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[liquidpenguins]

Update 2: Yay, here is the trailer:




Please check out the game at http://dontgettoodrunk.com



Update: I just wrapped up the final touches yesterday. I will be working on the game trailer today and hopefully unleashing this demo to the world on Aug 3rd.



Hey all! Long time lurker, first time poster.

I really should have started this in January. I guess that's one classic flaw in me: procrastination.

Anyway, back to the game and the story behind the game:
Ever since I moved to San Francisco in 2007, I've been in one or two bands. This usually meant practices after work, shows at dive bars on a weekday. I rarely got the weekend opportunity, so I cherished them. In the 8 years of playing with awesome musicians, I've experienced and in turn, learned a whole lot from the local music scene. I always wanted to turn this experience into something fun and interactive. There were too many stories to tell that no movie/tv show could do them justice.

After struggling with Unity for a bit, PhaserJS came to my help. Since I had to use JS at work, this was the perfect way to prototype game demos. It also works great for game jams. So this devlog is for the demo, not the bigger game I have in my mind. But yeah, I will explain what I want this to turn into after I show the game.

If you've played a local show, you know you will either need to bring everyone you know to the show, or most likely will have to talk to everyone at the bar/house/venue you're in and convince them to see you rock everyone's socks off. In this demo, you are playing a musician, whose band is about to go on stage next. Your mission is to maximize your reputation without losing your skills or money. You convince people by finding out their vice, buying the vice, and bringing it back without spilling all of the vice. The game is won when your reputation is maxed out. The game is lost when you use a vice too much, you lose all your money, or you lose all your reputation.

Without further ado, here is the gameplay:





You can play the current almost finished version at: http://dontgettoodrunk.com
What I'd love to turn this into is a Local Band Simulator, where you take control of a band, and manage their instruments, practices, mental and physical health, income/spending, band members, etc. I would like to make the musician version of Oregon Trail, where you  try to get your band out of debt and into underground fame.

Hope you enjoy the gameplay and maybe even the almost-finished demo. I will be posting more updates as I make progress towards the completed demo version.

PS: Shout out to all the homies and lady-homies who've helped me get this far, help shape the game the way it is, and were along for the weird band adventures!

[liquidpenguins]

I asked my old drummer to record a short soundtrack for it. It is about musicians after all, gotta have some nice sounds for it.

Two weeks ago we practiced twice and went into the studio with 10 songs. They turned out better than anything we've ever done. I guess when you don't have too much expectations and have fun instead of worry about budgets and whatnot, it shows in the product.

Now the real question is whether to add vocals to the songs for the bandcamp version or nah?...

[liquidpenguins]

[knightley]

Saw your post by accident, really dig the pixelart and the theme of the game.
Good luck!

[liquidpenguins]

Thank you!!!!


Might as well give a quick update:



Updated the menu to make it look more polished and remade the logo. Added help/about sections. Also used one of the songs as the intro song. I also started tweaking the reputation system, increasing the values for faster gameplay.

Right now, I'm trying to finish the "smoking MJ" animation. After that, gotta work on the Options section in the menu.

[knightley]

is there a release date yet? 

[liquidpenguins]

I plan to wrap up this demo by Mid August, though hopefully I can release it at the end of this month.

The big remaining feature is mobile support. Once that's done, it should be polish and gameplay balance.

[knightley]

Hmmm, I wonder how the UI works on mobile devices,
sometimes UI does not work equally well on desktop and mobile.

[andyfromiowa]

Just played the demo and got too drunk.  Fun, fresh concept.  I really enjoyed it.

I'll be curious to see how it progresses as development continues.   

[liquidpenguins]

Hey all,

I have been cleaning up, and trying to finish the smoking animation. I've done everything but this animation, not sure why it's bothered me so long, but hey I've vanquished it!!!


The last remaining thing big part of the demo right now will be The Void:

He will be your worst nightmare, the party pooper, the entity that will drive you towards the vices, the dude at the party who intentionally trips you while you spill the three beers.

[liquidpenguins]

Just played the demo and got too drunk.  Fun, fresh concept.  I really enjoyed it.

I'll be curious to see how it progresses as development continues.   

Thank you!!

[liquidpenguins]

Hmmm, I wonder how the UI works on mobile devices,
sometimes UI does not work equally well on desktop and mobile.

True, I may have to adjust it accordingly, though last time I tried it (a month ago), it fit my iphone 6's screen perfectly.

[liquidpenguins]

Enter the void:

[PetterBergmar]

Best title ever

[liquidpenguins]

3 months ago I quit my job to finish this game demo, and here I am, right after three months to the day, sharing the trailer.

Here are some things I learned during this process:

• Always Prototype: finding the right gameplay for a game is about experimentation. You'll get plenty of ideas, try them all in small doses and see if any of them are fun. The previous version of the game was similar to a board game where you had limited amount of movement and the goal was to get people near the stage before time/movements ran out. While it was fun as a board game paper prototype, it was somewhat boring in the digital world.
• Have a solid core: The first thing I did luckily was to code the base mechanics of the game. That is, how consuming vice would affect the player. This allowed me to play with prototypes until I found one that was fun. You are going to need this foundation to build everything on top.
• Tools:This is one thing I did not do and I really should have. I always saw this project as a throw away. Build it, then re-do it bigger properly. But what I would have done differently is first build tools to create the world. Tiles, furnitures, instruments, etc. It would have been more fun to build random house parties and or venue.
• Choose the right engine:I build this game using PhaserJS. This engine, while not as robust as others like Unity, is very easy to use and really fun to create prototypes. I was using JS for the last year and a half, so that also helped. Depending on your scope and what you want to accomplish, choose the right engine for you.

Now let me talk a bit about how I actually made the game.

• Code: All done in PhaserJS. I first built the core vice consumption mechanics, then moved to how the crowd would move around. After that coded basic interactions (talking to people, finding out what they liked, buying the item and sharing it with them, ending with the good and bad effects of the vice). The last part I coded was what I call the SpillZone, the grid based part of the game that comes when you're trying to get back to the person you were talking to. There are a few caveats of Phaser which might seem weird. For example, the camera doesn't have a zoom functionality, so the zoom actually is me scaling the world up or down. Due to that, and my reluctance to re-modify the boundaries/borders, I make everyone freeze until the conversation is over. Shitty, but since the conversation is short, I don't think anyone will care about it for now. If it was a full game, then yeah, that wouldn't have worked.
• Art/Animation:All done in Photoshop. I've been doing pixel art for over two years now. It's still not where I want to be, but it's getting there. I did make sure to keep it consistent. There were times when I would modify the main character, give him more detail, but then I would remember how many sprites I would have to modify as well and with the time constraint of not being employed, I would put that aside and focus on finishing the game.
• Music:For this game, I enlisted my ex-drummer's help. She was super excited to play and record something again. So was I. We had about three practices, half the songs we played were from our old band's failed album recording session. The other half were new songs. Since this is a somewhat short game, we decided to keep the songs very short as well (30 sec to at most 1 minute). Thus why we called ourselves the Quickies. We went into the studio and knocked out 10 songs in less than 4-5 hours. It was the most fun we've had while recording. I guess not having any expectations will do that.
• SFX:I made all the sound effects in Propellerhead's Reason. I've used the program since college, so I have quiet a bit of experience with making bleeps and bloops with it. I also used Reason to make the two electro songs that play in the SpillZone.

This may have been the most fun I've had on any of the side projects. I hope to improve my art, coding skills, and how I create the world for next time. I also will focus on a story-driven game next time. Already have something in mind.