Category Archives: Journal

Project M Devlog 1

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In my efforts to write things more regularly… it’s time to write some things!

Firstly, about one of our new projects. What is this project?

Well we’re not sure yet! We know the experience we desire but it’s not clear how we’ll get there. It’s current ridiculous description is : “A space mercenary economy simulation RPG”. Confused? I know I am.

For now we’re focusing on the backbones and core game systems. It’s the tough part of the project where nothing comes together at the same time and everything feels broken and worthless.

Prez is working on the art style and some of the design elements. We haven’t settled on any of that yet so it’s stand-in art everywhere. I’m making the quickest possible versions of everything to get up to a playable build. Final art is a long way off.

The game almost has a playable flow to it. Just a few more additions and a play testing build will be ready. With PAX AUS just a month away it’s certainly cutting it fine if we want to show it. It’s not our only game for that show but it would be nice to have it there.

Mini goal is to have the playable build ready by June 30 and play test / balance / bug fix from there.

It’s really hard to show any screen shots for this project at the moment. All the systems are pretty much purely menu-driven and won’t have any cool looking characters or effects for a while. Here’s an attempt to find something….. more soon!

A portion of the starting screen.

Ok, back to it then.

-Ryan

 

Stress and an unfocused mind

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Been a while.. Time for another mini brain dump..

I’m feeling quite stressed at the moment! Life is throwing curve balls.
My wife is pregnant, on bed rest and due 2 weeks after the PAX Australia event. This is a whole bag of stress!
Do I cancel PAX and stay home in case it’s early? My usual dev time has been cut to pieces so do I stop trying to put together the PAX demos that were planned? Do I refocus and target something much smaller? Will It be worth going at all if that’s the case? I don’t know. Uggh.

At the moment I’m still planning being there, I just need a little focus time to get ahead of the 8 ball. I’m way behind on the non-dev side of things too, ill have to try organise some flyers and business cards sometime today.

On the plus side, i’m improving my ability to get things done with limited time!

I’m starting to reconsider my wizard beard effort too… It’s getting a bit ridiculous!

Oh and Game of Thrones.. Wtf! I haven’t read the books yet but I’m going to have to now.

<3 -Ryan

VR Hands

By | Journal | 4 Comments

One of the things I found jarring when testing out my new ‘Oculus Rift’ was not seeing my own hands in the world when I wanted to. I’ve been playing with the idea of projecting a 3d mesh of my body/hands into the VR space to see where it goes…

 

What this site needs…

By | Journal | No Comments

… is more images!

I’ve decided to get better and creating promotional materials for our games and the best way to do that is to … do that.

I’m going to go through and create some tidy banners and slide shows to better display and utilise this space.

First one up, the Ludum Dare entry from the past weekend:

A rogue deputy betrayed your trust and left you for dead. Take the town back.

Ouch – 48 hours minus about 30

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Maaan! Tough weekend!

Stupid me thought I should try make an LD48 Entry…… Didn’t pan out too well but I got something done..

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=5765

I keep saying I’ll try to focus more on gameplay for these things but I always end up bogged down fiddling with some art or sound or something like that.

I guess it’s maybe because I don’t usually get a chance to do any art/sound so it’s fun fun! Next time I think I’ll make sure to have a working game prototype with cubes FIRST….. might end up with game that plays better.

-Ryan

Vanishing Thoughts And Collecting Links

By | 1gam, Ignite The Skies, Journal, Missile Control, Ouya | No Comments

The Pain

I had a deep, thoughtful post I was compiling in my head last night as I drifted off to bed…. but I decided to write it in the morning and now I’ve forgotten everything including the core topic! Maybe it will come back to me if I ramble a bit…. I think I need to try catch up on some sleep before jumping on the plane to GDC in ONE WEEK!!! Woooooo!

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1GAM for Feb ‘Complete’

By | 1gam, Journal | No Comments

Done!  I’ve managed to pull something together in probably a total of about 24 hours. It’s kinda stupid but it fits my goal for the #onegameamonth. (which is to experiment with a bunch of different genres and just generally try new things)

It was a little bit too hectic this time… I think I’ll start the next one earlier! My current target is to get something done for the 7DRL event  (here).  That’s not far away so I need to get some regular Blunt Instrument related work out of the way ASAP!

linky

-Ryan

1GAM Scramble!

By | 1gam, Journal | No Comments

SO it’s close to the end of Feb and I don’t have a game! Something must be done.

I’ve started a simple multiplayer prototype to see if I can make it into something fun in two days…

http://blunt-instrument.com/bullet/

It’s not anywhere near being anything worth a sideways glance but I’ll see what happens!

Feedback is good too 😀

-Ryan

Port An XNA Game To Unity

By | Ignite The Skies, Journal, Videos | No Comments

So Ignite The Skies has been sitting around for a little while and every time I look at it I die a little bit inside. It was built using XNA but was never finished (it’s probably sitting around 90% done)

I’ve been toying with the idea of taking it across to Unity but it always felt like such a shit tonne of work to sift through for no real progress. Recently, I found someone had made a simple XNA Emulator for Unity. This tweaked my interest and I tried a quick test to see how well it would work for ITS. After a little bit of fiddling and fleshing out the stubbed parts a bit, I got the main game loop working in Unity! Well, it worked in a very limited sense. Most of the rendering didn’t work properly and the way it was dealing with resources wasn’t feasible to use long term.

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