Dev Journal #10: Crunch Time

This is the final stretch of road for the game. I’m crunching like crazy to get the game done and submitted this weekend. The menu graphics are finally done, as are the backgrounds for the game modes, and the Ludum Dare theme. All that’s left to do is integrate some more features into the Kongregate API, and I’m going to be adding the Mochi Ads API and the Score Tracking API, so I can collect ad revenue wherever my game is, and keep track of the player’s high scores when not on Kongregate. I have a solution for my music problem, that is just a quick fix so I can release it, and that is to just take Mike’s songs and edit them together into longer tracks for the different modes. I’m still trying to fix the problem, but this solution will work for now at least, until I can figure out what’s causing the problem. Besides that, it’s all testing and polish.

I’ve also made the decision to change the name of the game. IPL was originally just a temporary thing to call it, but I never thought of anything that I liked. However, I was just turned onto a new name thanks to a suggestion from a friend. IPL is now Blow Da Bricks!

Dev Journal #9: Pixels!

Work Done Last Week:

This past week I worked on all the animations for the pieces, and they came out really well. However, I hit a road bump when I went to actually animate them in-game, and stumbled over that with a bunch of little errors, most of them just from me getting used to animating in flixel. I did get through it, though, and the game looks so much better, and much more lively.

Work To Do This Week:

Unfortunately, I’m very slow with making the art, so it takes me a while to get everything done. Thankfully, all I have left now is to finish up the game mode backgrounds, clean up the menu graphics, and make the LD48 theme. My plan for the extra themes is to start by using my current standard theme and my LD48 theme (I’m going to remake the original LD48 graphics). Then I’ll add in extra themes as updates over time. This will allow me to focus on finishing the game and getting it polished so I can release it by the end of October. Besides graphics, I just have to fix the music cycling and add a few more features through the Kongregate API. My goal is to finish up the graphics for next week, then get the finishing touches and last bit of polish before that weekend (October 22).

Dev Journal #8: Getting There

Sorry for the delay, I had a test this week and a bunch of homework so I didn’t get around to posting on Monday.

Work Done Last Week:

I did a lot of graphics for the menus this week as well as finished all the menus needed and made sure everything flows well. I still need to make better backgrounds for the game modes, as well as a few alternate art styles for the blocks. I also got more of Mike’s music but I’ve been having problems in flixel trying to cycle between tracks. For some reason when I try checking when the current track is over, I get errors, and therefore cannot go to the next track to play.

Work To Do This Week:

This week is just going to be more graphics and I’m going to be testing out the Kongregate API. I’ll try to prepare some screen shots for next week’s post to show off how it currently looks, and maybe even get started on a small trailer.

Dev Journal #7: Back on Track

Work Done Last Week:

I scaled down the game a lot, mostly in the Campaign, because, honestly, it’s not fun. As I continue to test as I develop, I find that that the Campaign get worse and worse, and the Arcade modes get more and more fun. I’m halting development on the Campaign, and focusing on the Arcade mode. I don’t like that I’m just taking out a huge chunk of the game, and over a month after I wanted the game done, but it is necessary. It’s another learning experience in the importance of good design and extensive prototyping. I’ve gotten more positive feedback about the fun and simple gameplay (even from the IndieCade contest I entered), so the design there is good, but again, the Campaign design is lacking.

Work To Do This Week:

I’m mostly doing testing and debugging at this point. Besides a few small features I want to add, its mostly art, music and polish at this point. And with that, I can say that I have an expected release date on Kongregate of late-October. This week I’ll be working on the menus and the flow, to make sure everything runs smoothly, as well as some art and graphics for the modes of the game. As for music, I should get the last of Mike’s songs this week. I met a few guys since I’ve been at school that are good composers so hopefully they can make a few small songs so the game has a lot of songs with some good variety.

On a side note, mini-LD #21 was this weekend so I spent some time on that. I didn’t have much time, but I got a little done, and have a solid design, so I’m going to keep working on it as a small little side project. I’ll keep the blog updated with new prototypes for it every once in a while, but I’m not going to be spending much time on it, so I’ll probably only post a new version every few weeks. The theme was “Greatest Fear” and I made the game about germs, but I won’t go into depth of the design until I get the initial prototype finished.

Dev Journal #6.5

This is just going to be a quick update about what’s going on with the game. It’s been a month since I had planned to post last, and I apologize for the long delay. Vacation, work , and the start of my first semester of college really took me away from the game, and I didn’t have any time to work on it, so I didn’t want to update the blog with a new post about me not getting anything done. Luckily, I am back on track and ready to get working on IPL once again. I’ll be going back to my weekly Monday posts starting with this one, and will soon have a finished product to show.

Dev Journal #6: Almost There

I got a lot done this week, and it makes up for the fact that I’m going to be away from a computer for a week. I don’t have a laptop so I won’t be able to work at all for the next week. I’m planning on posting another Dev Journal by Friday, August 20.

Work Done Last Week

I got just about everything done. I added bosses to the Campaign, with its new structure, added instructions to the main menu, and set up the music. For the most part, everything in the game runs as it will in the final version when I’m done.

Work To Do Next Week

There are still a few things I need to do to finally finish the game. I have the music set up, but I’m still waiting on a few new songs from my friend who’s making the music. I also need to make the sound effects and the animations for the pieces, as well as cleaning up the graphics for the menus and stuff. And last but not least, I need to integrate with Kongregate so I can make use of their online leaderboards, but I learned that flixel has a wrapper for the Kong API, so it won’t be hard to get the basics up and running.

On a side note, I’ve had a bunch of game ideas for my next project (don’t worry, it won’t be another match-3 game), and getting away for a bit will let me think them over and allow me to relax and do some designing. I have a few solid ideas, and I’ve been thinking about one of them for months, so after some more designing (and once I finish IPL), I’m going to begin prototyping the first game.

Dev Journal #5: Vacation

I’m keeping this post brief for this week. I went camping for a few days so I didn’t have much time to work on the game as I’d have liked, plus my job kept me from working on the game when I wasn’t away. I wanted to have IPL done by the end of July but that obviously won’t happen. I’m going on vacation again for 8 days, and I’m leaving on Saturday, August 7. Until then, I have a lot of free time, so I’ll be able to get a large chunk, if not all, of the game done. I’m going to delay my next Dev Journal a few days to Friday, August 6 so that I can post a larger chunk of progress before I leave for vacation.

Dev Journal #4: Some Delays

Work Done Last Week:

I had some problems with the mouse positions inside the flash player, where the positions would be 16 pixels off, so if you moved your mouse onto the pixel “0, 0″ in the flash screen, it would register as “-16, 0″. I got stuck on this problem mainly because I didn’t know how it happened, as I didn’t change how the mouse is detected in the code. I searched and went through every line of code and couldn’t find the problem, so I just did a small hack that changes the mouse positions at the beginning of each update. It’s a sloppy way to handle it but I had already spent to much time on it and I was already behind. That and a few other bugs delayed me from getting as much work done as I’d have liked to. However, I was able to flesh out the game more, adding menus and multiple states for the different modes.

Work To Do This Week:

Everything is set up so that it is on par with the C++/SDL version. I need to finish this up by adding the bosses back into campaign, learning and implementing how to add sounds and music through flixel, and putting in the different information displays, progress/timer bars and simple score display animations for the pieces (such as displaying “+10″ over the pieces when they are cleared).

Dev Journal #3: More Flash

Work Done Last Week:

I’m still getting used to Flash. I didn’t have much experience with ActionScript or flixel before starting to port so I’m learning as I go. Luckily since I’ve already made most of the game once, it isn’t too hard to port it, and flixel makes it much easier. I have all of the basic gameplay finished, and Arcade Mode is fully functional. There are still a few bugs, however.

Work To Do This Week:

Once again I’ll be focusing all my efforts on porting IPL to Flash. This week’s goals are to get the game to mirror everything I’ve gotten into the C++/SDL version. I’ve got a few kinks to work out, but they’re not that hard to fix.

Dev Journal #2: I’m Making Some Changes

After some thinking, and looking into flash development, I’ve decided to switch the development of IPL over from C++ and SDL to Flash (using flixel). I’ve figured this makes most sense, especially because of what the game is. IPL is a casual puzzle game, and I feel that it would be better suited as a browser game. One big reason is that I don’t have any way to develop this game for the Mac or Linux, and that really limits who can play the game. Another reason is the convenience of a browser game is much more than that of  downloadable game. Plus, Mochi and Kongregate have APIs that include leaderboards, which is good to have for Arcade Mode, where you can post your high scores and compare them to others. I’m looking to have IPL finished by the end of this month, including the Kongregate API integration.

Work Done Last Week

Last week I mentioned that I had to shorten the Campaign levels because they were too long and they got pretty boring. Unfortunately, it didn’t help much. The Campaign Mode needed a redesign. What I’ve done is restructured it so that in Campaign, you choose one boss, and then play a set of levels until you reach the boss. Once the boss is defeated, you gain a powerup. Your progress is stored and you can then use the new powerup (as well as other ones you’ve gotten) when you go to the next boss. Before, it was just all back to back, and it got longer and longer until the player wouldn’t be having fun, and the game would become tedious. This way, you can play through a boss, and pick it up later at the next boss. I wasn’t able to finish the power-up animations because I started to port the game to Flash and that’s been taking up most of my time.

Work To Do This Week

Right now I’m going to be focusing my efforts on porting IPL. This week is going to be pretty tedious, but it should help in the long run. I’m going to once again try to fit in the time to do some graphical stuff but I’m not a good digital artist so it takes a while for me.