a little more of Ninja Game!

New (mini) game in process

First, I'm not abandoning Ascendam, I've been programming a little of its main mechanics and I thought I will need a lot of feedback to make them feel as good as I want, so I decided to make a small game based entirely in Ascendam's wall-jump mechanic.

Besides I think it is kind of simple game I have had a though time explaining it to a couple friends, that sounds kind of a warning signal so I'll make sure my prototype is very clear about what the game is about. All what I'm going to say for now is that it will be local multiplayer game based on wall-jump mechanics.

I'm really exited about start prototyping it, I already have some code from Ascendam and I decided to use very simplistic art style... I haven't had very much time for game dev lately, however will do my best.

I drew this characters in Pixly... then I noticed I could make them directly with Unity basic objects haha, so probably I will use this only as a guide to make the 3D ones:

Pixly did something weird with the original colors (eyes should be black, and the sword doesn't change), but it's fine, it looks kind of cool anyway haha.

Song: Ascendam Theme

Around one week ago (or two?) I was working on some sprites for Ascendam when I realized I still needed to define a little more the "look and feel" I want this game to have, so I decided to give another try to compose a song that would reflect the dynamic gameplay I want to create.

I did a little search and found this awesome music app for Android called Caustic 3 (I think it also exists for iOS). It is not free but it really worth its price (actually I didn't find any good free music app). Anyway, maybe I could write about the app later, today I want to share this song that I composed for Ascendam's title screen. It took a little more time than normal because I was still learning the app, and I had little idea of what kind of song I wanted to compose, but after some tries it started to emerge by itself.

I was thinking in a style similar to the music in Mega Man X3. However as I have said, I'm not a born musician so I'm still pretty far to compose something that awesome. Anyway I believe it's good enough and now I can imagine a little more how dynamic the gameplay should be, as well as the movements I want Anz (the main character) to perform.

I uploaded two versions, one is just the song, the other is the looped version. I uploaded both because the loop is not expected to start at the beginning of the song, so I pasted the song 3 times as I want to make the loop to sound in game. I'm sharing here the looped version, the original one can be found in my soundcloud profile.

I hope you like it!

Doing some sprites with Pixly

Lately I have been very busy and it has been a little difficult to spend time in Ascendam, however I have a few new Anz sprites and have been tuning (in my mind) the game mechanics.

The first sprites I created for Ascendam (the ones in my previous post) I drew them using an Android app called IsoPix. It is a nice not too basic pixel art app and I thought it was quite good actually. I was planning to purchase the Pro version but the problem was that it doesn't support animations. Is that big deal? well, yes. If you want to make the different facing directions of a character, they will probably look weird if you don't test how the transition between the main frames looks (I will try to write a post about that in the future).

So when I was really close to purchase IsoPix Pro y found this great free app called Pixly, and believe me, nobody told me to write this, but Pixly is far FAR superior than any other apps I found in the Play Store, I don't know why it is not the first app that shows up when you search for "pixel art".

What is so good about Pixly? well, if I would need to say it in once sentence it would be: it satisfies a game developer's needs. I'm not planning to make a full review because I actually haven't used all its features yet, but you can take a look to its website, there are short and concrete examples of its features.

The things I like most of this app are:

1. It supports layers, so you can draw the movable parts of your sprite in individual layers, and later animate them easily.
2. It supports frames, so you can make animations and export them as animated GIFs (or as a PNG sprite sheet).
• This is really useful because instead of make a huge sprite sheet that contain all your frames, you create a single frame, let's say 128×128 px, and you can navigate between frames using the timeline menu, and reorder, copy, delete them if you need.
• It still can improve in this side, being able to select the frames and save multiple animations would be really useful for complex characters. Also the animated GIF I exported didn't display the colors correctly, but maybe I did something wrong (I have only tried a couple times). Anyway you should check if the latest version coincide with what I said.
3. It supports configurable grids.
4. It supports to load and save color palettes.
5. It supports two techniques for rotation which is very useful.
6. It can export your work to a sprite sheet, and it will only export the layers you have selected as visible, so if I want a sprite sheet with only the heads of Anz, I can export it easily.
7. Zoom in/out is smooth and not limited (other apps support some specific zoom levels only)
8. It has a lot of undo/redo steps (I'm not sure how many, but they have been enough so far)
9. It has mini view window, i.e. when you are working with zoom in a specific part of you sprite you can see in real time how it looks in another zoom level.
10. It has have mirror transformations, magic wand, color replacement, and so on...

Oh, and almost forgot, one thing Pixly does NOT have:

1. Annoying ads ;) ... it only shows an ad when you save.

I don't want to insist too much in how good this app is, but I feel really happy with it because I can have some progress in my game while going on the bus, or waiting for any reason, and for free! If you are looking to make sprites for a game I highly recommend this app.

Here is a side view of Anz I drew in Pixly. You can see the layers at the right side, that menu can be hidden so you have most of the screen available to draw.

About the sprite, maybe I will change a little its legs but I'm still not sure, I prefer to make some other positions required to start programming and experimenting the gameplay.)

I will be working on sprites for a while, I hope to have time to update my progress here.

See you!

Ascendam - Characters concept art

Last entry I was talking about making games that fit your personal style, so after a little more than a week rethinking my "mysterious" game, I finally got to the point I think I really like it :), I decided to call this game "Ascendam".

I have been working mainly in the conceptual art for the characters (back to the pixel art :D), the game story, and a little of game mechanics.

This is Anz, the main character:

I want this character to be an avatar for the player, I mean, I want Anz to be a representation of the player in the game in a personal level. Because of that I don't want to create a deep detailed description of Anz's personality. Later if I have time I will make a female version, but for now the male character should be enough.

Anz will use a spear as its main weapon, later in the game you will get bombs as well. Those are his weapons so far, but I'm not sure if I will add any other in the future.

Well maybe it would be good to explain briefly the gameplay now so the enemies make sense to you.

The main idea is to "fall" through tunnels in a labyrinth, Anz will be hanging of a kind of rope so you will be able to control how much you want to go up or down, you will be able to grasp the walls and climb faster than climbing by using the rope only. Also you will be able to move down faster by running down on the wall (ninja style!).

I'm planning to have 4 enemy types. Probably I'm going to add different difficulty levels for each of them, but that's not yet clearly defined.

First the basic enemies, you will find this little guys climbing on the walls of the labyrinths, they are harmless if you keep away from the wall. I call them Walldos.

The Guardians, you will find this guys flying through the tunnels. At the beginning they won't attack you if you grasp a wall, but in future levels they will use their flexible arms as whips.

Cloud Crowds, you will fear this creepy enemies. They will be flying through the tunnels as well, but you won't be able to attack them. They will be moving in a rhythmic way opening their eyes from time to time. You won't want them to see you.

Smiley Gear, this will be a fundamental enemy in the game mechanics, those will be static enemies that you will need to destroy in order to progress through the maze.

I hope they intrigue you a little :). I will be working on the scenarios (I need to experiment some ideas to have scenarios that I can realistically create) and programming the basic mechanics, so I can know how fun they actually are.

See you later!