tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30013658162149086802024-03-16T01:49:35.997-04:00Sassy Echidna SoftwareUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger171125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-72389368557204880252020-12-30T15:35:00.001-05:002020-12-30T15:35:24.757-05:00Sassy Echidna Software: 2012-2020<p>I have a new website: <a href="https://alexandrah.neocities.org/">alexandrah.neocities.org/</a>!<br /></p><p>This means this will be my final post at Sassy Echidna Software.</p><p>In short, I have outgrown this blog. I created this blog in 2012 when I was 19. I wanted a space for sharing my games and writing about games in general, and Sassy Echidna served that purpose well. My creative output accelerated during this time, and I'm still going strong. </p><p>I also grew and matured a lot during the past decade, as an artist, writer, thinker, and person. I was still practically a kid when I started the blog, and looking back at the first several years of posts on this site, it shows. I've taken down some of my most embarrassing writing, but removing the rest would require me to delete three-quarters of this blog. I'd like some distance from my old writing, and I would like to mostly write about things that aren't video games.<br /></p><p>Also, most people don't know how to spell "echidna." This makes sustaining readership difficult. <br /></p><p>My <a href="https://alexandrah.neocities.org/blog/posts/2020-12-27-Blogs.html">inaugural blog post on the new site</a> goes deeper into my rationale for creating it, so I won't repeat myself here. In addition to hosting the new blog, the new Personal Site will be where you can find all of my games going forward. As the informational pages on Sassy Echidna become outdated, I'll take them down.<br /></p><p>Thanks for following the blog over the past 8 years! The new one will be even better. <br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-51746380886680726722020-08-23T11:46:00.001-04:002020-08-31T09:47:47.461-04:00Card Games vs Literary Characters: Enhanced and Print Editions<p>Here's one last little bit of game dev before the semester starts and I disappear for the next four months.</p><p>The first is: I've made a print version of <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/card-games-vs-literary-characters"><i>Card Games vs Literary Characters at the End of the World</i></a>! Since the game's original title only describes the narrative and not the theme of the game itself, I named the print version <i>Cardin</i>g<i>er.</i> Its like"harbinger," but... card.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXM2cDOmBM0NScV8CIRaovqEgD4VJ9RVhXhiptxdMZ69F4ymUlj3bDOWgzNGXlBa0mSUO1y7eaPF69p5SXB6fU7GVI9s3YbbuDthDpAMiuqm8wRGdmqJQDGBmBpbcffj23wESpnlkD0aUg/s2048/promo01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXM2cDOmBM0NScV8CIRaovqEgD4VJ9RVhXhiptxdMZ69F4ymUlj3bDOWgzNGXlBa0mSUO1y7eaPF69p5SXB6fU7GVI9s3YbbuDthDpAMiuqm8wRGdmqJQDGBmBpbcffj23wESpnlkD0aUg/s640/promo01.jpg" /></a></div><br />I'm really happy with how they turned out! I tried to mimic the original digital card design as much as possible while making enough changes to make them actually readable in-person. I also added flavor text to the cards, space permitting! <br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbsL82HfA7TpUkpsGTQddfHlF3r3Q0Jyt3FH_6sBJ5Q5So3bfHyOlFpTSL6Tjwh50tkfs_Uf4BeWJSoApcZ86kJdn7id3oozyt-u5b3pWPo7kM7r3F0j_XpJcbMUMpLmV3LPQNA947PhyphenhyphenJ/s2048/example05.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1862" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbsL82HfA7TpUkpsGTQddfHlF3r3Q0Jyt3FH_6sBJ5Q5So3bfHyOlFpTSL6Tjwh50tkfs_Uf4BeWJSoApcZ86kJdn7id3oozyt-u5b3pWPo7kM7r3F0j_XpJcbMUMpLmV3LPQNA947PhyphenhyphenJ/s640/example05.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrVFJtXztYCAt2ekVsX1ZLPvhwn4XjWXXAa-leD1h7YFrtcPY0Z9jtH_g2B2AXSQ3E9H2OeQfNBMAjPwkVFC1WTZHcs7I1-GJBfaTi3iPdhQDrNjeJYMok1_zGRX2FEPWgQ1DeyyWoQV4T/s2262/example02.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1054" data-original-width="2262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrVFJtXztYCAt2ekVsX1ZLPvhwn4XjWXXAa-leD1h7YFrtcPY0Z9jtH_g2B2AXSQ3E9H2OeQfNBMAjPwkVFC1WTZHcs7I1-GJBfaTi3iPdhQDrNjeJYMok1_zGRX2FEPWgQ1DeyyWoQV4T/s640/example02.png" width="640" /></a></div><p><br />I printed the game through <a href="https://www.thegamecrafter.com/">The Game Crafter</a>, so if there's interest, I'll make it publicly available for purchase. Otherwise, card sets will be available as prizes at Underground Arcade events, whenever the world reopens.<br /><br />Working on the print version of the game also has implications for the digital version. Before immortalizing the game in print, I wanted to make improvements to the rules that I wasn't able to do during the game's original brief development cycle. I used the digital game to test these changes against the AI, so I've released an <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/card-games-vs-literary-characters">"Enhanced Edition" of <i>Card Games vs Literary Characters</i></a> reflecting these changes.</p><p> The list of changes is as follows:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li> A point is only earned at the start of your turn when your deck replenishes, instead of every turn. The previous system was implemented as an easy way to stop the game from locking into a state where neither player can advance their win condition, but it was too passive.</li><li>You can now retire cards when you have five or more in play, discarding the old card and replacing it with a new one from your hand. This prevents the lock scenario described above.</li><li>If you do nothing during your turn, you may draw an extra card.</li><li>Cards with the "devour" ability can have no more than 4 HP, instead of 5. Formerly, a devouring card at max HP was practically invincible. </li><li> Cards with the "prosperity" ability now score a bonus point for every 5 cards in hand instead of every 4. If a deck is built to maximize draw power, the prosperity ability quickly becomes overpowered.</li><li>"Miner Bee," "Combo Miner," "Idealogue," "Evening Tears," and "Vampire Princess" have been buffed. The draw power of the first three has been improved, as has the durability of the latter two.</li><li>"Blood Knight" has been reworked. He now has an extra HP, but he also now has the "decay" ability, so he's harder to pick off on the turn he's put into play, but easier to defeat after that.</li><li>The Oz cards: "The Lion," "The Tin Man," "The Scare Crow," and "The Wizard" have all been nerfed. Even with their high cost, they were otherwise absurdly powerful.</li><li>The final opponent's cards - those from Booster X - have all been nerfed. It is clear that she is way too challenging an opponent, and improvements made to the game's AI have made her invincible with her old deck.<br /></li></ul><p>The game also features some small improvements to the AI and UI, as well as bug and typo fixes. A version with the original rules is still available for download.<br /><br />That's it for now! Enjoy.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoBa_aalZ9YM7wLTmqnex7ljP-0H9EOwIkXkSrol7wXB8LWw9nVImctRxysVvpEebFm4eNYQb28WwBZwp6Ulq1ecMHx64gkNYnwoNjYB7lS1oK1PFTkHcJL3S7Z0aqPwKYNS6ttpk5AgN/s2048/promo02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoBa_aalZ9YM7wLTmqnex7ljP-0H9EOwIkXkSrol7wXB8LWw9nVImctRxysVvpEebFm4eNYQb28WwBZwp6Ulq1ecMHx64gkNYnwoNjYB7lS1oK1PFTkHcJL3S7Z0aqPwKYNS6ttpk5AgN/s640/promo02.jpg" /></a></div><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-19749510037920428312020-08-13T18:16:00.004-04:002020-08-13T21:16:22.640-04:00Clark Stanley's Van Racer<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgZYOBvDmPQswCHH0oJb-kAHm0rnsbuSc8Yi15h2DlsUN5UmvNSAjdY40fCYg7f75pDRDHlJMDTCjDZsQbo10erAPE_943M1judVclvyGyHsoMCmp6LmShpTB5JMkRfzC3uyJnh5xEyWn/s1022/vanScreen01.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="766" data-original-width="1022" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgZYOBvDmPQswCHH0oJb-kAHm0rnsbuSc8Yi15h2DlsUN5UmvNSAjdY40fCYg7f75pDRDHlJMDTCjDZsQbo10erAPE_943M1judVclvyGyHsoMCmp6LmShpTB5JMkRfzC3uyJnh5xEyWn/s640/vanScreen01.png" width="640" /></a></p><p></p>I made a short racing game for 1-2 players. Imagine 16 minivans traveling at 240 mph bouncing into each other, and that is this game.<br /><br />This one was made for the Grid Grind Jam at Glorious Trainwrecks. Each game had to contain 3 elements from a 3-dimensional grid. I chose "van," "garden," and snake oil salesman "Clark Stanley." <br /><br />I once had a dream about making a 2.5 racing game like F-Zero or Super Mario Kart, but with minivans. So I decided to make the game for real.<br /><br />While the game embraces its trash aesthetic, this is probably one of the meticulously engineered things I've ever made. From the drift physics, to the graphics optimization, to the 3D audio, this ended up being a lot more difficult to make than I originally imagined!<br /><br />All of the sound effects were made with my mouth.<br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/KaitoCat7">Paul Schroeder</a> made the <a href="https://paulschroeder.bandcamp.com/album/clark-stanleys-van-racer-ost">soundtrack</a>. It's awesome.<br /><br />You can download the game for Windows from <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/clark-stanleys-van-racer">Itch</a> or <a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/11952">Glorious Trainwrecks</a>.<br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-17904548363057473892020-05-24T16:00:00.000-04:002020-05-26T16:04:02.947-04:00Quake Level - Borderworld Hole<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb6dd-LsTcRIs104xpqWOccvQdqH2vZIStnv_yYFZ8ZF5wQ9MDYnh0wWoXTaiB5myOXwlZnM79MeliF1Pjvxd2aFoWvMQHe16InocpcMKki3K0smZQeWlcqiP1Jq6Oup4jYAiV61ySkdZJ/s1600/spasm0005.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb6dd-LsTcRIs104xpqWOccvQdqH2vZIStnv_yYFZ8ZF5wQ9MDYnh0wWoXTaiB5myOXwlZnM79MeliF1Pjvxd2aFoWvMQHe16InocpcMKki3K0smZQeWlcqiP1Jq6Oup4jYAiV61ySkdZJ/s400/spasm0005.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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I made a short Quake level that I'm calling "Borderworld Hole." I designed it to teach myself the <a href="https://kristianduske.com/trenchbroom/">Trenchbroom</a> level editor, and so it very much features a "stream of conscious" sort of design that's a mashup of whatever themes and concepts I wanted to explore in a given moment. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUrZ32gdhecjs8HPC_uYYV-5WAzhde8r0Eujra_oAy4FueseAeGODdbaYXl0JQZhJ1NEzn2kNFYyUM9QwjfV2GRWlA2CMAjJ47rkzjEhbDFkehtL4xtCbNdISUroqs0nB9hphL93dBWzA/s1600/spasm0015.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUrZ32gdhecjs8HPC_uYYV-5WAzhde8r0Eujra_oAy4FueseAeGODdbaYXl0JQZhJ1NEzn2kNFYyUM9QwjfV2GRWlA2CMAjJ47rkzjEhbDFkehtL4xtCbNdISUroqs0nB9hphL93dBWzA/s400/spasm0015.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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You spend the first half of the level exploring twisted hallways that periodically reconvene at the same rocky pit, but the second half ends in a hectic battle in a massive outdoor arena of sorts, so that's pretty cool.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZt6NE30M9UBq7G_wcGnkUJb_CTJJqRNqFXL6Ls7U0-7T9E_1Vkkh-OWO_y_SoVw7AYleEQa-MTm6p0ExEVCCeS3S8UPhqId6IREYnYzYLWhUT47CIEndTwlKzdCl0TzZmA_749NMw6ra-/s1600/spasm0040.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZt6NE30M9UBq7G_wcGnkUJb_CTJJqRNqFXL6Ls7U0-7T9E_1Vkkh-OWO_y_SoVw7AYleEQa-MTm6p0ExEVCCeS3S8UPhqId6IREYnYzYLWhUT47CIEndTwlKzdCl0TzZmA_749NMw6ra-/s400/spasm0040.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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You can download the level <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/vomy1p2ziroo7bs/ah01_borderworld_hole.zip?dl=0">here</a>. Place the ah01.bsp and ah01.lit file in your game's id1/maps directory, and after selecting a difficulty level, type "map ah01" in the game's console to play it.<br />
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The map DOES NOT render properly in Quake's original engine. You have to play it using a modern source port - I most recommend <a href="http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/">Quakespasm</a>.<br />
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I had a blast learning how to use Trenchbroom and am affectionate towards the classic Id shooters, but Quake is too bloody and dark for me to immerse myself in it for very long. I'm going to turn my attention to something a bit lighter next!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJECemCH03gBJqRJ6lYZjmIS-KnZpqQQdbFPTzVfqDat52E7aDQO-lkvF-lRsqct3wHKTg0QG4Q-XuLgfujyrdHOaCuxowCa1aL8kJNk_WzLSKBvSOXc2QxvuPvhFTcUkTUSbB65EjzbN/s1600/spasm0032.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJECemCH03gBJqRJ6lYZjmIS-KnZpqQQdbFPTzVfqDat52E7aDQO-lkvF-lRsqct3wHKTg0QG4Q-XuLgfujyrdHOaCuxowCa1aL8kJNk_WzLSKBvSOXc2QxvuPvhFTcUkTUSbB65EjzbN/s400/spasm0032.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-32055086309950412342020-01-14T13:33:00.004-05:002020-01-14T13:34:21.196-05:00Card Games vs Literary Characters at the End of the World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_erdvpxXHH7RM6Yyfzw4-j8dYc9fV6JbfU-aki8Mjreo1T0lUUUGju-L3uG3e8m_Bc1Ham1lRrZoeQ0FaXu_hNormhtO3aMty3ZkdqC_we74bcHKbjVf1Rm0b07g9qPBS5KQxp2Lwl6d/s1600/screenshot01.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1280" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_erdvpxXHH7RM6Yyfzw4-j8dYc9fV6JbfU-aki8Mjreo1T0lUUUGju-L3uG3e8m_Bc1Ham1lRrZoeQ0FaXu_hNormhtO3aMty3ZkdqC_we74bcHKbjVf1Rm0b07g9qPBS5KQxp2Lwl6d/s640/screenshot01.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I made a single player TCG with 8 opponents, 94 cards, and general oddity.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I really like how this one turned out. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Play it here: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/card-games-vs-literary-characters">Itch</a></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/cardgamesvsliterarycharacters/462752">Game Jolt</a><br />
</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/11758">Glorious Trainwrecks<b> </b></a></span> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-46792383453454800372019-10-19T08:47:00.004-04:002019-10-19T08:47:55.045-04:00Bloodjak II is free!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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From here on out, <i>Bloodjak II </i>will be strictly available for free (on <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/bloodjak-ii/devlog/105412/bloodjak-ii-its-free">itch</a> and <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjakII/430744">Game Jolt</a>)!<br />
<br />
Thank
you so much to everyone who bought a copy and supported our team in the
months following the game's release - I hope you've enjoyed the game
over the past couple of months! However, I believe that the best thing
for the game, especially given its communal high score competition, is
to grow its player base, and the best thing that can be done to
accomplish that is to make it freely available. <br />
<br />
Thanks again for the community support and enthusiasm. I look forward to seeing some high scores get topped!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-75630275584662889532019-08-12T16:48:00.000-04:002019-08-12T16:48:13.442-04:00Bloodjak II Version 1.0.1Firstly, I had just discovered that it's been impossible to make purchases off of <i>Bloodjak II</i>'s <a href="https://gamejolt.com/dashboard/games/430744">Game Jolt page</a> for the past week. I've since fixed it. I've never had this issue before when launching anything on any platform, and can't apologize enough. Thank you for your patience.<br /><br />Otherwise, we've launched a small update to the game. Downloading the new version is recommended but not required.<br /><br />Bug Fix<br />
<ul>
<li>Jack out sound no longer resumes playing if the player dies during jack out and restarts the game through the pause menu</li>
</ul>
Other Changes:<br />
<ul>
<li>If the player isn't logged into Game Jolt, the scoreboard now shows the Guest Scores by default</li>
<li>Can now change the ship color in the options menu by tapping the A key or A button</li>
<li>Version number is now on display in the menu</li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-75355844692647376532019-08-10T13:49:00.000-04:002019-08-10T13:49:37.178-04:00The Story of Bloodjak II's Procedural Difficulty (Devlog #3)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9IxbZ8r4N1plp2jOLTwhjIUUZme3oaKO8oDg3prTYR2car_uFAmNx1gN5rmaUTMCeYHFVJ-gcaFJexwoY8sNJcIo6imqI3x1y44Qfxl_qlh8ohSHwRRXLWWlssTiZu1ogbis9w2cOdGo/s1600/general02.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="671" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9IxbZ8r4N1plp2jOLTwhjIUUZme3oaKO8oDg3prTYR2car_uFAmNx1gN5rmaUTMCeYHFVJ-gcaFJexwoY8sNJcIo6imqI3x1y44Qfxl_qlh8ohSHwRRXLWWlssTiZu1ogbis9w2cOdGo/s400/general02.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
From the perspective of difficulty progression, I had two objectives with <i>Bloodjak II </i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(which is out now on <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/bloodjak-ii">itch.io</a> and <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjakII/430744">Game Jolt</a>)</span><span style="font-size: small;">. The game had to be infinitely playable while also never ceasing to become more difficult. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Practically, this is due to the game's nature as a single score attack game type - the game cannot have a score ceiling or end, but the game's difficulty must, at some point, be able to overcome the player's skill.</span> If there were a score ceiling, then the high score competition would end as soon as somebody hit it. If the game's difficulty plateau'd, then a player of a certain skill level would be able to play indefinitely.<br /><br />The difficulty of pursuing both of these objectives simultaneously is that the game must always be fair. This is, of course, almost always an essential rule of thumb for game design, especially for a skill based game. The game's difficulty must constantly escalate, but never to the extent that it becomes impossible. Not only does this introduce a skill ceiling, but it also makes the game needlessly frustrating. Part of what makes the <i>Bloodjak </i>games work is that player death is always the result of player error. That is what keeps people making run after run after run.<br /><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjak/80167"><br /></a><i><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjak/80167">Bloodjak</a> </i>the first technically accomplished both of these goals, but it had other issues. Not only were waves of enemies generally homogenous (they usually consisted of a collection of the same enemy type), but there was a lot of dead time in-between waves, and enemies also had a tendency to trickle it one at a time. I borrowed a lot of code and concepts from the original when making the sequel, but the enemy spawn algorithm was something that needed to be rewritten from scratch.<br />
<br />
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
Bloodjak II's Spawn Algorithm - The First Iteration </h4>
<h4>
</h4>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxfm9YjoTx-pcl-vO-Vf-m7KNUJZE5aXBNhQy-VVlh_xkqwkg3rCpcGCL5uz7jbRcIKeX0YRtuVP5XlKasSJJwy1VConcj8wruCw0OPYfi8yvE7xUrO701_HCo1F7rcO5Y1lTMBoorKvP0/s1600/general01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="671" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxfm9YjoTx-pcl-vO-Vf-m7KNUJZE5aXBNhQy-VVlh_xkqwkg3rCpcGCL5uz7jbRcIKeX0YRtuVP5XlKasSJJwy1VConcj8wruCw0OPYfi8yvE7xUrO701_HCo1F7rcO5Y1lTMBoorKvP0/s400/general01.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Enemies spawn in waves at gradually shortening intervals</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />Every set number of seconds, a wave of enemies spawns. If there are no enemies on the screen, then the next wave spawns within a half second to reduce dead time. Waves spawn more quickly over time.<br />
<br />
However, the player does need a breather every once in a while. Every group of waves is collected into a group of waves, or a meta-wave. Each meta-wave consists of at least 6 waves, and on average gets longer as the game progresses. There are an extra few seconds of dead time in between one meta-wave finishing and another beginning that are unskippable. The game's background also has a chance of changing during this time to better punctuate the end of the sequence.<br /><br />After certain waves, new enemy types are introduced, and the maximum number of enemies that can spawn increases. The chances of more difficult enemies and larger waves to spawn increases over time.<br /><br />This overall served as a solid foundation from which I was able to build the rest of the game, but it produced some immediate problems:<br />
<ol>
<li>There was no inverse correlation between how many enemies spawn and how powerful those enemies are. At times, you would be as likely to spawn a pair of small "fighters" as you would six large "destroyers."</li>
<li>Enemy combinations would be produced that were excessively difficult. If they are arranged on the screen in just the right way, it may be impossible to survive when ten "heavy" ships clutter the screen with diagonal shots.. </li>
<li>Enemy combinations that were otherwise surmountable would suddenly fill the screen with lasers in ways that were nearly impossible to dodge. Firing patterns were often synchronized within large groups of enemies. </li>
<li>The early game would sometimes lack variety, even if it were hypothetically possible for the game to produce a wide variety of encounters. If an enemy's first appearance can be as early as wave 14, they still may not appear until wave 30.</li>
</ol>
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
Imposing Hard Limits</h4>
<h4>
</h4>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhELfl3zKnlFjqLnOvmMLRfBo8Y0jaK5wUVxe5r3u15sToCCb6aYuo1MFyYl_YTu3_13jyo_tlbpWFQuS9OPwpdWi_ZIF9TMUxfGPB6xamzAbGWKN00aWSBN6BqqOGXDovvLip95zejHkZw/s1600/impossible03.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="671" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhELfl3zKnlFjqLnOvmMLRfBo8Y0jaK5wUVxe5r3u15sToCCb6aYuo1MFyYl_YTu3_13jyo_tlbpWFQuS9OPwpdWi_ZIF9TMUxfGPB6xamzAbGWKN00aWSBN6BqqOGXDovvLip95zejHkZw/s400/impossible03.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some hypothetical enemy combinations are needlessly difficult</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
An obvious solution to the first problem would have been to assign a difficulty value to each enemy type, impose a total limit on the overall game difficulty, and increase that difficulty limit over time. For example, you could decide that a fighter is worth 1 point while a destroyer is worth 10. The difficulty limit would start out at 5, meaning that the most difficulty encounter would consist of 5 fighters. When it increases to 10, anywhere up to 10 fighters could spawn, or a single destroyer. When it increases to 20, two destroyers could spawn. This prevents the problem I had where it was hypothetically possible for 10 destroyers to spawn in a single moment.<br />
<br />
The problem with this system is that it wasn't compatible with the system I already had in place. As it stood, I already had a hard limit on the number of enemies that could spawn at a time. Combining this with a point based difficulty system above did not produce the desired results - enemy waves just got blander.<br />
<br />
Instead, whenever a wave spawns, the game counts each enemy that spawns within it. Only the first two ships of a wave has a chance of becoming a powerful enemy like a destroyer. The first four or so can become intermediate enemies like heavies. Any enemy has the chance of becoming a "popcorn" enemy like a fighter or a bomb - the screen can flood with them without any serious consequence.<br />
<br />
This mostly produced the desired effects. Small waves were more likely to consist primarily of larger foes. Larger waves were more likely to consist mostly of smaller ships, but may contain a managable number of more powerful enemies within them. <br />
<br />
Furthermore, certain hard limits on the total number of enemies of a type had to be imposed. The game is manageable with a single heavy on the screen, tricky with two, difficult with three, and often a nightmare with four. Generally speaking, only three heavies will be on the screen at a time.<br />
<br />
However, I had to be very careful when imposing hard limits on the difficulty of enemy spawns - if I impose too many limits, it would create a difficulty ceiling, which, as stated, needs to be avoided! Thankfully, enough difficulty parameters were able to increase indefinitely that I was able to maintain my objective of infinitely progressing difficulty while imposing a handful of limits.<br />
<br />
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
Making the Impossible, Possible</h4>
<br />
Regarding the third problem, one solution would have been to further limit the number of enemies that appeared on the screen at once.<br /><br />That would be a boring solution for a boring game. An important aspect of the game is to make the player feel as though they must, and are able to, overcome great odds.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkKT07VY5OtFUylctXFAFy510T0aoWc2S20iCW9w0c6470ktX1ebOs2IeESvpKB7VKUEtSlViQV29S8I6oREQjrEAtHHsKmagDoZdNEJ9ORwoW1RMsfst4UbEND0x-vVNmORHE9xDEamJb/s1600/general05.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="671" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkKT07VY5OtFUylctXFAFy510T0aoWc2S20iCW9w0c6470ktX1ebOs2IeESvpKB7VKUEtSlViQV29S8I6oREQjrEAtHHsKmagDoZdNEJ9ORwoW1RMsfst4UbEND0x-vVNmORHE9xDEamJb/s400/general05.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Enemies will often "take turns" firing</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I did a number of things to preserve a high enemy count while not making it a death sentence. The first was that I put a limit on the number of enemy projectiles on the screen. If that limit were breached, then any ships present on the screen would have to wait to fire again until the screen clears of projectiles.<br />
<br />
But doesn't that make the difficulty created by flooding the game with enemies illusory? No. A screen with twice as many enemies will still mean that the player is bombarded with twice as many projectiles - it's just that the player is attacked more frequently instead of being attacked all at once.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, remember how the game counts each enemy that spawns in a wave? Enemies that are counted first will fire before those that are counted later. Enemy 1 attacks first, then 2, then 3. The result is that firing patterns are more staggered. Not only does this make individual waves of attacks easier to manage, but it also means that the player is spending more time dodging lasers.<br />
<br />
Not only do both of these solutions make unwinnable situations winnable, but they also, counterintuitively, make the game <i>more </i>intense. There is less dead time between volleys of attacks, meaning that the player is spending more time responding to fire and less time waiting.<br />
<br />
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
A Designer's Touch</h4>
<br />
The fourth problem is one that is hard to solve with procedural generation. While all of the problems are caused by randomness, that the early game is occasionally dull is a problem that is more inherent to procedural generation itself.<br />
<br />
When a game randomly generates content, there is a range of possibilities. In the early game, it is necessary that some of those possibilities are relatively uninteresting (oh no! a single enemy fighter spawned!). The problem is that, sometimes, the game <i>only </i>generates bland situations. Sometimes, you only roll ones.<br />
<br />
There are ways to change the spawn algorithm to correct for this, but not anything that I could achieve during the last week of a brief, two month development cycle.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyyLldXCZPMfozNuWud5RjCp35FyUj6A-XPN_B7RGcGrYgq14dGMLSLgXXeS29NrPKgUbRPzbm_f5kErCrq2vuGB3PdCACbUPVcYkRBh4fwEL8gu-IfvwV93-zweID1Lfjiamhof4BJiLk/s1600/intro01.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="671" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyyLldXCZPMfozNuWud5RjCp35FyUj6A-XPN_B7RGcGrYgq14dGMLSLgXXeS29NrPKgUbRPzbm_f5kErCrq2vuGB3PdCACbUPVcYkRBh4fwEL8gu-IfvwV93-zweID1Lfjiamhof4BJiLk/s400/intro01.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The game's first four waves</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
So, there are a handful of waves in the game that are predetermined. The first wave is always a fighter. The second wave is always two or three. The third is always a heavy (the earliest moment a heavy could've otherwise been spawned randomly). The random generation kicks in on wave 4, and the rest of the predetermined waves are scattered throughout.<br />
<br />
It's not an ideal solution for a game where each run is supposed to be unique, but the predetermined waves are rare enough and feature enough random variation within themselves they are mostly invisible, and when they are visible, they are justified. <br />
<br />
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
Conclusion</h4>
<br />
How did I do overall? Improvements could always be made, but not only did I succeed in achieving my most critical design goals (achieving theoretically infinite playtime with theoretically infinite difficulty), but I did so in a way that improved upon the difficulty algorithm of the last game. Compared to the original, <i>Bloodjak II </i>is more varied. The player spends less time waiting for enemies to spawn or do something, and more foes can spawn at a time.<br />
<br />
If you want to evaluate my work as a designer for yourself, feel free to get Bloodjak II from either <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/bloodjak-ii">itch.io</a> or <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjakII/430744">Game Jolt</a>. Thanks! <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-5880414951267704122019-08-06T21:00:00.000-04:002019-08-06T21:00:22.718-04:00Bloodjak II: Now available<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWhRRj6t06uDsf3pLFqm0FW81J6RJO5GHh_3aKglm5dLsYI-5t_RrYC3yd17EKuECX_aup3PAZ9qSe5hSYf3_DmyUdmEqMGASOLN8y2IfmYHC12sUwK2AWdbR5eTCgXJXIwcDJ76CU5B-g/s1600/Thumbnail04.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="671" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWhRRj6t06uDsf3pLFqm0FW81J6RJO5GHh_3aKglm5dLsYI-5t_RrYC3yd17EKuECX_aup3PAZ9qSe5hSYf3_DmyUdmEqMGASOLN8y2IfmYHC12sUwK2AWdbR5eTCgXJXIwcDJ76CU5B-g/s400/Thumbnail04.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
I am pleased to announce that <i>Bloodjak II </i>is now available.<br /><br />You can buy it for $3.99 from <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjakII/430744">Game Jolt</a> and <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/bloodjak-ii">itch.io</a>! <br />
<br />It's good! I'm proud of it, and I'm proud of my team. <br /><br />
Here's the trailer: <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/37ZY57uQnmQ/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/37ZY57uQnmQ?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-19122868545233280482019-08-02T21:07:00.001-04:002019-08-02T21:07:44.304-04:00Bloodjak II Devlog #2 - Where's my Game, Bruh?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDkyU2D7OewOOn7yyb5wEt2zMZ8WthVQOZsCAmOONVdlOGVVoXXm1jsQHPzUuKtmonU0PziIx8q5vdW29T2jsJKsgS4XFrh9LuIymZ-bxPNwJHD2AIWKMK0slyhEcj-WnWOTV6t2R7IV4h/s1600/bomb04.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="722" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDkyU2D7OewOOn7yyb5wEt2zMZ8WthVQOZsCAmOONVdlOGVVoXXm1jsQHPzUuKtmonU0PziIx8q5vdW29T2jsJKsgS4XFrh9LuIymZ-bxPNwJHD2AIWKMK0slyhEcj-WnWOTV6t2R7IV4h/s320/bomb04.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<i>Bloodjak II </i>was supposed to ship on August 1st. Today is August 2nd.<br /><br />A
number of factors have lead to us delaying our release by a few days,
the two main ones being 1) video games are hard to make and 2) I had
been hospitalized for a couple of days due to my appendix becoming
inflamed and being removed from my body. We are in the final stages of
development and will be shipping within a few days.<br /><br />If you dig
through the history of this blog (don't) you will find a number of posts
where I apologize for a game not being released, insist that it will be
released soon, and make the claim repeatedly over the course of a year,
after which the game is belatedly released (or not). This is
not one of those posts. <i>Bloodjak II</i> is fully playable and is awesome - almost all of the remaining work is UI stuff. <br /><br />Here are some cool GIFs showcasing some new enemies if you haven't been following us on <a href="https://twitter.com/BloodjakII">Twitter</a>.<br />
<br />
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<br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-42921005264303701332019-07-21T23:11:00.000-04:002019-07-21T23:11:26.777-04:00July News (Artscape, Charm City Meadworks, Social Media, and Bloodjak II)Hello! It's been a busy month, and I just want to take a moment to poke my head in and address the many game projects and events I am juggling.<br /><br />
<h4>
Regarding Underground Arcade and our events, past and future</h4>
First of all, thanks to everyone who attended <a href="http://www.artscape.org/visual-arts/visual-arts-detail/54">Gamescape</a> at <a href="http://www.artscape.org/">Artscape</a> this past weekend! It's a favorite event of ours (being <a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/baltimore-game-collective.html">Underground Arcade Collective</a>), and that is largely due to the people. I personally loved watching many of you connect with our work in some fashion over the course of the festival. Shout out to IGDA Baltimore's Jonathan Moriarty for doing a stellar job of running the event.<br /><br />Final high scores for the weekend are as follows:<br />
<ul>
<li> Bloodjak II - 11,070 pts - Dom</li>
<li> Soul Eater - 6728 pts - Liz</li>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show"> Diablow - 14,264 pts - Stephen</span></li>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show"> Star Kid - 5443 pts - Kai</span></li>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show"> Aaargh! Condor - 1490 pts - Mr. Older</span></li>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show"> Koi Puncher MMXVIII </span></li>
<ul>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show">30 Koi Punched in 1 minute - Brandon</span></li>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show">62 Koi Punched in 2 minutes - DDD</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show"> Monster Truck Power Fantasy - 47,600 pts - Dom (again)</span></li>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show"> Astro-Path - 6000 pts - Conlan</span></li>
<li><span class="text_exposed_show"> Fungilluminati - 2440 pts -Taylor</span></li>
</ul>
Those are some big numbers! I am impressed by everyone's performance. <br /><br />We will be showcasing in Baltimore again at <a href="https://charmcitymeadworks.com/">Charm City Meadworks</a> on August 14th! Facebook event details are <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/709021346185556/">here</a>. We can't wait!<br /><br />Speaking of Underground Arcade, you can now like us on Facebook (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/UndergroundArcadeCollective">here</a>) and follow us on Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/UnderArcade">@UnderArcade</a>). We're running for our third year now, and a social media presence has long been overdue.<br /><br />If you're looking for our games, mine are <a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/my-games.html">here</a>, Stephen's are <a href="http://let-off.com/">here</a>, and John's are <a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/">here</a>.<br /><br /><br />
<h4>
Regarding Bloodjak II</h4>
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My apologies for the lack of Bloodjak II devlogs. You can better follow the game's progress on Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/BloodjakII">@BloodjakII</a>). The game is still set to release on August 1st, which means that little time can be spared for devlogs. While I hate to leave folks relatively in the dark, the game will be better for it.<br /><br />I had a blast sharing the current build of the game as part of Underground Arcade's collection last weekend - we're on the right track, and I can't wait to share the game with the rest of the world.<br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-15728132050859225932019-06-15T17:25:00.000-04:002019-06-15T17:27:33.658-04:00Bloodjak II Devlog #1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhD9NAmoFqczZrK0UXUbVJTlxGoJ9_WZwcrA9FJ_1Yr3oX-MoKeEY3JG8j4uEG7x4c8YciMjMzfJGCziRrdfbJXB6myNFWkrF_SQA0g2f1TwPK2jCuvLqT8xhmw1uhyphenhyphenbO83x7x7AUCLAKx/s1600/BloodjakII.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="543" height="563" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhD9NAmoFqczZrK0UXUbVJTlxGoJ9_WZwcrA9FJ_1Yr3oX-MoKeEY3JG8j4uEG7x4c8YciMjMzfJGCziRrdfbJXB6myNFWkrF_SQA0g2f1TwPK2jCuvLqT8xhmw1uhyphenhyphenbO83x7x7AUCLAKx/s640/BloodjakII.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />
Hello.<br />
We are making a game called <i>Bloodjak II</i>.<br />
<br />
<h4>
What kind of game is this?</h4>
It's the sequel to 2015's <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjak/80167"><i>Bloodjak</i></a>, an arcade-style shoot-em-up set in the darkest corner of cyberspace.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfOFemeyORKkOt-KFckdzZdPGc2QJp3F9aFcgZQ5PeP_TK25Jw7f9vH2ggBwYxdC3mKH0FgXJsayIaekuK8-ki5ShzxLyR9_8Bg8_aOlYg8F8nMsrCovfeyIX8sSsGx_8fVzCUzAfT4wOk/s1600/33.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="636" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfOFemeyORKkOt-KFckdzZdPGc2QJp3F9aFcgZQ5PeP_TK25Jw7f9vH2ggBwYxdC3mKH0FgXJsayIaekuK8-ki5ShzxLyR9_8Bg8_aOlYg8F8nMsrCovfeyIX8sSsGx_8fVzCUzAfT4wOk/s400/33.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Footage from the original</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Besides its fast-paced and unforgiving gameplay, what sets <i>Bloodjak</i> apart from other games of the genre is its scoring system. Dead players do not get to submit their score - in order to save your score, you must determine when to end your run and survive for the remainder of its duration. Complicating this is the fact that your ship is fragile and is destroyed in a single hit, resulting in a high-stakes, but rewarding, play experience.<br />
<br />
The original version of the game was created in 48 hours for the <a href="http://jams.gamejolt.io/indiesvsgamers">2015 Indies vs Gamers Jam</a> at Game Jolt. It ranked in the top 10% of over 369 entries for the jam, and as a part of <a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/baltimore-game-collective.html">Underground Arcade Collective's</a> exhibit, it's been widely enjoyed at the festivals and conventions at which we've shown it. While I've made countless small improvements over the years, the original is still constrained by the brevity of the original jam from which it was produced.<br />
<br />
So, I'm leading an effort to remake the game, bigger and better than it's ever been. The game is being developed as part of Philly Game Mechanic's Profit Jam, an initiative to make, ship, and sell a game within two months. I've been itching to revisit <i>Bloodjak</i> for a long time, and the Profit Jam seemed like the perfect opportunity.<br />
<br />
<h4>
What new stuff will be in the sequel?</h4>
At the very least, <i>Bloodjak II </i>will feature new enemies, more bosses, improved pacing, faster and more intense combat, improved visuals, and higher quality audio. My goal is to make a more complex, action-packed, and visceral experience.<br />
<br />
The original was made a small team consisting of myself and Geoff Backstrom, who composed the game's music. To help deliver on the promise of a better game, I'm working with a larger team this time - <a href="http://www.alexcolesound.com/">Alex Cole</a> and <a href="https://www.danhalma.com/">Dan Halma</a> are handling the game's sound and music respectively, and <a href="https://www.dvuono-portfolio.com/">Danielle Vuono</a> is handling the visuals. They're all very good at what they do, and I am excited to work with them! <br />
<br />
I'll be sharing regular updates about the game's development in the coming weeks - you can subscribe to this blog's RSS feed from the bar on the right, or you can follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/alchiggins">@alchiggins</a>. Thank you! Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-20086743692440515832019-06-05T14:51:00.002-04:002019-06-05T14:53:26.676-04:00We Meet in the Dungeon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlbVxLZzqhFYoudr84s1SIAa0V70etzV43lmk2VBJqwelJ9KSyXbootbgecPJZq_65XQ65uwwQaXCM5hH2KR7QBFXJvD55Iu4jIL5U8mshosCA6Rqcm9N0Q8zCfzp3Zg17OAlOBpsugQg8/s1600/Cards01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1059" data-original-width="1600" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlbVxLZzqhFYoudr84s1SIAa0V70etzV43lmk2VBJqwelJ9KSyXbootbgecPJZq_65XQ65uwwQaXCM5hH2KR7QBFXJvD55Iu4jIL5U8mshosCA6Rqcm9N0Q8zCfzp3Zg17OAlOBpsugQg8/s640/Cards01.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<i>We
Meet in the Dungeon </i>is an
asymmetrical card game for two players. I originally made it for <a href="http://www.phillygamemechanics.com/">Philly Game Mechanics'</a> Try-a-New-Jam event earlier this year. The objective of the jam was to attempt something I've never done before - hence, the existence of this multiplayer tabletop card game.<br />
<br />
Each participant assumes one
of two roles: that of the Dungeon Player, or that of the Adventuring
Player. The Dungeon Player is building a dungeon filled with monsters
and traps while gathering darkness to summon a powerful overlord
monster
in an attempt to complete a sinister objective. In response, the
Adventuring Player assembles a team of adventurers to conduct raids
on the dungeon, attempting to recover two MacGuffins from the Dungeon
Player and stop their ritual.<br />
<br />
You can download the rulebook and card sheets from <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/we-meet-in-the-dungeon">Itch</a>. <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0vO2ljxcD5PVTEje2Q87bfZDTiYe8ONIqe0seNibT4WIjena8W9d1tadp8Li8ED-7jvPqMH3gZPIYrwI84rEfLqstiP7qYSTKqRnUWsCd4mUGIqvhQQdqXJJGBRlvVUw8exPPIYh-puZG/s1600/CardsInGeneral.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0vO2ljxcD5PVTEje2Q87bfZDTiYe8ONIqe0seNibT4WIjena8W9d1tadp8Li8ED-7jvPqMH3gZPIYrwI84rEfLqstiP7qYSTKqRnUWsCd4mUGIqvhQQdqXJJGBRlvVUw8exPPIYh-puZG/s640/CardsInGeneral.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-44734376152985678622019-05-16T22:04:00.000-04:002020-01-27T03:14:37.061-05:00Farewell, Waker<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpJsH9Fwx9x4mOoAa1JsOBe2OXA9CoDU2z-rU7mgaf2kAUT5yXfsHFpKV-uAXWXdhu6Qm7jw7SoONKAw8dcQVsY79omWb7LRzmjqbirOkZyUztJZlSf_0t1Npy-03eD3xVYm7qadBYoBZw/s1600/screenshot175.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpJsH9Fwx9x4mOoAa1JsOBe2OXA9CoDU2z-rU7mgaf2kAUT5yXfsHFpKV-uAXWXdhu6Qm7jw7SoONKAw8dcQVsY79omWb7LRzmjqbirOkZyUztJZlSf_0t1Npy-03eD3xVYm7qadBYoBZw/s400/screenshot175.png" width="400" /></a></div>
This is four years overdue, but I am formally declaring that I've abandoned development on <i>Waker.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
For those of you unfamiliar, <i>Waker </i>was a fantasy narrative adventure game that I was largely developing by myself from 2012-2014. The talented <a href="http://www.ashtonmorris.com/">Ashton Morris</a>
was handling audio. It was to be a full length game with distinct
puzzles and a branching story. A fair amount of people (strangers,
even!) were excited about it. Folks were asking to collaborate. The game was blogged about. I never had as much engagement working on a project in the years since.<br />
<br />
What lead to the demise of the game wasn't the scope itself as much as
the fact that I had outgrown the project - my skills had improved
considerably over the years I spent working on it. There are still a few
really neat things happening visually and narratively - I still love
Sue the Poggle.<br />
<br />
During a couple of years following 2014, I had thought that I would one day return to and finish the project. While this possibility had rapidly dwindled since then, the release of <i><a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/danger-zone-friends">Danger Zone Friends</a> </i>last winter was the final nail in the coffin. <i>DZF </i>became the full-length magnum opus that <i>Waker </i>was once meant to be, rendering <i>Waker </i>obsolete.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The last build I created is now publicly available in the <a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/posterity-archive.html">Posterity Archive</a>. It consists of about half of the planned story. The game ends abruptly when you reach the castle of Eldria, which I never populated. </div>
<br />
Again, lots of y'all were really excited about the project, and I appreciate it. Thank you for your support.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-27887090854836140832019-04-11T10:29:00.001-04:002019-04-11T10:29:53.550-04:00Cecil Con Updates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/baltimore-game-collective.html">Underground Arcade Collective</a> is returning to <a href="http://www.cecil-con.com/">Cecil Con</a> this upcoming Friday and Saturday! Woo! <a href="http://let-off.com/">Stephen</a>, <a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/">John</a>, and I will be showcasing FIFTEEN VIDEO GAMES this weekend! Which is a lot! It's a lovely event and we are thrilled to return.<br /><br />The games on display will include:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/11483">Soul Eater</a></li>
<li><a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/danger-zone-friends">Danger Zone Friends</a></li>
<li><a href="https://let-off-studios.itch.io/star-kid">Star Kid</a></li>
<li><a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/monster-hug/">Monster Hug</a></li>
<li><a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/invasion-versus/">Invasion Versus</a></li>
<li><a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/aaargh-condor/">Aaargh! Condor</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/koi-puncher-mmxviii/">Koi Puncher MMXVIII</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/11036">Diablow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/monster-truck-power-fantasy">Monster Truck Power Fantasy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/ungrateful-birds/">Ungrateful Birds</a></li>
<li><a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/gewgawlicious">Gewgawlicious</a></li>
<li><a href="https://let-off-studios.itch.io/astro-path">Astro-Path</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjak/80167">Bloodjak</a></li>
<li><a href="https://let-off-studios.itch.io/fungilluminati">Fungilluminati</a></li>
<li><a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/digital-toilet-world">Digital Toilet World</a></li>
</ul>
<br />As is always the case leading up to a con, I've updated some games of mine in preparation for the event.<br /><br />
<h3>
Danger Zone Friends Update!<br /></h3>
<br />
In response to player feedback, I've improved the tutorialization in the introductory level of Danger Zone Friends, better explaining JRPG fundamentals to players who may not be familiar with them. The tutorialization was not something I handled gracefully as the game's audience shifted from one person (my partner who has played JRPGs before) to a general audience (who includes... everyone). Hopefully this makes the game somewhat more accessible.<br /><br />The new version can be downloaded <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/danger-zone-friends">here</a>!<br /><br />Exclusive to people attending Underground Arcade Collective events is a special demo version of the game that features a demo exclusive boss! The demo exclusive boss is called Demo Exclusive Boss. Yes, the Demo Exclusive Boss is a palette-swapped Screaming Tortoise Sword who can shoot lasers and turn invisible. No, the Demo Exclusive Boss will not be available as paid DLC for the full version of Danger Zone Friends. You have to come to a live event to fight Demo Exclusive Boss. Those are the rules.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifEKJu5kkIK8pxT9xyH0pPo17CK1k0jmJwO36LOC7V8ixvnXxReM_ZPG61A7xVUtB37yIJGHqoK0rbS4lHFC7yHQW2FcKgW0PzWbYZFihZ9WflmDtaj5XK1_uld3SG72ZKWAlClwW_Rz_a/s1600/dzf_deb01.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifEKJu5kkIK8pxT9xyH0pPo17CK1k0jmJwO36LOC7V8ixvnXxReM_ZPG61A7xVUtB37yIJGHqoK0rbS4lHFC7yHQW2FcKgW0PzWbYZFihZ9WflmDtaj5XK1_uld3SG72ZKWAlClwW_Rz_a/s1600/dzf_deb01.gif" /> </a><br />
<br />
The Danger Zone Friends demo starts at the game's introduction and concludes shortly after the first dungeon. In the context of the full game, the first dungeon itself doesn't need a climax, but as a stand-alone episode, it badly does. Hence, the creation of Demo Exclusive Boss. <br /><br />
<h3>
Bloodjak Update!</h3>
<h3>
<br /></h3>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyUdcywV4aKugbbs7k_T9K6rlkuhGo87_1E3Hfs3MjlVNB569AD_OSv5F7PkdYxTl9nzpS5i6Dy1N0X6dLOqQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />Four years after being asked by several people to add gamepad support to Bloodjak, I've finally done it! I've resisted buying a gamepad for a long time on account of being poor. I now own a gamepad, but I am still poor.<br /><br />
There is a mechanical difference between playing with the keyboard
and playing with the gamepad: the gamepad joystick uses vector math,
while the arrow keys do not, meaning that, when playing with a keyboard,
you will travel faster diagonally than you do orthogonally. However, the advantage to the keyboard player
is slight and does not outweigh the extra finesse granted to the
gamepad player. <br /><br />This difference in diagonal speed would not normally be ideal, however, the physically incorrect keyboard movement has been present in the game for four years. It can be hard to walk the line between updating a game in a way that respects the original work and doing it in a way that fundamentally changes it, and improving the keyboard movement falls in the latter category. Meanwhile, adding physically correct gamepad movement is easier than having it match keyboard movement. Purists can still play with a keyboard if they want the "true experience," but if you own an Xbox controller, that is now the best way to play the game. <br /><br />
You can download the latest version <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjak/80167">here</a>. Someone please beat Teapawncha’s high score.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-55315764272830581012019-02-04T22:17:00.003-05:002019-02-16T13:04:48.744-05:00Danger Zone Friends Soundtrack<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHT1is0mEcydMf18bYvkNClbwhnRkbnLKw2E5x4R-FBKD15AxUoR5wM6zB0Kf5QcbdYEKHXSOiKBINVz68A05pcvv-hWx7uaQoJVXAWEW9RsymAQLdT-krVRjZ9By00z9FT5rgQ-yP51T2/s1600/dzf_batt12.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="290" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHT1is0mEcydMf18bYvkNClbwhnRkbnLKw2E5x4R-FBKD15AxUoR5wM6zB0Kf5QcbdYEKHXSOiKBINVz68A05pcvv-hWx7uaQoJVXAWEW9RsymAQLdT-krVRjZ9By00z9FT5rgQ-yP51T2/s1600/dzf_batt12.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
Thank you so much to everyone who's played <i>Danger Zone Friends </i>so far! If you liked it, please share it, and rate it on <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/danger-zone-friends">itch</a>, <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/DZF/393818">Game Jolt</a>, and <a href="https://rpgmaker.net/games/10971/">rpgmaker.net</a>. If you didn't like it, please share it anyway, but maybe don't rate it! <span style="font-size: x-small;">(that is a joke)</span><br />
<br />
The game's soundtrack is one of my favorite aspects of it, and serves as the emotional core for the experience. You can stream and download the tracks here: <br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="no" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/playlists/698707917&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-38625928271203876162019-01-26T16:00:00.001-05:002019-01-26T16:00:19.373-05:00Danger Zone Friends: Now Available<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/danger-zone-friends"><i>Danger Zone Friends</i></a> is out! It's a JRPG about two roommates on a grocery trip gone awry. You can download it for Windows from <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/danger-zone-friends">itch</a>.<br />
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Agnes and Lulu set out to make a simple errand, but along the way, they find themselves taking a wrong turn into the Danger Zone! Will they be able to survive the hazards of the underground world, return to the surface, and complete their shopping trip?<br />
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2+ hours of JRPG adventure, featuring tactical combat, an original score, and jokes.<br />
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You can read more about the game <a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/2018/11/danger-zone-friends-other-news.html">here</a>! The trailer is below:<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wxYVwMfRoC8" width="560"></iframe><br />
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As many of you know, this game is special to me for many reasons. I've been working hard for the past seven months, and at the end of it, successfully produced what is arguably my first full-length game. If you only ever play one of my games, please have it be this one.<br /><br />I normally offer more thoughts about my projects upon release, but I'm comfortable letting this one speak for itself. <br /><br />Gamejolt and soundtrack releases soon. Thank you for playing!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv90LxO7UVqsuho0KYUTCGs3nTbotwCqAJxsCq1W0zRDzwqGBFaf3lhBTicdb5DWoIN2x-zvW9cTBN5bjMPjM4s-tXparqr7-RtEjL63s5NTOs3t1Ip_ygEgg85k1j1PHz9ErA8uogUeY4/s1600/ScreenE.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="544" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv90LxO7UVqsuho0KYUTCGs3nTbotwCqAJxsCq1W0zRDzwqGBFaf3lhBTicdb5DWoIN2x-zvW9cTBN5bjMPjM4s-tXparqr7-RtEjL63s5NTOs3t1Ip_ygEgg85k1j1PHz9ErA8uogUeY4/s400/ScreenE.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />In other news, <i>American Wallrunner </i>is now on <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/USWR/389875">Gamejolt</a> and <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/american-wallrunner">itch</a>, with downloadable HTML builds for those of you without Windows. Enjoy!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-85959607726991151282019-01-09T15:28:00.000-05:002019-01-09T15:31:11.840-05:00American Wallrunner and Other News<div style="text-align: left;">
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<i>American Wallrunner!</i></h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm0QkdEgJCL5KngIBDTg5sZQ32J-ZERmzea5hnnjlQput3PjyC4FMgcJadvc_B1VoTgfSOfqJ45fjnbiV9Jn7bfQX3FgH38mjyDAx94AWhVkQZZZoOiNH9RCt5CdqxpEAAVw94-ITewmLf/s1600/wallrun23.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1228" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm0QkdEgJCL5KngIBDTg5sZQ32J-ZERmzea5hnnjlQput3PjyC4FMgcJadvc_B1VoTgfSOfqJ45fjnbiV9Jn7bfQX3FgH38mjyDAx94AWhVkQZZZoOiNH9RCt5CdqxpEAAVw94-ITewmLf/s640/wallrun23.png" width="640" /></a></h4>
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Angie is a disgruntled former CIA agent with uncanny parkour skills.
After quitting her awful job in an inglorious fashion, she attempts to
earn some money by working some side jobs - jobs that require an
experienced wall runner. But nothing can prepare her for the truth of
her very existence...<br />
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Another year, another <a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/11342">Glorious Trainwrecks Secret Santa</a> game! <i><a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/11392">American Wallrunner</a> </i>was created for mbtzl, who asked for a game that featured parkour with a Cold War aesthetic, among other things. <br />
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Currently, you can <a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/11392">download it</a> for Windows from Glorious Trainwrecks. A web version will be on Gamejolt and Itch soon.<br />
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Post-Mortem</h4>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIsUIXD7erWo3K9zJTUeWbhDqHqKSy_yDGWCM2P60_RsQ6qs4HqThUhsVZ5w-uRO2dZOCQTDUB9Mh4l6srPCUv3Xb6RPs5Fz2Vja1v_sls89WAzISnSHqc0s2ypWH4vfwLdXnKy0uSaSv2/s1600/wallrun24.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="331" data-original-width="588" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIsUIXD7erWo3K9zJTUeWbhDqHqKSy_yDGWCM2P60_RsQ6qs4HqThUhsVZ5w-uRO2dZOCQTDUB9Mh4l6srPCUv3Xb6RPs5Fz2Vja1v_sls89WAzISnSHqc0s2ypWH4vfwLdXnKy0uSaSv2/s640/wallrun24.gif" width="640" /></a><br />
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I spent about half of the past five weeks developing most this project from scratch, splitting my attention between it and <a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/2018/12/danger-zone-friends-trailer.html"><i>Danger Zone Friends</i></a>, the <i><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjak/80167">Bloodjak</a> </i><a href="http://www.phillygamemechanics.com/arcadecab/">Phillytron</a> port, grad school applications, and holiday mirth.<br />
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The most unusual aspect of this game's development is the soundtrack. A day before the game was due, it had no sound! So, I dug through my hard drive and found a series of bass recordings, most of which I made back in the fall of 2016. During that time, I hadn't yet found other people to play music with, was trying to develop a solo act for open mics, and recorded instrumental song ideas that I could reference later. Ultimately, I never developed a solo set, but I was glad to have finally found a use for the recordings!<br />
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I spent more time developing the mechanical aspects of the game than usual. Many games have featured wall jumping, but wall running? In 2D? If there's a similar game I could have referenced as I designed and programmed <i>American Wallrunner's </i>movement, I had never heard of it. <br />
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This game combines the movement logic of 2D top-down games with that of 2D side-view platformers, and it needs to switch between them on the fly. The problem with this is that, in top-down games, the player only collides with the walls. As far as game logic goes, floors do not exist - they are defined by the absence of anything rather than the presence of something. However, in side-view platformer games, the player collides with both walls and floors - floors are defined by the presence of floor rather than the absence of wall!<br />
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As I made <i>American Wallrunner</i>, I began with the logic of top-down games, and added platformer logic later. This meant that floors were defined by the absence of wall instead of the presence of floor. So, when the player lands on platforms suspended on walls, their character is checking to see if they're making contact with nothing. In theory, this sounds simple. In practice, this is the complete opposite of how game collisions are <i>supposed</i> to work, and it's provided a series of technical design problems to numerous to fully document. <br />
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What I'm trying to say it, the game's movement seems straightforward on the surface, but it's terrifying under the hood. Take my word for it.<br />
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As is the case with most games, but especially games of small scale, I didn't get to implement as much content as I would like. While this is often invisible in the rest of my projects, the foundations for systems and events I wanted to add later are a bit more plain. For example, the whole game was structured around having a good handful of odd jobs for the player to complete before they could unlock the ending. While the final game works well with the two jobs that exist, the game's structure would have made more sense with at least one or two more. I also had planned for nearly every statistic displayed in the player menu to have some sort of bearing on the game world, especially hunger, thirst, and bladder. I laid the groundwork: the numbers are there, and they're dynamic, it's just that only a few of them have any sort of practical significance.<br />
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Overall, I'm happy with this! Part of the reason I do the Secret Santa jam every year is that it pushes me far outside of my comfort zone and forces me to make design decisions I never would have considered. Who the hell makes a 2D top-down game with wall running as the main mechanic, set during the Cold War, with fantasy creatures as the supporting characters, that casually condemns American foreign policy? I do. I am that guy.<br />
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<h4>
Other News</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWpaVQ34eVMjddONNqPPWT04l6FpXhlgTWFp3AKI3rAZsH2pEgdBl2EZlyxCeYqyUh_FvYrS6a1FlpNJBNPyP7LaTigUcvQVEdVYumtdNquv9QpbPWhcOu-6l2j9l9uv8ip8fyDvCFB2yJ/s1600/BloodjakPhillytron.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWpaVQ34eVMjddONNqPPWT04l6FpXhlgTWFp3AKI3rAZsH2pEgdBl2EZlyxCeYqyUh_FvYrS6a1FlpNJBNPyP7LaTigUcvQVEdVYumtdNquv9QpbPWhcOu-6l2j9l9uv8ip8fyDvCFB2yJ/s400/BloodjakPhillytron.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Well, would you look at those control prompts on that there menu? Are those... buttons? Yes, folks, it's true! <i>Bloodjak </i>has been ported to an arcade cabinet! But not just any arcade cabinet - it now lives on Philadelphia's community arcade cabinet, the Phillytron! While I was unable to attend MAGFest myself this year, the Phillytron and its assortment of local games did. Thanks again to <a href="http://www.phillygamemechanics.com/">Philly Game Mechanics</a> for encouraging me to port the game to the cabinet, and showcasing <i>Bloodjak </i>as part of the collection.<br />
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Speaking of conventions, I am excited to announce that Underground Arcade Collective will be returning to <a href="http://www.cecil-con.com/">Cecil Con</a> this April! We had a lovely time last year. I hope to see the rest of you mid-Atlantic nerds there! <br />
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Finally, after I finish porting <i>American Wallrunner </i>to the web, I will be able to give <i>Danger Zone Friends </i>my full attention, and release it this month. Stay tuned.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-52093835589639961092018-12-27T11:37:00.001-05:002018-12-28T12:58:17.772-05:00Danger Zone Friends Trailer<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wxYVwMfRoC8" width="560"></iframe><br />
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<i>Danger Zone Friends </i>is going to be out soon! What does that mean? I don't know!<br />
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In any case, here's the game's trailer! You may seen a bunch of screenshots by now, but I am fairly proud of the animation work, and <i>especially</i> proud of the music composition and sound design, so I'm very excited to finally show just a little bit of that off! <br />
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As for the game itself, it just needs a tad more tweaking. I've spent the past couple of months refining the game's balance, tutorialization, and user experience, and I'm completely done with that!<br />
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Finally, a quick note while I'm here: I've boasted in-person and online that a playthrough of the game takes about 3-7 hours. To improve the game's pacing, I recently decided to reduce the enemy encounter rate, which brings typical playtime closer to 2-4 hours. It was for the best to trim that excess fat and better focus the core experience. My apologies to anyone expecting an epic, but the game is better this way, and it is still freakishly huge for a solo effort. I am continuously excited to share this project with the world; thanks for watching!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-47602963246067520152018-11-01T21:52:00.000-04:002018-11-01T21:52:09.505-04:00Danger Zone Friends & Other News<h4 class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Announcing: <i>Danger Zone Friends</i>!</h4>
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This is older news for those of you who follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/alchiggins">Twitter</a>, but for the rest of you, I am pleased to announce my next game... <i>Danger Zone Friends</i>! It's a JRPG about a turtle and a pantsless otter who make a grocery run for shredded cheese, but take a wrong turn into the DANGER ZONE. As our heroes attempt an escape from this strange and dangerous land, rumors spread of the return of an ancient evil, the Dairy Demon, Cheelzebub...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-XOG97uHOmihnxq3EAcxSvDpHFGvam0a-wctTg03e_nXFX28-uC9OWj7KFLo6ZtEV3AW10nZ0qktqjH47zGkgVCHk8IAbn1js-gXMDEoq2cUeHaxrvgTR1p2_BBbuQg_bKm6C_cc9pTKh/s1600/ScreenA.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-XOG97uHOmihnxq3EAcxSvDpHFGvam0a-wctTg03e_nXFX28-uC9OWj7KFLo6ZtEV3AW10nZ0qktqjH47zGkgVCHk8IAbn1js-gXMDEoq2cUeHaxrvgTR1p2_BBbuQg_bKm6C_cc9pTKh/s1600/ScreenA.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spoiler alert - it is.</td></tr>
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<br />This is, undoubtedly, my greatest game to date, featuring some of the best encounter design, art, storytelling, comedy, and music I've ever produced. 3-6 hours of playtime, 20 minutes of original music, over 25 enemy types, so on and so forth. It's been an undertaking.<br /><br />
This game was originally made for my girlfriend, who asked for a "cute game" for her birthday with animal characters. She plays a fair amount of Persona and Pokemon, so I thought she would appreciate a *cough* <i>short</i> JRPG. As a supposedly casual project, it seemed like a good excuse to dust off the copy of RPG Maker VX Ace I got in a humble bundle a while back, and just have fun making something without having to code original mechanics from scratch. Many of my favorite RPGs of all time - <a href="http://off.wikia.com/wiki/OFF_Wiki"><i>Off</i></a>, <a href="https://aeresland.net/"><i>Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle</i></a>, and <i><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/space-funeral/3492">Space Funeral</a> - </i>were vanilla RPG Maker games created without a lick of original code. It felt like a rite of passage to produce my own RPG within the (very limiting) constraints of the tool. A lot of folks question the legitimacy of RPG Maker as a development suite, and while I know it was the right tool for the job, I still feel self-conscious about using it. At the end of the day, though, you can't argue with the results. <br /><br />Despite my aspirations for this to be a tiny, casual, and sloppy game, it quickly turned into a serious endeavor. It became clear, after I had drawn, written, and programmed the initial cutscene that I was onto something special. I started development in June, missed my girlfriend's July birthday deadline, and continued to work for the following three months, pushing myself to push myself as an artist, composer, and writer.<br /><br />As this game was made for my girlfriend, it includes a number of elements - inside jokes and scenarios - that will only truly be understood by the two of us, making this the most personal, expressive, heartfelt game I've made, strangely enough. However, the game should be just as enjoyable for the rest of you. Remove the insider knowledge, and what remains is an unusual story filled with non-sequitur humor. <br /><br /> <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">But if you didn't know that about Astrodon Johnstoni, that's okay.</td></tr>
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The combat is mostly what you'd expect from an RPG Maker game, building upon the default turn-based battle system. What sets <i>Danger Zone Friends </i>apart from other RPGs is the increased importance of non-damaging support skills, namely, abilities that cause buffs, debuffs, status effects, healing, and MP manipulation. Out of the three characters in your party, only one of them is any good at dealing raw damage. The game places more emphasis on providing adequate support and changing the flow of battle. As a result, battles are slowly paced, thoughtful affairs. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW00F6NSDI2lYPY_4EP-ymcEoq75fMdqh3ICBQSbRnZ5rusGjnHJ7aKnvMj5VmWV0pW9rW8X8x-jvH7ZmfIMq0IvkbbU40_euc-oOBuClyWryZAi_mT48mgRooE_ip0jX1QDRwguu1K4OF/s1600/ScreenG.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW00F6NSDI2lYPY_4EP-ymcEoq75fMdqh3ICBQSbRnZ5rusGjnHJ7aKnvMj5VmWV0pW9rW8X8x-jvH7ZmfIMq0IvkbbU40_euc-oOBuClyWryZAi_mT48mgRooE_ip0jX1QDRwguu1K4OF/s1600/ScreenG.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Despite having the same core battle system as nearly every other RPG Maker game, I attempt to make combat in <i>Danger Zone Friends </i>deeper than in other games in its genre.</td></tr>
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All in all, the game's loaded with jokes, cool monsters, and a rockin' soundtrack. Currently, my girlfriend is about 80% through her playthrough. As soon as she's done, I'll start preparing it for general release. I'm also going to wait until a lot of the hype around (the admittedly fantastic) <a href="https://www.deltarune.com/"><i>Deltarune</i></a> starts to die down - it shares a lot of tonal similarities with <i>Danger Zone Friends</i>, and there's no use in competing with it. <br /><br />Anyway, the most important thing is, I love <i>Danger Zone Friends</i>, and I hope you will too!<br />
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<h4>
Updates to <i>Monster Truck Power Fantasy</i> and <i>Bloodjak</i>!</h4>
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In other news, both <i><a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/monster-truck-power-fantasy">Monster Truck Power Fantasy</a> </i>and <i><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjak/80167">Bloodjak</a> </i>have gotten patched! There's minor bug fixes with both, but the largest changes are that <i>Monster Truck Power Fantasy </i>now has a subtitle option, and <i>Bloodjak</i> now runs at a constant speed, regardless of its framerate. These were mostly made to address technical issues when showcasing the games live, but for those of you who are hard of hearing, hopefully the subtitles allow for you to better enjoy <i>Power Fantasy</i>.<br />
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<h4>
Baltimore Game Collective: Now Featuring John D. Moore!</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsbg9lk4AEmq2bcVRPFV09mTaxqtbLyeMZp1nBcocazfGaBI4C7E87TvqhvyGeEXkCl__VF0rkf4ZWgxNKH2IByUhoyHWhVIvDMrEn7xxDTctwpxJincw-p5Tjn6CXtgNx501hUhf-9E4J/s1600/underArc04.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1149" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsbg9lk4AEmq2bcVRPFV09mTaxqtbLyeMZp1nBcocazfGaBI4C7E87TvqhvyGeEXkCl__VF0rkf4ZWgxNKH2IByUhoyHWhVIvDMrEn7xxDTctwpxJincw-p5Tjn6CXtgNx501hUhf-9E4J/s640/underArc04.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Tomorrow night, Stephen and I from Baltimore Game Collective will be showcasing our collection of work at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/524353304700625/">Colorspace Labs' First Friday Indie Arcade</a> in Philadelphia! What's new this time around is that we'll also be showcasing some games by our newest member, <a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/">John D. Moore</a>. John is a prolific developer whose diverse creative output spans over two decades. We'll be featuring three games of his this time around: <a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/monster-hug/"><i>Monster Hug</i></a>, <a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/dr-creepinscares-pumpkin-patch-match/"><i>Dr. Creepinscare's Pumpkin Patch Match</i></a>, and <a href="http://whatnot.bombdotcom.net/ungrateful-birds/"><i>Ungrateful Birds</i></a>. Happy to have you on board, John!<br />
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That's all for now. Please stay tuned for the release of <i>Danger Zone Friends </i>later this month.<br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-38503745756725647972018-07-23T09:52:00.000-04:002018-08-14T15:37:09.916-04:00Festival Debrief<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7mHRbQxAj9uM2LSml5CyFuEtEBImvqTNBNeaYcuSJYmSPuPzWi4pU92nvvULiUUcSjSfnJL10fWw6BR5DiEx0H3QGsAwSRbsbymv-U2JXNjAg0WxlO9TaLqZn3U3AHrfnZ9H8MGRaXPas/s1600/37713504_10216334590615547_5745426461083303936_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="960" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7mHRbQxAj9uM2LSml5CyFuEtEBImvqTNBNeaYcuSJYmSPuPzWi4pU92nvvULiUUcSjSfnJL10fWw6BR5DiEx0H3QGsAwSRbsbymv-U2JXNjAg0WxlO9TaLqZn3U3AHrfnZ9H8MGRaXPas/s400/37713504_10216334590615547_5745426461083303936_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo Cred: Christian Lumsden</td></tr>
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Thanks again to all of the people who came to Artscape/Gamescape this past weekend! It was a pleasure to see some familiar faces and meet some new folks. I'm always impressed by the quality of work of my fellow developers: I had a great time playing <a href="https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=885708965"><i>Virtual Wave</i></a>, <i><a href="https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=440755855">That Rock Paper Scissors Game</a></i>, <a href="http://www.hamsterdamgame.com/"><i>Hamsterdam</i></a>, and <a href="http://shademare.com/"><i>Miracle Mia</i></a>. It was good to see <a href="https://tinheart-interactive.tumblr.com/">Tin Heart Interactive</a>'s <i>Confines of the Law </i>make an appearance after having played it at Cecil Con, and while I hadn't had a chance to get to <a href="https://bobastudios.tumblr.com/">Boba Studios</a>' <i>Squirrely Roo Rabbit</i>, it looks lovely.<br />
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I want to give a shout out to our amazing players who stopped by! I'm often astounded by the tenacity of those who compete in our high score competition, but I've never before seen a feud between two players develop over the course of a long weekend. Thanks to Jordyn and my friend Dom for providing an intense <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/mtpf/312312"><i>Monster Truck Power Fantasy</i></a> rivalry, and to Jordyn's stepbrother Mike for causing the greatest high score competition upset in Underground Arcade history, making a flawless run just three minutes before close, shutting out his rivals. I yelled a little bit. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF7yJFt3ovXjeQHlD5AK4c3u_adnzupQulFpT1CgW0-W4hNDNOwkAfaJMtDo313JPSJeoVHeK2rpp-In1ZTbovs7oHqHB0w-xVNdOisbnqDAr8lrhuisfLLBqZ_wXKRdkIXbkNg6oZiPf-/s1600/IMG_20180722_185741.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF7yJFt3ovXjeQHlD5AK4c3u_adnzupQulFpT1CgW0-W4hNDNOwkAfaJMtDo313JPSJeoVHeK2rpp-In1ZTbovs7oHqHB0w-xVNdOisbnqDAr8lrhuisfLLBqZ_wXKRdkIXbkNg6oZiPf-/s320/IMG_20180722_185741.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">446 buildings destroyed with perfect tires. Who does that?</td></tr>
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The complete list of top scorers by 7:00 on Sunday is as follows:<br />
<ul>
<li>Bloodjak: Jordan: 3926</li>
<li>Mutant Highway: Caleb: 1483</li>
<li>Monster Truck Power Fantasy: Mike: 44,600</li>
<li>Fungilluminati: William: 13,230</li>
<li>Diablow: Calvin: 15,505 </li>
</ul>
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Congratulations!<br />
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Some of you reading this may be looking for my colleague Stephen's work: it can be found at <a href="http://let-off.com/">let-off.com</a>. All of my games can be found by clicking the "games" tab at the top of the page (or, don't even scroll up, let me make it<a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/my-games.html"> easy for you</a>). Some of you may want to download a certain song about a Monster Truck; you can get that off of <a href="https://soundcloud.com/alex-higgins">my soundcloud</a>.<br />
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Stephen is continuing to work hard on Diablow. Meanwhile, I'll be releasing a secret mini-RPG in the coming month before resuming work on my running project, <i><a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/toilets-meat-and-drugs.html">Monsterpunk</a>. </i><br />
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We're looking forward to seeing y'all again! Much love.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-12220612883675997142018-03-17T21:29:00.000-04:002018-08-17T18:19:46.107-04:00How I'm Redeeming a Terrible Game (Monsterpunk Devlog #15)Here's a story about an ongoing misadventure lasing several years, player progression systems, efficient problem solving, inefficient problem solving, and the creative process.<br />
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<h3>
Your Boy was in Trouble</h3>
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The last time I touched <i><a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/toilets-meat-and-drugs.html">Monsterpunk</a> </i>was April of last year. Higher priority projects filled my time since then - namely, festival applications, game launcher software, graduate school applications, <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/the-giant-robot-blues"><i>The Giant Robot Blues</i></a>, and <i><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/mtpf/312312">Monster Truck Power Fantasy</a>. </i><br />
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When I finished <i>Power Fantasy</i>, I breathed a deep sigh, re-opened <i>Monsterpunk</i>'s project file, compiled it, and played it. I was mortified. <i> </i><br />
<i><br />
</i>I softly screamed into the internet:<i></i><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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Been working on a game on-and-off since 2014, opened and played it after a year hiatus with fresh eyes, it's two hours long, now I realize only about 15 minutes of it are good.</div>
— Alex Higgins (@alchiggins) <a href="https://twitter.com/alchiggins/status/955658941857501184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 23, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
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I can't think of another game I've made, no matter how old or awful it is, that I haven't been able to enjoy on some level. Even the <a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/posterity-archive.html">trash I made in middle school</a> has entertainment value in the same way your kindergarten doodles of Jedi stabbing each other and gushing fountains of blood has entertainment value. <br />
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The main problem with <i>Monsterpunk </i>was that it was simply boring.<br />
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I don't think the game is destined to be boring. Often, it shows in the finished game if it had a troubled development cycle, but this isn't always the case. For example, Looking Glass Studios didn't have a working game a year and a half into the development of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief:_The_Dark_Project"><i>Thief</i></a>, and the project almost folded. In order to save the game, they had to reprogram many of the its fundamental features from scratch. They went on to release a highly-influential classic. <br />
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Fixing <i>Monsterpunk </i>requires me to do the same. The game's problems aren't hidden in the details, rather, they're rooted in some of the game's central premises. Fixing the game has been similar to stripping away the foundation away from a building, replacing it, and hoping the structure still holds. So far, it's been a daunting, but rewarding process.<br />
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Writing about the awfulness your yet-to-be-released game is not a conventionally sound PR strategy. However, I think there is much to be learned from an experience of producing a strong piece of art after a long and troubled creative process, and I can provide a more accurate and useful account of the process by writing about it as it happens, rather than as a post-mortem.<br />
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My game was bad, but it's better now. Let me tell you why. <br />
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<h3>
The Context</h3>
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Before I describe my solution to the problem, I want to provide some more of its context. I've been creating <i>Monsterpunk </i>since the fall of 2014. Originally, it was a small life-simulation RPG titled <i>Toilets, Meat, and Drugs</i> that I made in a week for a game jam. It was inspired by the mechanics of the life-sim game <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digimon_World"><i>Digimon World</i></a> and the aesthetics of punkgames by developers like <a href="http://slimedaughter.com/">Porpentine</a> and <a href="http://harmonyzone.org/">thecatamites</a>. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDZZDwc4TmLvAZ_rO0cdUPEF4XTFpecbkarsvjFlU13MVs2fpVbUndzBS6MogVqTqgBXcP5xXovLDeFeTfmiXXWe2sOh02qxjQHPqyNwHQ_SGCiF-p0SQJAKlqxHvyeM98JrpaKEHLXKA5/s1600/dworldScreen.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDZZDwc4TmLvAZ_rO0cdUPEF4XTFpecbkarsvjFlU13MVs2fpVbUndzBS6MogVqTqgBXcP5xXovLDeFeTfmiXXWe2sOh02qxjQHPqyNwHQ_SGCiF-p0SQJAKlqxHvyeM98JrpaKEHLXKA5/s1600/dworldScreen.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Digimon World</i>, 1999<br />
<i></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiGl0WR3iD3EtPr6yT-6KV7UNr9X2OGcq_K_55MD59wZ9Vyb88oHBYEBnSg35UE4tz-XVhsP4G2j0u5kff3vWY0OlVbDPAsKY8veDtIGdcR8vhSeiKzxwCn8JNChjrajGhl8DSoe6v96qG/s1600/armadaScreen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="767" data-original-width="973" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiGl0WR3iD3EtPr6yT-6KV7UNr9X2OGcq_K_55MD59wZ9Vyb88oHBYEBnSg35UE4tz-XVhsP4G2j0u5kff3vWY0OlVbDPAsKY8veDtIGdcR8vhSeiKzxwCn8JNChjrajGhl8DSoe6v96qG/s400/armadaScreen.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Armada</i>, Porpentine, 2013</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_tSkx6XQBrTAR79CjHn5rmxbyPFO_jcyw4BsXA-2tUwKJV_BO76_LVNneu6bkE3wU26EcfoJNp6xY4Fr0KPgp01ktqQ3Ao7xaNQV4dg5hWPOcgUPMRlBxdZakOVZnv346M9PHPBV6Islh/s1600/spaceFunScreen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_tSkx6XQBrTAR79CjHn5rmxbyPFO_jcyw4BsXA-2tUwKJV_BO76_LVNneu6bkE3wU26EcfoJNp6xY4Fr0KPgp01ktqQ3Ao7xaNQV4dg5hWPOcgUPMRlBxdZakOVZnv346M9PHPBV6Islh/s1600/spaceFunScreen.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Space Funeral</i>, thecatamites, 2010<br />
<i></i></td></tr>
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Unfortunately for my game, the MS Paint-esque punk aesthetic was a lot more relevant in the early 2010's than it is today. All I can do now is continue to embrace it.<br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Toilets, Meat, and Drugs</i>, even in its earliest form, was a boring mess. Jupiter Hadley, who does the fantastic work of covering and recording footage of every indie jam game she can come across, recording the opening minute or so for one of her compilations of game jam entries. <br />
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The opening of the game consists of you character slowly moving in front of a series of signs, reading through a full explanation of the game's rules, before slowly backtracking to use a toilet. The writing is cringe-worthy.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkcEJHUjWqMYDhVXGri_Eu7iQNUqljl0n6y2gD8moVg9URHpvEfGCG1wkUc3FIelztr2-QrMZjcncIeEWIhZhGHiTtMJQXgf7ehlXno9ZFyWQc2BgI2dFG96J-llJOj3Os1-N19fc3saqa/s1600/MonsterMash21.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1366" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkcEJHUjWqMYDhVXGri_Eu7iQNUqljl0n6y2gD8moVg9URHpvEfGCG1wkUc3FIelztr2-QrMZjcncIeEWIhZhGHiTtMJQXgf7ehlXno9ZFyWQc2BgI2dFG96J-llJOj3Os1-N19fc3saqa/s640/MonsterMash21.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Toilets, Meat, and Drugs </i>intro, 2014</td></tr>
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In one of my less-proud moments, I made a comment to her asking why she recorded such a dull segment of play, and we had a brief exchange, toward the end of which she made some comment along the lines of, "if you want me to record something interesting, make something interesting."<br />
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Her actual wording was a lot gentler, and please make no mistake, I was being a jerk (I am so, so sorry). I was irritated and confused following the exchange, but eventually, I came to understand her point. The opening minute of the game (and much of what followed) was boring, it was a serious problem, and it was my fault. Generally speaking, a game, like any other form of entertainment media, should be engaging from the moment the player boots it up. If it isn't, it better be justified. <i>Toilets, Meat, and Drugs </i>did not offer that justification.<br />
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<h3>
The Core Problems</h3>
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The problems with game, both in its 2014 and 2017 iterations, are numerous, but the two largest problems are its tutorial (which sours the beginning) and its pacing (which sours the middle). The 15 minutes of fun I referred to in my tweet happened during one of the game's ending sequences. That particular sequence is very good, but it takes an hour and forty-five minutes of unrewarding play to get to it.<br />
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It should be common sense to even a novice game designer that verbally conveying all of the game's rules to the player at the very beginning without any context is a terrible idea. It's too much information, it usually can't be referenced later, it isn't interactive, and the player has no reason to care about any of it. One of the earliest changes I made to the game was replacing the tutorial with something more interactive, simplified, and user-friendly.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtHKLbkZJcs6KRrj8TB_0dXJaxoDHmiTMxGLkOOU9GTBHE7iIoMKSknB3y6C0F02DtCIsqQT78pil_UucitTsYJvu9RJXNmuK9z915BasKSB5EBb9EmDqF7BcRlNl0fWxXE6lTVs9S3kO/s1600/uglyBaby.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1019" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtHKLbkZJcs6KRrj8TB_0dXJaxoDHmiTMxGLkOOU9GTBHE7iIoMKSknB3y6C0F02DtCIsqQT78pil_UucitTsYJvu9RJXNmuK9z915BasKSB5EBb9EmDqF7BcRlNl0fWxXE6lTVs9S3kO/s640/uglyBaby.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Monsterpunk </i>intro, 2015<br />
<i></i></td></tr>
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That said, it's still a boring way to start the game - its opening minutes are still slow and information-heavy. I've only just begun to remake the game's beginning, and will write more about it once I've finished.<br />
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I have, however, solved the game's pacing problems. The game's sluggish pacing and excessive downtime are the result of its player progression system.<br />
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In most role-playing games, your character progresses via an experience point (XP) system. Most of you know this. Your character completes challenges, are awarded a number of XP, and when they get enough points, they level up and become stronger, allowing them to complete challenges that were previously impossible.<br />
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<i>Monsterpunk</i> is not like most role-playing games - most of its mechanics, including its progression system, are inspired by <i>Digimon World</i>. The full manner in which the player gains abilities and becomes stronger over the course of <i>Digimon World</i> is surprisingly layered, but the most obvious form of progression is through the passage of time. <i>Digimon World</i>'s protagonist is a human with a monster partner. That monster partner goes through different life stages, usually becoming more powerful each time it grows, until it dies, is reborn as a baby, and the cycle repeats. A monster's progression through its life stages is directly linked to its age, and time in <i>Digimon World </i>progresses at a constant rate. It's a form of progression that, for the most part, occurs irrespective of anything the player does.<br />
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On paper, this is an idea that can work thematically, and it does, but it sounds terrible from a conventional game design perspective. As described above, outside the context of the game's other systems, the monster aging mechanic removes agency from the player. However, <i>Digimon World </i>makes it work. When the player hits a wall of difficulty that requires a more powerful monster, instead of simply waiting for the monster to grow older, they can pass time by taking the monster to the gym, thus increasing its physical strength. Incidentally, training at the gym also accelerates the game's clock. An hour in <i>World </i>is normally the equivalent of a real-world minute - an hour of training at the gym, however, is nearly instantaneous. In other words, if the player's monster isn't powerful or old enough for them to progress, there's a single fallback mechanic that solves both<i> </i>problems. It's still a tedious solution, but it does have a certain elegance to it.<br />
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In <i>Monsterpunk, </i>I similarly linked player progression to play time. This was a life simulation, after all, so it made some sense to adopt mechanics that most closely resemble real-world aspects of being alive. As time passes, the player character passes through different life stages, with each stage being more powerful than the previous. However, <i>Monsterpunk </i>does not have a fallback mechanic analogous to <i>Digimon World</i>'s gym. If you hit a wall of difficulty that requires a more powerful character, your only option is to wait it out. <br />
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This would lead to situations, for example, where a player would progress too slowly through the game, and their character steadily age and advance through life stages earlier than necessary. Their power level would be ahead of the difficulty curve, diluting much of the game's tension. More frequently, however, a player would progress too quickly, accomplish every challenge they could at their current power level, and then find themselves hitting a wall of difficulty that could only be overcome by waiting to age.<br />
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This threw the player into a state of tedium in which they lacked an immediate objective. Even worse, few of their choices mattered until they passed a growth threshold.<br />
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<br />
<h3>
The Solution</h3>
<h3>
</h3>
In the end, I came to understand why the traditional XP progression system is so widely adopted.<br />
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While we take this system for granted, it works for numerous reasons. By attaching an XP reward to certain behaviors or challenges, you can incentivize the player to do virtually anything. Not only that, but it allows the designer to make any interaction rewarding, even if in a superficial way. Most importantly, though, it directly links the pacing of the game to the player's mastery of it. The more efficiently the player overcomes challenges, the faster they become stronger, allowing them to access more of the game's content sooner.<br />
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In the case of <i>Monsterpunk</i>, implementing an XP system did everything it was supposed to do. Not only have I eliminated most of the game's downtime, but every action the player took that awarded XP now has a little extra meaning attached to it.<br />
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Where <i>Monsterpunk'</i>s XP system diverges from most other games is that it places less emphasis on killing other characters. While combat, and the decision to abstain from it, are central parts of the <i>Monsterpunk </i>experience, the game must have a means to reward players who pursue any play style. Therefore, I attached XP to nearly every system in the game I could think of, from flirting with other monsters, to growing your own food, to pooping in toilets.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZpGsOb1V4Dq6cCzcdNemD72-N8bw1wgPApS2SupeYTUK11-NVH34tcdZ9mmNtIzjbBWHA4k55-N9WkukzHEmlJ9GldIr3wNzvjJLVBsyJziZ52cIIMPJpzk6qsaObxmeZY0_6AZe6ry3w/s1600/mPunk11.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="638" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZpGsOb1V4Dq6cCzcdNemD72-N8bw1wgPApS2SupeYTUK11-NVH34tcdZ9mmNtIzjbBWHA4k55-N9WkukzHEmlJ9GldIr3wNzvjJLVBsyJziZ52cIIMPJpzk6qsaObxmeZY0_6AZe6ry3w/s1600/mPunk11.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Every time the player gains XP, their progress bar briefly flashes alongside the amount of points earned.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
I was reluctant to thoughtlessly fall back on a classic set of game mechanics that most designers and players take for granted. While conventional design ultimately served as a solution to <i>Monsterpunk</i>'s core problems, it was only through a blind rejection of convention that I was able to better understand its merits.<br />
<br />
I booted the game back up, played through it, and was amazed by how much my game had transformed. All of the tedium and downtime once plaguing the game was <i>gone</i>, and just as well, everything I achieved as a player felt a little more substantial, and every interaction that lead to an achievement felt more enjoyable. <br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Wait! It gets better!</h3>
<h3>
</h3>
<i>Monsterpunk</i>'s new XP system proved to be a gift that kept giving in unexpected ways. Adding inherent rewards to most player behavior allows me to trim superfluous features from the game that have become obsolete. The best example of this is the game's reputation system.<br />
<br />
I added a reputation system to the game to address some of the problems with its flirtation system. The player's character is capable of flirting with other monsters in the game - those whom they successfully flirt with will no longer be hostile to the player. It's the game's primary nonviolent means of problem solving. This mechanic is inspired by skill check system of Dungeons and Dragons - the player character has a score that represents how good they are at flirting, the target has a score that represents how easily affected they are by flirtation, a random number is generated based on these scores, and if the number is high enough, the flirtation attempt is successful.<br />
<br />
In narrative-driven games, it's a really effective system, but in most cases, if you want the player's choices in a game to feel like they matter, you should avoid designing with output randomness. That is to say, the result of a player's choices shouldn't be random. If a soccer player kicks a ball into a goal, and the referee flips a coin to determine whether it was actually worth a point, it would be a frustrating experience for everyone involved. The outcome of the soccer game would cease to be wholly representative of the either team's skill, and instead be largely left to chance. The players' decision making and physical feats would feel as though they didn't matter.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, early in <i>Monsterpunk</i>'s development, I designed the flirtation system to be heavily dependent on chance, and replacing with a new skilled-based system isn't very feasible this late in development. Instead, I opted to make it so that there was some guaranteed reward attached to every flirtation attempt, regardless of whether it was successful - a guaranteed non-random outcome.<br />
<br />
This was the basis for the reputation system. Every time the player flirts with another character, regardless of how well it goes, their reputation goes up. If their reputation reaches a certain level, their flirt attempts become more effective. Furthermore, acts of violence decrease reputation, making flirtation less effective, and the player's reputation naturally resets over time.<br />
<br />
Ultimately, the reputation system didn't make the game any more compelling. It was a needlessly complicated mechanic that required me to frontload the game's tutorial with yet another long-winded explanation of a system that the player didn't have a reason to care about, because it wasn't fun.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieehzz-2sb2v-KV5nrKxT09NNU6BIx0LEAzOXolGfPKNNM8ZTjKalcj91TBncpaZRGf8srXa8wYkzZpgG02StE9rL3upervjwJ4L1PsFUkcbwE1GkQnPYAjh8m0d8tR9d6rFIsCvmiAe83/s1600/reputationBull.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="638" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieehzz-2sb2v-KV5nrKxT09NNU6BIx0LEAzOXolGfPKNNM8ZTjKalcj91TBncpaZRGf8srXa8wYkzZpgG02StE9rL3upervjwJ4L1PsFUkcbwE1GkQnPYAjh8m0d8tR9d6rFIsCvmiAe83/s1600/reputationBull.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just wait until I clutter the screen with a <i>fourth </i>freakin' bar!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
After I implemented the XP system, I was relieved to have realized that the reputation system was now obsolete. Instead of awarding the player reputation for their flirtation attempts, they were now awarded experience, which is just as effective at providing consistency to their decisions' outcomes. In this case, an experience-based reward was more meaningful than a reputation-based one, as advancing a life stage is much more exciting to the player than building a short-lived flirtation bonus. <br />
<br />
It should go without saying that it is almost always better to solve multiple design problems with a single system than to create a new system for each problem. This is what makes games elegant.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Downside</h3>
<h3>
</h3>
My original goal with <i>Monsterpunk</i> wasn't necessarily to make a "fun" game, but rather, an interactive experience that's compelling on multiple levels. I think that game designers are just starting to explore what else can be achieved artistically with digitally interactive pictures and sound besides "fun," and I think life-sims have a lot of potential to thematically relate to the human experience in numerous ways by the nature of their content. One of the reasons I am obsessed with <i>Digimon World</i> is that, for a flawed, buggy, poorly-translated children's game, it mechanically explores the passage of time, death, and the existential angst they cause better than anything else I've played.<br />
<br />
My current goal, however, is simply to release something worth playing as soon as humanely possible. That means I have to sacrifice some potential for thematic depth in exchange for raw quality. Right now, it's better for me to release something that's fun, but relatively shallow, than something that aspires for depth, but fails to engage the player on any level.<br />
<br />
<i>Monsterpunk</i>'s time-based progression system had potential to explore existential themes regarding the passage of time, but ultimately, it failed to do so. The new XP system lacks this potential, but makes the game worth playing. Could I have found a way to preserve the time-based system and make it compelling? Absolutely. Would it have been as efficient, simple, or viable as implementing an XP system at this stage of development? Probably not.<br />
<br />
I'm a little sad that <i>Monsterpunk, </i>however good it may be, will not be the game I originally intended it to be. But, confronted with that reality, I've made the optimal design decision, and now have a game that I can be proud of.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Lesson</h3>
<h3>
</h3>
In game design, I think it's often easy to become lost in the details - to see games as a collection of individual features and visual and audio assets. My approach for the first three years of <i>Monsterpunk</i>'s development has been to improve it by improving the details. Would it be more fun if I made the textboxes look nicer and drew character portraits? What if I composed distinct music for each area? What if I provided better feedback through the UI? How about if I added more playable characters? Expanded the game world?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJc8JkgfCJD0Ziz94s4lL0Oq4c3gfF5uM_K_CzlndSReppnayv2bZSuY8NnQOEpOeGjgS2hqlaA5SlefWbBRFLpeH4nEEPgB0LyBPwkmOeU1PjDDoCyD_99PMtX2vuO7URthNm_3-IGCgn/s1600/mPunk4.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="638" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJc8JkgfCJD0Ziz94s4lL0Oq4c3gfF5uM_K_CzlndSReppnayv2bZSuY8NnQOEpOeGjgS2hqlaA5SlefWbBRFLpeH4nEEPgB0LyBPwkmOeU1PjDDoCyD_99PMtX2vuO7URthNm_3-IGCgn/s1600/mPunk4.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yeah, sure, let's spend a few years adding 25 playable characters instead of addressing your game's real problems.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I spent a long time making changes to the game that, undoubtedly, were improvements. Yet the game itself still wasn't that much more enjoyable than it had been before making those changes. It was frustrating.<br />
<br />
Even for those of us working outside of the industry, who make more minimalist work, the underlying assumption that "more polish + more features + better graphics = better game" is so prevalent that we have a tendency to focus on improving the individual components of a game at the expense of examining the larger picture. Or, at least, I have that tendency.<br />
<br />
The thing about this approach is that it isn't a time-efficient way to solve design problems. Even though <i>Monsterpunk</i>'s primary design problem (the awkward pacing) was a singular problem, because it impacted every sub-system of the game, and impacted them throughout the entire game, I originally thought that the solution was to improve each of the game's individual sub-systems. I spent years doing this with only modest success.<br />
<br />
After taking a hiatus from the game, I re-examined the problem and came to the profound realization that the scope of the problem didn't change the fact that it was a singular problem and therefore demanded a singular solution.<br />
<br />
Game development culture fetishizes time commitment to projects. For professional industry devs, working excessive overtime hours during periods of crunch is normalized, but even outside the industry, there's a broad expectation that successful game development requires great personal sacrifice. "If you aren't spending at least 30 hours a week on your game, you aren't going to cut it." "Don't sleep during game jams!" "Daisuke Amaya spent five years of his life handcrafting <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Story"><i>Cave Story</i></a>, what the hell are you doing with your time? Spending time with friends?" With this prevalent attitude, my default assumption was that, if I simply spent more time on the game, it would improve, regardless of how I spent the time. <br />
<br />
To a certain extent, those advocates of self-destructive workaholism do have a point. Like anything worth doing, making games take effort! But there is little advocacy for, or celebration of, efficient game design. The key to successful indie game development, especially for those of us working day jobs, is to find the most efficient path to achieve a desired audience response. Perhaps if efficiency and elegance were more appreciated within our subculture, I'd have approached <i>Monsterpunk</i> with a different mindset and have solved its pacing problems sooner. <br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3wL-dFZsHPB7zCAErXaXvNaniZZYxEjnQ6On5wQgyllWX7ds1QYsIhJrg-szUn_PsLDp_JCouGbfTYJis_OfvB7c-DhrAAhLkiZhSO7bXsGjGvjuGua6kjd_PMVyRJWqPIhplxASlfvTX/s1600/mPunk6.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="638" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3wL-dFZsHPB7zCAErXaXvNaniZZYxEjnQ6On5wQgyllWX7ds1QYsIhJrg-szUn_PsLDp_JCouGbfTYJis_OfvB7c-DhrAAhLkiZhSO7bXsGjGvjuGua6kjd_PMVyRJWqPIhplxASlfvTX/s640/mPunk6.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thanks for reading, here's a GIF of a bird in a yellow television pooping on plastic bricks.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-54390433055106150272018-01-19T19:52:00.001-05:002018-01-19T19:57:47.202-05:00Patching of Games and the ImplicationsA friend brought it to my attention that <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/monster-truck-power-fantasy"><i>Monster Truck Power Fantasy</i></a>, among other Game Maker: Studio games I've made, would display a black screen on his computer running Windows 10. This appears to be a rare bug, but it's one I've since fixed. <i>Monster Truck Power Fantasy</i>,<i> <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/gewgawlicious">Gewgawlicious</a></i>, <i><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/bloodjak/80167">Bloodjak</a>, </i>and <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/digital-toilet-world"><i>Digital Toilet World </i></a>should now run on Windows 10 with no problem.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/the-morphine-western-revenge"><i>The Morphine Western Revenge</i></a> already had the fix applied, most people shouldn't download and play <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/darcys-yurt-adventure"><i>Darcy's Yurt Adventure</i></a>, and <i><a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/empty-chambers/16913">Empty Chambers</a> </i>and <i><a href="https://sassyechidna.blogspot.com/p/how-to-fly.html">How to Fly</a> </i>were made in Game Maker 8, so I ain't touching those anymore. Everything else was made in Unity or Twine.<i> </i><br />
<br />
I know I'm late to the conversation about the permanence of software as a medium, but I'm becoming increasingly aware of just how fragile it is. Text can always be transcribed and preserved in a dozen different ways. Music and film can always be digitized to a playable format indefinitely. I'm starting to come to the realization that my games may no longer be playable on Windows, maybe not even ten or twenty years from now, and there isn't much I can do about it.<i> </i><br />
<i></i><br />
This particular black screen bug, from what I've read, was caused by the Windows 10 Creators Update, and it affects fullscreen Game Maker: Studio games indiscriminately. There's a simple fix that can be performed from within the program. So far, so good. It took an evening for me to go through nearly every game to perform the fix and re-upload it, but it's worth it to make sure that my games can run, let alone run well.<br />
<br />
The scary thing, though, is that Game Maker: Studio is no longer supported by the developer, as it has been replaced by Game Maker: Studio 2. GM:S, in its final version, was capable of circumventing the bug. I certainly can't count on that being the case in the future, or on Game Maker: Studio properly running in the future.<br />
<br />
So, it's possible to port all of my games into the new program. From what I hear, this requires the games to be reprogrammed, to an extent. I've made six Game Maker: Studio games so far, and it would take some serious time and effort to port them in Game Maker Studio 2 to make sure everything continues to work on current software and hardware. Not to mention, every time I have to make a change to fix a bug across all of my games caused by, for example, a Windows update, I have to fix and re-upload all of my games.<br />
<br />
I make about two or three games every year. Let's say Game Maker Studio 3 comes out in five years. By the, I would hopefully have at least 16 games that I would need to port into that program... the workload required to keep my work current will snowball over the decades.<br />
<i></i><br />
Of course, who knows how long Game Maker will exist as a program in any iteration? Nothing lasts forever. Maybe the last version is released, say, fifteen, twenty years from now, the company goes bankrupt, and I lose the ability to make any changes to my games' source code?<br />
<br />
Of course, you can run any outdated Windows program in compatibility mode, and it <i>should</i> run correctly. But whether it does or not depends entirely upon the competence of Microsoft engineers. The ability for anyone to play my games over the course of my lifetime is largely in their hands. Not to mention, it won't occur to the typical player to run a game in compatibility mode, or to run it through an emulator. <br />
<br />
This is probably going to be a widespread problem as operating systems undergo countless iterations over the coming decades (get hyped for Windows 40), and I may be pleasantly surprised by the solutions the IT community develops, but in the meantime, it is unnerving.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-29173123722096856922018-01-17T21:44:00.001-05:002018-01-17T21:44:42.058-05:00Monster Truck Power Fantasy v1.1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4CSf3C5jDcxPcrWHavE0QPnPklVwghTn1uEZ1MNMaEGMHZSOF7NMGaYJ3dZaYXA0L9p8ZMqcMd65btLCogDECIRGZKLDVb-chp5Z87iTkZedzyeStcXbFXopB37CCSvJFy-q82BtjGOzb/s1600/mtruck19.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="637" data-original-width="965" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4CSf3C5jDcxPcrWHavE0QPnPklVwghTn1uEZ1MNMaEGMHZSOF7NMGaYJ3dZaYXA0L9p8ZMqcMd65btLCogDECIRGZKLDVb-chp5Z87iTkZedzyeStcXbFXopB37CCSvJFy-q82BtjGOzb/s640/mtruck19.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
I updated "Monster Truck Power Fantasy" to version 1.1. It is now downloadable from <a href="https://gamejolt.com/dashboard/games/312312">Gamejolt</a> and <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/monster-truck-power-fantasy">Itch</a>.<br />
<br />
I fixed some bugs, adjusted the spawning patterns and scoring to be fairer to the player, and made some slight graphical and technical improvements.<br />
<br />
Here's the complete change list. Cheers!<br />
<br />
<b>v1.1</b><br />
<b>Features:</b><br />
<b><b></b></b>-Tire damage dealt is now based on the percentage of tire integrity remaining.<br />
-The minimum tire integrity is now 1.<br />
-Tires deflate and wheels start sparking at a tire integrity of 34.<br />
-The tire integrity bar now flashes red when tires deflate.<br />
-New building textures added<br />
-Score at end is now outlined in black.<br />
-Rooftop fences no longer spawn in proximity of tire spikes.<br />
-The spawn rate of sharp objects increases during last 30 seconds. <br />
-The truck now shakes when hitting things.<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Bug Fixes:</b><br />
<b></b>-Removed developer feature where truck height could be adjusted with the arrow keys (oops)<br />
-The speed of game is now unaffected by frame rate.<br />
-The truck now continues traveling in the correct direction after game ends.<br />
-The game no longer immediately ends if you begin a run within a second of opening the game.<br />
<b></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001365816214908680.post-50897817551805529322018-01-09T22:46:00.001-05:002018-01-09T22:46:54.469-05:00Monster Truck Power Fantasy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtMAF7qYDh31e1cZihv5iHGlw88NhvmZ3tRlMeTmooVKJeeRTDFXETk0tq9-pBvLPnNgw118vuWP6G0Cy3ydcr4a7G0fI0Oh6gfYkpvL_Z1Kkk9EgEXWsTFB6x9slFuhVH2O_7r0QwT5DY/s1600/mtruck2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="958" height="438" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtMAF7qYDh31e1cZihv5iHGlw88NhvmZ3tRlMeTmooVKJeeRTDFXETk0tq9-pBvLPnNgw118vuWP6G0Cy3ydcr4a7G0fI0Oh6gfYkpvL_Z1Kkk9EgEXWsTFB6x9slFuhVH2O_7r0QwT5DY/s640/mtruck2.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Here's a new game for ya kiddos: <a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/10940">"Monster Truck Power Fantasy."</a> I made it for the 2017 <a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/10883">Sekret Santa game jam</a> at Glorious Trainwrecks. My gift recipient asked for a game with a giant monster truck that destroys an entire city, among other things. <br /><br />So, I made a game about a monster truck. I could describe it further by genre, but why should I? It's a video game about a goddamn monster truck.<br />
<br />
I've always been enamored with the idea of music games in the style of James Earl Cox's <a href="https://gamejolt.com/games/Fins/39976">You Don't Know the Half of It: Fins of the Father</a>. So, I decided to write a song for the game with conventional structure and lyrics, as opposed to an instrumental loop. Imagine Jon Spencer, Sleater-Kinney, Shakey Graves, and the frontman from Arcade Fire getting together and making a baby. A song baby. This is that song. <br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="no" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/381352061&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe><br />
<br />
I was given a month to work on the game, but due to the work on <a href="https://alchiggins.itch.io/the-giant-robot-blues">"The Giant Robot Blues,"</a> hospitalization, and holiday cheer, I've only had a week to make the game. Three of those days were dedicated to the music. This didn't leave much time for game design.<br />
<br />I'm pretty happy with the results, given the short development period, but a post-jam version with bug fixes is in the works.<br /><br />You can <a href="https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/10940">download the game for Windows from Glorious Trainwrecks</a> for the time being. Release on other platforms is impending. Thanks for playing!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0