Design Process: Project Voyage (Day 6)

I love this mock-up style, but I think I may change it soon.

DESIGN PROCESS: This is where I will be choosing a project and discussing it's design decisions over a period of time. Expect frequent updates.

So, writing a daily blog is horrendously difficult (at least when it's focusing on a game that's not in production). To that degree, I will not be doing daily updates. I'll try to get around 3 updates a week, but daily updates are too much for me, especially since I have a social life to attend to. Haha. ANYWAY.

Jacques (who would like everyone to know that his name is actually Jack and that I'm writing his name this way to distinguish between ACPCP programmer Jack Storm) and I began to discuss some of Voyage's gameplay two days ago. (Then, I went to a party and afterwards, slept for 26 hours straight...) We broke the basic gameplay down into five categories. Each of these categories was expanded upon briefly so that we could look at all possible venues of gameplay, then remove what we didn't like/what didn't make sense with the theme of the game. We call this subtractive design.

1. Fishing
• A fishing system implies some sort of developmental system for better equipment, lures, wires, reels, etc. I've considered that fishing will probably be a big part of the early game and that there'll potentially be a trading and bartering system so that you can actually do stuff with the fish that you have caught. This introduces the need for a system of communication with the locals and maybe a food system so that fish also serve a purpose for the player. A food system would then imply something like a health system or even a cooking system where you can get achievements for catching and cooking certain fish. Soon you see how quickly one system can develop into many, many more! 
2. Diving
• A diving system also implies some sort of equipment system where you can acquire things like diving helmets, scuba gear, a snorkel, etc. These types of things would allow for the player to dive for longer and have a greater chance of finding secret underwater treasures! This adds another layer of gameplay and exploration, all taking place underwater. This system wouldn't only exist on the seas, but potentially on islands and in lakes as well.
3. Finding Islands
• Since finding islands and exploring the world is supposed to be a large part of gameplay, a primary method of exploring the world would be sailing from island to island and then exploring said islands on foot. This system of discovering islands relies on a deep movement system that would allow for sea, land, and interior/exterior exploration of environments. Interaction with the environment and NPCs, as well as combat with "enemies" would also be important. We determined that a land motion would be very platformer-esque, while sea exploration would be more "Castle Crashers". We want a seamless world, so designing this may become an issue.
4. Sunken Treasure
• Locating sunken treasure is sort of a hybrid of diving and boat development. There would be a hook that grabs chests from the ocean floor, but this would be some sort of upgradeable purchase for the vessel and would prevent the player from having to dive for treasure. This system would be incorporated to allow players to just completely avoid diving altogether if that's what they want.
5. Sea Encounters
• There would either be planned or random scripted events where you both meet and interact with sailors just like you! Just without real people behind them. These conversations imply some sort of communication system involving little thought bubbles. You could probably also challenge them to battles to steal their shit.
• This system could be broken into two parts.
• Combat with other sailors
• Trading with other sailors

Over the next few days we will be detailing and drawing various infographic-esque diagrams for these systems. THEN WE GET TO REMOVE THE ONES WE HATE or keep them all because we suck at removing systems. ;D

Shitty Design Sketches. :D (Decipher at will.)

Showing basic system of entering/exiting water. There is a zone where it occurs.

Showing how underwater would show up when you are fishing/diving.

Showing the movement system and the layers of the movement system.

Resketching the disembark location so that it is closer to the angle
we actually want the game at.

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Design Process: Project Voyage (Day 5)

VISUAL SPLENDOR. ;P (Clusterfuck or Rebirth concept)

DESIGN PROCESS: This is where I will be choosing a project and discussing it's design decisions over a period of time. Expect frequent updates.

Sadly, it seems like we may be coming to the end of concept art for a little while. I'm getting to the point where there's pretty much nothing else left to conceptualize visually (for now besides objects and stuff). If I do any artwork now, it'll probably be for my other projects which actually require ridiculous amounts of concept art and I'll plug them in here at the end for the visual SPLENDOR.

Ahem. So, I didn't do any actual design stuff today because I'm getting into the swing of coding some stuff for Dolphin Squadron and there aren't enough hours in the day to spend time (seconds) with my family, work on Dolphin Squadron, procrastinate and then work on Voyage with enough time to blog! So, what I'm posting today is something that I said while I was talking to Jacques and my friend Joe (Distorted Travesty) about Voyage. These things give you a pretty fucking raw look at how I sometimes choose to explain projects to people and justify my design decisions and visions for the games I've worked on. Be forewarned that these are IMs, so my grammar/spelling may not be spectacular.

This here is me rationalizing (to some extent) why basic combat should be included in the game; I also kind of touch on some aspects of gameplay elements. Something interesting that I've noticed about having these conversations with Jacques is that about 90% of the time, I haven't actually considered the ideas that pop up (and then pitch to him) while I'm rationalizing things. Almost every single one of my games has been fleshed out in this way at some point or another. Even City Across the Sky went through this process! The issue with that game was just the botched production phase. The design I think was fairly solid. Anyway. Here is Part 1 of 2 (and some music to go with it [vertical re-orchestration]).

1. I think that players will want to be able to like see a crab and let it scurry away, or murder and eat it though
2. Nothing serious
3. Maybe there's a dude on a bigger raft
4. or like a legit pirate ship
5. that one day you want to overthrow and take the crew
6. Or you just avoid them
7. and explore the world
8. the message bottles say something that peaks your interest
9. They're out of order and you piece together a little mystery
10. relaxing, nothing dire
11. you find a shipwreck and a skeleton
12. You wonder where such a big boat came from
13. since you just have a raft you can't go far
14. you're like, "That'll be me one day, just not dead. Hopefully."
15. The first night, it's cold. Your character shivers while he sleeps. You're like, "Oh, that's sad. He needs somewhere warm".
16. Etc
17. That's what I want. A game with little to no words.
18. at least spoken words
19. Just player thoughts. A player making connections with the world.
20. The music soothing them. The gameplay enticing them to explore more of the world.
21. The early game has to be filled with the character making a bunch of small discoveries that have actual meaning.
22. So the player knows that, in this world, things matter
23. You're not going to find a crashed ship for no reason.
24. I hope I'm explaining the idea/feels well enough

After this, I go on to try and clarify some of the problems that Jacques brought up with some of the concepts. Nothing serious, but this is a much more structured idea being explained. It also, in my opinion, almost completely describes the type of game I'm trying to create. This response was directly related to Jacques heckling me about liking science fiction as a way to describe things "different". Haha. Part 2 of 2

1. What I imagine is a dude who, for whatever reason, decides to abandon his life in society and explore the seven seas. He gets as far away from society as possible, builds a raft, and just goes. He ends up somewhere and yeah, you play the game. The sci-fi aspect was just a way to say, it doesn't happen on a planet where society has taken over everything.
3. Anyway. As you're playing the game, you explore, you find some message bottles, you uncover like, let's say, a stereotypical treasure map. In the context of the game, that's fun, but only if you establish a desirable atmosphere or something that you can be. Think megaman X, you're megaman, you're cool, but Zero, Zero is a fucking baller. You wanna be just like that guy.
4. Zero (as a concept) is like some benevolent, elderly pirate that maybe teaches you something at the very beginning of the game or just drops you off at your destination and sails away.
5. He looks cool, he acts cool, he is cool. (He says nothing)
6. But whatever, you want to explore and shit
7. You've got your raft.
8. So this treasure map leads you to a cool hat or something. You put on the hat. Now you're an explorer. That wasn't so hard, but it's a pretty shitty hat.
9. I don't want this crappy hat
10. The old seafarer had a dope hat
11. You want a hat like that
12. But you only have this hat
13. What do?
14. This happened the night that you realize that your character was shivering at night or something pressing, but subtle.
15. Now what's important is making a life for yourself, but this island is shitty
16. You want to go somewhere else
17. You travel to the end of this small island where you saw on the map that there might be something, there's nothing there, but there's nothing anywhere else. You've got to explore.
18. You set sail
19. Now the aesthetic is very important.
20. You're sailing and eventually you find another island
21. It doesn't matter which of the nearby islands it is, but it's an island
22. You mark it down on your map
23. This exploration positive cycle happens for a little while with a bunch of other cool, soothing things and then one day, while you are sailing you see another boat. It has a flag. Then suddenly, you realize, wait." I don't even have a boat..or a flag. I'm really sad aren't I." Those pirates see you floating around and they sail right past you. You don't even matter. The dude on that boat wasn't as cool as the elderly guy, but he was still cooler than you. It's like, maybe...maybe I can get cool like them, etc.
24. You see this whole pirate thing
25. is just a metaphor for growth.
26. When these bigger boats pass by, you see your character like, just stare at them.
27. You want to make him/her that cool so you explore, you discover things, maybe you even discover things that haven't been discovered before.
28. You're not trying to change the world. You're just trying to understand it.
29. You're having fun and relaxing as the player and hopefully, if done correctly, unlocking that feeling that children have
30. Just like the wonder of discovering something you maybe can't explain.
31. Imagine a game where you are the fucking dude who like discovers magic
32. But you don't know it
33. Yeah
34. So, if you read that
35. I wonder if that explains anything other than my vision for the game. haha
36. There aren't pirates necessarily
37. There are like
38. other people seafaring
39. Maybe while you are sleeping one of them steals your hat
40. You don't have a hat anymore
41. you're exploring and you see this fucker with your hat
42. So you follow him, but he gets away
43. you keep sailing in the general direction and you end up at a new island
44. behold
45. a new land
46. Then you find a new hat
47. and suddenly your old hat doesn't matter as much? Or maybe it still matters
48. and you get (steal) it back
49. and then you feel like, "Yeah fuckface, don't steal my hat"
50. And then you're on your merry way

Whether or not I'm going to allow the player to actually "lose" things like with the stolen hat (this is a negative experience and I'm advocating the positive), I'm unure. However, if you think about it, setting up the player with loss, and then having a quick positive reinforcement (finding the new hat or something else cool) might be even more uplifting if the loss comes first. There might be severely scripted events like this in the game, but I may try to avoid that as best as possible.

I have to look at the goals of my game--my theme, per say--and determine what kind of gameplay, or "everything in the game" as Joe says, should compliment that idea.

For now, that idea is this: "Trying to convey the feeling of discovery that you feel as a child, but lose as an adult because of science and shit." I don't think it gets much better than that!

I'm running out of concept art. Haha. Alas.

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Design Process: Project Voyage (Day 4)

Here you can see the player floating behind an island. :D

DESIGN PROCESS: This is where I will be choosing a project and discussing it's design decisions over a period of time. Expect frequent updates.

Boy, is it difficult to get work done on a schedule. I'm usually so chill about getting work done on side-projects that actually trying to adhere to some kind of design schedule is mildly difficult. It's mostly because I've got SPACE working in Dolphin Squadron though, so I've been coding that. Haha.

Anywho, this morning, I took a shower (I do this occasionally) and was thinking about this whole movement system nonsense. I'm not 100% sure about the details, but I've been tinkering with the idea of traveling towards the background in my head and I don't think that I'll use that mechanic in the game. Whether or not it's possible to code isn't the issue, but the design practicality of it is. Unless I'm doing the game in full 3D (which I doubt right now), I don't think that traveling into the far background would be cool if you could just sail there uninhibited! I think having to lose sight of your destination for a while and traveling through unknown territory to get there would be cooler and ultimately feel more like an exploration. A system like this doesn't necessarily need to implement 2.5D, though we still might depending on this camera zooming thing (another day's post).

Regardless, what I'm thinking of is closer to a system where the designs of the levels make it look like you're actually making progress towards a goal that you've maybe passed recently (or not so recently) in the background. For example, let's take a look at this concept image.

Sweet Concept Image Portion

This might be posted again tomorrow for another discussion.

In this image you can see that there's something at least mildly interesting in the foreground (trees). So, let's say that your character has washed up onto this random island after being capsized by a storm (an idea I hope to exploit occasionally ;D). You wake up, and since the area is brand new, it'll probably stick in your mind for a few minutes longer than usual. So, you start exploring to the left of this new world (there's water to the right and your raft is kind of busted [maybe]), wondering what kind of new island you've ended up on, all the while thinking, "Maybe there might even be dragons here, or something!" Eventually, after a long enough trek, and maybe finding some things along the way, you'll end up at those triangular objects in the background (now as pyramids in the foreground). Then you'll suddenly see the trees that you left behind in the new background. A semi-circle of exploration! Something like this would add to the sense of scope in the game because it could be an indicator of some sort of progress.

I like this idea better than a purely 2.5 dimensional world where you can sail directly towards the background, maybe because I can simply imagine it working like this better in my head. And while a 3D-esque world might be nice, I think that something like this overall would just be a cooler experience for the player. Agree or disagree, it's currently just what I think is right for the game. I haven't discussed it with Jacques yet, but that's going to happen after this blog post.

On a less designerly note, Jacques has mocked up an example of vertical re-orchestration (which is something I plan to talk about in more detail tomorrow [along with my musical flairs system]). The gist of this system is that it'll allow us to easily do music that adapts to events in the game. After hearing it for myself, it sounds wonderful, but also sounds like it'll be pretty easy to code! Awesome! The song itself should be up on Soundcloud for everyone to hear sometime tonight or tomorrow, so check back soon!

And that ends today's Design Process.

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Design Process: Project Voyage (Day 3)

Rain's a'coming! Also, yay! A hat! No sail though. Bummer.

DESIGN PROCESS: This is where I will be choosing a project and discussing it's design decisions over a period of time. Expect frequent updates.

I decided that I should probably write this blog post before I got too caught up doing art and lost track of time, and then all of a sudden, I'd have two blog posts to write in a day! Uncool. So, today was mostly a Dolphin Squadron day, since Brook sent me some art assets to throw into the game, but that's information for another day. Over the last couple of hours or so, I've been thinking about the atmospheric systems that would have to be made for Voyage and they've made me realize that this'll probably be a somewhat long-term project after-all... Alas.

So, Mother Nature is a powerful woman who don't need no man--and is probably not a deity to be trifled with--as such, I've determined that any seafaring game in it's right-mind should take weather and atmospheric factors into account. Things like time of day, incoming weather and the general atmospheric conditions are super important for both the "feels" and, to a  lesser extent, the actual gameplay.

Speaking of gameplay, I haven't really put much thought into it yet; I like to develop worlds A LOT, so I'm holding off on that for now. A different approach is art-style and gameplay first, story and world second. I'm trying to make a game that's fun, but that's also atmospheric as fuck. A background story and a deep world are key, but not quite important at this stage. Granted, as far as animation and art goes, I'm not the best in the world (or even close), so I think I'll have to find one or make all this shit myself. Whatever, let's take a look at atmosphere for a little bit.

These atmospheric concepts are easily my favorite so far. 

When you think of the prettiest time of day, you don't usually think of mid-afternoon. You think something like, "Oh, oh! Sunsets are pretty!" or "Pretty sunrises are also pretty!". Sometimes you maybe think of both. If you're weird, maybe you do think that the most beautiful time of day is one of the regular, average-Joe times. That's cool, but I like sunsets. I love sunrises too. But what I really love is stars and how sometimes you can see them as the sun is rising or setting. I was never able to really see stars living in a city, so they were always double the beautiful to me. Therefore, that is what I'd call beauty; it's also what I've tried to capture it in this here concept.

As far as systems go, the dynamic-time-of-day-and-sometimes-atmospheric-effects-plus-weather system is going to be a very complicated one; but the way I see it is, if I can design it in a simple way, I can probably code it with enough time, effort and outside assistance. I mean, can you even imagine a game where you can actually see a lightning storm happening in the background? And then maybe watch it get closer until you're right inside of it!? Then you capsize and end up on a remote island, but with all of your stuff so it's just like being lucky, but also exploring. That's a game worth playing.

I can imagine it. It's a pretty cool game. It also probably exists somewhere else. But I'm not trying to innovate my life away here, I'm taking something I love about nature, about perspectives and seeing if it'll work in a 2D game (my favorite kind). So, let's hope it comes together one of these months.

Perspective of clouds makes things better. And that aura! ;D

Expect Greatness.

Ryan Huggins~

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Design Process: Project Voyage (Day 2)

Oo, birdi--oh shit, a fish! I CAN EAT! Or I won't, whatever. 

DESIGN PROCESS: This is where I will be choosing a project and discussing it's design decisions over a period of time. Expect frequent updates.

So, it's Day 2 of progress on Voyage and I'm excited to say that the image in my head is getting just a bit more complicated (this is good). Yesterday, I wasn't quite sure how I wanted the game to look; I only had the concept for the "feels", you know? Well, now I'm getting a little closer to a vision of a playable game; and something that would allow me to keep the style of my concept art (maybe). Also, I have a musical concept here from Jacques Yeates. He says, "Imagine sailing to this." (He also says "It's very early concept music." :P)

But enough about that (the vision) for now; let's take a look at the concept image from up at the top of the screen. I was thinking about gameplay briefly and wondering whether or not I should include any kinds of spoken text. I discussed it with Jacques and we determined that dialogue might take away from the "feels" and detract from the game's purpose/our desire for players to just enjoy the world! I figure that talking with words is too "society" anyways, and our little 40-year-old friend is trying to escape from that, so we don't really need any of that. 

Note: We think it's important to keep the character goals, as well as the gameplay goals, in mind  when deciding on the "rules" of game world!  

What I did decide on, though was keeping these "!" and "?" things from the concept art. I used something like this in City Across the Sky (poorly), but I think that implementing them from the beginning, instead of later in the process, will make them feel more integrated into the overall experience. These symbols would include more than just "!" and "?", but maybe include things like hand-drawn emotes, animated effects, etc. I was thinking that some forms of communication could occur with these things popping up or fading away and the rest of it would be more passive. I'd like to keep the game relatively HUD (heads-up-display) -free (as far as persistent HUDs go) as well, but we'll see how long that dream lasts.

The way the camera works has been established in my head as well. I'm thinking of a little bit of Castle Crashers at a potentially more severe angle (to show off more of the horizon) and with more vertical scrolling. I'm also thinking that a little bit of 2.5D action will make the world feels like it has some depth to it. Castle Crashers never really gave the player any sense of depth as they moved towards and away from the camera, though I'm not sure that it'll be necessary to have lots of depth with this game. 

I was thinking of using techniques like pseudo contra-zooming to add some depth, but it might be more disorientating than anything, so I'm not sure yet. I still plan to have player controlled zooming active, but it may, or may not, be necessary with the goals I have in mind. ANYWAY. I have a movement concept art.

Arrows represent movement. Obviously.

Getting back to the vision, this concept is the closest one I have to the playing field depicted in my head. Right now, the player is standing on land. While the player stands on land, their vertical (z-plane) movement is dramatically limited (represented by the small and concentrated nature of the land arrows). However, get a boat and while at sea, your movement is limited significantly less. This is my clever way of metaphorically exploring the idea of "open seas". 

Note: While the player only has their raft, their paths of oceanic travel will be limited as well, but not as much as on land (probably). "How limited?" I haven't planned anywhere near that far yet! ;D  

This would also remove the conceptual issue we were having where if it was 2D (x and y planes only [and ala most two dimensional platforming games]), then the player would have to disembark on literally every island in their mostly linear path. A 3D transition may have fixed that, but I like the style a lot, and 2.5D might let me keep it! Yay! If I could get this to work correctly, you might be able to travel to the islands in the waaaaay distance. The ones that you've (probably not) been wondering about this whole (2 days) time. I'm not sure how this would work coding-wise, but I'm sure I can figure something out (or just use 3D?)! ;D   ...D;

That concludes today's Design Process.

Dolphin Squadron: Update

Yes. We understand that PETA may be an issue.
But we also doubt it because we're noobs.

Yeah, just a mock-up for Dolphin Squadron. In MOTHERFUCKING SPACE. How you get there will forever remain a mystery, but it'll happen somehow. Haha. Obviously, Brook (artist) didn't really try too hard on the bg in this mock-up--or maybe he just couldn't figure out space. Regardless, I'll probably use particles or parallaxes anyway, so it doesn't matter too much!

Also, high-tech PETA will definitely be a mid-boss (our description of mini-bosses). We will probably also have other classics such as...

• Aliens
• Cthulu
• Megladon
• Magikarp (probably not)

Expect Greatness.

Ryan Huggins~

Current Project: Dolphin Squadron

DOLPHIN SQUADRON

So, Dolphin Squadron has been in development for about a month now. Originally, it was supposed to be an arcade-inspired game for Steam's Greenlight program. Sometime during the beginning of development we realized that we liked the game beyond it just being a school project and it went from a shitty school project to a shitty personal one. 

In Dolphin Squadron, you are a dolphin hired by the US Marine Corps to intercept dangerous underwater mines that are being used to covertly destroy coastal cities around the world. The core game is a vertical scrolling shooter where you play as a weaponized dolphin fired out of a deep-sea submarine. Starting at the bottom of a trench and traveling up towards the surface, the goal of the game is to destroy a mine before it reaches the surface by first, catching up with and destroying a mechanized escort fish that's carrying it to the surface, and then destroying the mine with your dolphin's body. The hook is exploding dolphins. To destroy the mines, you have to destroy the mecha with your dolphin lasers and then slam your dolphin into the mine.

There's more than just dolphin lasers now, but this pitch was what sold the game to my class and teacher and from there we began development on a game that was pretty much about blowing up marine wildlife. Ironically, only one person was concerned about the potential for people to become offended by the game's core theme of kamikaze dolphins, but we ignored them and continued to work on the game.

These kind of things still make me happy. Haha

Presently, the game is on a smooth development course (with an February-April release window), but there are a few issues with the core design and some mechanical issues that I'll need to iron out before a release. Of these, one is establishing a clear method of level progression and another is the difficulty of creating "procedural" (read : random) obstacle generation that doesn't fuck up and create impossible gameplay at higher difficulties. I haven't heard any complaints about the enemy/obstacle locations being "dickish" (direct quotes) from the most recent versions of the game, but reaching a happy balance for difficulty (as far as concentration of obstacles goes) is getting very difficult.

Currently, the spawning of enemies and obstacles is pretty random--and that works fine for now--, but I'm wondering if there should be a more dynamic system for spawning enemies and obstacles. I figure that once I reach a middle ground for obstacle concentration, I can tone up the difficulty through other means such as providing the level boss (the mecha) with weapons and introducing mid-bosses in some levels. Weapons balance was a minor issue for awhile, but at this point, the weapons seem to be suitably balanced, though they'll definitely change a little bit before the end of development.

Our goals for the game aren't terribly crazy, but we do plan on polishing the game for at least a month or three before releasing it. Figuring that we can implement all aspects of the levels, get all of the art done and add a fun number of gameplay secrets before sometime in late January/early February, we could have the game ready for a release sometime in April. Eventually, I'll release a video or two of the gameplay and how it's progressed. :D

Expect Greatness,
Ryan Huggins~

Welcome Back, Me

Well, it's certainly been awhile since I've last updated. For the last few weeks (months?) I've just been acquainting myself with the college life. I'm now attending Champlain College for game design and so far it's been a pretty fun time. ...But no one cares about my college experience. What's important is that I've been improving my skills as a game developer and designer for the time I've been gone and here I am, returning prepared to make some games. So, let's talk about those.

Project Fall :

My previous project, Project Fall, hasn't been updated too much, though I'll potentially be releasing the prototype to the wild soon. Currently, I'm working on developing an artistic style for the game before I dive head-first back into development and turning it into either an arcade-style platformer (a murderbox as I like to call it) or a full-fledged platformer. Who knows. Maybe I'll do both! The design is solid, the testers like/love it, the controls are sexy--it's a good prototype...now to just make something with it.

Concept Art for Project Fall

Dolphin Squadron :

Here is the project that I'm currently working on. Dolphin Squadron! Dolphin Squadron is an arcade-inspired scrolling shooter where you play as a dolphin employed by the Marines/SEALS to intercept and destroy deadly, coastal-city-destroying, mines...with your flimsy dolphin body. I like to call the game Exploding Sea Battles sometimes since there are a lot of explosions, many of which are friendly sea creatures simply getting in your way.

I designed the game for my Game History and Development class here at Champlain College, but it was an idea that I had previously come up with while I was showering. Figuring that a radical game about exploding sea creatures and a weaponized dolphin would garner at least a little attention, I decided to use the concept for the game. Right now, the game is a little more than a prototype and I plan to throw up some updates and videos here to show progress as the game develops.

A friend of mine actually turned his monitor to play the game...

Dolphin Squadron was developed over 4 weeks (for class), though arguably, I coded pretty much the entire current version of the game in less than a week (the last week :P) before the game was due. We plan to finish the game and add some more crazy shit to make it sexier and overall more fun to play. Current issues include difficulty, a minor lack of understanding the goal (for new players), and a shitty tutorial.

Hanriot :

Hanriot was our (ACPC Production's) first game jam game. We formed at the game jam and have decided to stay a loose group pretty much during our time at college. Hanriot was a game designed for the theme of disavantage and our lead designer (I programmed), James Shasha, decided on an Italian Pilot who crash-lands in the Alps, behind enemy lines, during WWI. The goal of the game is to get through the Alps and reach the city at the end of the game.

We didn't manage to complete the game because of mapping bottleneck issues with Game Maker 8.1, but we did create a visually pleasing game (even though it wasn't perfect) in 48 hours, with a bunch of freshman game developers. We were very pleased with ourselves.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE GAME HERE.

WELL, ACTUALLY HERE.


Project Clusterfuck :

So, I wanted to make an RPG/Adventure game and thus, Project Clusterfuck was born. Generally, I develop games under the Siifour Studios name, but this game is currently being developed under "my" side-studio ACPC Productions (you don't want to know what it stands for) and the final game will probably fall under the ACPCP and Siifour Studios production houses (Siifour's designer and musician and ACPCP's artists, testers, co-designer).

The game is literally a clusterfuck of five different RPG stories because we thought it would be cool to have the player transverse through a series of different RPG stories. Whether or not the idea will hold up is up for speculation, but based on our current designs, we're more than ready for the hurdle. I'm producing, coding, and designing the game, but with five people writing five different stories for the game, I figure that I'll be more of a mediator and balance maintainer than a full-fledged designer. :P

Project Clusterfuck is my current large-scale side-project. While I work on Clusterfuck, I'll probably develop at least 5 or 6 games of a Project Fall or Dolphin Squadron scale and hopefully they'll be just as fun as those two games are shaping up to be.

We will also have a fuck-ton of art and concept assets.

Now here are the artists:


Brook (Revocare) :

Some of Brook's OCs.

A mecha and it's rider (WIP)

Brook is our key artist. 

Megahn (Nanrie) :

Two Clusterfuck characters together. 

One of Megahn's OCs.

She can drawn with pencils too. Who does that anymore? ;D

Hunter (Totalblatherskite) :

They got infatuated by a cat in a movie. He drew a cat.

OCs from Hunter's story. 

Matt (Pseudosutra  I don't currently have any of his art, but here are his character designs) :

One of Matt's characters drawn by Brook.

An ACPCP fan favorite. Gungie (I think that's how they spell it...)

MOTH CHARACTER! :D

Ryan  (Project Duo) :

The main character of Project Duo.

I'm not a colorist. Haha

The above character's brother.

Note : All of this art (sans Hunter's) is for Project Clusterfuck. ;D

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Working With Flash

A great environment.

After working in Game Maker 8.1x for a pretty long time to build games, I figured it was about time I started learning another environment for designing and developing games in. Game Maker 8.1 is a good program, and is very capable of doing what I wanted it to do with my 2D projects, though I felt limited only knowing one or two programs for game creation. Enter FlashDevelop + FlashPunk. (To be honest however, I may end up using Game Maker (Studio) to make a lot of my older game ideas because I know it best.)

It's been a blast messing around in a new engine/language...so finding myself reading code snippets on my phone in the middle of the night to learn the language pretty much sealed the deal for me and Flash (at least for Project Fall). Moving over from Game Maker 8.1 to FlashDevelop + FlashPunk has been a fairly smooth transition and the object orientation of FlashPunk has been very helpful in allowing me to learn AS3 quickly. Still though, I'm kind of a noob, so I have a bit of practice before I can actually make anything worthwhile with the program!

I've been using the FlashPunk official website and official forums to learn the language and build games and Zachary Lewis's tutorials have taught me pretty much everything I need to know to get my hands dirty with the program even if I'll have some trouble for awhile.

To be honest though, the only real issue I'm having right now is that I'm having trouble referencing variables from other classes and I figure that it's only my newbie-ness preventing me from doing something so basic. I figure that I've learned enough about the engine to begin porting the Fall prototype over into Flash and I can only hope that the performance issues that plague Flash as a game development platform doesn't become a serious issue for me! -.- Wish me luck!

Expect greatness. Ryan Huggins~

Current Project: Fall

You're the horizontal thing (he's flipping).

Today is the last day that I've dedicated to official prototyping of Project Fall. Which essentially means, that I will continue to prototype the game until it feels like I want it to feel, then move on to learning Unity so I can port it to that platform (if 2D is actually feasible there). It also means that I can like, release screenshots and concepts of the prototype because it's actually pretty fun now.

Obviously, the screenshot that you have become privy to in this post represents more of my legendary placeholder artwork, but it handles the job of emulating gameplay, and it does that job extremely well.

The Early Story

So far, a few things are different with how I approached this project as compared to City Across the Sky, and yet the game followed a pretty standard stream of changes and iteration. At first, I had an idea of a game where you would have a bunch of weapons (the prototype only has 10), murder enemies, and avoid falling objects from the sky. It was going to focus on paths of motion and tight controls but be executed around the notion of avoiding this falling objects. I started on the prototype, got wall-jumping the way I wanted it, added a weapon or two, created some enemies and everything was fine and dandy. I thought the game would work out exactly as I planned it. Then I added the falling objects and the game suddenly was some shit. I realized that my original vision just wouldn't work with what I had coded (motion of objects and controls) and with that, the vision in my head fell apart. However, I liked what I had created a lot, so I kept the enemies, weapons, and movement and later moved towards and idea which I called the "murder box".

The Fall

After the idea of "Fall" had failed me, I decided to keep the name (since I have another project called Spring [more on that later]) and work on the concept of a murder box arcade game. But, for awhile, I thought the idea was much too simple and reminded me a lot of Super Crate Box, a game by Vlambeer, a studio that I really like and would ideally, like to emulate, but not copy. I was at a complete loss for what to do with the game, and let it sit for about 5 or 6 days. I hadn't abandoned it, but I didn't have an idea for what to do with the game. The simplicity of the gameplay is inspired somewhat by Super Crate Box and to a lesser extent Super Meat Boy, but I'm working hard to make it feel like a different game entirely.

I believe that it's very important to come up with your own ideas, but at the same time, I don't think that borrowing ideas that work from other games to supplement your own individual visions is necessarily a bad thing. As long as you're not ripping off another game, I feel like similarities between games should only serve to honor the original inventor of the idea.

The Inspiration

For awhile, I had trouble finding something that could work as a goal for the gamer; one that didn't tread too closely to Super Crate Box or the notion of solely trying to acquire a higher score (but that would ultimately be the goal of course). In SCB, getting the crates and finding new weapons was the major goal. It served the purpose of randomizing gameplay and acted as the scoring mechanism which was a great design choice because it fostered simplicity. For a while, I wondered what I could use as my scoring mechanism. For a while, I couldn't think of anything.

But, I asked my girlfriend (who is by no means a gamer of any kind) to make a list of things she thought I could put into the game to make it better. She made a list of ten things, and initially, I thought the list was a pile of crap, so I was frustrated by her naivety within the discipline of game design. I was serious, and her suggestions were...well they were not serious. So at first I disregarded the list and stopped development for a day or two. But eventually I came back and looked at the list and something clicked with two entries on the list.

1. Triangles that spin and cut you.
2. Squares that shoot you.
3. Keep the basic shape thing you have.
4. If there is something good falling from the sky, give it a rainbow trail or something.
5. Zooming cars.
6. Raining guns that you have to avoid.
7. Mermaids.
8. Catch the gun and it kills everything on the screen. Call it the "Silver Star Gun".
9. Bubbles. Toxic bubbles or happy bubbles.
10. Sound effects.

Raining guns and the "Silver Star Gun". From these ideas, I created the Gunstar. 

The GUN STARRR.

A weapon that, if the player is doing very well for a certain period of time, will fall from the sky and offer you ultimate power for a short time span and allow you to murder the crap out of everything on the map (if you're skilled). This idea, spawned from a list of what I considered terrible ideas at first, inspired me to work on the game as a murder box and helped me move away from the idea that the game was too inspired by Super Crate Box.

What you should take from this is, ideas can come from ANYWHERE, not just yourself. Outside ideas are extremely important and even if you don't think that whoever is giving you the ideas is qualified to give you ideas (probably because you don't think they know about games or fun and you do because you're a "game designer" and they're a regular person). You have to remember--and I have learned to remember--that game designers aren't usually your target audience, just because they MIGHT be the most vocal audience or offer the most criticisms, you don't tailor your game to them, you tailor it to the people you want to play your game. In the case of Fall, it was casual gamers and the indie hardcore.

The Murder Box

So, by mixing ideas from other games and adding a few of my own, I've managed to make Fall feel more like an action-arcade game inspired by the elemets of Super Crate Box (spawning weapons to keep you on your toes), rather than a copy. By adding elements from Team Fortress 2 (rocket jumping), Cave Story (where certain weapons affect how you move), Galaga (power-ups which are not implemented into the prototype yet), Super Meat Boy (simple motion, but with my own arcade "feel") and my own design elements (usually inspired by friends and family) such as the Gunstar (a power-up) and the leveling (leading to bosses), difficulty (based on a tier system) and scoring mechanics (which encourage the player to beat their own high scores to encourage player improvement), I managed to make Fall a completely different game and in the end I hope others think so as well.

Concept Artwork

By Jacques Yeates. He thinks it's too cutesy. You can see how the Gunstar
 has influenced the theme of the game.

By Ryan Huggins. I thought the shades (reference to Gurren Lagann) made this
one of the greatest things ever.

Early Prototype Videos

Expect greatness. Ryan Huggins~