Jono's game dev blog

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...

It's been a few weeks since the last update on Super Mansion Quest, I've made progress and am way past the Stencyl version in terms of content and features at this point. Current tasks I'm currently trying to get a inventory system working. Half of it is done so far, the x and z buttons can now call functions for different weapons, before that I had weapons linked to a single button. After that I'll either get the saving/loading menu working or start work on the first boss. Additions I made a temporary title screen and a main menu that's half finished. Rockets and homing missiles are implemented, they work pretty well and the missile launcher is a lot of fun to use, it needs to be more balanced but it's going to be a late game weapon anyway. The skeleton head has newer art now because I felt like redrawing it There's also explosions and death effects now which make it more satisfying to kill the skeleton heads and fire rockets. Other notes ...

The game now has a working title of Super Mansion Quest and is being rebuilt in Construct 2 after I hit some walls in Stencyl a few weeks ago. Here's a screenshot of Super Mansion Quest in Construct 2. Construct 2 is really cool because making it do some things is simpler than it was to do in Stencyl and that has made getting the game back to where it was fast in some respects. I had written a part about the lack of a tile based map editor but the latest beta has fixed that (along with an inbuilt TMX importer), so now I don't need to worry about that part at all. The only real downside so far is how tied into the HTML5 system it is, I think that causes the desktop export of the game to be 54MB as opposed to the web version which is 354KB. I've managed to get most of the old systems implemented so far and along the way I put in some new ones like enemy and player knockback, an ammo counter, reloading and a spin attack. There's a few things I need to rebuild b...

A while back I hit some walls in Stencyl which caused me to move to Construct 2. There was some big issues like the lack of global behaviours and debugging tools. There was also a lot of smaller issues that put me off using it any further like the lack of community and the 3.0 version being nowhere in sight. 1. No global behaviours In Stencyl there are things called behaviours and these allow actions to be executed, they are applied to either scenes or actors. Unfortunately they can't be applied globally which means that behaviours controlling the GUI and menus need to be applied to each and every scene manually, this becomes unmanageable when dealing with a lot of scenes like an RPG or room based game. The workaround to this is making only a few large maps but that would mean coming up with a completely new camera system and then working out how handle all the spawning of enemies and items based on the room you enter. It'd be just as messy if not messier than making su...

So it's been a few weeks and I've managed to make some progress, not as much as I had hoped but at least I didn't stop completely. 2 extra coloured floor tilesets to make different rooms look a bit more distinct open doors so I don't need so many switches a directional dagger attack keys for opening various doors added a health system for enemies and the character animations and poses for the character to make the movement look and feel more natural lots of small tweaks and additions that I've probably forgotten about I still haven't come up with a proper name for the game or the character so the working title is Mansion. The major bug that's holding up a lot of progress is the player being duplicated when I switch rooms, If I can't fix this in a reasonable amount of time I'm definitely moving away from Stencyl because it's a rather problematic bug. The only other bugs I know of right now are some collision issues for movement, t...

Over the last few weeks I've been working on a top down action adventure game, inspired by games like The Legend of Zelda. If you follow me on twitter and missed the original few tweets and the few screenshots I've posted you've probably been wondering what the hell I've been talking about. The main character is a maid because I like the look of the outfits, so I decided to build the story and character around that. She's mainly inspired by characters from various anime series and Sakuya Izayoi from the Touhou series. She'll be able to use a variety of melee and gun based weapons along with a few cleaning tools for puzzles and boss fights. The story isn't really a priority at the moment and is subject to change but it currently involves the main character fighting demons and the undead to rescue her master who is at the top of the mansion in some room. I'm currently working towards making a small representation of the game which I'll hop...