Yeah so I haven’t done anything for a year because I got a job that wasn’t completely meaningless. However, that job is currently on hold for the next few months so I have time to actually put some effort back into this blog.

I really need to revamp this whole thing.

So the job I’ve been doing is help run this business competition. The one that I was a finalist in last year. I help people start small businesses, which is not unrelated to being an independent game development. It’s totally awesome, but means that I don’t have as much time to dedicate towards making games. I still been keeping up with it, but I loose interest after a bit and subsequently have a bunch of half finished projects.

I guess that’s one of the problems with being not borrowing money from people, you don’t have as much motivation to complete the things you start?

Also, I went through a bit of a personal crisis last year that has made me have to reassess my living situation. It’s since been resolved, but I have to be a bit more cautious with what I spend my time doing these days. My living costs essentially doubled at the start of this year and suddenly being a bum student was no longer feasible.

Here is a picture of what I’ve been doing:

And a half finished game that will probably never see the light of day:

Ok, I’ve been away for ages, doing school work and trying to get jobs. No excuse really, but I have made some progress. I have the story worked out for Drone 2 and have the UI somewhat working. Here is a preview of the Intro. I’ve been having some personal issues at the moment which have caused me to change my focus a little, but soon those worries should be over. The music is by Brokenkites who is an awesome dude. The most underrated musician on the internet.

The framerate got screwed up when I uploaded this to youtube, I’ll fix it at some point. I’m sure it has something to do with downsampling…

So for this class I’m doing I had to make a submission to the NBR Audacious business challenge. I’d heard of this thing before a number of times, but never bothered to enter because I didn’t think I’d win/didn’t have a good enough idea. Well since I had to enter this year, and knowing that business types tend to appreciate lucrative ideas over wacky ideas, I thought I’d submit the making of Drone 2. Given that I had stats to back up my argument, I managed to win one of the 40 prizes which was pretty sweet.

I also had to update this website for this other class which is awesome because I’ve been meaning to update this site, but kept making excuses not to. Part of that upgrade was adding more to my portfolio, so now there’s a bunch more stuff in the images section. Stuff like this.

I also made this character for this other class with Drone in mind, but I haven’t settled on it or anything.

So yeah, I’ve started doing this design course and it’s been going pretty well, I mean, it’s better than cleaning right? But I haven’t exactly had much time to do game stuff, just a lot of graphic design which will help in the long run.

This sort of thing: (the lines are supposed to represent floors and the little people students on each of these floors).

"people spiral"

Let me tell you a story; about a month ago, we all got this assignment to make a “manifesto” for this paper about planning your future career. This manifesto was supposed to be about your design philosophy etc. and I figured it would be a written document you know, like 1000 words or something. Well, I found out a week before the project was due that it can and should be submitted as anything except an essay. Yeah art school right? They seem to have this thing about being super vague about everything.

Anyway, being a game nerd, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to do what I do and so decided to make my manifesto in the form of a game.

Except I only had a week to do it.

This was the result:

Manifesto game

I had to take bits out of games I’d already done work on in order to get the thing done on time, something I didn’t want to do, but didn’t really have a choice (due to time constraints). I spent the last 36 hours working on it non-stop. I didn’t get to sleep, shower or shave. First time I’ve done that in a while…

But yeah, it could hardly be considered a game at all. It’s more or a narcissistic ramble about why games are better than other forms of media. It looks kind of cool though, and shows off this tree growing thing I made.

So if you are at all interested in what I’ve been doing, feel free to download it. Just bare in mind that it’s a manifesto and not a game, and it was intended to be marked by someone who I’m pretty sure has never played a game in their life, so the difficulty curve is pretty much non-existent.

http://dwwilson.info/games/manifesto.exe

Ok so I said I’d have Drone part 2 finished by November but…

Work on that game has been painfully slow for a variety of reasons, the main one being that redoing Drone is a bit like being told that you have to rewrite your entire thesis, but in a language you don’t understand.

The second one being that I got massively distracted by something else which I’ll talk about later.

But it’s not all bad news, I managed to convince the local Polytechnic that I’m competent enough to do a Diploma for Graduates in Design (which is the same as an undergrad degree, but 1 year instead of 3) which means the government will lend me money to do what I do in my spare time for free, and give me another qualification.

So that’s awesome. On top of that, back in late August, I went online to upload some stuff to this website when I discovered that my download count seemed to have jumped from 14k to 240k seemingly overnight. Now I don’t know exactly what happened here, there could be some kind of screw up with the numbers, but whatever the case I’m pretty happy

Here is a ss of the download report, (I don’t believe it either)

I think it may have something to do with this Chinese website.

So yeah, all the traffic seems to be coming from there. 三江源 to whoever linked it there, I’m sorry but I don’t speak Chinese, although half my family does, so next time I release a game I’ll make sure to include a fully Chinese language version.

Speaking of other games, here are some screenshots of the thing I’ve been working on (and being distracted by). It’s not even close to being a game yet. All it is are some trees and ground. The interesting thing about this though, is that the trees and ground are generated procedurally. Well, the ground is generated, the trees “grow”.  It’s like watching a plant grow in timelapse. Each tree is unique and grows towards the light in real time. The idea is that you’ll have to grow these trees for some reason I’ve yet to decide. So far, it’s pretty fun to just plant trees and grow them into shapes. At some point, I’ll make it so they need water and compete for minerals in the ground.

But yeah these screenshots don’t really do it justice, it’s all placeholder art ATM and the still images don’t show off how cool the growing animation looks. I’ll upload some videos when it’s a bit more finished.

Oh and Happy Halloween!

It’s been a while since I posted anything here as I’ve been pretty slack at getting work done. I’ve been doing a heap of “research” by playing many RTS games and looking at a bunch of sci-fi stuff trying to figure out how I could attach some sort of plot to drone.

I’ve also been working on this other project that is prooving to be more fun than editing drone. This project doesn’t have any name yet, and couldn’t even be called a game at this stage.

In other news, I’ve decided to quit my job at the end of this year and go back to school to study something. I’m going to try and wrangle it so I can use whatever work I do over the next year as part of an assessment. Or not. Basically, I just need to quit my job before I go mad.

Well, Drone got a review on Rock Paper Shotgun.

In case you don’t know, RPS is one of the two big indie games websites on the internet, the other being www.indiegames.com.

This is good, VERY good.

To put it in perspective, I had as many downloads in a single day after the RPS feature than I had in the previous 7 weeks. (~2k)

I sent them this rather absurd e-mail about a month ago but never heard back. I’d assumed that they either didn’t see the e-mail, or just thought drone was a piece of shit, so I didn’t bother following it up. But it turns out a guy by the name of Quintin actually played it and had the decency to write a review for it.

So Quintin, you’re awesome.

here is the review

Ok, I changed some stuff:

Nerfed the railgunners a bit. They still do all the same stuff except they now drop $250 instead of $60, they come in smaller numbers (unlike the sand people) and they don’t try and dodge walls.

Nerfed the pipebomb guys a bit. They drop $100 now, up from $60.

Made the portal particles purple so they stand out against a white background.

Made the win text less vulgar.

Made the achievements a bit more logical. The spanner doesn’t count as a weapon anymore, and you can’t get the no structures achievement unless you NEVER build a structure in the area (selling them all before the end won’t work anymore).

You can preserve your progress by overriding the “config.ini” in the new version with the “config.ini” from the old version. Checkpoint saves won’t copy over though.

got a feaure at:

http://www.crudepixel.com/en/features/spotlight/74-drone-real-time-action-strategy

good review, good website.

Also, a dude named DarkWolf2 mentioned drone in a thread so that’s awesome.

http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=912410

I also made some alternate sprites the other day, here is a mockup of what it might look like in the game. I think this one is better than the other one, not as unique, but more functional and plesent on the eyes.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I kind of think the texture on the background looks a bit cliché, but isn’t it supposed to? It’s like crates in first person shooters.

does this look better?

Drone got a mention on Jay is Games which is cool, didn’t find out until a fellow developer mentioned it to me though which is kind of funny.

http://jayisgames.com/

Speaking of which, he’s the creator of boxycraft, this physics platformer that’s kind of like phun (if you’ve ever heard of that) except with a goal.

Worth checking out if you’ve got a spare moment.

http://boxycraft.wordpress.com/