Jono's game dev blog

Over the last few weeks I've been working on Super Mansion Quest, just so I could play around with making some guns in it. So far it's gone pretty well, I'm really enjoying working on it again. Added two new guns in the form of a machine pistol and a rifle Simplified the weapon creation process temporarily so I don't have to manage so many events for a single weapon Worked out how to convert Rounds Per Minute to the interval for each bullet (60 divided by RPM) Created a guide for creating new weapon types Created a room for target practice Added a recoil feature which makes the bullet spread of a weapon worse the longer it is fired Added dotted lines to measure the bullet spread Created a central dotted line to allow the player to line up long distance shoots easier Created a simple bullet firing noise Adjusted the pistol stats The machine pistol works really well because of the fast rate of fire and the bullet spread indicator. The rifle is cool because o...

Over the past few weeks I've been working on features and graphics to allow Scourge of Tethys to be played on Android phones and tablets. I was also working on a post about virtual controls which I hope to finish soon. I will be launching the game on the Google Play Store, but I still have to work out the details of that. Please only buy it if you have version 4.0+ of Android as it won't work on any previous versions. You can get the APK from itch.io for only $1. Buying it from itch.io also means you get the desktop version as well. If you have any problems with the game please contact me on Twitter

Recently I've been working on a few things for Scourge of Tethys and I've finally released it. The enemies now have some animation, the titlescreen has a little animation to it, the difficulty increases over time and each round gives a score bonus. The game can now be bought from itch.io for $1 http://jon-dog.itch.io/scourge-of-tethys

Over the last few weeks I've been working on updates for Scourge of Tethys. It's now sitting at V1.03 Major things I've added is a main menu theme by z0diakk, an online scoreboard, being able to play with a gamepad and a pause function. I've also added some small tweaks to the difficulty and controls so the game is more balanced. You can buy it from itch.io as pay what you want: http://jon-dog.itch.io/scourge-of-tethys It can also be played online at Kongregate & Gamejolt . I'm going to be doing a few more updates to the game over the next few weeks while trying to start a new project. Here's the full list of changes since the original release:

A space shooter game I've been working on for the last month called Scourge of Tethys has been released on itch.io as pay what you want In Scourge of Tethys you defend your home moon, Tethys, from the attacking aliens. The aim of the game is to get as high a score as possible You can also play it online for free at either Kongregate or Gamejolt. Kongregate: http://www.kongregate.com/games/Jon_Dog/scourge-of-tethys Gamejolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/shooter/scourge-of-tethys/30691/

So it's been a while since I've updated this, I haven't been updating much because I didn't like the address of this blog. I settled on Pixelated Adventures, hopefully this time I won't get annoyed by it and then stop updating my blog for a while. As a quick note, Grapple Punch is on hiatus because I couldn't come up with ideas for AI or interesting levels.  I also made a small piece of pixel art which I put on my Tumblr. So I decided to revisit making a museum in Unity , currently it only has a photo I shot and some pixel art of Reimu Hakurei because I was wrangling with Blender's interface and Unity kept on ignoring the textures I was updating. I definitely want to make it into a rather grand environment with lots of pieces across multiple mediums such as sculpture, sound and maybe even video. There's a lot of background stuff to sort out with that involving copyright, licensing and gathering art I can display so it's more of a long term pr...

2 weeks ago I became interested in making a roguelike again for some reason, Since I don't really like ascii graphics that much I spent some time looking for tutorials that involved graphical tiles. I didn't manage find a tutorial specifically for making a graphical roguelike, but I did find this post that meant I could easily convert an ascii to tiles after creating a game with the libtcod library. I remembered that there was a tutorial that used Python + libtcod so I decided to try that out. Over the course of a week I followed the tutorial and learned about all the shortcuts and features that libtcod provides. At the end of the tutorial a I had a roguelike with a lot of standard features such as spell casting, dungeon generation, equipments and even a field of view system. Unfortunately the tutorial wasn't as complete as I had hoped but it still gave me a good starting point. So I tried to add new features and realised that I don't actually know enough about...

After Swan River Swim was finished I launched straight into another game that I'm temporarily calling Grapple Punch. So far I've managed to get grappling and reeling working, and it only took me a few days work. Currently I'm working on combat to go along with the grappling, at the moment it's just going to be punching, but that will most likely change in the future. When combat is working well enough I'll work out how I want the game to look like and then make the art to match the vision. After that I'll probably make a few levels, find suitable sound effects and the game should be pretty much done. If you want to try out the game you can play it here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20792563/prototypes/grapplepunch/index.html The controls are arrows to move, Z to launch or reel in the grapple, and X pulls you towards the grapple.

2 months ago I started work on a game called Swan River Swim for the Australia Day weekend. I finished a simple prototype that weekend but I wanted to take the game a bit further. On Sunday I finished Swan River Swim after replacing the art and adding sound to the game. I uploaded it on Monday to Kongregate which was surprisingly easy, it didn't even take that long to be approved. In other news, I turned 21 on the 31st of March. To celebrate I had breakfast with extended family on Sunday and on Monday to a restaurant with Kamil and Sue on Monday. One last thing, Quarries of Scred 1982 is now out on itch.io! You can get it here for $2 and 20% of all proceeds go to charity.

So a few weeks ago Global Game Jam was coming up but I didn't attend for monetary reasons, instead I worked on an Australia Day game over that weekend called Swan River Swim. Swan River Swim is a game where you have to swim back and forth across the Swan River because your friends dared you, they also promised you beer. Basically you avoid boats, jetskis, jellyfish and algae to collect a 6 pack of beer for every 6 laps you finish. I managed to make the game over a two day period and you can play that version here . I didn't get it to the point I really wanted it to be at but I'm happy that I managed to get all of the obstacle types in. Right now I'm refining the game to make the game more balanced and more alive because it currently has no sound and very little animation. After I've finished refining the gameplay, added sounds/music and new graphics I'll be putting it up for sale and then start working on an Android port. The only thing I really need to add fo...

So Super Mansion Quest is currently on hold, because I got stumped with regards to AI and animations. Instead I'm going to expand the unfinished prototype I made during the last Ludum Dare called Monster Tournament. Monster Tournament (not final name) is a game about fighting in a tournament against many different alien species and monsters, the opponents you face and the arenas you fight them in are going to be randomised so playthroughs are unlikely to ever be the same. I'm currently working on a design document and defining the art style early on so I can aim for completed assets instead of prototype art that will be mostly thrown out when all the gameplay features are done. In other news, Legacy of Barubash is heading towards completion quite nicely, and over the holidays Kamil programmed a text adventure called Quarries of Scred 1982 which you can try out here. It's a fun game about mining through a cave system looking for diamonds while avoiding unstable rocks, f...