Greg-Anims.com

action vs exploration

All the traps and level objects are in the game, stuff like bounce pads, switches, floating platforms, shooting guns, homing mines, jet fuel… they’re all coded and animated, which was a real slog toward the end i wont lie. This is the first content-driven game i’ve made which doesnt rely so much on a single novel idea, so its a lot more work than i’m used to- but im getting stuck in and really enjoying the process. I’ve more-or-less finished the art for the 3 worlds you will play through as well. Adam has finished most of the music and it fits the game perfectly, it sound awesome! I’ve had a lot of help from various coders around the stencyl community and now the controls are much tighter – i can also throw a lot of particle fx into the game without slowing it down at all. I can’t quite decide whether to make the game a slower, more forgiving exploration based platformer, or a fast paced action game like N+ or supermeatboy – i really enjoy both styles, maybe i’ll go for a blend of the two. I’m also debating a 2player mode, and iOS port. Thoughts and feedback  appreciated

level art

After watching my girlfriend and friends play the game, i realized that you couldn’t see far enough ahead to anticipate traps; i had to spend a day scaling down every art asset and re-tweaking the controls. But now i get to move onto fun stuff, like the level art  Here are close to complete level tiles for the construction world, i spent a while trying to find what would work best for backgrounds, i have finally settled on tiles. They are black with 30% opacity (though i am going to make them a bit lighter, so the levels are clearer on the eye), which means i can change the colour of the sky in different levels, and the background will still match the colour scheme, all the art assets in this picture come to around 20kb; using large images for the backgrounds in each world would have meant a massive filesize (not good for a flash game!). When i’m making the tiles, traps or basically any aspect of a game i try to think how i can get a lot of variety out of a small amount of assets, by making things tweakable and work in conjunction with other aspects of the game. Being primarily an artist it pains me to play the game in its prototype form when it looks horrible, so i’m pretty relieved to have the art style down, and can start making it look nice!

jetpacks

Development is going smoothly and im really enjoying making the game

Please listen to the awesome tunes of my friend, and talented musician on the game, Adam (mucky): http://mucky.bandcamp.com/

My biggest concern about the game is the situation i usually find myself in near completion, where i have spent far longer on the game than intended, i need to get it sponsored and released – but it still could use a ton of playtesting and reworking to make sure everyone gets it and can play through it without frustration. You spend so long working on content for the game, but the thing that makes or breaks it – the playability – you dismiss because you think the game is “finished”, whereas in reality it could use about 1/3 of the levels re-doing, and some more thrown in to teach the player the mechanics better, and a smoother difficulty curve.. i want to try to avoid past mistakes and properly playtest and refine this one.

I’m learning on this game the importance of a fast-workflow, and will start setting aside some time to study and train my art/design skills. I used to think the amount of time you sank into a project dictates its quality; now i think it is simply your skill level.

metroidvania quick look

UPDATED: 12 March (game is going in a more action based direction, rather than exploration)

Hey everyone, i moved house so i haven’t had internet. Here’s an early screenshot of my new game, a metroidvania (platforming in one big world, whilst collecting new abilities) action platformer which focuses on fast responsive control and exploration jetpacks. I have a great musician doing a dedicated soundtrack and a lot of the visuals are complete. Like my last game, this is being made in Stencyl engine. Thanks for following my work!

Hey new guys

I reckon i have an influx of new visitors to this blog because of my new game Making Monkeys, so “Hey ” if theres anything you want me to write more about (i really have no clue about this blogging stuff), or if you have a suggestion as to what game i should make next im happy to hear it.

If you could, please visit Monkeys on NEWGROUNDS or KONGREGATE, and support me by voting 5, or if you are on newgrounds please click in the bottom left of the screen “recommend for a collection” and recommend it to “game dev platforms” or “puzzle games”. Anyone who does this, thankyou so much!

Finished Making Monkeys

My monkeys puzzle-platformer is finished, and as soon as the *sponsorship process is finished it will be released. If you wondered what happened to grapplePack, Sam moved to San Francisco and got a new job; so didn’t have enough time to continue working on the game. We’ve since divided up what we had, and i have all the art assets i created for the game, which will likely be used in a new title.

I’m playing around with different ideas for a game and also talking with a friend and great coder- Cole, who is designing some amazing effects for future games- dynamic lighting, dynamic destruction (enemies and terrain) and decals (graphics which can cover any part of a level/enemy: ie- blood splatters or explosion marks)

*If you’re unaware of how flash games make money, basically a gaming portal like Armorgames, Miniclip or Newgrounds will pay you money for advertising space on your game (splash page, hyperlinks and “more games” buttons) – so that when your game goes viral, it acts as advertising for their website. The games portals then make money from their new traffic through advertising. Basically everyone gets money depending on the quality of the game, and you get to play games for free at the expense of having adverts displayed to you.

monkey progress music production

Here’s the monkey game so far (click image to enlarge). The process is 50% experimentation and refining, the image in my head when  i began was much different, but my vision for the game adapts as i go along and if something isn’t right, i will always re-do it. I hate looking at a part of my game and thinking i don’t like it, so ill always redo it until i am proud of it and hope that the whole package resonates with players. I just talked with a great musician and i’ve found the perfect soundtrack, which will be chilled out/funky/cheeky hiphop beats that’ll have players bobbin their heads whilst scratching them, trying to solve each puzzle.

I’ve also been working on producing music myself, mainly because i cant stop listening to electronic artists like deadmau5, skrillex, porter robinson, knife party… so im trying my hand at it, and really enjoying it  Heres a really muddy sounding wip track (my first!) i tried:

http://soundcloud.com/dampsquid/dbb

If i get any good at this music thing, it means the entire game, will come directly from me, and i can put together musical/audio feedback for almost everything you do in the game, making it a really complete experience.

the funky monkeys are coming

Gameplay mechanics and animations are in place, im really happy with the expressions on the little guys as they move around and die. Re-doing the level tiles because they don’t match the quality of the rest of the game- my games always look as simple as possible in the end, but i do go through a lot of iteration and experimentation to get everything looking fresh.

My goal was to finish the bulk of the game before the end of the month, but i ended up at the awesome reading music festival over the weekend instead. I’ve got loads of ideas in mind for the future, amongst them:

- flash game academy (tutorial website)

- regular video dev-blogs

- a Unity 3D game

- an iOS (iPhone) game

- a new brand image/more pro website/new game each month

- facebook/twitter pages

Which of these do you guys like best?

many monkeys

Background for my new puzzle platformer that i just painted. I loved tweaking the colors in this, and i got them just how i want them. Kind of summer/autumn clash of hot and cold- you’re gonna be lookin at it for about 20lvls of brain splittingly hilarious puzzles so its gotta be nice. WIP title for the game is called: “many monkeys”, and the bulk of the code is already done. Really enjoyed coding it because the idea is really fun to me, and pretty quirky too.

A few tips

PLAYTEST

Get your partner, friends and family.. to play the game whilst you sit in the back taking notes (keep your mouth shut too!). Probably the hardest thing for me whilst making games is the difficulty curve, when you’re so close to a project for so long its impossible to know how others will react to it, i’m always amazed when people play my games in development and can barely get past the first few levels; whilst obviously i thought it was too easy. You can never do enough playtesting, i always wish i had done more on my games before i release them.

PREDICTABILITY

Things should work how the player would predict, and be obvious- everything should work how its “supposed” to. For example, most platformer characters are square, so it is very clear where the players feet will land, and the collision box on the player. If there’s a ladder in your game, it should be climbable, it there’s a gun it should kill things, if there’s an non-player character you should be able to talk to them or kill them. Basically when the player sees an object they will have certain predictions/expectations about how they can interact, and if your game doesn’t deliver, it disappoints or confuses the player. A popular comment on Bat Country is: “I tried to bomb the guys in the shark, as soon as i saw them!” because the player expected to be able to kill them, it makes sense because the bombs kill the bats, but the player then is dissapointed and immersion is also broken. If you set up a “rule” in your game, you should try your best to keep it consistent throughout.

DESIGN FOCUS

Not sure what the picture is about here, but it reminded me of a japanese movie.. “you must focus sensei!!”, anyway… stick to your core design! The experience you want to deliver, write it down in a sentence, i think my one for Use Boxmen was: “a challenging and satisfying puzzle game, focused on interaction between characters to reach a goal”, the point behind this is that every aspect of your games design should be there to compliment the core focus. It helps you stick to your vision and keep the game to its simplest form, instead of packing it full of filler content and copying other games you may have played. You will know a game that does this well, because the whole package just feels right, examples off my head are: valves games and team ico’s games. Sticking to the focus also helps make sure that every part of the game you work on, needs to be there to enhance the experience- and you wont be stuck working for a long time on parts of the game which are unnecessary or add nothing to the experience. Simple is better.