Prototype makeover

I purchased some large art bundles from the Unity asset store. Backgrounds, icons, and special effects always have been my weaknesses, so just buying royalty free art is a sensible investment. Having the art early on can influence design in unexpected and beneficial ways too.

I will continue to paint and animate my own characters. I use a tool called Spine which allows me to programmatically interchange pieces like weapons and gear. I chose to use animals as the fantasy heroes because it fits better in the premise of the game. Plus, animals are gender-neutral, and it rids having to be politically correct in having a specific number of different races, especially for a game that will be localized worldwide.

Match 3 RPG

I am likely going to make a match-3 RPG. Character abilities can be triggered by placing a pattern on the grid, that must match the locations of previously destroyed cells (illustrated by orange cells in the screenshot below). It will be made in Unity using C# and the Spine animation tool. The same tech was used to make my latest finished and soon to be released game Pizza Bot.

Prototype

This next match-3 project likely will be fantasy themed because I already have a whole bunch of character art. Painting backgrounds and icons is my weakness, but I can buy some through the Unity asset store. I spotted some great special effect packages too.

Match 3 always will be popular, and is already "fun" from the beginning. The design challenge is going to be crafting all the interesting features that extend out the game, while offering sufficient strategic elements to prevent the experience from getting dull and monotonous.

I believe as long as there is gradual and continuous progression through occasional unlocking of interesting features, then the game will surely be a success. A game like Zombie Guard is not necessarily fun because of say, the weapons, but rather, the unlocking and upgrading of the weapons. This has been a general design focus in all my games. Typically I strive to create the core of the game, and then insert a lot of content with data driven systems for weapons, skills, items, and AI character types.

Since this will be a turn-based match-3 game, I can write some simple AI to play-test the game for me. I have a spare phone to have AI play stable builds 24/7.

From the very beginning I will be setting the game up for easy localization into other languages. If done correctly, all I would have to do is gather translations privately from various people who have already contacted me. Ideally, it will be easy to update and append translated text through external data files.

So, that is that.

Two Goats

Goat Mechanic has been updated and Gassy Goat has been released...

Goat Mechanic

I have updated my previous app Goat Mechanic on Google Play and redistributed it on the Apple App Store. It started as a game jam entry that got turned into a standalone app. I integrated Google Admob interstitial (video) ads. Players can wait for in-game currency, or watch a 30 second video ad, or purchase currency with real money. It is a bit shameless, but it works.

This is an older game, written in Lua with the Corona game engine. This project uses a tool called Spriteloq/Animo, used to consolidate the art; the tool no longer exists because it was sold to a company that is no longer in business. Thankfully, I had a backup within the project's depot.

Gassy Goat

At last, Gassy Goat has been released - a game that had been finished for a long time, now available for download on Google Play. I will submit it to the Apple App Store in a week if there are no major issues.

Gassy Goat is an HTML5 game written in Phaser with the language LiveScript that compiles to JavaScript. The code is obfuscated with Minifier.org, and packaged as an Android APK with Cocoon.io using the AdMob plugin for interstitial ads. Yes, there are definitely many layers of technology involved here.

...I'm glad to be near the end of list of tasks. Only Pizza Bot remains. There are some older apps that I considered revising, but I have determined it would not be worth the time.

Zombie Guard update and return to iOS

Zombie Guard has been given a much needed update! I went through and increased the game difficulty, added different controls for vertical movement, updated to the new ads plugin and Corona game engine for many benefits including improved performance.

Updating an app to a new version is a bit slippery. I had to carefully ensure that the game can handle the save files of the previous version. Plus, upgrading to the new AdMob plugin had issues. Is any of this difficult to program? No, but there is zero room for error because the update will gradually affect up to 50,000 current users.

The app recently was declared an Editor's Choice through Google in the category of zombie games. Recognition like this, and all the YouTube videos of players enjoying my work is what motivates me to continue.

Due to this article, I have improved the default controls for movement by allowing pinpointed touch location rather than buttons. Plus, all buttons can be enlarged which might feel more comfortable on smaller phones. Settings can be changed back through the options.

Zombie Guard sits at a million downloads on Google Play. It is making its way back onto the Apple iOS app store (and most of my other apps). Building the app even through the Corona engine requires a modern Mac, so I'll be renting and connecting remotely to one through MacInCloud.com. To my surprise, Corona already is installed.

Pizza Bot

This next project 16 will be a small arcade style shooter for mobile phones! Control a flying bot that is on a quest to deliver a pizza! Sounds easy enough..? But other competing corporations have deployed their own drones to intervene an otherwise simple task. There will be three bosses and continuous play for competitive high scores.

Unity

In-game shop interface

Spine for all animation

Clip Studio for all the art

Tech

This game is written in C# using Visual Studio Code which I really like for being lightweight and powerful. Unity is component driven, and I forced myself to embrace the paradigm. It gets easier to implement additional enemies because it is just a matter of dragging and dropping existing components from my library. Also tiny bits of polish like spasm animations and fades can be easily sprinkled on arbitrary game objects.

This small mobile game is serving as a great learning experience for my next ambitious title. Still, despite all the newness, it does not take long until it just becomes a familiar environment, and a huge mountain of work.

I had been using Adobe Animate for HTML5 and CocoonJS to package the web games as apps. It works, but seems like a precarious setup; I am weary of support on particular phones. I wanted to play it safer with Unity - a more recognized and well-funded engine that now has a more stable HTML5 export option, with direct support to build native apps.

Art

The art is an intentional simplified style through Clip Studio Paint, so I would not obsess over the colors and lines in this small project. It is supposed to look like ink and watercolor on grid paper, and it is fairly convincing when viewed on a phone or tablet.

For animation, I bought a license for the Spine tool. It is a rather intimidating tool, but took only a day to get the hang of.

Design

This game is heavily based on the Web game Frantic Frigate with a different theme and style. Actually at first I had started a hotel management game, but that would have been an excessive undertaking because my previous apps need some time and maintenance.

A scrapped prototype

Still, I think most of my games are a bit too casual, easy, simple, and even childish. Frequently I have wanted to branch into deeper territory through darker themes and games that evoke emotional responses. Then there is the other side of me that wants to sell out by making more casual defense-genre games.

Business

I feel secure by continuing to focus on apps for Google Play, monetized with Google AdMob and in-app purchases. Immediately following this project, I will go back and update all my apps with in-game video ads or banners to further boost my income. I came out empty handed with other networks like (*cringe*) RevMob. I am wondering if I can deploy my future Unity games onto the Web with AdMob as well.

Overall

It is just a matter of plowing through all this work. I am securing my current and previous projects, in order to create a blank slate when I go abroad. I believe an appropriate environment can play a huge role in being open and creative. Despite being an introvert, I actually draw a great deal of energy from the hustle and bustle of cities - the lights, sounds, aromas; it is incredibly inspiring. Plus on the contrary, having my own furnished and minimal apartment will allow me to be closed, disciplined, and focused.

Office "Ink"

I have been experimenting with some newer brushes available for Clip Studio Paint, to create some conceptual illustrations of some design ideas. I've come to really like the look of blue ink and digital watercolor. When placed on a scanned page of grid paper, it can look convincingly "realistic".

I would prefer not to use my usual vector-like art style shown on the right.

Above is a concept I painted in a few hours, partially inspired by Sim Tower from the 90s. I made things pop with white outlines and air brush, like cutouts of paper shadowing on top. If I were to attempt all this in my vector style with full colors, or even some semi realistic style, then it would probably take days of arduous effort and still I would not be satisfied. Sure, this monochromatic blue style lacks contrast, but it gains contrast when compared side-by-side to the other games in the app stores that have super vibrant colors.

Gassy Goat - Gameplay Trailer!

Well, I have dusted off the nearly finished project of Gassy Goat! This is a game that I put off from completing about a year ago. Honestly, I really did not want to finish it a year ago - I was so tired of playtesting it; beating it from start to finish was just arduous. Now after time has passed, I can see it as a newcomer, where some features are better or worse than I recalled. It is bittersweet.

Here is a trailer gameplay video I made last night:

"Hey, this is actually kind of fun" I thought to myself while perpetuating the goat into the air while grappling onto birds and other animals. Likely this game will do quite well for the casual gaming audience. There is very little text so localization into other languages is unnecessary.

In other words, the game is now complete, so that's a bit of weight off my shoulders.

Almost there

A little closer each day! I am satisfied with the way this feels and plays. I changed lot of interfaces to make it more legible on smaller devices like phones. The game has been simplified for the casual audience, while still retaining a lot of the original concepts I wanted.

I added weapons that have limited durability, or, clicks/taps until the weapon must be discarded. Enemies have various elemental resistances depending on the environment, making way for some strategy in hero and upgrade selection. The game starts slow, and grows, with a constant sense of progression. I actually have started playing it, and it shows a lot of potential. After I sprinkle in some more polish and finalized features, it should be good to go.

Weapons offer a different style of play, where some players may prefer the tedious clicking/tapping, versus long term expensive heroes and upgrades.

Shown are various heroes and an equipped sword for clicking/tapping. Currency can be used to upgrade heroes, weapons, buy trinkets, etc.

Quests, showing objectives and rewards. As simple as it gets. Boxes can be selected for a description on the side. For example, enemy hitpoints, elemental resistances and weaknesses (physical, ice, fire, poison, lightning).

Similar as the interface in Zombie Guard, I used a simple node system that allows features to be added more easily, without overhauling menu and interface art. Meaning, it is easy to add additional features later.

At this point it is playable. I still want to add even more progression by offering options granted by resetting all heroes, hero skills, upgrades, gold tokens, trinkets, weapons, etc. As if resetting to the very beginning, but, with minor permanent improvements that have a very high value in the long run. For example, permanent increases in damage, increases in hero experience gains, faster weapon attacks, etc.

Nomadic

In four months from now, I will be on a plane to begin my new life as a "digital nomad". This is a relatively new movement that consists of individuals who earn a living through the Internet, and work remotely as they travel sporadically.

There is no doubt my current residence of six years and social community has a lot of benefits. It is safe and we have everything we could ever need. Still, I constantly feel strained and weighed down in a way that is difficult to convey without getting into details.

...Yup! Drastic change is imminent. Vacations only have a short lasting effect on me. I need a complete change in lifestyle.

I leave October 3rd to stay in Thailand for seven months. From there, probably Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan. I am spiritually connected to Asian culture, and, I am very introverted so traveling solo is quite appealing to me. I will take my laptop and bare necessities, working on game projects wherever I go.

Optimizations..!

Moving right along. Many heroes for my idle game have been animated and fully programmed, along with the main systems for particle effects and such. With some more art and features underway, it should be playable quite soon.

Unlike Zombie Guard, I'll be releasing this sooner rather than later, followed by more regular updates to features and bugs. Eventually it will make its way to some of the bigger portals like Kongregate, then, as a standalone app for Apple and Google Play.

This is an HTML5 game that plays well on a PC/Mac browser with superb performance. I played it on my phone as well, both in the Chrome browser app, and, as a standalone app by packaging it with CocoonJS.

The good

Everything just frickin' works so I do not have to waste time porting my game to a different library for a different platform. HTML5 is proving to be very useful and I hold a lot of trust in its future. The design of this game allows me to introduce additional features over time. Google Chrome has incredible features to debug and benchmark performance so it will help tremendously. I would much rather debug on my PC, rather than fire up some esoteric software packages to extract debug information off my phone, for bugs that only appear on the device and not the simulator *cringe*.

The bad

The game can run quite slow on mobile devices like my Android phone. I can work with this, by sprinkling critical optimizations here and there. Particle effects will have to be reduced as that seems heavily expensive, likely due to the code compared to the actual rendering. Compressing all the code with Minifier helps a tiny, but it is better than nothing.

The game has excellent performance on PC, despite many art assets and animations.

Eventually I will be able to compile all LiveScript files to Javascript, reduce and obfuscate the Javascript with a service like Minifier, and then upload to a private domain along with recent changes. All this will be done automatically with a build tool like TeamCity which came recommended to me.

So, enough tech talk...

I recognize I have been going even further into a casual gaming direction. My previous work already was fairly casual, and now this idle game even more-so. The market for these kinds of games is strong and reliable despite the competition. My plan however is to create something far more artistic, stylized, and meaningful, following this idle game.

Idle, and why?... because botting is fun!

I want to share with you my motivation for making an idle game, a quickly growing genre in the past several years. These are games that do not require a lot of hands-on time to play. To me it just all comes down to one thing: progression. And steady progression tends to feel rewarding and "fun" to the player. It can be addictive.

One of my favorite idle games is not even an actual idle game. It is Diablo II that still has a community of online players. The game gets very tedious near the end of the game, to further progress and find items. That is where botting comes in, using custom scripts. Basically you design a character, play through the interesting content, and then have a program do most of the rest.

Sounds ridiculous and pointless right? But it actually is fun, to check in and find that your character mindlessly found that extremely rare item with a 0.000002% chance of dropping, while you slept through the night. You can then further refine your character by trading items online and revising the script files to improve your character, in order to reach level 99 more quickly - this takes an insane amount of actual time even for a bot.

Wait, it gets better. You can buy additional CD keys and run multiple characters at the same time. This is not my video, but it demonstrates the point:

By doing this, you get to find those extremely rare items more quickly, to arm additional characters. This way of "playing" transforms the game experience from skill to optimization strategies. Like, being a coach rather than an athlete.

Global Game Jam 2017

Global Game Jam 2017 was recently held worldwide. The event just keeps getting bigger with more cities and locations participating each successive year. NYC alone had over 500 participants hosted in the Microsoft Building in Times Square.

I showed up and collaborated with five others (four, after one had an emergency the first evening). We used the Unity engine and Discord to communicate easily and share extra files. I was really impressed by Unity's collaborate feature - built-in cloud source control.

The theme was "waves", which was open to interpretation - especially for fluent English speakers. Waves may only translate to physics based waves suggested by the keynote video, and not the additional interpretation of gestured hand waves.

This was the first game jam ever where I wrote virtually no code. I was basically an assistant artist, filling in gaps, and hunting down audio. So, needless to say, it was fairly relaxed for me, with the exception of the 36 miles I walked according to Google Fit.

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