So I’ve been goofing around with Hexels. It’s a fun tool, and even if you have no idea what you’re doing (like me), you can come up with some lovely images in a short amount of time.

This might be a pipe dream at this point, but I’ve played around with the idea of releasing the music for Rebound as a paid download.

I sat down last night and worked on a rough sketch for a potential album cover. It’s kind of bare, but I think I like the overall design.

One more example of me doing things I’m not qualified to do.

I’m starting to think that audacity is the most valuable resource that a game developer can acquire. The personality trait, not the program. Although, Audacity is pretty helpful, too.

Sorry things have been so quiet around here this month. Here’s where we stand:

I’m almost done with making new things. The Thermosphere is nearly complete. This is a good thing. However! This also means that there won’t be much to show you, in the way of screen captures, that you haven’t already seen. However, however! I still have a lot of work to do in making the game not crappy (which is the opposite of playable).

So we have this dilemma where I’m going to be tweaking things for a few months, and there will be nothing new to look at.

And that’s one of my favorite parts about following devlogs: looking at neat stuff.

I will struggle to find a solution!

I really like Arvi Teikari’s updates for Environmental Station Alpha. He uses .gifs of gameplay, so you can see the game in action without having to load a video. I’m not sure how realistic that would be with Construct 2. ESA is also much prettier than Rebound. But movement is maybe the most important aspect of this game I’ve been working on. So maybe we can freshen things up with little tidbits of gameplay.

Heck! Who knows. What I’m saying is, if you’re one of the [number] people following this game, I’ll try not to leave you hanging.

Way back when I introduced that gunk to Rebound, I had to make triggers to create different splattering objects, depending on where the gunk landed.  This is what they look like.

I was excited about the development, but also a little worried that I had introduced a ton of work that would annoy me later.  These triggers are small, and they have to be placed meticulously throughout the level.  I knew this would amount to several eye-shriveling hours at the computer.

But I underestimated how much of a worker bee I am.  In fact, these little triggers have become a valuable part of my work rhythm.

All sorts of folks work on video games, and we all have different needs and impulses.  Some of us are visionaries.  Some of us are drones.  Some of us think visually, sonically, or kinetically.  Some of us can’t think at all, unless we’re twisting our beards fervently, late into the night, until we find an awkward pile of short hairs and skin flakes on the desk in front of us.

Sorry, that’s gross.

What I’m saying is, there are a million different ways to work on a game.  And to some extent, because of the complex mixture of mediums present in games, you need to dabble in all those forms of creativity.  Sometimes you need to be a visionary.  Sometimes you need to be a technician.  But since you’re one person, certain modes will drain you, and some will recharge you.  Throughout this project, I’ve started to see that big-picture activities like level design take a lot of energy from me.  And meticulous, repetitive tasks give energy back.  So after a couple long days of visioneering, I use activities like the careful placement of tiny triggers to recharge.  I throw on some music, glare at the screen, and twist my poor beard into oblivion.

Whenever you work on a team, you typically have someone playing the role of Project Manager.  Sometimes that person will actually hold the title, sometimes he will just end up in that role because of his natural leadership qualities.  But when it’s just you, getting yourself out of bed, forcing yourself to sit down and work, you have to be the Project Manager, whether or not your personality leans toward leadership.  And part of effective management is knowing how to best coordinate and utilize the personalities at your disposal.  So as a one-man game development team, you have to be Visionary, Artist, Technician, and pulling it all together, Mr. Manager.

Wearing a lot of hats, knowing when to switch between them.

Anyway, this is all a very roundabout way of saying that, after a few frustrating weeks of trying to figure out space, I took a break and made some triggers.  And the worker bee has been placated.

So now we’re getting to the place where Marty’s sprites correspond to the environment.  Or, at least, that’s what I’ll try to cultivate in the Thermosphere.  Apart from resolution and palette, Marty and the enemy sprites appear to have different light sources.  This is something I did on accident, but then I noticed I was doing it, and now we’ll just pretend that I meant to do it.

I think I’ve settled on a theme for this world, along with a palette and a general sense of trajectory.  But here at the beginning, flexibility is key.  I’m starting to learn the rhythm of getting an idea, trying it out, listening to what the game has to say, then following up on (or discarding) the experiment.

After making the demo and starting a new job, I’ve lost quite a bit of momentum.  But I’ll try to settle into a groove this week.  Also, I’ve been thinking about making some minor adjustments to the website.  Specifically, it might be time for my Ice Hockey buds to retire.

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This is the music for the Prologue.  You might notice a stylistic difference between this and the other tracks I’ve posted for Rebound.  That’s because this was made with the Korg M01 for Nintendo DS.  It’s a really fun program.

I’m hoping to use the M01 to create a distinction between the music you hear in the game’s Prologue and Epilogue and the music you hear in the worlds between.  This goes back to my decision to make Marty’s resolution different from the creatures around him.  I wanted to represent this musically as well as visually, if I could.  The M01 definitely has a different feel from the DS-10.

Enjoy.

Well, I’ve mostly finished Eden.  The music is coming along slowly, but everything else is pretty much there.

I think the next step is to make a demo.  I definitely wanted to have a majority of the game finished before I put out a playable version of it.  And I would say (pending some cataclysmic scenario) that we’re there.

So for the next few weeks, I’ll be chipping away at a checklist of bugs and whatnot.  This means that I won’t have any new content to show for a while.  I’ll try not to be silent for too long, though.

I should have a working demo ready in [several] [units of time].

Here are some examples of changes I’ve made to sprites in the development of Rebound.

Some have been dramatic, others not so much.  The most important change I’ve made so far is in the eyes.  That was a result, I think, of changing Marty’s design.  These other characters needed to become less cartoonish.

Drawing and animating sprites has become one of my favorite activities.  I can see why aspiring developers tend to get caught up in visuals, to the point of neglecting the rest of the game.

Any-old-how, that’s what I’ve been up to.

This rendering of Marty represents a dilemma.

Every once in a while, I’ll make a change that creates a paradigm shift for the rest of the game.  The last time that happened, I decided to make that gunk splatter all over the place when you killed an enemy.  It was a simple change, but it caused the rest of the game to expand, including the story.  It also lengthened the production time by a month or so.

For a while now, Marty’s sprites have included greys that were not part of the original palette and a higher resolution.  Before that, everything adhered strictly to the limitations of NES graphics.  But I haven’t felt right about Marty’s look for a long time.  In the process of adding some color, I applied a different sort of shading (cel-shading, as opposed to the minimal contour lines found in the other creatures).  I really like the way he looks in that style, but he looks nothing like the rest of the game.  That’s the dilemma.

I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that Marty doesn’t come from the world he explores in this game.  He’s from someplace else, and I’ve been trying to accentuate that idea ever since I made that gunk, and the story solidified itself in my mind.  So now I find myself dividing objects that represent the two worlds.  I like the idea of contrasting these elements with different visual styles (and possibly musical styles), but as I did with the gunk, I have to decide whether this is a case of “raising the bar” or “getting too big for one’s britches”.

We’re looking at a change that could lengthen the development time of this game beyond a year.  There’s nothing magical about the scope of a year, but when I started Rebound, one of my primary goals was to keep things simple.  And this is not simple.  I like this change, but I feel the need to “count the cost”, as they say. (I’m just full of idioms today).

In any case, I’ll do some research, and as always, watch lots of Miyazaki.  It seems that every day, I find myself doing things that I’m totally unqualified to do.  I’m humbled, and grateful for the chance to work on games.