Boatventure: Getting Bloggy

Boatventure! Basic movement implementation!

[Re-post from acpcproductions.com] Hello everyone, it's Ryan Huggins, a game designer here at ACPC Productions and I'll be running the Boatventure blog. We've just *really* gotten into working on the game after finally settling on Unity after having built several prototypes in Game Maker. I'm currently busy working on the first iteration of the game and am taking a break to set up this blog. To begin this blog, I'm just going to throw up a few pictures, but I'll be updating periodically every time I make visual progress on the game; and sooner or later, I'll actually talk about the gameplay... The .gif at the top of the list is an example of the basic movement implementation and the current (rudimentary) system for cycling through your boat modes.

Some Boatventure and some Railwar! Two games being developed by ACPC Productions crossing over. Art by Meghan.

Screenshot Mock-ups

A mock-up by our artist, Meghan. Boatventure has gone through a ton of artistic revisions these last few months. This is an example of being at the surface of the water.

Another mock-up; Meghan and I have been doing a bunch of work trying to figure out the style for Boatventure. We've got a lot of work to do, but the style's finally getting to a place that we like. This is an example of underwater exploration.

Character Art

This is the original concept art for Wynona. A main character (but not THE main character) of Boatventure.

This is a grandma. She is also a pirate.

Tears and blood. We're not sure why she's crying, but Meghan felt compelled to draw it. Classic Ghibli-style tears.

Update and Boatventure: Log 3

Just messing around with some boat ideas

So, it's about time I return to a roughly weekly update schedule. This last semester has been the semester that's supposed to weed out all of the bad game designers and it has been reasonably difficult, but as far as I'm concerned it wasn't hard enough. A lot of the work was just busy work that prevented me from working on side projects, like Boatventure, but didn't actually teach me much. That's why I haven't been updating these last couple of months.

Luckily, ACPC Productions and a few other developers at our school just recently started a game developer's association, the Extracurricular game Developers of Champlain (EDC). We've just begun a three month development cycle called the Marathon and I'll be working on Boatventure. Other than that update and some new concept art stuff I don't have much else to say this week!

Click for the fullsize image!

Us wondering how the world will actually be built.

Student Developer: Microsoft Surface Pro - Log 3 + Boatventure 2013

WHO IS SHE? She is the co-lead of BOATVENTURE 2013!
Boatventure 2013 Dev Log located below the Surface Pro: Wrap Up.

The Surface Pro: Wrap Up

It's been roughly 2 weeks since I decided to use the Microsoft Surface Pro as a tool for game development and in these two weeks I've decided that the Surface Pro is a great tool for developers on the go, but not yet a perfect replacement for a desktop development environment. Most of the problems stem not from the internal hardware or the power of the system itself, but in the available software and the size of the screen (which surprised me in how much it could hinder productivity). The Surface Pro did a lot of great things for me--it ran pretty much everything, let me draw and sketch ideas like I was using paper, connectivity was solid and the type cover made it comfortable to program for hours--but there were a few issues that slowed me down and helped me determine that, for a software/game developer, the Surface Pro is a stellar secondary device, but only a decent primary one.

For a primary device, the screen size was much too small for me to easily multitask, especially when it came to managing 8+ code windows at once. That was probably my biggest issue and it ended up inhibiting me more than I would like to admit. A few other smaller issues, like the length of the charger and the quirks of Windows 8 also, upset me, but it was definitely the screen size that convinced me to return to my desktop for big projects.

However, where the Surface Pro truly shines is in its ability to be an amazing portable device. If I was to go out for a few hours--an example would be a class--where I needed a light device that could power through all of my college activities, let me sketch ideas, and make code edits (or even create full programs in a reasonable amount of time), the Surface Pro would absolutely be the device I would choose. It's just when you ask it to become a primary device that it may fall short for heavy developers.

Do I recommend it? Yes. And I already have to several people. It's just important to ask what you want the device to do before you purchase it.

Boatventure 2013: Development Log 1

A great example of prototyping in action.
These five silhouettes are no longer part of the game.

Today marks the beginning of the weekly (or occasionally bi-monthly) development log of Boatventure 2013 (20XX)! I was working on the first draft design/prototype of the game during my two week test of the Surface Pro as a development device, but sadly (or wonderfully), that prototype bombed and helped us to determine that our core mechanic just wasn't fun! First, here's a bit of background

After many years of global warming, the majority of planet Earth has found itself submerged beneath a torrent of rising sea levels while much of mankind has been wiped out by the resulting influx of superstorms. In recent years however, with humanity at the brink of extinction, the Earth has finally begun to stabilize itself. The majority of those who survived this global warming-related apocalypse have taken refuge on what little dry land remains, while others have taken to the seas themselves, searching valiantly, for any remains of civilization until the depths claim their lives as well. Thrown into the fray without any hesitation for adventure, you play as a boat scouring the ocean world, searching for a way to kickstart a new civilization, and somehow resurface the world that now lies beneath the tides.

If you take a look at the images above, you'll see five ships and a submarine. In the first design of the game, the player would be able to unlock new, larger ships and then cycle through them at will during the gameplay in order to solve puzzles or just lay down the law to other ships. The system was based around a mobility-power dynamic, where the smaller ships were more mobile, but the larger ships were more powerful. Luckily, it became apparent during prototyping (and prior to that, in some arguments with the musician, Jack Yeates) that the system might not be fun, or at least be terribly difficult to balance. (On that note, check out one of our MANY concept songs and maybe let us know what you think!)



In a true designer fashion, I don't like really like scrapping cool conceptual systems without testing, so I insisted that we prototype it out; and for a few days, I thought it would work out, but it quickly become more and more apparent to me that cycling through different boats was a fun mechanic, but that the power vs mobility dynamic was not. At all.

In the end, we got rid of the different sized boats, but kept the idea of cycling through multiple specializations of ship. This means that you can unlock new ships with a new type of weapon (like how Megaman unlocks new weapons) and cycle through them in real time. In addition to this, we're considering a Cave Story-esque mechanic where each ship can "tier up" by doing well, obtaining a more powerful weapon in the process. Like Cave Story, however, they can also level back down.

It's important to note, that unlike both of the mentioned games, we plan to make sure that every type of weapon has some sort of gameplay purpose (akin to The Legend of Zelda's items) to aid in the exploration! So cannons might be able to break down certain walls, torpedoes can destroy underwater rocks, and battering rams could maybe let the player push objects that would normally damage them. Each different weapon corresponds to a different specialization. (We're still coming up with more like an anchor grappling hook.)

A bit of a very basic platforming scenario. TAKING PLACE AS A BOAT!!! :D

In addition to the combat, it's important to remember that the game is an exploration-adventure game where the player is literally a boat. We've spent a lot of time thinking about how the player can get around (and we have a lot of ideas!) Though, one of the tested mechanics that was really positively received, was the submarine mode. Since your boat has the special ability to change into different ships, it can, naturally change into a sub to explore the deep-sea depths! In addition to this, the player can unlock a lot of other cool tools for exploring and getting past obstacles that they couldn't otherwise get past.

Submarine mode is my personal favorite though. It literally and figuratively adds depth to the game and will let us design some really cool areas to fight in, explore, or solve puzzles in, whereas the other ideas are more combat orientated with the added bonus of increasing mobility (Castlevania-style).

So, hopefully, you like the idea of Boatventure! It's really shaping up to be an amazing, beautiful, stylistic adventure game that we can be proud of; and our secondary protagonist at the top of the page, is shaping up to be a great character. More on the main character in the coming updates. :)

More sketches of our super cool co-lead! 

Quick Rant: Ugly "Journalism"

EDIT: This was written while the Phil Fish and "Annoyed Gamer" debacle was going down on Twitter. I was mostly upset by the comments about how developers should be grateful to journalists for covering their games and less upset about Phil getting bashed (because he retaliated in some not-so-good ways).

Let me begin by saying that no matter how successful a developer is, it's NOT okay to attack them; even if it's just "on the Internet".

To be honest, I'm not even sure what to say about how, today, Phil Fish and Jonathan Blow were disrespected by the latest Invisible Wall video at gametrailers.com (source). They were essentially insulted and slandered for several minutes because they were tired of being called upon to comment on every little rumor solely due to their success as indie developers. Some people get tired and upset when they're bombarded by questions and asked to comment on every little thing. Of COURSE they'd eventually speak up about it. They're not journalists who always want to talk about the next big story. They're barely celebrities. They don't get PAID to comment on things. They get paid to make things--to make games that people like. So WHAT if they don't want to comment on everything that has to do with the industry. Especially rumors that are commented on, over and over and over again like the new generation of consoles.

But then, that's not even the issue or what I'm upset about. Who the fuck cares about that. I'm upset that after this happened and after Phil Fish got upset about someone BLATANTLY attacking him on the internet (who wouldn't be upset and take to twitter to vent?). I'm upset that the internet took this as an opportunity to just go crazy and start personally attacking him and--to a lesser extent--Blow on the internet. I mean what?! These people make great games. They dedicate so much time to making games that people will like and that can stand as pieces of art and then they get slandered and insulted for being successful?! Even if you don't like them as people, they're successful developers. And yet, as the "annoyed gamer" in the Invisible Wall video put it, Phil Fish and "Blowfish" should be grateful to journalists for promoting their games.

Let's think about that. The developer of a good game should be GRATEFUL when a journalist, whose JOB is to find games they like and promote/talk about them, promotes their game. Journalists (usually) don't choose to write about games out of the goodness of their heart. They choose good games so consumers get the greatest product or that drive the greatest number of hits. Phil and Jonathan aren't EVIL people, they're just outspoken developers; and even if you think they're assholes, you definitely shouldn't be insulting them publicly.

I'm personally insulted that this is the kind of place the industry has become. A place where successful developers can't be outspoken about their success and where journalists think that they are entitled to comments and time from developers just because they choose to promote their games. No game is ENTITLED to promotion by journalists and they're not "lucky" when they get promoted. Promotion happens to good games or to games that people like. Just like a journalist can refuse to promote a game, a developer should be able to refuse to give a journalist a story, or a comment without getting shit for it.

My heart goes out to Phil Fish for being insulted like this and if I ever make it into the limelight with my team, we're definitely going to make a change.

And that's my rant. My Surface is dying and I have to make some lunch.

Expect Greatness,
Ryan Huggins

Two Things: Dolphin Squadron and Boatventure 2013

If I wasn't happy about this, then I don't know what happiness is!

So, Dolphin Squadron released on May 31st at 12PM and since then, the game has been fairly successful and at the very least has completely blown my expectations out of the water! The pun, ...sadly was intended. To recap the events up until now, here is a list.

Demo

• Featured on Indiegames and Russian indie blog, True Indie Games. Pretty fucking awesome day for us before we even did anything! Inspiring.

Release (DOWNLOAD HERE: http://acpcproductions.com/ds)

- Featured in a mash-up at Indiegames with games like Mutant Mudds Deluxe and Teslagrad!
- Feature at IndieStatik and our longest feature (word count) yet!
- DS was top 3 at Reddit r/IndieGaming for roughly a day. Dropped steadily afterwards.
- Front-page primary feature at GameJolt for a few days. Currently secondary feature.
- 4.8/5 review score at GameJolt.
- Featured again by True Indie Games.
- Blogged about by my friend's game blog, Distorted Travesty.
- Five or Six LP videos of DS and one First Impression (so far).

- Ryan befriends editors and administrators of GameJolt, IndieStatik and Indiegames. :)

I'd actually say that I'm already more than fucking happy with the turn out.

I'll update with the general statistics of the game on Friday when I wake up! At the same time, don't expect ridiculous numbers! Haha. It was still my first actually complete game and my expectations were low, so I was ecstatic even with my reasonably low numbers. :)

Boatventure 2013

Open in new tab for full size!! And follow us. ;P

I started doing some mock-ups of how the game would actually look using the assets we made at the ACPCP Official Progress Jam a few months ago. I'm honestly, extremely satisfied for the most part. The bottom picture is the most recent and depicts what the game would look like earlier on in the game. The top picture (made before I found the bigger assets...hence blurriness) would be like JUST starting. 

Notice how the game zooms out as your progress. This will be to accommodate the larger ships and action as the game progresses. I was going for an exponential growth type of idea, but we'll see how the artists (and Flash) feel about that kind of stuff. If it doesn't work here, I like to consider all of my games polished prototypes, so perhaps I'll revisit it in the future...says Ryan who hasn't even really started on this game yet. :X

Regardless, I'm a happy duck (subtle reveal of another game? Perhaps.) So...

Expect Greatness~

Ryan Huggins

P.S: It was a reveal.

Ducktics.

Dolphin Squadron has been RELEASED!

The game still looks wonderful when played in portrait mode. Kinda looks like a long tablet. Haha! (From early demo)

We've been developing Dolphin Squadron for about three of four months now (mostly on and off development because of school), but it's finally finished! Yay!

The game is a vertical scrolling shooter where you play as a mechanized dolphin hired by the US NAVY SEALS to intercept dangerous underwater mines in order to save various coastal cities from utter devastation! 

Gameplay Description

PERFECT LAUNCH!

The game begins as your dolphin is fired out of a deep-sea submarine in an effort to catch up with an angler-like mecha that’s carrying a city-destroying mine up towards the surface. Starting at the bottom of a deep-sea trench and traveling up towards the surface, the goal of the game is to destroy the mine before it reaches the surface by first, catching up with and destroying a mechanized angler fish (a mecha) that's carrying it to the surface, and then destroying the mine with your dolphin. Sadly, to safely detonate the mines, you need to slam your flimsy dolphin into it...

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE GAME AT THE WEBSITE http://acpcproductions.com/ds/ !!!

DOLPHIN SQUADRON!

If you play the game and like it, show your support by visiting Jack's Extended Play (EP) page at http://blueskybleu.bandcamp.com/album/dolphin-squadron-soundtrack-ep and maybe even purchasing his music! He's made music for so many of my/our games and deserves some serious attention as a musician and composer for games. :D

Other News

Now that Dolphin Squadron is done, I will be working full-time on Orphan Adventure Game with artist, Matt Barrett and composer, Jack Yeates.

I also never got a chance to write part two of Motivated Design due to release date issues with Dolphin Squadron, but I will be getting ready to write that as SOON as possible!

Expect Greatness~
Ryan Huggins.

Summer 2013: Week 2

So, as far as game development is concerned, this week was a moot point. I didn't really do anything at all and honestly I'm not sure why. I've been feeling a TAD unmotivated I guess, but I think I can fix that through some room cleaning and willpower. I actually almost forgot that I needed to write a post this week, but here I am, scraping up stuff that I've done, but not shown and creating a post!

Anyway, the only thing I made progress on this week was Dolphin Squadron. I quickly designed and made the art for a website which will be active in a few days with a trailer that has yet to be made. >_> I still have a bit to do before the release at the end of this month/beginning of next month.

In other news

I did do a substantial amount of art (by my average output) for Project Clusterfuck (game) and Project Duo (web comic). It wasn't technically this week, but it is work that I haven't shown off yet, so I figure I'll talk about it for a little while. I might make it a goal to draw a test page a week over the summer to get into some sort of rhythm, but I've given myself way too much work I feel... I seriously need to reduce my workload so that I can focus on something and stop stressing out. :U Anyway.

Project Duo!

Project Duo is a story/game/web-comic that I've been working on for some time, but have made very little progress on. If I'm going to focus on any two things this summer (3 months now :<), it will be this and something else like Orphan Adventure Game.

Story

I don't have a very solid synopsis of the story yet, but it's a story about two young adults (Decus and Sera) leaving home and going on adventure so that Decus can become a hero. Obviously it's more intricate than that, but I find that the best stories are the ones that aren't cluttered or over-hyped. Those are the stories that end up being the most charming in my opinion. This story is primarily character-driven, so I plan for it to have a substantial amount of character development and dilemmas sprinkled throughout, but I also hope to keep it pretty simple overall.

A slightly more attractive synopsis of the story is this one.

Without his brother home to distract him anymore, Decus realizes that he's the only person in his family who hasn't saved the world. Being the type of guy he is (crazy and ridiculous) he buys a spaceship so that he can search the cosmos for a world without a hero; one that he can save! Sera tags along (as the main character) because she doesn't want to lose the only person that she really trusts. The story follows the duo on a mission to find an inhabited planet that needs to be saved. Their goal is to save whatever planet they find from utter destruction. At some point in the story, they get derailed in their mission, but the goals are always the same. Be heroes. Define justice. Save the world (universe [multiverse]).

Artwork

Here is Sera, the main character of Project Duo.

Sera is the co-lead/main character of Project Duo and in many ways is a difficult character to explain. She was born on the same planet as Decus (below) and shares a special bond of friendship with him because of some hectic events that went down in the past. She has some serious trust issues and can be extremely straight-forward at times, but ultimately just wants to be happy. She thinks that she can find happiness by attempting to becoming a hero with Decus, but she's not quite as dedicated.

Decus is arguably the real main character, but we don't tell anyone. He's a "fan" favorite.

Decus is a character that helps to drive the plot of Project Duo forward. He is absolutely and utterly dedicated to any task that will allow him to reach his goals, but because of that, he's also kind of ridiculous and dangerous. He uses his unnatural levels of charisma to get what needs to be done, done, but despite this, he is also the only member of his family that hasn't become a hero yet. 

This is Alice, our resident strange-ass character.

Alice is character that suddenly appears on the duo's ship early on in their adventure and cannot be identified by the ship's AI (MAHM). She can be severely unsettling and deranged at times, but she's also a little girl. Aww, look at her. She's playing with a butterfly. <3 

This is Charlie, a mid-game/story character. She's kind of a hipster of the future.

Charlie is Decus' brother's partner-in-crime and somehow ends up as a part of the party. Tragically she's a bit of a hipster.

I was asked to sketch some weapons for a lizard race in PD, so here is 40 minutes of sketches (I'm slow).

I have a writer on-board for Project Duo so that I can focus on the art and development. He asked me to sketch him some weapons for a lizard-like race, so I drew some stuff. I hope to slowly fall out of my comfort zone with this project and improve dramatically as an artist in the process.

This is a draft of the crew's spaceship. It's like a duck. Yay!

This is the Schietern, the Project Duo spaceship. It's pretty small, but pretty cool at the same time. At least Decus really likes it.

So, that's really all I have to say today. The next part of Motivated Design still needs to be written, so I'll post it as it's own post tomorrow probably. :D

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Summer 2013: Week 1

Getting prepared for an Orphan Adventure Game.

This is the first of a series of weekly updates for the blog and today, I figure I'll talk a little bit about Orphan Adventure Game. If you are not interested in OAG, then at the end of this blog post I introduce a new topic that may offer insight to the world of student developers (at least at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont).

Orphan Adventure Game

OAG is currently a project that I plan to prototype and develop with Matt Barrett and Jack Yeates over the next seven to eight weeks. I explained the concept of the game in my previous update, but to simplify, it's a three phase RPG where you explore, shop and battle as a rag-tag group of musical orphans. The phases take inspiration from various rouguelikes, Second Wind, Final Fantasy, Mother 3 and The Binding of Isaac, though these mostly inspire the exploration and shopping systems. The battle system is based on musical orphans using sounds and music to defeat their foes, but it's not a rhythm-based system. It's in it's early stages, but as time goes on and more progress is made, I'll reveal more about it.

The game's prototype is going to be made in AS3 as to give it a large, easily-accessible target audience and distribution stream, but the full-game, assuming the prototype(s) pan out, will be written for other platforms. I'm aiming to release a full-version of the game as a multi-platform, browser/mobile/personal computer venture, but judging by how poorly AS3 handles sound, I may end up abandoning browsers. We will see.

Currently, I am working on making sounds work smoothly in AS3 and as far as the prototype is concerned, I think that I am satisfied with what I have. I'm more or less brand new to the platform and I'm not using any libraries or anything (since I'm preparing for college classes that will make me use AS3), so next on my list of things to figure out is moving between phases and therefore between "rooms". My projected path is as follows:

1. Make sure sounds are working and write fade-in/fade-out functions.
2. Determine how to switch between phases (combat, exploration, and shop) and move between rooms.
3. Begin prototyping of combat phase without an inventory. This will require basic character classes and stats.
1. While doing this, I will also work on a message-box/dialogue/text-handling system to display text elegantly.
2. I will also begin messing with animations and visual assets.
4. Begin work on exploration phase.
1. This will include writing something that will randomly generate rooms, but will allow me to create scripted events for the plot progression.
5. Begin work on shopping phase.
1. This will involve writing an basic inventory system, though this system may be written sometime earlier.
6. After making sure the phases are fun, I'll begin polishing the phases.

Motivated Design: Part 1

Aside from creating Dolphin Squadron and starting on a variety of other projects like Orphan Adventure Game and Voyage, my freshman year at Champlain College also introduced me to a slew of potential problems that I didn't know existed, namely the lack of motivation, cloud of resentment and propagation of rivalry (sometimes negative) among some aspiring game developers. The most startling thing about this though was that these problems were being partially created by me and my team! This realization was definitely a sort of wake up call for myself and for the rest of us (we were trying to inspire people, not demotivate or upset them!), so, over the next couple of weeks, I think that I'll discuss the issue of motivated design and developers at Champlain College and abound.

An Introduction to the Issue

The issue arose when we found that our loosely defined "team", ACPC Productions, was being resented for being composed of people who, as freshmen, were very vocal about wanting to make games. Because we had actively sought out and "allied" with talented people that we worked well with, we had inadvertently upset a pretty large group of people (freshmen and upperclassmen included) that saw ACPCP as two things: an entity that was attempting to "steal" talented people away from the other developers and a clique of pretentious asshats that thought that because we had a team, a name, and ideas, that we were better than everyone else.

At first, I found it absurd that people would think something like that about us--all we wanted to do was make games and as a group that's what we did--so when we heard this from Brook, the team was more or less devastated and many of us took the news to heart. But as time went on, we began to realize that we could have potentially been upsetting people because of what we were trying to do. We wanted to make games, but so did everyone else. The problem was that with the way we approached game development, we came across as pretty self-serving or at least cliquey. We wanted to inspire people, but we were doing the opposite.

All Talk, No Games

We actively work on a lot of projects. Screenshot from the document I use to manage our "teams" and projects.

Because we work on a lot of projects (not all games), speak openly about most of them and then create and release a lot of promotional artwork (but few prototypes), we can be seen as a team that is all talk and no games. And judging by this list, which doesn't include a couple of my projects like City Across the Sky (prototype) or Voyage (concept), you can see that we do, in fact, work on a lot of projects, with only two being anywhere near completion: Dolphin Squadron and End Love. 

In addition to this, we were fairly large. This upset people and made it look like we were just arbitrarily adding people to the "clique". This was especially harmful because the whole team is usually never working at the same time. Dolphin Squadron, for example, was developed by myself, Brook and Jack Yeates, with the rest of the team occasionally doing QA and usability testing. Even more so than that though, was how we over-scoped our games at various game jams in an effort to push ourselves as hard as we could go. This led to the development of the idea that we couldn't really finish anything and spread it through a public, developer-centric space. 

A New Idea: The EDC

At that point pretty much, ACPCP and the idea of us being the group to inspire other groups at our college, was fucked. We had to improve our image, get rid of the name or do something else. James Shasha (Designer) was keen on the idea of getting rid of the name and starting anew; Brook Chipman (Artist) wanted to reduce the size of the team down to the original members (the Project Clusterfuck team); I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't want to kick anyone out and I didn't want to lose the name that we started with. I also just wanted to work on and finish Dolphin Squadron. I just wanted to make games.

We decided to reorganize around this idea of a community of student developers. A place where anyone could go and work on anything they wanted. We designed a club that acted as a place for people to go to pitch ideas, form teams and make progress. Pretty much what we did within ACPCP, but open to everyone and not just the members of our clique. That was the idea behind the EDC, the Extracurricular game Developers of Champlain. We turned it into a club and suddenly, a lot of the negative emotions began disappear, and people seemed genuinely interested in the idea.

PART TWO OF MOTIVATED DESIGN NEXT WEEK.

Expect Greatness.

Ryan Huggins~

Dolphin Squadron: Final Moments

A little Gurren Lagann is never a bad thing. :P

It's been an entertaining run, but it's finally coming to a close. Dolphin Squadron is officially in it's final stages and will be ACPC Production's first game. That's pretty fucking exciting to me! The game's been in active development for four out of the last eight months and I'm happy to say that the end-product is actually pretty fun. It is also brutally difficult at times, but the controls were partially an experiment and I think they were successful overall.

DOLPHIN SQUADRON :D

IT IS DONE. :D

Over the coming days, I'll be writing up a postmortem for Dolphin Squadron and the development of a student game as a freshman; and, in general, I'll be trying to get Dolphin Squadron some publicity.

SPEAKING OF WHICH. When I put the game up at Tigsource for usability testing a week or two ago, Indiegames.com picked it up and wrote a small thing about it. For a team of college freshmen with very little marketing experience and a desire to just improve, not really to make popular games, it was nice to know that our game was at least a cool enough of a concept/execution for a game journalist to pick it up. :D It also gave a bit of a motivation boost to the team and was great for me to use to inspire the game developers around campus who want to make games, but don't feel like they're good enough!

Regardless. I put this final stuff into the game yesterday at 11:57 PM and that means that the game now goes into a recluse state for about a week or so. During this time, I will be catching up on some ARTING and then later on, competing with my team for the rest of the summer to expand our worlds (for Project Clusterfuck) through web-comics. I'll also be making two games in AS3.

Orphan Adventure Game

A short RPG with a Forum Adventure art style. :P

One of our artists was having a bit of an issue actually getting art done for awhile, due to a variety of reasons, and as such, I had to intervene. He wanted to make something with a fun, quirky theme and a somewhat unusual art style for games. Enter Orphan Adventure Game, an RPG about orphans rising up and, uh, saving the world? defeating the evil ice cream man? We're not quite sure yet to be honest, but I'm designing and programming the game, while Matt Barrett is coming up with the concept and will be doing art and such. We're both writing it.

Boatventure 2013

Gotta get to work on this. Haha

After Orphan Adventure Game, I reaaaally need to get to work on Boatventure 2013. Jack Storm, one of our programmers working on a sweet secret SRPG project I designed, told me that I had like, 270 days or something to make the game. I figure if I spend like a month or two making Orphan Adventure Game, I'll be able to finish Boatventure in time. :X Let's hope, otherwise the name will be changing slightly!!! D:

Expect Greatness~
Ryan Huggins.