renderSmith.net

Envy

Here is the final version of “Envy,” my game based on the theme of 100 Things.

I hope you enjoy it.

For this week, my chosen task is to complete a game for Expermental Gameplay, based on the theme of “100 Things.”

In searching for a game, I struggled to find that idea that “just fit,” and worked with the theme. 100 Red Balloons, 100 Dalmatians, 100 Lights, 100 this-that-and-the-others — nothing seemed quite right for me on this piece. Something clicked a few days ago, and my ideas poured forth for a game dealing with our “relationships.”

Continue reading

Photo by yamagatacamille on Flickr

Week 3’s theme comes to us from the the Experimental Gameplay Project, which is a result of the class that inspired my work on these little games. Each month, this site chooses another theme upon which to base a game, which must be completed within 7 days, prior to the end of the month. This schedule fits in wonderfully with mine, as Sunday is the last day of the month, and an excellent time to try and complete a game by.

This month’s topic is 100 Things. It has proven, for me at least, to be a difficult topic to tackle.

I don’t know yet what my 100 things will be, or even what I’m going to do with my 100 things, but I imagine as time crunches down on me for getting this project completed, the game will start coming together. I’ve still got a fair bit of time left on this one, comparatively.

More updates on this one as they come!

So I came to the end of this week and came up a bit short in the art department for the game. Part of this was due to time constraints, and part was due to some nasty issues I had with a pixel art program called Pixen. Regardless of these issues, here is what I’ve come to call the “Deadline Edition” of my game based on the “Guardian” theme.

If you’ve got any thoughts or feedback, I’d love to hear it. I hope you enjoy it!

guardian_deadlineEdition

Included in this version is a bug fix to reset the enemy count each time the game is reset — preventing cases where no enemies show up while playing. (Thanks, Ben, for spotting that one!)

If at some point my schedule allows it, I’d like to fix the art here, but the most important aspect here is that I feel the gameplay is working, for the most part.

Guardian (Photo:ciberia via flickr)

I’ve been a bit behind schedule on getting things working this week, but I’ve got my first playable version of my game based on the theme “Guardian” up now, ready to be downloaded below.

Continue reading

This week, I’m borrowing a theme from the Ludum Dare prior themes list — Guardian. This is in response to my trouble reducing a theme down to a simple single idea. At times, ideas flow easily, but wrangling them into something simple is often the hardest part. I imagine if this is a successful game, I may continue to use their list as my source of inspiration moving forward, or rely on other lists to help drive me on. Taking that element of complication out of this one week rush would help immensely, and let me focus on getting down to the business of developing around the topic.

Continue reading

Above, I’ve included an image of the final version of “Multibreaker.” Not much has changed in the way of the dynamics of how the game plays from the previous version, but I’ve dropped in some more complete visuals to help the experience.

I plan to do a post mortem of this project in the next day or so, which will be posted up as soon as it’s complete.

For now — enjoy Multibreaker!

Multibreaker_final

MultiBreak_alpha2

New version, now with faster moving ball and respawning bricks.

Today’s task — art and final adjustments!

Below, I’ve included the game in its current form — VERY RoUGh

When the game starts, use the arrow keys to move the paddle and the spacebar to add “balls” to the game. The top number on the right is the number of balls you have left to play with, the middle number is your score, and the bottom is your current score multiplier. This is mostly a test proving that the game plays, and examining the playability of the game. You will likely run out of bricks way before you run out of balls. If this occurs, launch the remaining balls, and let one ball past the paddle and to the bottom of the screen. This will end the game, and bring up a high score page. Closing this page will restart the game, and let you play again.

This is simply a play test, for the moment. Graphical updates will come shortly.

Continue reading

Thus begins the first week of the game prototyping project.

This week’s project is a Breakout clone. The mechanic I’m experimenting with as my modification to it is the idea of multiball play, with the player controlling when balls are added, and how many they can juggle at any one time. Any ball hitting the floor results in the loss of all balls currently in play. The player is limited to using 25 balls total in a play session, be it through 25 single ball plays, 1 play with 25 balls, or any combination between. I’m currently debating a timer in place to force the decision to speed up play a bit. The score will increase along some increasing (exponential, fibonacci) path as more balls are added, incentivizing the player to play more aggressively and increasing the risk of failure as more balls are added. Continue reading