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[evil dan]

Hey fellow devs!

I've been working on an arkanoid-style game that I started last summer, but put it down after a few weeks to spend 10 months writing a book.  Now that the it is in to the publisher I have pulled out this thing and continue working on it.  So far it's been a lot of fun.

Basically it's brickbreaker + aliens and explosions.  There's a bit more, but you get the general idea.

Here are a few screenshots:

[TheChaoticGood]

Will the aliens attack back?

[evil dan]

Hey TCG

Yeah - the way it works now is that the enemies fire down and you can reflect them back up to explode the baddies.  If you miss, they take out one of the cities at the bottom.  Once all of the cities are gone, you lose the level. 

[evil dan]

So... It's been over a year since I've made a post but this thing has been continuing to make (relatively) steady progress.

I've got some .gifs - the first is a fairly descriptive vid of the game:
A big portion of the game are the different bad guys with different attributes and dynamically generated placement/flight paths shown in the following .gifs






I've decided to start (continue I guess) this devLog because I've been kind of a crazy ball of stress and I think it helps to communicate with others. I've been working alone and it has become an echo chamber of doubt - despite the positive feedback I've gotten from players when out showing my game.

I went part-time at my day job doing media work in October to try to flesh this game out into a full Wii-U title. I then immediately got freaked out at the time it would take to complete it and switched gears --> I shifted my focus to another game that I thought I could finish much quicker.  I spent 3 months working on that game and tried unsuccessfully to get it Greenlit before deciding to dump it.  No one was very interested in the game and it was kind of a waste of 3 months of dev time - although I must admit that I learned a lot.

So I'm back on this game and it's going well production-wise and getting positive feedback, but It's still scary to be working on something by myself.

That's where I am big picture.  Hopefully I'll be able to give more day-to-day updates.

[evil dan]

Last night I finally started to work on music.  I've been adding sound effects and auditory feedback the whole time but couldn't find the right sort of music for the project...

But then last night I started playing the game while listening to Jango (it's a music streaming service similar to Pandora) and some funk started playing.  It just worked awesome with the game.  So last night I started trying to create some 70's style funk groove stuff.  I laid down some drums and bass using the virtual instruments on the computer an- but tomorrow I'll pull out the guitar and wah pedal to layer real music on top.

In general I'm feeling good about the project but have been super anxious about my day job.  I went part time to work on the game but I'm not there enough to be super effective at what I do, which is stressful.  I keep expecting my boss to fire me/lay me off --> but it keeps not happening, so I've got to just sit with that feeling of uselessness.

[tjpalmer]

Looks like a fun idea!

[evil dan]

Thanks!  I've got a whole thing where it dynamically generates the level - the enemies & their flight path and environmental obstacles - and that continues to be pretty fun for me despite having played it a gazillion times.

I've started working on a couple pieces of music for it - inspired by 70's funk.  Here is a rough cut of one of them (I've tried to embed the youtube, but if it doesn't work pls use the link below):
 

[evil dan]

My wife went out of town a week ago so I've been in single parent mode.  I've hardly gotten anything done on this game (although somehow I manage to sink time into playing Talos Principle). 

All good.  Production should pick up again next week.

[evil dan]

Been back on production and feeling super psyched!

I put up a new video that I put together in the hopes of getting my game into MagFest:





And currently working on the intro cutscene.  Feeling pumped!

[evil dan]

Hah! Finished the opening cutscene!

Next up I think will be replacing a bit of code that keeps track of the ball's state.  It was written like this:

myState = "slow";

But the issue is that it's much cool to have multiple states at once!  So... I'm rewriting to be more like this:

slowState = "true";
doublePaddle = "false";
invincible = "false";
thisGameIsCruising = "true";

I've also added a bit of directional influence on the ball - which has made a difference in the fun factor of this game

Cheers!

[evil dan]

Re-writing that bit of code I mentioned in the last post has proven slightly more challenging than I hoped.

I've done it and things are cooler - but it introduced a few new bugs which now I've got to track down and eliminate.  Just gotta keep at it.

All in all things are going pretty awesome and I've been keeping my motivation.

[evil dan]

I've been working furiously for the past month. I've been feeling super inspired and have been able to keep my motivation strong throughout. This has been the outlet for whatever other things that are stressful in my life lately.

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I hope it's not a train.

Here's a new gameplay video I posted recently:

[evil dan]

Still been mostly on task - although I have a cold this week so I'm not getting as much done as I have been. 

I did add a script that adjusts the color of new levels (if you make it to a certain level) and the result is kind of cool.  Here is a link to a couple of the randomly generated levels that are using that effect: