2017: The Good and The Bad and Beyond

As you all may know 2017 is coming to it's close, has been a pretty cool year overall. I think it was better and not worse than 2016 - that's a good sign. I feel like a lot happened in this year (especialy the days after June 20th 2017).
Without further ado let's start with the bad - just to get it out of the way.

Bad: 

- In the end of 2016 to early 2017 I had some form of anxeity complex. I don't think I can explain it without sounding utterly confusing. But here it is shortened - my self confidence, hating on the school system and arrogance.

- As well as that I couldn't use my computer due to my crap grades in the December mocks, that means I couldn't work on my games.
This fueled my anxiety because I kept on fantasizing and filling the plate with too much ideas; believe me if you have ambition - filling your plate is going to be the last thing you ever want to do.
It'll fill you up with fat and you won't be able to move anywhere. Well I did have access to my dad's macbook at some point where I could at least work on RedBlue Adventures: Crash n' Brawl and start Bounty Hunter 2, so I suppose this cloud has it's silver lining.

- I didn't really post much art, because I didn't do much digital drawings (excluding pixel art) and I was often too lazy to scan my traditional drawings.
And I don't feel proud of the drawings I do, mainly because they encompass loads of flaws. I rarely use my sketchbook because I'm quite worried that I'll junk it up with crappy drawings, so I just draw on a separate piece of paper and tuck it away when it's full.
I can definitely say that I've improved (which I'll get to later).

- I flopped my history mock, got an E. Worse than my Q1s (almost got a B).
To be honest it was my fault because I didn't bother having past paper questions. Don't get me twisted I definitely studied, I was developing my revision summary which I think will help in the long run.
This wasn't like last year where I just simply didn't care (I know, what an edgy rebel I was back then), glad I've changed since then.

Good:

- I definitely improved in art, I had a better grip of anatomy than I did previously. I also made sure to not draw the characters' eyes too anime, I'm pretty sure that if you looked at the bad art out there that is anime based.
You'll know what I mean.

- My programming abilities have had a major increase in terms of skill, arguably more than my art. I learnt how to write more maintainable code and learned many programming concepts which may aid me in the future. Heck, I even learned some C++ due to this. C++ is a pretty hard language to learn especially with things like pointers (which I do have a basic grasp of and is one of the most difficult things about programming).

- I fulfilled my promise of going to game jams! And I don't regret going to them, making two games because of these jams feels pretty great. These are the games I made from the jam by the way https://prowniebrowniesoft.itch.io/pipe-dreamer and https://prowniebrowniesoft.itch.io/gizard .
One great thing about these jams is seeing many other game devs on the jams' discords (that's how I got a discord in the first place). Do you know the tester I talked about on my update on BHII? He was from the game jam I made Pipe dreamer in.
Another great thing was that my game "Gizard" actually got some amazing criticisms, want to know why?
Not because they were saying the game was good, in fact it was quite broken. But because they gave me things, in the long run that would help me with game design. I even think about their criticism now as I write this and progress on my two current game projects.
I would like to continue joining Game jams next year.

- I learnt the truth about following your passion: It isn't something that can be followed, but rather something you develop. I'm bringing this up because at the begining of the year that's one of the main reasons I've had anxiety.
And perhaps this could help anyone constantly getting anxiety on the meaning of passion, running around to blogs and videos trying to find a true definition to pasison when all they get is arguments around the lines of  "Don't let anyone tell you that you can't follow your passion" or "Your passion won't make you financially secure in the long run" or "You're not talented enough to pursue your passion, find a way to enjoy what you currently do"

Those points are too one sided. Well, the last one is debatable, but I urge you not to side with any of these arguments. Anyway, following your passion is quite unrealistic and especially if it's just a dream - you don't know what this dream truly is or how it might change, it's an unpredictable thing. Instead focus on developing growth and if you ever feel like "Oh goodness... Is this my true calling? Was I ever meant for this? I can't do it" block that away. Bite the bullet and do the hard work. I'll assure you the passion will come back after you learn to overcome this.
Take this from me, I've had points when I developed my games when it was an utter nightmare to solve the bugs and problems. I didn't say "I'm giving up, this isn't for me". I said "This is hard, but I'm sure there's a way out" and guess why I finished 4 games and put out a public alpha this year.
By the end you will feel powered and proud of what you have achieved and lo!
You end up passionate about what you do. And you show it to everybody and they think "Wow this guy can make games!" well, except the experts of Game Development who give constructive criticism. Still getting either is a godsend, especially the last one.

- I started to actually care about maths, maybe because I graduated high school and started to think about it for myself. Recently I've been self-studying maths thanks to an app called Desmos. It's really great if you enjoy making graphs and learning about maths. Let's all be honest here:
The way they teach maths in school is like this - "Okay, a = 3, b = 2.6, c = 6.9 what is 'a' divided by 'b' + 'c'"
To be honest that's freaking lame. I'd rather make up the sums and use a and b as variables to mess with. I learned some A-Level maths like integral calculus using this app. I don't even do A-level maths.
Eat your hearts out A* maths students! This barely-scraped-off-a-7 (A)-in-maths guy is coming along to show you you can study maths without an A level. Heh... I'm jesting (again).
But still, if I ever want to study A-level maths after using desmos for a while - It'll speed up the learning process and higher the chances of me getting the highest grades.

Beyond:

- I really need to improve on my music skills, my real-life freinds were heavily critical of my music ; to be honest they were quite harsh on it, in fact: terribly harsh. In fact their words stung me, they said things like "90% of your muisc is bad sounding", which I disagree with - I'd say the earlier ones do but the more recent ones sound decent at best.
See here, I'm not saying "I suck" or "I'm the best", I'm saying "I can do better, there are things I can fix". It doesn't ignore the problem however it makes me happier as there will always be a solution.
The nicest thing I got was "If you get good enough at [music] I'll have you compose some original soundtrack for an independent film I'm making"
I responded that I was still learning and they said "Learn more, that project ain't for ages"
Jesus christ, I feel like I'm being used...
And Rockman claims that I "insult" other people's art.
But you know what? In a way I'm glad I'm receiving all this hatred, because as much as I don't like to say it: It does encourage me to make better music.
I spent one night watching youtube vids on music theory and I already know what triads, minor and major scales are. I feel like I can conquer the world and prove these chumps wrong.
I jest. It's obviously going to take time to improve,  I'd need to invest some time into learning some more music theory. It'll make my music sound less crappy.
Just keep in mind, I'm still homing my craft so no need to go all gung-ho bashing on my music and making fun of it. I'm pretty sure if it weren't for my crappy early music, I wouldn't have made better stuff. But you know what reaper (Overwatch) says:
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

- Academically I aim to get a high B or a low A by the end of Year 12, as I said - I'm creating a revision summary. This is so that I can be in good shape for Year 13 where I can aim for things like solid A's or an A*. I personally wish I got those kind of grades in my GCSEs...
Well I've got this opportunuitty in 6th form.

- I would honestly like to carry on learning maths because I like it and who knows, It may definitely help me with making games with things like Physics.

- I'm continuously working on BHII and RBA and I want both games finished in 2018. RBA in early 2018 and BHII in late 2018.
Ideally it would be good if I had a month to spare with both projects to polish and fix bugs. Progress is flourishing with both projects - with BHII I've implemented 4 new incomplete levels and 1 incomplete boss. I'm also rewriting some of the Enemy AI, Level-loading and other bits of code, so in the long run it can be easy to modify.
With RBA I've been mainly devoting my time to play-testing and adding moves to characters. I'd say around this point it's 85% complete (that's an estimate, the only thing missing is the music, polish, remaining moves, a small number of animations and backgrounds). I hope to get the game done by Febuary 2018 and released by mid-march 2018. It's coming soon.

Summing Up

2017 was overall a better year than 2016 for me. It gave me foundations on many areas and I'd like to continue this into 2018. There was one thing I said last year:

"I don't want to set a checklist of what I will plan to do in 2017 because it just feels structured and stagnating to say the least.
It's better to go with the flow, because you never know,
You may do something great you never even envisioned."

I still agree with this, the stuff in the Beyond section are only generic ideas of what I want to achieve next year. The rest feels like an unknown journey I have to take myself. And you never know, you might achieve something you never thought you would.

In closing, I wish you all a fantastic new 2018!
well... uh... maybe.

That's all from me!

Bounty Hunter II Public Alpha

The alpha of the game is out and available in the hands of fellow gamers!
Keep in mind this is not final and is subject to change.
Let me know what you think of the game!

Game development stories: God playing gamers.

Hello there!

Game developers are the ones behind all the mechanics in the game. They know all the power-ups, moves, combinations, levels and every little bit of the game that tickles.

So you think that when they start to test their games, they'll be the almighty gods of their own creations? Will they conquer any game they make and turn everyone's euphoric expressions into expressions of utter terror and misery?

Well, I believe you are terribly mistaken.

Because you see, when a game is in it's early stages of testing, developers have little experience with actually testing the game.

Obviously they have that edge of knowing how to play the game but they don't know how to experience the game. You see, it's like the developer is like a child making buildings out of Lego and the gamers are the people in the world.

The developer obviously knows every train station and building off by heart but they don't have the experience of living in the town, hence they don't know whether players are struggling finding what to do or where to go.

Developers like myself play testing their game is like the child shrinking themselves into their own little Lego world, to see that their world is actually living and breathing; they take the position of the gamer.

The incredibly strange thing about this, is the fact that the developer (at first) is just like the newbie players. They get their faces handed to them by the monsters that reside within the game world. Next thing they see is a load of dead corpses from many players - failing to get across the first boss (or even enemy).

The developer gets killed quite quickly.

They realize that the boss is way too difficult.

The developer reverts back to their former role and makes the monsters slightly easier to beat. The developer realizes that the players become stronger as they fight the bosses with confidence. The developer fights the boss, and quite easily too. Because they know the game well.

Well not exactly easily, but they do defeat the boss relatively quickly (much like the other gamers).

The developer understands both sides and now he has mastered one of the most greatest aspect of Game development.

This story is strikingly similar to the development of Bounty Hunter II, Catwalk and RedBlue Adventures.

I'm pretty sure you can see why Catwalk is probably better than most of my games. Because I was that developer who inserted themselves into the role of the gamer. With other games before it, it often felt like I was adding features until the deadline and wouldn't have enough time to play-test it.

Now with more time, I often focus a lot more on play-testing and getting into the worlds and fleshing them out.

Similarly with RedBlue, when I first play-tested it, it was incredibly boring - and using that knowledge I decided to make it a much more fun game.
I put in things like showing the amount of damage or even-out the difficulty a bit. Now, it's more fun to play.

And that's what developers never tell you about playtesting.
That's all from me!

BH2 Updates

Hello there!

It's been a while since I've updated anything BH2 related!
Apologies for that, but there is good news to be had from this: Progress!
A lot actually.

Let's get to the bitty gritty shall we?

POUCH

"Wait" you say, "What has 'pouch' got to do with a game where you run and shoot things?". A lot actually, cutscenes in particular.
POUCH (Prownie's Outstandingly Ultimate Cutscene Handler) looks a bit like this.

As you can see it is not the most tidiest of systems at the moment but it's still easier than hard-coding every single line of dialogue and movement etc. This brings me on to what the heck this POUCH thing is.

It is a custom-made cutscene making tool that I have built myself.

It originally started as something that just sprouted dialogue, but thanks to my increased skill and confidence in programming, I decided to make it do more than just read dialogue.

It also moves characters, spawns objects, fades the screen in and probably most cinematic things you can imagine.

Combat + AI

There have been plenty of changes to those, especially AI.

A few months ago, I sent an early prototype of the game to a play-tester I met on Discord.

He commented on how there was no need to dash in the game, a game-play mechanic which I thought would have added lots of depth to the game. He also mentioned that players would always go for the more easier and boring route to completing the game by kiting the enemies.

I decided to play thorugh the game without ever dashing, and funnily enough.
I was able to beat it.
Easily.

You could be a complete newbie at video games and be able to beat that clear, one shot and boom!
Done! You can now throw away the game into a nearby rubbish bin and forget the fact you ever played it.
(Please don't do that to the final game. I crafted it with my heart and soul! Criticism is welcome though).

He was right, I could just walk back whenever I saw the enemies or heck even stand in one spot and just spam the shooting button until they die.

Because in that prototype the enemies just walk towards you and if close enough they stop to attack.
They don't shoot or lunge or do anything that would need you to dash out of harms way.
They're lacking... quite a lot of what makes good AI.

So one day I decided to create a room exclusively for combat purposes and alter the enemy AI. I first of all decided to give the enemies a lunge attack. And I tried to playtest the game without using the dash.

Within the first few 30 or so seconds I died from the enemies' attacks.

A small light shone in my heart as I first saw an ounce of challenge burst through this very figment of my combined efforts.
Now the dash was becoming something useful.
Not too long after I found out that you could actually use the enemies dash to your advantage.
Let me explain.

When the enemy uses their dash attack, you can actually dash simultaneously right through them, then emerge behind them with a mill-second to spare to blast their brains out with your trusty Peacemaker.

Yeahhhhh...

Actually, I've got a name for this: The trade blow.
Because you essentially trade positions with the enemy and shoot them right away.

It might sound simple or trivial on paper but in practice it is not as easy as you think.

Timing is an essential ingredient to getting this tech right ; if you don't dash as soon as the enemies do, the enemy will be the first one to lunge at you with all their might and power.
And you are going to have a bad time.

I also applied this to the boss of the area (yes, this game has planned multiple bosses, not just one like the first game). He is harder than your average enemy but he is quite a good way to mess around with the combat system, since I don't want to reveal much about him (since I want you to explore it for yourself) I won't talk about him very much.

The last thing I want to mention about the combat is a more minor one. You can cancel dashes by pressing the shoot button. This can be quite useful if you want to keep your fire range close to the enemy rather than dashing to the other side.

I'm still skeptical about this feature since I haven't found too much use for it.
But then again, I think I'll need to play-test the game a lot to see where this feature works the best.
And make any necessary changes to make this feature more useful or ditch it entirely.
Only time will tell.

Animations

I have spent a lot of last month working on the animations, and for a large part, they are complete. They are a huge step-up from the RPGMaker2003 styled 3 frame animations that the 1st game had. The animations feature detailed and clear walk-cycles within each character.

Since my game "Pipe Dreamer" I have come up with a new way of animating sprites, I basically separate the body parts into segments and animate them. Then I put them together to make an animated sprite.

In my opinion this works far better than drawing every frame from scratch because, let's face it:
There will always be that off-chance that you may say "Oh dear! Where's the position of the torso at this point of the animation?" once realizing that you have made a wonky animation.
It has definitely helped me not only make more efficient animations, it helps me make them faster.

Isn't life easier when you break it down?

Level Editor

To make development easier, I've decided to make a level editor for myself.
It loads level layouts from a list and displays it all.
This is quite revolutionary for me since in the first game, all the areas were in one scene.
Part of what it does is generate enemies and collisions based on an arrangements of specifically coloured pixels.

But there is a downside to this, if I want to edit a collision box on an enemy or implement an animator on to them, I would need to click the Generate tiles button to generate them again, I might need to find a workaround but I won't focus on that now.

The feature is sound so far though, nothing game-breaking. Ideally I would prefer to make an editor where you can place enemies, collisions, cut-scenes and all that stuff on the go and save it all to a specific file, but I don't think I have developed enough skill to do that.

Perhaps I may create a better editor if I ever create Bounty Hunter III.

Summing up

Progress with Bounty Hunter II has been going pretty well as of lately. I have been spending a lot more time and effort on this game than I did with the first game so hopefully it should be better than the first...
I hope.

I'm planning to get a playable prototype by December so that's something to look forward to.
It's going to be pretty short, and I mean short. But that isn't always a bad thing, since I prefer shorter games as the replay value is higher.

That's all from me!

RedBlue: Adventures update

Hello there!

This is the first game development post I'm writing on this blog heh...

Alright... so over the past few months I've been working quite solidly on the RPG (alongside Bounty Hunter 2 which I may update soon because I have a quite a good amount to say about that).

Firstly,

Well, it's just a bunch of buttons for now...

I have a shop system all good and working.

As you can see, you can buy food, characters and moves.

Isn't that cool? It kind of reminds me of the tavern from the IOS game "Slayin'" where you could buy new characters to fiddle around with.

How do you get the money?
By defeating enemies of course!

I'm pretty sure most of you may assume that food can be used in battle as a healing item.
But that's not the case with this game.

Instead food is used as a way of permanently increasing character stats (like TWEWY).
You need to win a certain amount of battles in order to do this (again, like TWEWY).

I feel like this is a good mechanic to have players strengthen their characters and give the game some sort of replay value (because it's an arcade RPG, it's a GIVEN that these should have replay value).

It makes the game more personalized, as you can experiment with seeing which food item does what to the characters and how their stats increase.

There are 3 playable characters that you can buy from the store to assist Redler on his adventure, each with their own strengths and weaknesess.
And of course Moves!
Which nicely gets me to moves.

You can buy moves from the store which add a move to Redler (or any of the characters) which you can mess with or use to your advantage.

Obviously these items get unlocked as the player progresses through the game by getting stronger.

Secondly,

I would like to mention about the more back-end stuff (I honestly love that they even call it that).

This is what I use to play around with character stats before I input them into the game (which inputting the stats pretty tedious if you ask me).

Let me tell you some amazing advice that will make your life easier.

If you want to make an RPG, it would be ideal to have a spreadsheet.
Why?

Because you can see what kind of stats your characters have at a certain level (which is processed by calculations I've come up with).
It helps balance the game without having to constantly play test the game over and over again.

It includes stats not only for players but for enemies as well.
In any future RPGs I desire to make, it will be a golden standard to use spreadsheets.

As you may see here - characters have about 4 stats (actually they have 5 now if you count "Special points" which is basically my game's version of mana, I'm too lazy to put it on there. Feel free to call me out if the game isn't balanced in terms of SP).

This is because I honestly don't like it when RPG's throw a million stats that you have to somehow understand.
I.e. skill, resistance, guts, vitality, mt, whatever

I can see that these may increase other things like skill increasing the amount of critical hits or guts increasing the likelihood of your character auto-reviving or enduring with 1 hp remaining or such like.

But personaly I think that, whilst it adds depth to gameplay - it dosen't make it fun or enjoyable.

This is why I'd prefer just 4-5 stats rather than 9 or heck even 15!
It's also because I want to keep the scope for this project relatively low since it's my 1st RPG that I actually thought about these things.

I also think less is more in these kind of situations.
How about make defence increase the amount of health you recover in battle?
Or having intelligence increase the amount of SP you recover each turn?
Or even having less stats work with each other?

No need for 15 stats!
Looking at you Final Fantasy!

Well... hey! This is all food for thought, though.

Thirdly

I have also implemented some system where it spawns random enemies based on the kinds it stores in a list.

Like the shop, it changes as you progress through the game, spawning a larger variety and stronger enemies.

There is a level cap in the enemy selectors, meaning that when you get to a certain level, it will go to the next enemy selector to spawn the next set of enemies.

These kinds of things are far easier than just hard-coding things into the game.

It takes a workload off me, I'll only have to focus on implementing the enemies into the game (things like sprite animations, moves, stats etc).

I've also done an editor sort of like this in Bounty Hunter 2.
But that will be saved for when I write about that game.

Summing Up

Development is overall going pretty nicely.
I like what this game is becoming,
Even if it's full of flaws - you don't always get things right the first time.
Obviously the second or third effort will be better.

The important thing here is that I've learned quite a lot about what goes into an RPG.

That's what matters the most to me.
Now if you don't mind, I've got to work on the enemies and characters and... lots of things...
Including schoolwork too!

That's all from me!

Hello world!

Hello there!

I've started this blog as a (sort of) replacement to my DA journal. The reason why is because doing a DA journal is way to restrictive, especially on pictures (such a dang nightmare!).

With all that being said, I hope you look foward to the stuff I may post on this blog.

Well... it's mostly boring game development stuff.