In-D Gaming

2019 was a hell of a year

So ambitious. We released two games. Covid didn't hit us yet. It was the calm before the storm.

I never did a full year recap since I went MIA, so I wanted to take the time to commemorate our accomplishments of 2019 before catching up on last year.

Phasmophobia: Hall of Specters 3D

We released our first game for New Nintendo 3DS™ and by our standards we nailed it and it was a success. We were so happy to be able to do this and it felt like a huge accomplishment for all of us.

Altruism: Matchmaker

This game has been very fun to develop and became very fleshed out over the year. When I have a chance I'd love to buckle down and finish this game.

Small World Z

It would only be fair to consider the release of this game as a moderate success as well, however, today I see a lot of things I want to improve in it. It was definitely our largest game to ever be completed and felt like development took ages. It was a great payoff initially to have released it and I can without a doubt say I learned a lot from it's development.

Undergrudge

This is a project that's in the works and is on good priority. Undergrudge development started in 2019 after it's failed predecessors. Since then it has been fleshed out a lot more and I have a lot of exciting things to share in the future.

Other Projects

Various projects began development in 2019, some things like Card Game Simulator have seen a follow-up in development since then. I wanted to make this blog post to finally finish something I intended to.

Hey guys this is late but here’s the Q4 recap. I need to stop neglecting this blog!!

Small World Z

Oh boy..

A lot of this time was spent on finishing touches, N3DS support, and the submission process for SWZ.

New Release!

On November 21st, 2019, SWZ was released for Windows/Mac/Linux on Itch, and for Android on Google Play.

We also released this awesome trailer that Josh made:

N3DS/IOS

The game did not release to N3DS until January, and an iOS version is still coming, very sorry about the delays. I have been busy with our next title to be released, as well as doing a EU release for Phasmophobia.

CHax 2

bet that name caught you by surprise. Yes, I opened up the ol project folder and I removed all the networking code in preparation of using a new API. Then while I had it open, I thought it would be fun to prototype an AR feature. It did not take much work, it looked incredible, and I really want to come back to it soon. I’ll share more of this in the future if it comes up again. Just know It isn’t an abandoned project.

Altruism: Matchmaker

MATCHMAKER HAS COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED!

A whole lot of work has been done! Lots of animations and levels have been done, and something I wanna talk about in this post is the transformations. It has been a core element of the game and I don’t think I have discussed the mechanics at all.

Here are the four transformations, just like the original! (These are revamped from the original Altruism: The Game)

Transformations in Matchmaker will give essential powers for passing levels. To create a transformation you must make certain combo matches! These are listed below:

Key - Opens Locks :)

Combo: Match 4 pink or purple tiles in a square!

Platform - Resets part of (or the whole) board!

Combo: Match 5 blue or green tiles horizontally!

L - Clears an L shape on the board! MORE POINTS!

Combo: Match 5 pink or purple tiles in an L shape!

Spiked Squirt - Falls down and eliminates any red tile it touches

Combo: Match 5 blue or green tiles vertically!

NO MORE DARK MODE

This is a happy game about love, so why was it so dark looking?

Coming Soon!

There really has been too much to share but I am excited it is finally coming together and I can’t wait to release this game. Should be sometime this year :)

Other Things:

I work on a lot of random stuff on the side here and there, a lot of it never gets released but is always there for me to come back to when I feel like it. Some of it I don’t share to the blog but I think I am going to be more open again because it’s nice to have stuff documented and that’s hard to do is nothing can ever go public. So here are some things I worked on over the quarter.

Card Game Simulator

This is pretty cool, there isn’t a whole lot to say about it other than it’s designed to be able to play any card game you want online with friends, a lot like Tabletop simulator, but this game targets mobile users as well and will focus mostly on card games.

New Shooter (Undergrudge, Release Date: TBA)

This is the new shooter to replace Arena 51. It’s gonna be a fun one, and I will share more details about it in a future announcement post.

For now checkout these prototype GIFs, because developing in secrecy is becoming lonely too much isolation for me.

So i know this is a little late but here we go. I mostly just worked on Small World Z in these three months. It has been all end-game content, adding more dialog, fixing tons of bugs, and doing IAP implementation for the mobile versions of the game.

It was a super busy time and I didn’t document or milestone a lot of the stuff I did, I just worked and worked and worked.

Teaser

At the time of writing this, the game has just released and we have a launch trailer but for the sake of continuity I will plug the teaser here. We learned a lot from making this teaser that helped make our trailer a lot better. Check it here.

Awesome Artwork!

Our artist/my girlfriend made this amazing piece here, it includes some of the game’s bosses.

Other Things

I started working on something else too in my free time. This project here is going to be replacing the previously teased “Arena 51″, although keep an eye out for references to both of those games in Small World Z.

CHax 2 will be continued again soon now that Small World Z is being released. I think the focus will shift onto CHax 2 and Alrtuism: Matchmaker, both of which have been shown off in old dev logs if anyone is interested.

+1 for some consistency bringing in another quarterly dev log and +1 for being early on this. Yes, June isn't over at the time of me writing this but it's just around the corner. So let's talk about what iv been up to.

Small World Z

A lot has been accomplished on the road to release. A big visual change is the new scrolling background we got.

Been working on polishing some mechanics and graphics here and there. We finished the four main bosses of the game, all that's left is the final boss. We also have a total 5 abilities, 4 of which you unlock as you defeat bosses.

I have also been working very hard on improving the framerate and performance of the game for N3DS. So far I have been making good progress.

Oh and here is what the 2nd boss looks like.

TyperIO

TyperIO is a "command-line(CLI)-esque" text API for Unity 3D that acts as an extension to Unity's UI Text component. This thing let's you type input into a Text component at runtime and even invoke functions using the text input as a passing parameter so it makes it really easy to implement this into a game for any needs ranging from RPG dialog to a debug console.

I developed this in my free time and it started when I reused the dialog system I made for Small World Z into my Point-and-click game kit. Instead of simply reusing it as-is again, I decided to rewrite it and make it an easy asset package that's ready to go for any project.

I wrote some example projects with it such as: A "Hello World" 'console application', another CLI program that demonstrates a couple of super basic commands like "print", and even a chat system using Photon.

I actually ended up using a combination of TyperIO and the SWZ Dialog interface for my game Grim & Tonic. (See below)

Grim & Tonic

I made a game for Ludum Dare again!!! This time with the help of not only my cousin Josh, but my lovely girlfriend Alyssa joined again, and so did my friend Andrew who I don't think has ever worked on a game before but I appreciate his talent in literacy!

Grim and Tonic was a match-3 game in which you have a limited amount of time to out drink death. By making matches you get in the lead, but you must avoid matching poison bottles because they will lower your win percentage. If you can settle the board at 100% you will win.

See how we did!

Machine Learning?

So in a random spark of glorifying a solid spontaneous idea that I came up with, I took it upon myself to learn what machine learning actually was. However, before I delved into any research, I took some time and outlined some ideas in my head to come up with what I think would be a reasonable approach on machine learning and what would deem the correct classification. I then compared my approach to the approaches I found online and noticed mine was extremely similar to the one specified for game development and AI. Let me show you the graph here.

Reinforcement Learning is what I had already self-identified as a reasonable approach so I went along with that, worked on a project for a few days, and then canned it. I know I built up a lot of anticipation but yeah I didn't accomplish much. I did dip my toes though and I have to say it was very delightful and would love to revisit this experimentation later down the road.

What I did come up with was a paddle that tried to learn to keep a ball from rolling off, no matter which direction the player moved it. I learned a lot from this but ultimately didn't come to conclude a decent experiment. Although it did have its moments, check it out.

Conclusion

I'm still here!

If consistency was a person I would be the executioner pulling the lever on their poor innocent soul. ...That's a dark way of saying I've been inconsistent.

Maybe this year I can try something different and make a blog update every 3 months. This might be easier for me to do. Let's see if I can do that.

Phasmophobia

Mid-January I started the year off in the right direction with my belated release of Phasmophobia: Hall of Specters 3D for the New Nintendo 3DS™!

This was my first release on any console hardware of any type and I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! I can't wait to release our next 3DS title in development, Small World Z.

See the trailer:

Small World Z

Hall of Specters 3D was a port of our existing title so it was easier to develop. Small World Z is actually a whole giant expansion to it's original predecessor. So, it's been taking quite some time to finish.

It has actually been in active development and making a lot of progress. A lot of this is documented on our Kickstarter page.

In January I was making a game mode called Horde Mode where you and some party members are pit against endless waves of zombies.

(can't share any more images in this post because Tumblr's limit, maybe I should have split this post up into smaller ones :p)

Then in February I did some graphical updates like lighting and new health bars.

Then in March I had put it together some more, added a dodge roll ability (among other abilities), and even implemented the first boss fight.

At this point I had already typed everything below but Tumblr decided to erase it so I will be retyping it with less details and context and mostly summarize what I had originally written.

Altruism: Matchmaker

Matchmaker has been really fun to develop but tricky at times with a lot of hard to clean bugs. Alyssa has helped out a lot with these concept art character designs that I ended up turning into pixel art with her help and made the game look a lot better.

Really happy with how this is coming along. Haven't worked on it since the end of January but that's because SwZ is priority right now.

Other stuff

We decided to scrap our online action-packed top-down shooter game, Arena 51, previously announced on another blog post. In favor of a similar idea that we will execute later down the road. We are currently in the design phase.

I also have been working on a point and click game kit for Unity 3D to help me or anyone else it could help. Will post more about it in the future if I release it

Nothing new to announce yet, we got Small World Z in the works, then Altruism: Matchmaker.

Exit is on hold until I find time to expand upon it more.

CHax is also due for an update as I have to rewrite it's networking code in lieu of Unity deprecating their networking api. I will hopefully do this after Small World Z is released.

Conclusion

I have been working on a lot of stuff but it's hard to make updates here sometimes because it's always difficult to do on mobile but it's more convenient to be able to do it from my phone especially since that's where I have most of the media I want to upload on.

This will most likely be my last year on Tumblr, I will find somewhere else to document my development.

I STILL HATE THE TUMBLR APP. EVEN SAVING DRAFTS AS I TYPE MY UPDATES I STILL MANAGE TO LOSE A LOT OF MY POST!

Edit: now as I tried to save as draft again, it deleted my whole draft. Wtf Tumblr .. this is why I don't make updates very often.. I'm considering using a different site for blog posts now..

Edit 2: seriously, I spend half an hour typing and structuring something for it to all be deleted. It's so aggravating 😫😭😣

2018 was great let’s recap!

In the beginning of the year I started a few ambitious projects but about halfway into the year I became an official Nintendo Developer and I started working on a new title for New Nintendo 3DS, Small World Z, and I also ported our existing title Phasmophobia as well.

Then late in the year after the development of Phasmophobia was finished, we started development on another title that will be for New Nintendo 3DS and mobile devices!

Altruism: Matchmaker is our new Altruism game. It is sort of a sequel to Altruism: The Game but it is not a very story-driven game. Matchmaker is going to be a match-3 style game but it will use a lot of familiar elements to the original title. Here are some late 2018 development shots.

So during this time there was mostly work on submitting Phasmophobia and development of Small World Z.

Small World Z

New Game...

New Altruism IP!

I have been doing a lot of work on a new Altruism IP in this time. I don't want to fully announce it yet but I will be glad to show some EARLY development stuff.

If you can't already tell. It's gonna be a match-3 game. My first time in this genre and oh boy I never thought it would be as fun as it is. I never got into Candy Crush but I was a huge bejeweled fan. Funny story is this game was starting off to be more like Tetris but after some careful consideration it became a match-3.

Just a side note the game has progressed a lot since these photos. I will post photos appropriate to the recap dates. There are some more late December screenshots to show but they include the game's title so I will wait until I post my 2018 year recap to announce the game and show those.

Conclusion

As of my time writing this, I am so excited to share the projects we have in store for 2019 and am very happy with our success on our New Nintendo 3DS™ title Phasmophobia: Hall of Specters 3D. Check it out here!

So I have been slacking hard on updating the old Dev blog! Let's catch up another 5 months like last time.

So the first two games that I teased in my first 2018 re-cap have not seen any development since Small World Z has been in development. However, we have other things on the horizon, and I remember the 2nd half of the year a bit better than I did the 1st so we can have some better chronologicallity at the cost of less consistency. Always with the lack of consistency...

June-August

By the beginning of June, I had already obtained everything I needed to start developing for the Nintendo 3DS and to release our games on the Nintendo eShop digital storefront.

So, I launched an ambitious but small-scale Kickstarter for Small World Z, a full-developed successor of a prototype I made for a Ludum Dare back in 2017.

Flash-forward to July, the next month, and we had successfully reached our humble goal of USD $150.00 which we used to purchase our iOS development license (which was probably purchased a bit too early honestly) and the rest to cover a small portion of our hefty 3DS development expenses that came out of our own pockets.

And through August, the development continued...

Working on titles for a handheld gaming console like the 3DS is very fun and a great learning experience.

August - October

Sometime in May is when I was tinkering with 3DS development and I wanted to see if porting Phasmophobia was possible. And it was.

I had a lot of issues with the framerate when porting Small World Z but a lot of it had to do with my lack of experience in that field, so I didn't have a lot of hope for a 3D game like Phasmophobia. However, after stripping away all the flashy camera effects and tuning down all the texture resolutions it seemed to hit a solid 30fps pretty easily. I shouldn't have doubted it so much but it was coded by me in 2016 and I have learned a lot since then so I knew my code wasn't very optimized.

So in September I formally announced Phasmophobia to be released on Halloween. Unfortunately, plans fell through, and delays after delays have been made. The game is still in the submission phase and we are working out all the problems. We hope to see the release soon.

These issues have taken a toll on Small World Z's development but when we aren't working on one we are working on the other.

Conclusion

2019 is gonna be a good year. I still have to make a dev log entry to go over November and December but it is mostly Small World Z related info and a new game I might want to tease. Please use these Facebook pages to stay up-to-date with Phasmophobia and Small World Z:

Phasmophobia Facebook Page

Phasmophobia Official Website

Small World Z Facebook Page

Getting back into the groove of things so I'm making this post to catch up on pretty much the last (and first?) 5 months of this year.

The beginning of the year was pretty slow and I can't remember what months I did what exactly, but I got back into development in February after getting this awesome idea for a game.

New game! "EXIT"

This is gonna be a crappy Dev log considering I don't want to spoil too much before announcing any games but this one is called Exit. So this is a-(gross my cat just sneezed all over my hand as I was typing this.) This is an informal teaser announcement. I won't talk about it too much but it will be on PC, Mobile, and Web. It will also only have co-op play, no single player.

I can't wait to formally announce this project and release more info since this game is what inspired me to start developing again. It would be finished by now but.. well I'll get to that in a minute.

Another new game!

Whoever knows me, knows I can't be locked down to ONE game. I had fun with the idea of EXIT and it sparked a lot of creativity in me. I craved an action game that I could enjoy playing with my friends. That should be announced soon after EXIT.

You guessed it..

Now let's talk about what I am currently working on. Yes. Another game.

So back in April of last year I had made a game for Ludum Dare called Small World. It didn't do that great but hey, I had a lot of fun making it because I have been wanting to use RPG elements for a while. It also ended up being a very unique idea. After playing over it several times and getting feedback from others, I had decided to make a "sequel" to the game that would be a very large expansion developed on top of the existing game.

Small World Z

The game revolves around the seemingly infinite amount of NPCs and interactions you make with them inside an infinite 2d sidescrolling world.

Now let's throw some more weapons and zombies into the mix and we got ourselves a hootenanny!

This game is going to be our first title to be released on the Nintendo New 3DS handheld system, as well as iOS.

We also made a Kickstarter, which was successfully funded! But I will talk more about that next time since this happened in June, but go ahead and check out the link for more information on the project. Here is a GIF of an early mobile build.

Conclusion

I haven't been working on my own PC lately so I haven't been taking proper screenshots. However that's 2018-related. Let's talk about what happened last year.. finally.

Jan-Mar

The beginning of the year started great. We did some major updates to CHax 2 and talked about how modding support will work. Not a lot has been done to CHax 2 since this time, however I can confirm when the time comes, game modes and modding support will be top priority.

Meanwhile, Altruism also got a makeover, packaged with an unfinished level editor to muddle around with.

April-June

Bug fixes were made to CHax 2, and I started working on some new projects. One was just a prototype design with a paper and pencil art style but that idea was scrapped and I ended up creating a new game for Ludum Dare 38 called Small World.

(Fast forward to 2018 this game is getting a huge update as a new game. Checkout the successfully funded Kickstarter)

July-Dec

These six months were unfortunately inconsistent and I was messing around with a few prototypes.

I experimented with an endless jumper because I really liked the minigame in New Super Mario Bros on DS.

I stopped working on it after I saw a game that was way too similar in a Facebook group that I followed.

Soccar2D was a fun one that I experimented with.

Basically, Rocket League 2D.

So after May of 2017 I did end up taking somewhat of a hiatus from the public. I was working on different t prototypes over the summer but I hadn't made any new blog updates or shown anything.

Things we're really inconsistent at the time and since then things have gotten a bit better. I have been working on a couple unannounced projects as of early 2018 and am excited to share what has been done.

I will most likely recreate my 2017 year recap that never uploaded due to an error, and I will add some screenshots of stuff I did over the summer.

Monthly Dev logs will be back in order starting with May 2018. I may post some seasonal recaps to cover what was missed out over 2018. In fact the frequency of Dev logs may change overall to be either bi-monthly or seasonal. The point is once that's decided, things should be consistent again.

Aaannnnd... CHax 2 development will start again in early 2019 because of the time I am dedicating to other projects this year.

On the Tumblr app on my phone...

My apologies that this re-cap is almost a month late. I have been pretty busy with personal life and a 2nd job. May is my birth month, I turned 21 on the 19th. I have kinda been taking this month as a break, unintentionally of course. 

Happy birthday to me!

I do not have a lot anything to show this month 

=(  

I’M STILL GOING!

Let’s get into it.

CHAX 2

I released a bug fix update towards the end of the month. Now I am working on something bigger. Also, I am continuing to work on modding support. Stay tuned for more.

Small World

I made a new game for Ludum Dare 38 called Small World. It was very interesting and I felt like I was free to do something I wanted to do for a long time in a small minimalist fashion. It was nice to make a game I truly enjoyed again. Give it a try on Ludum Dare, Itch.io, or play the latest version on Facebook.

The game randomly generates a population of NPCs as you play. These NPC’s will always exist in the world if you happen to see them. You can talk to them, recruit them, or fight them. There are also RPG aspects. as the actions you do can either heal your hp, earn xp to level up, or earn cash to recruit more people.

Paper Something

I started working on a small game for a mini ld... but I never finished it and i thought I’d still post this funny title screen screenshot..