My greatest enemy was my "Enemy.cs"

Tell me, what does this line mean to you?

probably not an awful lot. Well to me, it means the very source of a lot of pain and frustration over the past few days. Let me explain:
What I tried to do was spawn some random enemies in my rooms. Well that went perfectly well, enemies spawned in my rooms without a problem. Then, I let the enemies follow the player around which I had working quite quickly. So, the only thing left was for the enemies to remember the last position they were when the player leaves the room.

So basically, I tried to save the enemy position into the class that defines the 'room' the player left. BUT.... I discovered that this position wasn't only saved in the room the player left, but also the new room the player entered. In other words, the enemy was at the same coordinates in every room somehow. I was completely sure that I modified the right enemy and the right room so that wasn't the problem. So what could it be?

Well that question bothered me since christmas, until today. That brings us back to:

Because what I thought is that I could use this line to load new enemies into my game. So basically, every room had a list of these randomly loaded enemies. But what actually happened was that every room basically pointed to the same exact enemy, namingly the one that I loaded in the line of code above. In other words, if I changed the position of the enemy in one room, that position would be changed in all the other rooms as well because they all basically pointed to the same exact enemy!

And like that the days of insanity ended and I finally figured out why nothing worked like I expected it to work...

So, the progress I made this week was:

- add a key and a locked door to each dungeon floor

- add enemies to the rooms in the dungeon

- export the project to a mobile phone

doesn't seem like much, but trust me... it was quite some work to make it work properly. Hopefully I'll have a fighting screen ready by next week.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

A good start so far

First of all, this blogpost is a day late because I... kinda... forgot.
Anyway, I did make some good progress this week. For the coming two weeks I'll probably be able to make some good progress because I have a few weeks off for the holidays. Speaking of which, I wish you all a merry christmas!

So... what's new? Well first of all I found an artist willing to make some artwork for my next project! So stay tuned for some concept art in the coming weeks. On the technical side of things, I managed to make an algorithm that generates a dungeon of connected chambers. These chambers are randomly picked from a selection of predefined text files from which the program can build the levels and the logic behind them. In other words, a chamber is nothing more than a text file in which I can define different kinds of tiles.
Well getting all of that to work on the PC proved relatively easy. I had it working quite quickly without too much trouble. But when I tried to port it to a mobile version using Unity, the real trouble came.

Where the program worked perfectly on the PC, the mobile version didn't do anything all of a sudden. It was supposed to draw the level the player was in, but nothing appeared on the screen. I spent pretty much the whole day yesterday trying to make it work on my phone. The trouble was basically in the reading of the files. Apparantly on PC you can access all the folders without a problem to read files or load data. But on mobile, things have to be in a seperate Resources folder to work. That also meant that I had to use a different method to read my files. Where I could read the file line for line on PC, I had to load in all the text in the file at once on the mobile version. This caused trouble it seemed. While in theory it shouldn't really make a difference, in practice it was the bane of all my troubles. Because apparantly in one of my text files the linebreaks were saved differently! Note that you can't actually "see" what kind of linebreaks are used in a file(yes, apparantly there are differences). So what happened was that in one of the level files the "linebreak" was defined as '\n' which is pretty standard in programming. But in another the linebreak was defined as '\r\n' for whatever reason(maybe because it was saved in a different program?). This caused a lot of trouble because all of a sudden I had all these weird '\r' characters in my lines which caused the program to crash on my mobile phone. To find that little mistake cost me pretty much the whole day yesterday... But the good news is that I got it working on my phone! This first build only involves you moving the character through a randomly generated maze. No objectives or obstacles yet, I'll be working on that later this week probably.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Path of Vision

This blogpost I'd like to talk a bit about my newest project. I want to make a mobile game this time around since I feel that I have nothing worthwhile to play on my phone. So the only way to fix that is to make a game myself!

The idea for this game came to me in a whim really. It's strange how ideas sometimes just pop into your head randomly. But as I thought about it and shaped it into form in my head I started to love the idea so much that I decided to make it into a reality. So what is this idea? Well, on the surface it's nothing new really. I want to make a roguelike game which is completely focused on mobile devices. I wanted it to be easy to pick up and play and moreover you shouldn't have to feel impaired by playing on a mobile phone. The game had to fully embrace the tiny screen of the phone and its features.

The game is completely grid-based. This means that every step you take moves your character one grid square. You can move your character around by swiping in the direction you wish to go. On every floor you need to find the exit and the key to open it. But in your way stand several monsters which chase you around. If you collide with a monster you are taken to a different screen, the combat screen. The layout will be someting like this:

And really, this is where the game is gonna shine I feel. If your enemy attacks you a blue shield appears with a timer in it. If you press that shield before the timer runs out you successfully block an attack. If you fail to press the shield in time, you take damage. Now this may seem easy, but imagine if many shields appear all over your screen and you need to press them all within about 2 seconds.

To perform an attack yourself you need to press that red attack circle in the bottom-right corner. Different weapons you have equipped could result in different ways to attack. Think for instance that for a two-handed weapon you would need to press two buttons simultaneously, thus needing two fingers to attack.

For a more detailed description, see the design document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19NKwGxiDSl7ZNw6WoQncTG8CmqrKbKM95fEKcPNI9gM/edit?usp=sharing

This is just a brief description of what I would like to do next. I am already working on the framework behind it and the basic workings are there. Hopefully I can show you some screenshots next week.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

A new project!

I decided to finish off Cube Blast for what it's worth. I found some great sites for free music and sound effects, so I managed to find and add some decent sound to the game! I haven't changed that much since the last update really. Aside from the audio I added some bonus rounds in there which double your score to make the game a bit easier. I am quite pleased with the result, Cube Blast came out to be a fun waste of time but most of all it made me understand the workings of Unity. Thanks to Cube Blast I'll be able to do a lot of my future projects in the Unity engine which allows me to port games a lot of different platforms.
The final version of Cube Blast can be played here:
http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/cube-blast/36412/

So what's next? Well I'd like to try and make a mobile game this time. I feel like I don't really have any fun or engaging games to play on my phone, so I decided to make my own. I plan to make an easy to get into roguelike/roguelite (whichever you prefer) game for mobile devices. Later this week I'll get into more detail about the idea.
As for this coming week, I'll be doing a bit of research on some subjects I'll need to use for my next game(procedural generation mainly) plus I'll try and finish the design document.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

A quick update, last one about Cube Blast

Just a very quick update, I was in Belgium for the weekend so I haven't had any time this weekend to work on the project. This week I made a simple start menu, a wave timer and a game over screen. I didn't really want anything fancy since I want to finish this project as soon as possible and move on. I did however have some fun with the game over screens where I add just a little bit of lore and context to the whole situation.

The newest version can be played here:
http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/cube-blast/36412/

Next week I'll try to find some sound effects to add and do some polishing here and there. This project has outlived its usefulness by now, so I really want to finish it up and move on to the next one!

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Design decisions in Cube Blast

I'd like to make this extra blogpost to talk a bit about the design desicions I made for Cube Blast. If you want to know what game I'm talking about, try it out here: http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/cube-blast/36412/

The placement of the player was a very important thing. I used to have the player start in the middle of the screen, but there were a few things wrong with that.
First of all you couldn't really see anything except for the red block you control and a large white/grayish area around you. This taught the player virtually nothing about the surroundings and how the map worked.
Secondly, if the player encountered an enemy it would charge right for the player without any warning. The player would be given almost no time to respond before getting hit. On top of that, being in the middle would cause 4 enemies to come at the player at once and arrive at pretty much the same time.

So placing the player in the middle was no good. I instead decided to place the player to the right inbetween two blocks:

So... why is this important?

First of all, the player can see that to his right is a dark gray area together with two dark gray blocks. Assuming the player does not know anything about our game yet, this is all he can deduce from this situation: there is a light gray area and a dark gray area. The player is given a bit of time to figure things out and detect that the red block is in fact the character he is controlling. After a little while a green block appears that is moving towards the player. It seems to be coming from that little indentation in the dark gray line to the right. If the player does not move at this point, the green block will always collide with the wall before reaching the player. This will teach the player that those dark gray areas are in fact walls you cannot pass through. Furthermore, it gives the player a little bit more time to respond before being attacked by the green enemy.

Now it is time to take action! The green block comes closer and closer so the player has to try buttons to destroy it. At that point something appears in the corner that should draw the player's attention:

Intrigued by this mysterious blue aura I expect the player to head there and investigate. The aura spawns in the middle only the first time the player encounters it. All the other times the aura is randomly spawned. As the player heads over there and enters the blue aura, he suddenly changes color. This should inform the player that something should be different and it has to do with being inside that blue aura.

If the player manages to kill one of the enemies within this blue aura text appears on the screen: "Knowledge + 50". So apparantly that accomplished something. Simultaneously the knowledge meter in the upper right corner is updated to show the newly achieved knowledge amount. This should teach the player that he can earn something called "Knowledge" from killing enemies. After going at it for a while a non-experienced player should not have killed all the enemies before the aura disappears. 

This time, it does not say the "Knowledge + 50" text on the screen when the player kills enemies and the knowledge counter isn't updated. This conveys to the player that apparantly now you do not receive knowledge. At this point I expect the players to make the connection between earning knowledge and being within that aura(it's all deliberately blue).

These were some of the design decisions I made in the first level of Cube Blast. I hope I showed you a bit more of the designing process of making games and that you found it interesting enough to read through.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

All features implemented, ready for polishing

This week I finished implementing all the features I wanted. The spells you can purchase can now all be upgraded twice. This means that mechanically, everything is working and all in order. But this doesn't mean we are finished. I am now in the process of letting people playtest the game to figure out what I should change about it to make it a better experience. I noticed that the game's difficulty ramped up way too quickly, so I lowered the amount of enemies spawned in each level significantly so that players aren't getting overwhelmed with enemies too quickly.

The newest build can be found here:
http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/cube-blast/36412/
if you have any feedback please do send me an e-mail on: indiestepsblog@gmail.com

What I'd like to do this week is to add some information for the player. Some things aren't exactly clear how they work and while I am a strong believer in teaching through play, I am going to add some clear guidelines here and there. Furthermore, I am going to add a wave counter so that you can keep track of how far you got in the game. I will also add some flashy text to add to the game feel, as well as some sound effects.

And here I thought I'd be done by now, well I was dead wrong. I planned this as a test project to get to know Unity a bit but along the way I decided to actually finish the project off completely before moving on. So here we are, with a finished test project and yet an unfinished game.
Next week I'll make an additonal blogpost where I'd like to talk a bit about the design decisions I made creating Cube Blast.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Getting to the end!

I have worked hard this week and have implemented 4 different weapons/spells for you to use. The knowledge you can earn in the level can now not only be spent on upgrading your player(health, max mana, mana regeneration, shot speed) but also on purchasing new spells for you to use. I've tried to make them distinctly different, yet balanced. You can now shoot fireballs as your starting attack. Then you can purchase the Ice attack which shoots much faster and slows enemies down. You can also buy and unlock the earth spell which basically lets you charge through hordes of enemies. Finally you have the air attack which is a more close ranged, flamethrower-like attack. It is very effective at short range.

On top of that, I added a new enemy which is introduced in wave 5(if you can get that far). This enemy takes more hits than the others and shoots deadly projectiles at the player while keeping its distance. I also managed to add some floating text indicating how much knowledge you earned from killing certain enemies.

What rests now is the 2nd and 3rd levels of all the spells I implemented. You should be able to purchase better versions of the spells available all the way up to level 3 which should produce incredibly powerful spells. Furthermore, I want to add the indication of what spell you are currently using in the HUD since it is quite annoying not to be able to see your currently equipped spell.

The newest build can be played here:

http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/cube-blast/36412/

Hopefully, I'll be able to implement the 2nd and 3rd levels of the spells and polish the game up a bit the coming week. The end is near it seems, I can't wait!

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com 

A new build, finally...

Good day everyone,

I bring good news. With the spare time I got this weekend I managed to make a new build for Cube Blast! First of all, you now have a mana bar which is drained every time you shoot a bullet. It slowly regenerates over time, so you can't spam waves of bullets anymore. Furthermore, it now features a fully functional economy system in the form of  "knowledge" you can earn. You can spend these points on upgrading your maximum mana, your mana regeneration rate and heal your player.
Without further ado, you can play the new build here:
http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/cube-blast/36412/


I found a dominant strategy in the game during development, which was to simply stand in the corner shooting in both directions. All enemies were forced to line up against the wall and walk towards the player, which made it incredibly easy to kill huge waves of enemies without any trouble. That is why I came up with this knowledge mechanic which requires the player to move around and stay within a certain area to earn extra knowledge points for upgrading. Because of this mechanic, it is much less appealing to stand in the corner picking off enemies since you won't be able to improve your character at all. I will try to further nerf this dominant strategy by making some kind of ranged/shooting enemy which could hurt the player from a distance.


I had some trouble here and there to make the UI working correctly. I downloaded Unity 4.6 which features Unity's brand new UI system, which is really nifty. But even though making a menu and HUD with it was really simple, I did have some trouble making it display text inside the level, especially with floating text and messages and such. I'll try to add some game feel to Cube Blast by
adding some floating text every time you earn some knowledge.


Finally, I would like to add some extra spells. As you might have noticed, the white selection box in the game can go to "empty" spaces. These spaces are reserved for new spells and upgrades to those spells. I plan to have 4 different spells in total(including the current fire spell), which can each be upgraded twice. The spells will be fire, earth, wind and ice most likely. Hopefully I'll have some of these spells ready by next week.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com 

Promises made, promises broken...

I do apologize, the amount of time I had to work on Cube Blast was quite low it seemed. With all the exams and deliverables coming up I was quite busy. I did manage to add one thing though, which is a manabar which drains a bit every time you shoot a bullet. If your manabar is empty, you are unable to shoot anymore bullets until it has regenerated enough again.
Other than that I did not make any progress on Cube Blast unfortunately. My plan is still the same as I explained in my previous blogpost. I want to make some kind of currency/upgrade system. I expect to have more time this week. Since I did not mean for this to become a big project I want to finish it within two weeks from now, which seems doable.

What I did do however, was decide on a company name and a logo/intro. I decided to go for the name: 'Geared games'. I had a good friend of mine create the logo for it(for the record, it is the same person who did a lot of the artwork for FUTransport). I then animated the logo myself to be used as an intro for the future games I'll be making. I thought it turned out pretty cool, check it out here:


Not much else to mention now. I will try to bring you a new build of Cube Blast next week where some kind of currency system is built-in.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com 

Leaping forward

Now I'm really starting to understand Unity. After a handful of tutorials and fooling around with it I can proudly say that I have at least the basics of Unity down. Because of that, I was able to make great progress with Cube Blast! The problem I've shown you last week with the enemies merging into one has been solved now. The first thing I tried was to make every enemy check every other enemy in the level and perform calculations based on their distance from all the other enemies. As you might imagine, this was very ineficcient but it looked really cool. Check it out:

 The enemies work as some sort of repelling magnets where the repelling force is greater the closer they are to another object. I thought it looked amazing!

Unfortunately, this technique was very inefficient and would cause a huge drop in FPS the more enemies you had in the level. So I have now settled on a different technique. The enemies now only look at enemies intersecting their bounding box and repel from them. This made the algorithm much much lighter and still kept the enemies from forming a single block, though the effect looks much less impressive.

So my first goal this week was achieved: keeping the enemies from forming a single block. Next up was actually being able to hit the enemies. Thanks to Unity, this was farily easy to do. I could simply shoot a block and check if it intersected with any enemies. If it intersected, I could simply destroy the enemy and that's it. But that wasn't enough. It looked boring and stale and the blocks you shot would go on forever piercing all enemies in their path. So it was time to make it a bit more fancy, which meant one thing: particles. I have constructed some fancy particles which follow the bullet around and make an exploding effect on impact. Also, enemies being killed now splattered into particles to make it a bit more satisfying. The effect looks like this:

You might also notice that the bullets slow down when they've hit an enemy. With every impact they slow down and below a certain speed they explode. That way, you can pierce your bullets through a few enemies. Once I had that I programmed the enemies to have varying speeds so that not every enemy would walk as fast as all the others. Finally, I added a different kind of enemy which would come at you in a wave-like pattern. That was initially a bug, but hey you know what they say: "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" and a feature it was. To make the game ready to be played I divided the enemies into waves and added a bit of a menu.

I kept my promise to you, so here it is: the first playable version of Cube Blast!

http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/cube-blast/36412/

So what's next? Well, there isn't much of a goal yet. So I would like to add some kind of money system which you can use to buy and upgrade spells you have. Since it is a bit of a dominant strategy to hug the corner and shoot in both directions you should be encouraged to walk around a bit. So this is what I came up with:

The idea is that in the level a 'book' will spawn in a random location. You have to kill enemies within a certain range of these books to increase your currency with which you can buy/upgrade spells and abilities. I'll start working on that next week and we'll see where we'll end up.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com 

Getting the hang of it!

I have followed several tutorials and have been struggling for a while now. But it seems I'm getting the hang of it! I begin to understand Unity more and more and the more I understand it, the more I see its potential. I now managed to spawn enemies into my room, plus I solved the wall-collision problems. The enemies I spawn now also follow my player around, the only problem is that the enemies are still able to walk inside each other. This results in a large cluster of enemies:

Other than that, things are going pretty good! I am currently working on an efficient way for the enemies to slightly repel from each other. I have already defined a function that can repel two objects from each other sort of like a magnet. Problem is, it doesn't quite work yet for many enemies at a time. Hopefully I can solve that problem soon and then start working on the actual shooting on the enemies! 

This is how far I got so far:

Hopefully next week I'll be able to provide you guys with the first version that has actual gameplay elements to it, namingly shooting the green blocks to bits! In any case, Unity is very fun to work with once you get to know its workings a bit.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Unity make me feel this way...

Well, it was a rough start with Unity. I've been quite occupied but I managed to spend some time on game development. I have to say, starting with an entirely new engine feels like I have to start all over again. All of a sudden I can't do the simplest tasks and I feel lost most of the time. But, I believe that once I get the hang of it Unity will allow me to make my games much quicker than XNA. Another thing about Unity is that it ports to pretty much any system whereas XNA could only port to windows. I managed to implement Visual Studio into Unity using UnityVS which is so much better than using MonoDevelop to do my coding. Once you have gotten used to Visual Studio, it's hard to go back to simpler compilers.
Ok, so let's see my progress so far. The few hours I could spend on the game were spent in frustration and confusion. After some struggle, I managed to get a cube to move around with a camera to smoothly follow it around:

Well, I guess it's better than nothing. Even though this is very simplistic I managed to get a bug in collision-detection between the cube and the black walls around it, if you run into those walls the cube starts to vibrate and it looks really broken. I guess I'll just watch some more tutorials on the matter and hopefully I'll be able to make games in Unity effectively pretty soon.

This is what I'll set as my goals for this week:

- fix collision bug

- make random enemies spawn in and follow player around

I think that'll be plenty for now, seeing as I am really not used to working in Unity yet.

Hopefully, I'll see you next week!

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Oh boy, what a week

Well I'm glad I warned you last week that there wouldn't be any specific game update this week. I have been incredibly busy with all sorts of things and developing a game did not really fit into my schedule. Hopefully I'll have something presentable next week, even though I'm still going to be pretty occupied.

First of all I visited a few candidate locations for the game event I help organize called Indievelopment. We have a few good locations on our minds and after we have picked one we can finally begin inviting developers and informing press about our event. I was put in charge of press contacting. Therefore, I now possess a large list of press contacts which helps out tremendously once I start trying release and promote my own games.

I was also invited for a playtest session for Ronimo games! I can't tell you a lot about what I saw specifically(that would violate the contract I signed), but I can tell you what playtesting is like of course!
When I walked in their office I was greeted by one of Ronimo's designers. I had to sign the NDA clause and after that I was put in a room in front of a 42" screen. The game I had to play was already set up and I was simply asked to start and play. I had to write down any oddities I noticed on a sheet of paper(bugs, unfair levels, etc.). Every once in a while a designer walked in and watched me play. He would occasionally ask me why I chose certain tactics or give me slight hints on how to complete difficult levels. Since it was a playtest, some levels were almost impossible to complete(for me at least) while some others seemed incredibly easy.
At the end of my 2 hour play session we sat down with the designers and the other playtesters to discuss the game and suggest certain changes. I managed to give some useful advice and suggestions which hopefully helps them to perfect their game.

Finally I'd like to tell what I plan to do for my next game project.

Since I am not at all familliar with Unity I will start by doing something really simple. You control the center cube and you need to defend yourself from all these other tinier cubes. You can unlock and powerup several spells to defend yourself. Your goal is to survive for as long as possible.

Does not look exciting or original in any way now does it? Well that isn't exactly the point yet. Before I can make more complex and original games(and trust me, I have tons of ideas) I need to familiarize myself with the engine I'm using first. So we keep it simple for our first project, don't worry though because just because it is simple does not mean it isn't fun!

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:

indiestepsblog@gmail.com

The art of finishing

Apparantly, finishing a project is more about what you decide to drop and what you decide to leave in. Finishing FUTransport was more of a process of removing future features than it was actually adding things to the game. It was fun however to finally see something I made come together. Adding some sound effects and music I made on my guitar and keyboard really added some feel to my game I hadn't witnessed before. I have learned a lot about game development from doing this project, mainly how difficult it really is! But it was a lot of fun and very rewarding in the end. It's not a masterpiece by any length, but I'm proud of my first game nonetheless. It is my very first proud step into the universe of game development, and it was a very difficult one to take.
Play the final version here:

http://gamejolt.com/games/strategy-sim/futransport/33035/

So, what is next?
Well, as I've said before I plan to improve my design skills rather than my programming skills in future projects. This means that I will be making A LOT of games with simple tools such as Unity or Game Maker. I will try to release a new game every 2 weeks starting from the first monday of october(very busy week coming up).

Next week won't be an update on a specific game, but I will be able to tell you some concepts I have in mind for my next projects.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:
indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Making my way there!

I am pleased to announce that I will be releasing the final version of FUTransport next week. This week I got around to updating the HUD. This means that next week I'll add some sound effects to it, maybe some music and then we're done(finally)!

Play the latest version here: http://gamejolt.com/games/strategy-sim/futransport/33035/

All in all it took me a lot of time, but it did improve my programming skills a lot and made me truly experience the entire development process for the first time. My plan now is to focus on game design rather than my programming skills. This means that I'll be making A LOT of games in a short period of time. It won't mean that the games I'll put out will be any good, but as I've mentioned before it's an effective way to improve your design skills.

Unfortunately, I realize more and more how little time there really is in a day. With school projects piling up, helping to organize the gaming event 'Indievelopment', playing some volleyball and then developing games on the side I don't have a lot of time to spare. At least I spend my time productively(I guess). That doesn't mean I'm not excited for my next game project however! I already have a ton of new ideas to work out in future game projects and I hope to show them to you a lot more quickly than I could now.

Hopefully next week, I can move on to a different project and I can finally show you something different!

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:
indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Forcing those last few steps

This week I first decided to scrap the whole 'trains have to wait for each other' mechanic. I came up with too many cases where my system would fall apart and I did not see any value in trying to make them all work. I decided to just make a menu and get that out of the way so that the only things left are really to add some sounds to it and to update the graphics. I will also make some resolution options so that you can play the game properly on a variety of different resolutions. Here's the new build if you're interested:

http://gamejolt.com/games/strategy-sim/futransport/33035/

But really, I am sick and tired of FUTransport. If there's one thing I took out of the whole development of FUTransport it's that I don't want to make games in Microsoft Visual XNA anymore. Not only does it limit me to releasing games on windows, it's also a lot more difficult to get the most simple things working. I don't want to worry about how my code draws objects on the screen, I just want to worry about the gameplay elements and program how objects interact with each other. I will most likely be using something like Unity or another existing engine to make games with in the future.

Lastly I'd like to add that I played my first game of 'Furego'(that name does not sound right), the card game I've been developing with a friend of mine. Here's the design document of it if you'd like to see what it's like:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bOKhu-Td0tC7P8vgDwI-t6drv7-Epbh8-wPsxm8D4X8/edit?usp=sharing

I can say that the mechanics were quite fun, but getting the cards balanced and pinpointing the flaws in the game is quite difficult!

That's it for this week's update.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:
indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Another sunday, another update

Good news, I can bring you a new update for FUTransport this week! I have now implemented a few new trains to choose from and you must now plan your routes even better since only one train can ride on a track at a time. I was first planning to make trains bump into each other if they tried to pass each other on a single-lane track, but that became a little tricky when there were several trains arriving in/departing from a city. Trains should not crash into each other in cities or villages so defining exactly when trains should and should not crash was a bit of a fuss. In the end, I went for the easier solution and just made trains wait until the tracks were free before driving onto the tracks.

You can play the new build here:
http://gamejolt.com/games/strategy-sim/futransport/33035/#show-notifications

If you've played the game feel free to leave some feedback over here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1c96Zpu0_fUw1YxF9XR_dZIlnOo0SZ1XyIfauYBF6xv0/viewform

The things that are still left on my checklist now are:
- being able to upgrade tracks so that multiple trains can ride on it
- upgrading the HUD/graphics

I am ever growing more eager to finish this game to start my 'game a week' project but I just have to stick to it a little bit longer. FUTransport is almost finished... well... as good as finished. Unfortunately time is growing more and more scarce since school started this week. So now I have to not only work on my games but I also have to attend colleges. It's all worth it in the end I guess.

In other news I thought it would be fun to create my own trading card game. So I got together with a friend of mine and we have started developing a prototype. If you want a vague idea of what the game is going to be like check out our design document on it!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bOKhu-Td0tC7P8vgDwI-t6drv7-Epbh8-wPsxm8D4X8/edit#
We haven't thought out everything yet, but we're slowly making progress.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:
indiestepsblog@gmail.com

Side tracking

I'm sorry, no specific game update this week. I've been a bit preoccupied over the last week doing some other things.

Not only did a dear friend of mine leave for Canada for 4 months(so jealous!) but I have also gotten myself into organising a gaming event called 'Indievelopment'.
I deemed it important to do a bit of networking on the side and getting to know a few people in the gaming industry. Helping to organize Indievelopment helps tremendously with that. Thanks to that I now have an e-mail list of a few hundred gaming journalists which I would imagine greatly improves my chances of sucessfully promoting my own games in the future.

Furthermore I have been reading a lot of blogs and articles lately about game development and I have picked up a few very useful things. Most importantly, I learned about 'a game a week' projects. Which basically means just that, you make a (simple) game every week for a period of time.
Here's the blogpost for anyone interested:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RamiIsmail/20140226/211807/Game_A_Week_Getting_Experienced_At_Failure.php

I want to start doing a game a week after I have finished FUTransport(which I plan to do within the month of september). All games I make for 'a game a week' will be available on this blog for free, feel free to mail me with feedback on: indiestepsblog@gmail.com
Apparantly making a lot of games greatly improves your game design skills and can make you a lot more familliar with the overall process that goes into developing games. I have to admit that I am very very eager to start doing 'a game a week' which makes it even more difficult to finish FUTransport, but I made a promise to myself that I'd finish that project so I will.

Lastly I do want to announce at least something about FUTransport, since I plan to finish it in about a month. I already made a checklist of what features I would still like to add before I finish the project:
- Buying more kinds of trains(faster trains, larger trains/more capacity, etc.)
- More specific quests(connecting certain towns, reaching certain places)
- Upgradeable tracks, from single tracks(trains wait for each other)
                                    to double tracks(trains can pass each other)
- HUD upgrade

That's about it for this weeks progress report, I hope I can provide you with a new build of FUTransport next week.

For questions, feedback or requests I can always be reached at:
indiestepsblog@gmail.com

FUTransport, the first crawl...

The day I make this blog post marks 2 things: 

• The date I was born;
• The very start of my (hopefully) future career

Over the past few months I have been developing my first game with the skills I learned from college the past year. For a long time it seemed like a distant, almost impossible goal to be able to program my own games, yet here I am.

Even though the game I have been developing isn't by any means a masterpiece, I deemed it important to go through all the steps of game development and finish my game instead of abandoning it. I have made my first version of my game: 'FUTransport'. A game about building up and managing a network of passenger trains. To give you an idea of what it is like, here is a screenshot:

You need to build tracks and trains to visit as many cities and villages as you can. The more you visit places the happier they become and the more money you'll earn. However, trains and tracks can break down which you need to repair all while making sure the towns in your network are getting enough trains to transport all the people waiting on the station.

If by now you are still reading this, then perhaps you are willing to help me out a bit more. Because at this stage the most important thing I need to do is playtest. Since it is generally a bad idea to only playtest your game with a few friends, and an especially bad idea to only playest your game yourself (or so I've heard) I'd like to ask you to take a look at it. 

The game is freely available for download here(sorry, windows only):

https://mega.co.nz/#!fFhiWLBB!XIAHbKuxnXh-hLWlmTWsHGelKGFPZG39i2HzH9PqXZc

Now before you click that link and start to play, remember that if you don't let me know your opinion I'll never know what to improve on. So if you finished playing, please take a bit of your time to fill out this survey and leave any feedback you can:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1c96Zpu0_fUw1YxF9XR_dZIlnOo0SZ1XyIfauYBF6xv0/viewform?usp=send_form

Even if you started it up, hated it immediately and never want to play it again let me know what drove you off because this is all very important information to me. If I don't know what I did wrong, I can't improve.

I will use this blog to show the progress I made based on your feedback, from this prototype to the very end.

I can be reached at:
indiestepsblog@gmail.com