Scaling down

As much fun as doing daily blogposts has been, I think it's best to make them regular but not every-day regular. 

So like...certain days for reviews, certain days for gamedev, certain days for just about anything. I'll formulate a proper schedule in the next day or so - currently a little stressed and annoyed over Nominet.

Restarting hobbies

I used to do a lot of circus skills workshops and spent a great deal of my time juggling, stiltwalking and generally breaking myself in new and inventive ways. I stopped going so regularly in 2010, went sporadically during my time in uni (drunken juggling was entertaining) and when I moved back in with my parents, went back to my old group once and never returned.

But now, I'm thinking of getting back into it, gradually. Juggling at the least calms me and gives me something else to do with my hands and reflexes while I just let my mind wander. I miss doing more physically demanding things like poi and staff-spinning.

So I'm going to work it back into my life, probably just taking advantage of the nearby park when it's sunny. Hopefully dragging my best friend with me every now and then for the company.

It should do me good (and gets me out of the house).

PSP Emulation

In this case, I am referring to emulating other consoles on the PSP, not emulating PSP ISOs on a computer.

There is a curious emulation aberration I've noticed in the 5 or so months I've had CFW (custom firmware) running on PSPs. SNES ROMs don't run particularly well on a PSP. Not as bad as my long-ago attempts at running a SNES emulator on a DS Lite, but still not really at PC standard.

Yet, in comparison with the PC, the PSP runs GBA ROMs much better. It's very strange.

However, I don't think I'm going to complain too much. I can still use my PSP to play the games I missed out on as a child/teenager, plus with any luck/perseverance I'll even finally finish LeafGreen!

Premium accounts!

I finally have access to the Patreon funds, so I went ahead and bought monthly memberships for DevArt Premium and SoundCloud Unlimited!

Which has been pretty good so far. With DeviantArt I took advantage of the fact I could now link up my Twitter into a widget, so have some activity on there.

SoundCloud Unlimited has revived my interest and ability to produce more readings of Pride and Prejudice, which I'm very happy about.

So all in all, hurrahs!

Split Beginnings post-mortem

Split Beginnings

As you may remember, it was my entry for #genderjam, a gamejam about (surprise, surprise) gender! Using it as the theme, we had to make a game around our experiences of gender. I wasn't going to participate...but a conversation with the jam's curator, @deviever, made me reconsider this stance.

I decided to use this opportunity to get my story out there, show what non-binary folks go through, but more importantly, show that no matter the choices you make, you can't really help but go down the path you really want - whether it's gender or something else.

Eventually you'll crack and rethink your life, or even a tiny part of it. When that happens, you'll work out that it's best to be true to yourself, no matter the obstacles.

I hope, with all my heart, that my little interactive story has given people a new viewpoint on my life, and on that of other people like me.

Classical Music

I go through phases with music. My core loves are symphonic powermetal, chiptune and punk, with some intermingling from other stuff like ska, nu-metal and some "emo".

Currently, I'm in a massive classical phase, inspired by...believe it or not, my love of Pride and Prejudice fanfiction. One in particular put in actual songs, like Boccherini's Fandango, Beethoven's Fur Elise, plus others. I'm a little bit obsessed with Boccherini's Fandango at the moment - mostly because it's a beautiful quintet that includes a guitar and castanets. As one may expect, castanets don't pop up much in classical music...

I hope, at some point, once I've got somewhere with learning music, I'll be able to translate pieces like the Fandango into chiptune-style and use them in my games, or have other devs use them. I'm not picky.

Classical music is beautiful. In a different form, I can't imagine it would fail to be still beautiful - just different. Some of it would be lovely music to go with a game. Again, using the Fandango as an example, I can imagine it being good as a fancy battle theme.

Of course, I could be very wrong, but who knows? Maybe others out there agree with my idea.

Temporary halt

Now I've taken a bit more time to think about how the state my room has effected my work and mood, I'm taking a few days out to focus on sorting it all out.

The paperwork was only the first step. I need to clear out stuff I never wear, stuff I never read...all sorts. I have a huge stack of gaming magazines I need to get rid of, for example. A load of media I don't really need any more. I just need my room back so I can work again.

I'm going to try selling off some of the decent stuff, otherwise it's going to be a lot of stuff being recycled/binned. If I -do- sell stuff, I may open an eBay account as an easy way of getting rid of it all.

I'll let people know if that happens. Anyway, I hope you all understand why I'm doing this.

Burn out

It's a major problem I keep having. Regulating time for when I work and when I don't is difficult, particularly when I have bursts of inspiration at weird times.

So I regularly get burnt out and completely unproductive. I'm hoping that sorting out my room will help with this a bit (It's an unorganised chaotic mess with quite a few tripping hazards).

Room organisation and watching Digimon are my tasks for the weekend. I need a little break from the gamedev stuff - by the time Monday rolls around I should be back to my dev-tastic self!

ComX 2014: Syndaver

Made by dPiction Games, Syndaver is a psychological thriller set in an English hospital. There's a better summary of the game than I could hope to create myself on the dPiction website.

Anyway, it's an FPS along the lines of Killing Floor or Dead Space. Syndaver has procedurally generated levels and the option of entering seeds to generate known levels. Aesthetically, it's very well done - dark, with vibrant colours in the lit sections, there is a general feeling that something unpleasant will leap out at you, and it often does.

I can't comment on the sound much, as I only played the game in a loud room so couldn't really tell what was coming from the game and what was general event noise plus other people's trailers.

In terms of gameplay, it was a very solid FPS. I have a few issues with the build I played, but I hope by the time they bring it to commercial release (which I believe is their intention) these problems would have been corrected.

One majorly confusing bit was when I couldn't move the character much beyond a point. Eventually I looked down and found a rat blocking my movement. That was quite frustrating. There's also a lack of feedback that one would expect from an FPS: the enemies just vanish when they're killed, they don't react to being shot. The build I played also lacked any animation on the gun, which was disconcerting.

All in all, it's a good game - one I look forward to playing once it's been polished up.

On pixel art and sketching

For a good while, I did everything pixel-related in Aseprite or the GIMP. I never really thought about trying my hand at sketching it out on paper or anything like that.

Until I had to design my screens for #lowrezjam. I got stuck trying to make them in Aseprite. I could not see the full picture well enough.

So I bought some graph paper and sketched it out today. I can safely say I know how I'm using what little real estate I have on the 32x32 screen well.

I also experimented drawing out some other stuff as pixel art, I'm rather pleased with the results. I'm going to have to draw them all out in Aseprite/GIMP and upload them soon.

ComX 2014: Keeper City

And so begins my look at the games I got to see at ComX 2014!

The first is the one I originally went to see (because my friend was one of the development team): Arrowhawk's Keeper City. Here's one of the trailers.

It's a 3D hack'n'slash class-based RPG with bits of RTS elements, written in Unity3D. I got to play it briefly at ComX, I also have a copy to try at my leisure...when I remember.

What really struck me at first was how many elements I recognised from games I played with my friend or we'd both played separately. The art style reminds me a lot of the Borderlands aesthetic, the main character model is reminiscent of Caim from Drakengard 1, the gameplay also reminds me of the hack'n'slash games we used to play together.

And yet, it's all melded into something new and fantastic. It's not perfect, it's in serious need of a bit of polish (I get majorly irked by tiny problems) - but I'm still incredibly impressed with what they've managed to turn out.

The controls are pretty robust - I have slight issues with the fact the walk/run transition isn't as fast as I would expect, but overall it still works.

Team Arrowhawk did really well - I wish them every success possible! Check out their website as well - from there you can contact the team.

Instant cheerup music...

Everything Is Awesome - LEGO Movie

I can't help it, it's catchy and hyper. It helps to listen to it whenever I'm feeling a bit out of sync and unable to get going.

I got a few others, like Reel Big Fish - Cheer Up! and Fall Out Boy - I Don't Care (Machine Shop Remix) but right now my leaning is to Everything Is Awesome.

Serious Sam Classic Co-op

I don't play much co-op outside of PvE MMOs. I used to play a lot on consoles, like Secret of Mana and Jet Force Gemini (Floyd is invaluable) but once I moved onto PC I tended to play MMO's and occasionally Counter Strike.

Yesterday I got the chance to play Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter with my partner...most of the way through. I was flagging by the mission before the end, but it was still pretty excellent.

Serious Sam is great for both PvE and PvP, but there's definitely something much more fun about tackling Mental's hordes with other people. If I remember correctly there can be around 12 people on a Co-op server? Which, considering the enemy count increases with the more people there are...could be manically entertaining. I think Serious Sam will become one of the games I'll stream with other people on a regular basis. 

My only gripe is that I had a tendency to blow myself up with rockets/grenades. Or blow up the other person.

...I'm not designed to pay attention to fellow players...

Ideas for Comics

I've been getting little ideas for comics, mostly exaggerated versions of scenes in Pride and Prejudice (I may be a bit obsessed with that book, I apologise...) plus some of more ridiculous moments in gaming.

The regularity of these is very questionable, so having a separate site for comics is not likely. They will most likely appear on DevArt and Twitter, on the former with an option to buy them as prints.

Also certain frames may be made into t-shirts, if suitable. We'll have to see what my mind churns out into comic form.

#Lowrezjam

May also brings #Lowrezjam - another made by @deviever.

The idea being that we limit ourselves to a 32x32 screen for the entire game.

My current idea is a Hero Tamagotchi - like the tamagotchi pets that were fairly prevalent in childhood, but instead of a little bird or some other animal, you're caring for a little hero making their way about the world, fighting monsters and saving people.

I may need to expand on the idea, but so far it seems sound. Just need to spend some time making up the assets and learning Construct 2 to make it.

1GAM May

May's theme is Money.

I'm liking this theme. The extra encouragement to make some money out of our games, or even some out of the stuff surrounding it (merch, assets etc) is really quite nice.


I'll be taking some time this weekend to think if there's anything I can do for that theme, or even if I can integrate money into my #lowrezjam game (which I'll talk about tomorrow)

ComX 2014

It's an event in the University of Gloucestershire's Park Campus, in Cheltenham Spa for the Interactive Media and Business students. That includes their Interactive Games Design students - a very old and good friend of mine is a final year student and was showing off his group's game, Keeper City there - which I will review in an upcoming post.

There was a nice mix of games and apps made by mostly final year students, though there were a few talented 1st and 2nd year groups who were displaying work as well. I got to play nearly all the final years games, plus one other that I think was from a 1st or 2nd year group, a rather good alpha build of a fps/hacking game (again, will review soon)

It was really good to see all this up-and-coming talent - most were using Unity and outputting low-to-high poly games with fairly solid gameplay. Some required a bit of polish and such, but all in all it was a joy to see all these talented people displaying these 6-month projects.

I think out of them all, I have 4/5 games to review now? Even better is that I have contact details for all these people so I can let them know when the blogposts go up.

These are the teams from ComX 2014, in particular you should all check out Shogun, Eternal Resonance, D-Piction Games and Arrowhawk. (full disclosure - my friend is in Arrowhawk)

There are trailers for the games on the ComX site, which I will link directly when doing my reviews.

All in all, it was a good event and one I may have to return to.