[About]

Wazzap TIGers!  

It's my pleasure to introduce to you a new project that I've been working on for the past week, it's called Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and it has become my new obsession.


About
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a sea-faring adventure-RPG where you take the role of a protagonist who is set out to slay the epic sea-monster which captured your loved one.

Most the game takes place underwater where you battle dangerous sea-creatures to gain experience points in order to level-up and to grow more powerful. The underwater levels are procedurally generated and is random each time you play through the game!

You can resurface anytime to board your boat, where you go sea-faring amongst open water in search for your long lost love. Nearby, there lies a port town where friendly locals give you advice and offer you weapon upgrades and equipment to aid you in your journey.

The epic sea-monster lies below waiting for you. Do you think you have what it takes?


Art
The art in this game is done by Michael Hussinger. As you can see from the art in the game, he is quite awesome.


Music/Song
The music in this game is composed by Brandon Day. He produces the fattest beats.


Screenshots



Progress
The project is heavily under construction.

I currently have the overworld pretty much complete. But the meat of the game, the underwater, is heavily under construction. The camera is kind of wonky, I apologize for that.



You can check out the work-in-progress (Press X to skip intro):

Play (WIP)

Thanks guys! Currently the state is at vertical slice. Still alot to do.. I will keep yall posted.

And thanks tesselode, that's some very constructive feedback

I'm really looking forward to this game! Hopefully there will be a playable release soon! 

[Synesthetic Dream]

Synesthetic Dream is a game I am developing with my team at the Guildhall. It uses the UDK engine. At its core, Synesthetic Dream is a platformer, but players must master the skills of chaining together jumps, double jumps, and wall jumps to explore and uncover an increasingly beautiful game world. Players essentially create a painting as they successfully maneuver through the platforming puzzles.

In progress...




[ Gameplay Video ]

More info here: http://illogictree.com/blog/synesthetic-dream/

What yall thing of it?  

Yes, it is all true!  I definitely did use that guy's piece as inspiration for this current game. I saw it online at some forums and didn't even realize it was already a game in production until someone pointed it out in this forums yesterday.

I do mean no disrespect to the Nautica team. Their art style was indeed really inspiring and beautiful and I just wanted to capture similar aesthetics in the mockup. Of course, the final art would be stylistically different. I'm sorry if it made any of you cry in the process.

[filled]

I love you all!

position has been filled, thanks!

[[ Objective ]]

Hello fellow TIGers!  

[ Objective ]
I am seeking a pixel artist for a 2D flash game involving sea-faring and underwater sea-diving. I am a programmer who has made several Flash games and want to team with up with a talented artist who can pump out alot of quality art.

So far, I've been doing all the code and art creation for most of my games, but I am a programmer at heart and really want to just focus on the code development while letting the pixel artist focus on art creation.

You can check out some of the games I have created here. My most recent flash game, Wasabi, was recently featured, licensed and published by ArmorGames.


[ Setting ]
The game will take place in basically two settings. One is above water where you sail your boat in either left or right direction. The other is below-water where you must hunt for food and defeat sea-monsters.


[ Gameplay ]
The game is an adventure-RPG type of game. Basically, the game starts off with you and your girlfriend hanging out on a boat. A sea-monster taps the boat and your girlfriend is capsized. The sea-monster engulfs your girl and swims off into the distance. Your goal is to slay the sea-monster and save your girlfriend.

You are given a few tools. Initially you are small and weak and have only enough supply to venture a few miles out to the deep blue. You spend alot of time going underwater, fishing for food and big sea-game and selling it in certain towns. In the towns, you can restock supply as well as upgrade certain properties of your boat, such as oxygen supply (which allows you to stay underwater for a long time). You can also upgrade weapons and movement speed underwater.

The leveling up game mechanic is good because it gives the player a sense of progress and commitment. Also, the feeling of ultimately slaying the sea-bastard that engulfed your girlfriend will drive the tension that the player experiences during gameplay.

I would consider this game a "small" game in the sense that I expect the playtime of this game to be about 45 minutes.


[ Art Style ]
I imagine the art style to be very cute, charming and simple. The feeling I receive from the art and its colors should also be very ambient, brooding and moody in a way. The coloring and lighting do not have to be extremely detailed but must be visually appealing. The characters and objects must be readable.


[ Art Assets ]
The game is playable within a 320x180 area. I will obviously scale it to fit a larger area

Art assets for the game include:
- Various HUD elements
- Title screen
- Boat - Idle/Sailing animation
- Above-water elements: Clouds, sun, birds
- Character animations: idle, swimming, firing gun?
- Under-water elements: tileable backgrounds and foreground layers
- Fishies: Small, big, large, seamonsters (Squid, whale,etc) with various animation states
- Gun projectiles
- Town shop - buy menu system
- Other misc stuff

The game is still being designed so the list is no final nor is it comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of the scale of stuff that I'm looking for.

Here is a small mockup I made for the game, this is generally the direction I am thinking about for the sea-faring part of the game:
[Art removed due to copyright infringement.]

Here is a sample sound-track that I plan to use for the sea-faring to give a sense of atmosphere.


[ Contact ]
If you are interested and find the theme of the game inspirational for your pixel art, please send me a email at: [email protected]. Please include your rates and past work. Also, feel free to send me a message if you want more clarification.

I look forward to hearing from yall!  [cartman]

[Video:]

Just coded real-time grass animation in 3d! Looks pretty good right now, but still so much to do.

Video: http://vimeo.com/14435095

[ArmorGame]

Hey TIGers!

Just wanted yall to know that my Wasabi game has recently been picked up and sponsored by the Flash-portal site ArmorGames! I wanted to thank the TigSource community for all the wonderful feedback and love that you all have given me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Link here: http://armorgames.com/play/6433/wasabi

Eddie

That's really neat! What kind of solver did you use? Did you use that "Real-time fluid dynamics for games" paper that everyone seems to be using, or are you doing your own thing?

Yes. I believe I did use the same paper you are talking about. It's the GDC paper about Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics and it's quite awesome.

A link to the paper: dgp.toronto.edu/people/stam/reality/Research/pdf/GDC03.pdf

[fluid dynamics particle system]

Just coded a fluid dynamics particle system simulation. It uses Navier-Stokes equations to apply wind velocities.

Video here: http://vimeo.com/13341136

Woopee!!

Really dig the art style. I hope to play this bad boy soon!

I knew there was a bug I'd forgotten to mention. This was it.
This happens with the bait box, if you run out of bait, if you hit X several times you have to hit C the same number of times to remove the dialog.

Fixed! Thanks for the lookout

[Z]

I'd rather have it be UP and maybe Z too.

The reason I don't use Z as the button is because apparently on German keyboards, the Z and Y buttons are switched. And we all know how important the German demographic is. 

With the latest change in the location of storage, I found I used it a LOT more. It's helpful for when you have nothing to do, so you can fish and store.

Awesome. That was the goal. I spent a good deal of time figuring out the optimal layout for the island so that none of the widgets in the game will be left out. I'm glad you found it useful.


I had a lot of fun developing this game. You all have aided me greatly in balancing and developing the fun of the game; for that, I must thank you. I am considering wrapping it all up, removing the WIP label, and posting this game up on Kongregate or NewGrounds to see how it holds up in a bigger playing field. Wish me luck!

[appreciate]

Perhaps the word "wasabi" can be more prominent, or 魚 can be worked into a little graphic of the store which would be under the word wasabi? 

Haha. Yes I know that the character means fish and not wasabi. The purpose I chose the fish character was because I thought it would be an appropriate one-character word for the general theme of the game. I'm not trying to imply that the character for wasabi is the fish character, silly.

- Sometimes the water blocks get stuck in mid bounce.

I can't seem to reproduce that bug. Any word on how you managed to get the water blocks stuck mid-bounce?


I really appreciate all of you for taking your time to play my game and to leave such in depth comments. All this positive and deliciously critical feedback is makes me feel like putting on my tophat. 


I made another update after reflecting on the feedback from several players. I tweaked alot of the numbers to hopefully balance the game even more and make the gameplay less grindy. I find that alot of people are taking up to an hour to beat the game. Although I find it super awesome that my game is even interesting enough to merit one-hour play, the goal was to make the game be playable for about 20-30 minutes.

Also in this update, I added a Make Over block that you can hit to make your sushi avatar have a completely new outfit! Now you have the option to make your avatar super fabulous!!

I've some Q's, if you don't mind: Do you guys prefer pressing UP or SPACE for the jump? About how long does it take to get your first star?

[pixel artists]

I am currently working on a new game, Wasabi.

I would love to get some help from any pixel artists who is interested in helping me improve the art on this project. It is becoming increasingly hard to balance between coding, pixel-arting, and balancing the game.

Anyhow, please let me know. Thanks

Play Wasabi Here (Flash)

[quick update]

The storage boxes definitely need moving, I hardly used them this time. I actually think it might work better if you switch everything around so it's like this:
Pier - bait box - shop - storage - sushi bar - farm

I do agree that the storage boxes need moving. I've just shuffled the buildings around to hopefully promote the use of the storage boxes.

The fishing rod feels much better (did you change it or was it just because I was paying more attention?)

Not exactly sure what you mean by the fishing rod feeling much better, but I did adjust some of the times it takes for fishing.


Just did another quick update to balance the game as well as removing a few bugs. Also repositioned alot of the buildings to hopefully improve the gameplay. I am trying to make it so players would want to upgrade most (if not all) of the abilities. I find that if players are able to beat the game without any upgrades, the game is broken.

Please let me know what you think! Also, about how long does it take to get the 3rd star? I was aiming for about 15-20 minutes. Anyhow, I greatly appreciate y'all for playing Wasabi and giving me such valuable feedback. 

Carrots also grow quickly enough that you don't need to water them. Ever.

Good catch. I fixed it now so that it needs to water. The purpose of the carrot is that although it costs alot of money, it yields almost max veggie value, but also requires two watering cycles.

I didn't see much of a difference from upgrading my fishing rod. I think that needs making more obvious.

Upgrading the rod decreases the time it takes to lure a fish. I should probably note that to the player.

1) when upgrading the sushi bar, I think you should earn more per customer, this is because as it currently stands there's no real reason to upgrade the bar other than to complete the game.

Currently as it stands, upgrading the sushi bar decreases the time. But I think increasing the number of cash per customer might be a good idea... Thanks for that.

2) The bait box: It should have a limit of either 10 or 15 and buying more bait gets you another 5. This offers the player more control over when they buy more bait. Perhaps you could start with 5 and make this upgradeable.
It also doesn't feel quite right that you buy then carry seeds but you just magically fill your bait box from the shop.

That's a great idea, I will probably implement that that into the game.

Right now, I increased the number of money you receive from the sushi bar (now only by 1 per level). I also fixed alot of bugs as well as tweaking some values. Hopefully it plays alot better...

[Thank you all]

Interesting game. Found a lil bug, though. Happens when I jump at a block from the side and hit it multiple times at once, permanently raising it up.

Ah yes, that bug occurred to me once, but didn't know how to reproduce it. Thanks alot for pointing it out! I will get right on smashing it.

If I find any dinks I'll let you know, but i love this, who did the music?

The spooky shop song was found in Freesound.org. The reggae main theme is done by this dude named Bob. His stuff is free and mostly awesome.

It's not clear to me what the difference between the different vegetables is, either.  I thought maybe with better vegetables, that people would pay more, but it seems to be five bucks all you can eat.

Oh yes, I was told several times from my friends who tested it that they were unsure of the purpose of spending more money on different veggie seeds. Perhaps I should write some info about the advantages of each seed.. Thanks for pointing that out.

... and the bait seems very misleading. Countless times I bought more bait before I had run out, then I discovered that buying bait recharged all of it.

Hm, I guess I should notify the user that buying bait will max out your bait-bin and will not just purchase one. Thanks.



Thank you all for playing my game and for your valuable feedback. I will incorporate what yall said in my next update. And hopefully next time, I will have most of the user interaction bugs fixed as well as an adding a win state and a lose condition.   

I do have a question though, did any of you have any reason to use the storage blocks? It seems to me that most people just ignore them altogether.

[Wasabi]

Haro gentlemen,

After finishing up my Funkbot3000 game, I decided to start on a new project, Wasabi.  

As I was eating sushi with my girlfriend, I came up this sushi-simulation game design where you must farm, fish and upgrade your sushi bar. Basically, the goal of the game is to make more money so that you can improve your sushi bar. There are a several actions you can do during the game, including farming veggies and fishing.  

This game draws inspiration from such classics as Harvest Moon (SNES) and tycoon-ish games.  I started this game a week ago so its heavily under construction; it needs alot of tweaking and balancing to do in order to maximize its fun, but I feel that I am at a point where I can release it to the public for some feedback.

Anyhow, please let me know how you feel about my game. Did the controls feel intuitive? Was it clear what you needed to do to progress the game? Did doing things such as farming and fishing feel simple or complicated? I appreciate any feedback I can receive.

Note: Press Z to start the game. Start the game with Shift-Z to skip tutorial.
Thanks yall  

P.S. If any artists out there would be willing to help me on the art, I would greatly appreciate it. Please msg me if so.


Click Here to Play! (Flash)