X-Mas Break 2018

Hey all. Its been a while since my last post so I figured I should do an update post.

As usual the winter saps me of my strength, both mental and physical. I'll spare the details, but needless to say I've been epicly unproductive.

The above statement is a little on the glass half empty side as I did manage to devise a workflow in creating isomeric tiles. The main issue I was having was with getting the alignment so seamlessly mesh together, but I solved that problem with a pretty simple grid in layer groups to help me offset things properly.

Another problem I faced was with layer masks, but thankfully the latest version of Gimp supports layer masks for groups which is going to make my life a lot easier since isometric tiles don't conform to typical standards. I still haven't put it to the test, so I'm going to hold off the party poppers. But I'm pretty sure it's going to work out when I get off my ass and do something with it.

During the break I've been trying to make simple stuff like the UI elements. I'm hoping to have some rough drafts of the basic HUD before the break is over.

I So Metric

So, since the last post I've been brainstorming on ideas, writing up what a MVP would look like and doing some concepts for the “Harvest Moonisk” game I mentioned last time.

I've started modelling the PC and got though most of the retopology for the main body. After that I have to model hair, cloths and a few parts of his anatomy I was saving for after I have the main mesh made. Then there is rigging, materials and what not. The materials that are used in the Toon Kit add on I bought a few months ago look impressive enough to use instead of the Blender internal material that I typically use. The problem is the line art functionally is nowhere near as good as freestyle. I know that I could probably just run a color pass in Cycles then run a freestyle pass in BI and finally combine them in some kind of raiser imaging software like Gimp, but doing that for animation frames would be tedious to put it mildly.... I'll have to look up a more stream lined way unless the technology improves by the time it comes to print my animation frames.

So after much deliberation, I thought that my life would be too easy by just sticking to plain ordinary birds eye view tiles. So the solution I came up with is to make ISOMETRIC tiles!..... But seriously though, I remember my fond memories of playing Harvest Moon 64, and even though I know that it was partially 3D and you could pan the camera, I typically played it in isometric view. Some of the most interesting 2D games I've played used an isometric view, so naturally I would like to at least try to make it work. So far I have the basics down and can make some bland tiles. The real trick will be making more complicated textures seamless

Things seem to be moving smoothly so far. Real life keeps throwing me some curve balls but I've still managed to (mostly) keep doing something daily.

In not so gamey news I finally went to an anime convention (called N2U) around my neck of the woods.

It pretty much turned out how I though it would. If I had to summarize the city I live in, in one phrase, it would be “ho hum”. That's pretty much how I would rate the convention.

Now to be fair I didn't stay that long and It may have ramped up later and I may have actually enjoyed myself more. But after the first “panel” doing a 180 in subverting my expectations, the lack of events and overall small size of the convention, my inability to mesh properly in crowds of people that I don't know and the fact that the transmission in my only working transportation is trying to break free of its constraints (yes this is as bad as it sounds). I couldn't relax enough to try and enjoy myself. I bought a weekend pass but will probably forgo tomorrow.

So my rating in paragraphs:

Market: Had some OK stuff but was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too small. The event planer had some trouble with the venue the first time and had to refund everyone, they managed to get the “issue” sorted out and started selling tickets again. I suspect that most of the people made other plans instead of signing back up. Nice variety, but way too small.

Anime Theater: Like seriously, I know that this was a small convention, but showing just the first or first two episodes of anime that has already been aired was kind of lackluster. Maybe getting the licenses for fall anime just premiering for the fall season was out of scope, but they could have at least showed anime movies instead. Good way to waste time quietly while waiting for friends I guess.

Game Center: This wasn't too bad. They had a nice variety of consoles set up and for people that like co-op fighting games. They had a few collectors edition NES, SNES, Genesis and a few Xbox and Playstations.

Panels: Maybe they had some better panels lined up before the first cancellation but..... If the idea was to get rid of me, they did a good job at that /s.

The first “panel” was get the audience to draw a pose then show it to the speaker so he can rate it..... Seriously. Maybe this was fun to the younger members of the audience, but my idea of a panel is the speaker(s) talk about a subject, then members of the audience ask questions/make comments in turn. Maybe there were “better” panels later on but everything just finally came down for me and I had enough.

I'll have to give the organizers credit though. I'm sure it was hard to restart the event right after telling everyone that made plans, cancelled them, then to restart. I suspect that some of them didn't even bother to sign up again. This is the size of event that you go to when you know at least a few of the people that are going there or are meeting up with friends to go together. Maybe next time I won't have so much to worry about and I can try to enjoy myself more. I'll probably be aiming for a larger convention though.

Of Clownish Clowns

TL;DR: I'm going to work on a different project and Crunchy Roll just got woke, so I expect them to go broke.

One of the major problems of having a day job is it gives you a lot of time to think about your hobbies. After the first week of re-releasing CatAttack!!! I decided to look at the statistics that are available on the itch.io platform. I'll have to admit that I was a little disappointed, but realistically I kind of figured that these are the numbers to be expected. After just under 2 months my “game” got the grand total of 254 views and 16 downloads (Subtracting the test download I did). Someone actually downloaded the old Unity version once 0_o.

The only thing that I'm a little sad about (other than almost no one wanted to play my game T_T) is that no one even bothered to to leave any feedback on any of the web forums that I posted to. Still I'm not one to pass criticism without looking at myself in the mirror, and if there is one person that is guilty of over lurking, it would be me -_-;.

Still, no feedback is feedback in itself. From what the numbers tell me I failed to make an impression with the “customers” that I'm “selling” my game to (ya I know, “no shit Sherlock”). Light fan service type games just don't really attract crowds. So to put plainly, I'm changing gears,... again.... Yes, I realize this makes me look like a clown, and I feel like one too.

This wouldn't be much an issue if I was just planing on doing this for shits and giggles, but I would like to eventually have a means to leave my day job should I want/need to. And to do that I figure that starting with a Patreon game is probably a good way to begin, as you only really need the minimum viable product to start selling yourself. I still plan to make full releases, but having a Patreon will allow me to be a little more flexible. Also I don't plan on opening a Patreon right away, as a good portion my money would just go to the government via taxes since I still have a day job (no need to be over-productive when you are punished for it -_-).

Anyway, so after looking at what was successful, I decided to make a zombie survival game!.......

Just kidding.

The really popular games are of the monster girl breeding/sexing variety. I had the idea in my head for a “framing simulation” (Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon) for a while now. Monster girls won't be the main focus but will be a major part of it. I originally put this game in the back of the pile because I felt that my current skill level would be insufficient to make a game as complex as a “farming sim”, but after completing CatAttack!!! I have confidence that I can make it work somehow.

The game is still just on paper and I have nothing but air(vapour)ware to show right now, but hopefully I stick with this one. Either way, I'm sticking with game development and building my skills.

So it would seem that Crunchy Roll hates money, or at least that was the impression they gave me this week. “What were they thinking?!” is the only thing I can say about recent events. They essentially did everything they could to trigger (at least) half their user base....

OK, so for those that don't know on Aug 22 CR reported their master plan to have a division devoted to making original content to add to their platform, as they are primarily a localization platform for Japanese produced anime.

Someone had the bright idea of hiring a studio that held 3ed wave feminist ideology to do animations. The studios promotion video looked more like an April fools joke than a promotion, it was that unbelievable. Instead of selling their idea, most of the time was spent galvanizing how they had a diverse staff of 100% female writers and 50% female representation in their creative department because apparently women are still “stuck in the kitchen” and need help to succeed..... I find this incredibly sad because I saw a video recently made by the lady that owns Sad Panda Studio (Crush, Crush) and instead of boasting about how awesome she was because of her wamenhood, she spent several minuets going over her portfolio and what she intended to produce with the money raised by Patreons.

Needless to say hiring 3ed wave feminist and soy boy cucks to make western animations didn't go over well with a good portion of the CR user base, with many people (myself included) stating their disapproval and that they would be cancelling their subscription in due time. This stunt is just another nail in the coffin that has been steadily constructed by lagging behind technology with their outdated web player and their tendency to not show uncensored versions of the anime they hosted. The fact that they censored the first game they localized is still fresh in peoples mind.

One person I watched on Youtube came up with the theory that this was intended to create controversy, which I say may be right, but did they ever stir up the hornets nest if that's the case. Either way, I suspect that they will “go broke” long before this stunt bears (if)any fruit.

As for me, I have no plans to renew my subscription. Every 2 months or so I spend about 100-150 dollars on manga/anime anyway, so I doubt the industry is loosing any money by me. As for a streaming service, I'll keep my eyes open for one I like. In the meantime, I'll be going to where I went to see the uncensored versions of the anime CR refused to provision.....

Truly, CR deserves the Clown award of 2018.


EDIT:Spelling

CatAttack!!! Re:released

After a few months of on and off development I got CatAttack back to where it was in Unity.

It has more features like collectibles (that don't really do much), hidden areas that encourage exploration and a new attack system that uses the bells as projectiles instead of 1up material. I feel the design is a lot better too.

I wanted to add more stuff, more sound and a couple of different music tracks, but was running out of steam. I pretty much accomplished what I wanted to accomplish for now anyway.

So I uploaded the new version to itch.io. I feel more confident in it's overall feel this time around.

As for what's next, I'll probably go back to blender and try learning a few new things. I also should invest more time into FL Studio because I realized just how much I suck at it.

Du wae of Godot

Being on vacation for the last few weeks has given me time to finally put in some valuable practice and training. So I decided to hammer away at Godot.

There was a top down game I was working on a few months back,but quickly came to the realization that I need more practice if I didn't want to have a mess of code.

So even though I said I probably wouldn't, I went back to that crappy platformer I made a few years back and recently re-published on itch.io. The reason for this is because I already have most of the assets made, and to be honest, I feel like I did a pretty shitty job last time.

Due to the fact that I have time on my hands (and the housing market is shit) I've made steady progress. Most of the code I needed to learn to remake what I did in the Unity version has been learned. I also now got the hang of coding a finite state machine, so no more hiccups with animations not playing or playing at wrong times.

I'm still working on the boss animations and decided to make a search and find collectible system, since the game is only one stage. I hope to have a re-release by the end of the month, or at least early next month.

CatAttack!!! Republished

A while ago I noticed that crappy game I made a year or so got removed from Mega. Since no one commented asking for a re-up I figured that it wasn't a big deal and just left it alone.

I've been observing a publishing site known as itch.io and decided to use CatAttack as trial to see how easy it was to publish a game and find a more permanent home for my download (hopefully more in the future). I happen to also be following another developer and have been waiting for him to publish his game on the site so I could buy a copy. So ya, killing two birds with one stone.

Here is a link to it, in the event you want to torture yourself: https://arkinum.itch.io/catattack-ffffm

I'll update the link on the finished projects too.

As for game development news, I haven't really been doing a whole lot. Mostly due to fatigue form work and the very long lasting winter. I'm confident I'll get back into it eventually when things settle down and the weather gets a bit warmer.

That's it for now.