New Release! (Sort of)

Still cracking away at my first 'real' attempt at a game, Drunky Pants, but not a lot has changed visually so a blog update would be boring. I'll toss in some quick update notes at the end of this post though to get you up to speed!

In the mean-time, I took a weekend to re-skin one of my classic Android fart apps in to FartHaus as a fan project for the Funhaus youtube channel.

The app takes Funhaus' gassiest member and puts him in to his own fart soundboard app with 32 sounds and some animation. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

FartHaus App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.AwkwardLion.FartHaus&hl=en 
Funhaus Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCboMX_UNgaPBsUOIgasn3-Q

As for my game Drunky Pants, I've made limited progress but am just trying to tweak some little gameplay stuff and rules before getting too far in to the art/new features (AKA, stuff worth posting about). I want the base game to be fun on it's own, and then build on a good foundation. 

The big thing right now is coming up with my drinking rules and the pace. I want the game to get people talking with each other, laughing at ridiculous questions/answers, etc. But not at the cost of them getting bored and abandoning the game. Its' a tricky balance!

Depending on if I get any time during the week to work on it, I may get to do the first real-life test with some friends this weekend. If so, I'll report back on the first test. Fingers crossed!

Another Project: First Look

I'll have an update on my drinking game app "Drunky Pants" soon enough. It's getting to a playable state and I should be able to start testing out in the real world soon! I just want to get the rules dialed-in a bit more since some of them don't make sense with recent changes I've made. There's a brewery near my house, so I'm thinking of just heading there to strike up a game with strangers and get some feedback. Is that weird? Depending on the feedback, I may rustle up a small Kickstarter to help cover some development costs and make it really official (and bring it to iOS!) if people seem to like it enough.


Anyway, just a quick post today about something else I started on. Every once in a while I'll get an itch to start something new and take a break to rapid-prototype an idea or learn a new skill unrelated to the grind of finishing my current app. Oddly it helps me stay motivated and I get more done overall, even though my focus is split.

Sometimes out of that comes something interesting and unexpected. Here's the first screenshot of a recent quick prototype I did. This came out WAY differently than the original idea, but I like what it's become.

Yep, that's a platypus.

This idea came from me wanting to learn to use xbox controllers. It's a big goal of mine to move on from mobile and make some fun little experiences for PC, and I personally just love the feel of a gamepad. Game Maker makes it super easy to get data from the controllers so I was up and running quickly!

While my original intent was to start on something akin to Towerfall, I found myself fiddling with multiple control stick inputs on a single controller somewhere along the way. I found that controlling two things on the screen with a single controller was really difficult but fun, so I'm making a quick game out of the concept to see what people think. I liked this enough to create a quick design doc and even a name.

The working title is "Venn". In short, an image will appear in the middle of the screen (the platypus in this case). The player (represented by the red circles) must use their cursors, each controlled by a separate stick on the gamepad, to highlight two objects bouncing around the screen that can combine to make the image in the middle (since it's a platypus in this case, there is a beaver and duck that bounce around).

I had the main idea and controls for the circles working after my first session with the game. But it's taken me weeks to get back to it. While in the shower, where I get a ton of ideas, I thought of an "easy" way to do the scoring system (which only increases if the player has one object in each circle) and after a couple of tweaks, it's working great!


I have a couple more systems to put in but this is already sort of working after only a couple hours of fiddling. I still want to make this multiplayer but once I get the main systems up and running, it will be relatively easy to add in more people. Exciting!

...and We're Back!

First off, you'll notice my challenge updates just kind of stopped. It's a bummer and I let myself down. I was too ambitious too quickly and set up unrealistic goals... but I'm back! I still like the idea of my dev/fitness challenge and want to bring it back in some way, however this time I'll think things through a little more clearly and using what I learned last time before just diving right in. Now for a quick update on everything!

Things are finally slowing down at work & in my personal life and I can start getting back to a (somewhat) regular development schedule! I'll be posting updates here when I can but by far the better place to follow me is on twitter for the latest quick status update. You can hit me there @_AwkwardLion_   I'll probably be keeping this blog to weekly updates or so, but they will be regular.


With that said, I really got back to things this morning and accomplished quite a bit before the sun even came up (partly in thanks to the new Matt & Kim album that came out today, New Glow, waking me up and keeping me energized)! I continued work on my ongoing project, I'm picking up my game where I left it all but abandoned late in February this year.

My focus now is polishing it up at least a little so I can get people to test it and hone the gameplay. I tried to test the game with friends over the last month with my last iteration, but on multiple occasions I just couldn't explain the concept. It's amazing how you can sit and explain things to people, but they just can't grasp what's in your head if what's on the screen doesn't match it!

This morning I:

1. Cleaned-up some code. 
2. Adjusted the art.
3. Got one of the main features of the game, rule selection (that'll make sense later), working. 

Before I explain, here's a couple of screens as of the end of my development this morning. Not nearly done, but a lot more friendly than a grey background and some random unlabeled squares.

My current title screen. Based on a term my wife likes to use.
Any thoughts on using that as a name? It's growing on me.

Current gameplay screenshot.
The final art will be a little clashy due to the 90's gameshow theme, but not nearly this bad!

Now for some detail on the work I did starting around 5:30 this morning:
1. Clean-up Code
          - Since my last real effort at this, I learned that using 'global' variables is kind of a bad habit in a lot of cases. Most of my game was running off of these and at the time I thought it made things simple, but I read-up on how to use local variables properly and reference in other objects. WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. It's so much easier to call another local variable rather than use globals (obj_whatever.variableName = x). I still have some old global ones sticking around in systems that I don't really need to touch, but a majority of the others were removed and swapped with better functioning local variables that are easier to work with.

2. Art Adjustments
          - Goodbye random boxes, hello bright colors! Still a long way to go, but it took a big step forward in making the game at least manageable for people to understand when I explain it. Previous to the images above, it was just a grey background and randomly colored boxes all over. There's also a little movement to the background and things look a lot better than in the screenshots. Hopefully this will make it a little more friendly for testing. Especially now that buttons are at least labeled and the buttons/selections are working properly.   Which brings me to....

3. Rule Selection
          - A major part of the game and it's totally working! At the beginning of each turn players have a decision. Either select a player to face a consequence that the game randomly selects, OR select a consequence that is randomly assigned to a player (possibly even the player who selected it!). Before I just had a single 'test' button that would cycle through the options, but now players can actually tap on a rule and have it light up while the game selects its victim. Or, they can press the "doom another player" button and the game will cycle through the three randomly chosen consequences. It works VERY well using the local variable scenario I described in 1. This being in place means my basic game loop is done! As I write this it's dawning on me how big of a deal this is. In theory, I just need to add some animation and polish and I'll have something close to the final game! (Although I have a ton of 'extra' features I still want to try and add.)


Anyway, that's it for today. Made some really big strides and am glad that even though I wasn't working on the game directly for the last month, I've still been reading and researching game design & programming in GML. Keeping it top of mind and learning some 'best practices' has really helped.

The next big step will be testing the game and getting feedback to improve it and to see if it's even fun. Who knows, I may have to scrap the entire thing if it turns out that I have a complete stinker on my hands.



Another thing to celebrate is that AwkwardLion mobile apps have passed the 700 downloads mark! Sure, that pretty much may as well be a "0" when you're talking about successful Android download numbers, but as someone who's just doing this with a little bit of free time it's exciting to know that many people have at least checked out the work I've done!

Developer Fitness Challenge: Day 17

Recovery! I was right. Turns out the issue I had was with the switch system I created. Good news is that I didn't lose everything and have to start over. Bad news is, I have to re-think my switch/lockout system. It works fine until the end when I want to reset the board, then I run in to some issues with the next step.


I have a few more ideas on how to approach it, but I'm just not sure what the simplest will be.


Anyway, hopefully the next update will have some more interesting info and some good news. I'm coming up on my busiest few weeks of work for the year starting this week so hopefully I can maintain focus when I'm developing before/after work.



Edit: So I decided to take an extra 20min. and reset a few things. Managed to fix the main issue I was having the most trouble with last time. I'm getting the turn to end and create a new button that when pressed, resets the board for the next player.

The best part is, I think it'll work with the old 'switch' system I had in place. I should be able to put that in place tomorrow and have the whole system working for the first rough but complete game 'loop'. Exciting!

Developer Fitness Challenge: Day 16 (Part 2)

Just need to post out of frustration. While trying to simplify some of my code, I managed to break EVERYTHING I had done so far. The buttons I have built in to test just don't do anything anymore. I'm sure it's just a misplaced/mis-triggered variable somewhere but after a few days of little progress, only to end the day with a setback is just really demotivating.

I don't think I'm going to fix it tonight, my brain is fried. Hopefully after a good night's sleep I can get some fresh eyes on it tomorrow and recover.

My first thought is to remove the variables that 'turn off' the buttons (I added these switches so players can only make one choice at a time) because that's probably what is locking me out. If that works, it'll be a huge relief. If not then I'm going to have to backtrack a lot more....