Fins & Flippers XBox

Fins & Flippers for XBox 360 is complete! We aren't releasing the game on xbox quite yet but everything is done. We also submitted the game into the Independent Game Festival 2013!

Fins & Flippers Xbox Nearing Completion

We're almost done!

Comrades Milestone 2

I hit the second milestone on Comrades a couple of days ago. Things are going smoothly. The second milestone was mostly item based stuff:

-equipping items
-using items/weapons
-enemies dropping items
-treasure boxes
-attack rolls for weapons
-inventory menu
-picking up and dropping items
-animations for movement between tiles

Screen shot of the inventory menu:

Next up is adding in more detailed world generation.

-Curt

Comrades Milestone 1

I reached the first milestone of the game that I'm working on solo, which I'm calling "Comrades" for the time being. Nate and I have decided to each make our own games where we will do both the coding and artwork for completely on our own. Nate's game is the Arctic Space Monkeys game which you can check out on the post below.

The game started as me wanting to create a game like Zombies Ate My Neighbors that uses some rougelike elements (the name "Comrades" comes from the joke name "Mutants Ate My Comrades" which I was calling it at first.) I was having a hard time figuring out what I wanted the game to be, and when I didn't like where it was going, I changed it completely. Now instead of a real time shooter, its a turn based rougelike.

I wanted to make a rougelike that uses more exploring instead of starting at dungeon floor 1 and going to the bottom. So for Comrades, I created a Zelda like overworld that the player explores in. The overworld itself is not meant to be too dangerous, but it contains the dungeons that the player is trying to find. I'm planning on having three dungeons that the player can go to in any order.

 

So I hit milestone 1 today, which is the most basic bare-bone version of the game. I started doing milestones in projects, with each milestone being a complete game (you can win or lose.) The first milestone is obviously the most basic version of the game. I like setting up check points this way because then you can make sure you get all the essentials in the game first and then built up all the cool details along the way.

The first milestone has:

-3 types of enemies

-enemies can kill you (lose game)

-you can kill enemies

-basic level generation

-3 area types

-basic enemy AI

-rescue survivors (win game)

So now with the first milestone in place, I have the basic system ready and I can start adding some cool stuff in. For my next milestone, I will be fleshing out the procedurally generated areas a bit and adding in new weapons and items for the player to find and use.

Check back soon for updates.

- Curt

Arctic Space Monkeys- Preview

I started a game for the "A Game By Its Cover" Competition.  Here's a work in-progress teaser image.  The game is sort of a sped-up rts-tower defense featuring Arctic-Space-Monkey's engaging in Guerrilla/Gorilla warfare to protect their home land from invading space colonists.

                                     
-Nate

Game Title: Fins & Flippers

Fins & Flippers is the title we came up with for our scuba diving game. We have a mostly complete version of the game we've been play testing a lot and showed off at our school's art event, Arts Crawl, which was a major success (more about this next post.)

For now, I just wanted to post a few more pictures since I haven't said too much about this game recently and it's been coming along so quickly.

Sign in screen:



GIF Shark Attack:

Since the game is best played 4 players with controllers, we thought it would be best to make it into an XBox game. So that is where we are planning to take this next. I'm still deciding if I want to release a PC version online at this point.

There's a bigger post coming up with some more content.

Scuba Diver Shark Battle!

We started working on a new game about two weeks ago. It's a single screen multiplayer game for 2-4 players where you play as scuba divers using your harpoon to collect fish are bring them back to your boat. You also have to face a number of hungry sharks who also have their hearts (and stomaches) set on getting the fish. You win the game by collecting a set number of fish before your opponents do. You can also win if all of your opponents are devoured by the blood thirsty sharks. And if you don't mind playing dirty you can help speed that along a bit by flinging the sharks at them with your harpoon gun.



We started the game at a secret lounge area at GDC and we didn't really have much of a plan of what we wanted to do with it. The only thing we knew about it when starting is that it was going to be underwater and there were going to be sharks. After adding in the divers and sharks, we thought a harpoon gun would fit the theme nicely and decided to make it work a lot like the ninja rope in liero. We used to play liero a lot as kids and using your ninja rope to fly around the level and pull your opponent always made for some fun games. So we decided to make the harpoon gun is the center of the game. Everything in the game can be latched onto and pulled including fish, sharks, the boats, and the other players.

I've also been trying to keep a closer log of the things I've worked on each day and take more screenshots in order to document the development better. Here are some of the screen shots:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8 (today)

The game is getting pretty close to being finished. We will have the first version of the game done by Friday since we are planning to have it set up at an event on campus called Arts Crawl. I'm excited to see people play the game, I'm really happy with how it's turning out.

Finally, the SharkArm Brothers are making a game with sharks!

Curt

The Chicken Bandit

The Chicken Bandit is now officially released! Head on over to The Chicken Bandit's new webpage to check it out!

Try the free demo, then buy the full game for only $2.99! If you like the game make sure to give us a good rating on the market! (If you don't like the game, it's ok if you forget.) Tell all your friends!

Thanks to everybody who helped with the game! We hope you like it!

Get 3 Coffins Ready

Or maybe just one for now.

Chicken Bandit #9: Mega Worm

Working on the 3rd world boss, who looks a little something like this:

Chicken Bandit #8: Tie me up! Untie me!

Thanks to everyone who tested the demo of the game! We got a lot of great feedback and already made some great changes.


We've also been working really hard on the content in the game since the release of the demo. The second world is now completely put together putting us officially at 50% content complete. In reality, we are actually a lot farther than that, because we already have most of the pieces done for the last 2 worlds even though they aren't yet put together in their final form. We should be at (or very very close to) 100% by the end of next weekend or we are dead. And by that I mean that somebody is actually going to start murdering members of our team until we are both unalive.

A new enemy: a femme-bot who lassos you!

Sorry guys, I can't hang out. I'm a little tied up.

We also have a lot of other new enemies in. I'd like to introduce you to another one of them. Say hello to my little friend (fren):

I'd like to post more but I've gotta get back to work!

-radio

Chicken Rider Update #6: Old Man Last-10% is Getting on My Back

I haven't updated in a while because we've been too busy working on the game! Just to prove it here are some new screen shots of the map and the store:

Note: Screen shots are not 100% final.

It's taking a lot longer than I thought to get this demo ready to send people, I always forget how long finalizing things takes. All those little things that I let go start to pile up and it takes a while to make sure they are all in there and working correctly. The good news is that a lot of this kind of stuff will be done and we will hopefully have a shorter finishing up time for the final version!

Stay tuned, demo is going out VERY soon!

Chicken Bandit Update #4

Well I hit the 4th checkpoint a couple of days ago, but I'm not really following them exactly anymore. They sort of became just a giant checklist that I work on whatever I feel like or when I get some new graphics to put in. It was difficult to set up the later checkpoints earlier in the game because I didn't have everything complete designed or know how it would turn out. I should probably take the time to go through and reorder the list to keep everything more organized, but I might not get around to doing that before the game is finished.

There have been a lot of changes since the last post. I can't even remember them all. I'll talk about some of the notable ones.

We added in some new tiles and backgrounds. The game finally starting to look like it is coming together:



We changed the world map to look more like a Mario 3 type map. Different paths will be blocked off until certain tasks are complete within certain levels. There will be 4 different 'worlds' with at least 3 playable stages for each, a survival stage, special challenge stage, and boss stage. There will also be a couple different stores to buy upgrades, possibly along with some other mini-games. Here is a very WIP screenshot of the map with 0% of the final graphics:



We added a new item system to the game that allows the player to pick a series of items for each level. We didn't want to clutter the screen with very many buttons, so we decided on using a card system for the items where you can only use the top item that corresponds with the top card of the deck. You can also arrange the cards you've collected before a stage starts.

Here is an animated screenshot of the dynamite item:



Coming up next is constructing some of the levels for the first world and making the first boss. I'm beginning to become afraid of how long playtesting/balancing is going to take.

Train Tile Sets and Breakable Doors

We decided that we would use tilesets to create the trains instead of full images. This allows us to have lots of different types of carts without having to add many more images. I've also rolled out my good old trusty Chainsaw Level Editor to take care of things once again:

The carts look similar at the moment, since we only have one basic tileset complete so far.

We also added in the final graphics for the breakable windows and doors. I copied the same tile breaking system I used for City of Doom:

Development is moving along very quickly! Leave a comment and check back for updates!

Chicken Bandit Checkpoint 3

I reached my 3rd programming checkpoint a couple days ago. The checkpoints get kind of loose from here so I think I'm going to have to go back and re-evaluate them and set new deadlines.
The 3rd checkpoint stuff:

-Windows and Doors on the trains
-Doors open up when shot enough
-Specific spawn points for different type of enemies/items
-Arm movement (spinning to the angle shot)
-Lasso graphics
-Text wrapping and typing out in store

I added in a feature before to take screenshots as well as "animated" screenshots (multiple frames combined together in a gif) as I did in Grand Feather. The only problem was that it ran too slow on the device while recording, so I couldn't make a very good video. I spent a long time trying to optimize it and finally got it to run at a somewhat playable speed, 2-8 fps! Here is a sample:

Most of the graphics there are placeholders, besides the enemy and the main character, and the train background. The red rectangles represent windows, and the green represent doors that you have to shoot off. The player can lasso the safes on the train to pull down for bonus money (the lasso animation is not yet in.) You also might notice that the Chicken Bandit currently shoots backwards by twisting his arm back and firing without looking. Now that is a pretty impressive feat (especially for a bandit with no formal training in gun slinging) but there will eventually be an animation of him turning around to fire behind him.

I have also been spending a good amount of time doing the designing for what the final game will be, but I will talk more about that in an upcoming post.

The next step is adding in sound and music to the game engine, which probably should have already been done by this point.

State of the City of Doom

Alright, time for another City of Doom update. The game has pretty much been done for about 3 weeks now. The main problem I'm running into is with the final boss. I've been working on him for a while but I can't seem to come up with anything that I like. None of the attacks or anything are good enough for a final boss to have. I've been trying to play it through in my head (it's nice to have infinite extra guys in my head) and come up with something, but I'm still stumped.

The other problem here is lack of inspiration. After working all week on stupid mindless homework assignments and other monotonous assorted school-related programming tasks, all my creativity is completely dead by the weekend, whenever I have time to work on anything. On the bright side though, this is a great sign that my schooling is effective and accomplishing all it's goals. My transformation is almost complete into a coding robot who takes orders and has no ideas of his own. I can't wait till that day (the one where I finally become a robot), I'll be able to eat batteries and finally have a dance that I'm able to do.

CITY OF DOOM:


It will be finished soon!

City Of Doom

I think that it is time for an update. Since last time, we worked on Grand Feather a little bit, but mainly we have been working on another Action 52 remake, City of Doom.


work in progress title screen.

The original City of Doom features a man climbing up a giant building that is so tall that it eventually leads into space. He is attacked by bugs that he must fight off with his spray can. He also has to dodge what appears to be bowling balls that fall from the sky. And that's about it. Here's a video of the original:




We are taking the basic concept of this game, but also making a few changes:

-we are using the gameboy color pallete.

-instead of using an aerosol spray can to fight off enemies, you use a gun (we thought it would be more enviornmentally friendly that way.)

-the bugs you have to fight are bigger and more alien-like.

-you can fire in 8 different directions

-we are trying to make it fun

Here is a mockup of what it might look like once all graphics assets are in:

The graphics have actually changed a lot since then, but you get the idea. Here is a small animated screen shot to show what the game looks like in its current state:



We are not too far away from finishing this small game so make sure you check back soon for updates.

Angry Boulders Android Release!

A few months ago I started working on a game engine for Google's Android platform, but only had an emulator to test on. Now that we actually have a device we decided to start making some Android games. We just completed our first one, in about a week's time, Angry Boulders. It is an advanced version of our previous Angry Boulders with way better graphics and some gameplay updates. We wanted to make a smaller game first and put that out on the market before we dive into a bigger and better project. Here are some screen shots:



It took a little longer than I thought to get out the door for such a small game, but I really like how it turned out. I think the game is a great fit for a mobile device with a touch screen (especially if it also has a track ball.)

We are going to be having a whole lot of work for school until the end of the next semester, so we won't have time to start another Android project till we are done. Until then we will using our spare time to put some more time into Grand Feather, as we are eager to get back to work on it. We have an art show type thing coming up at our school, so we want to have a nice small demo set up to show off what we have done so far.

Check back for more updates!

Inside the Walls of Slime

Been working on the insides of the slime cave recently. I always forget how long it takes to create the levels after I haven't worked on a new one in a while. I haven't made any animated screenshots in a while so I'll post some of those!

Some flying eyeball guys and an immobel slime monster who will eventually have slimey veins that connect to a door that will be open when you kill it.

One of the tunneling monsters who lives in the slime caves. He is so scary that I can't even work on parts with him unless it's during the day time.

We also finally got in some of the real graphics for the 'life bar' that you can see at the top of the 1st picture. We tried to make the health system unique by using different foods that you find throughout the world for your health. Different foods give you different amounts of health, like the apple/tomato type food shown here can only take 1 hit, but getting a banana would give you 3 extra hits. You will start the game with 3 slots for health and you will be able to find plant seeds which will allow better food to grow in the 'safe gardens'.

That's it for now, keep checking for updates! I think nate's going to be doing another interview real soon, so come on back!

Slime Cave Entrance

We are really really close to having a demo testing version ready. We just need to do a bit more level editing and add in a few more cutscenes (and one boss).

Here is the entrance to the slime cave along with a small new tileset which consits of grass that looks like it is covered a little bit in slime that you see leading up to the entrance of the cave.



We actually have a ton of new stuff since the last update. Brand new enemies and fun stuff for the slime cave, so I might post them up in the future. We will be finishing up the slime cave level editing and then adding in the slime boss real soon. More updates to come!