Staying in the Know

Pepsi Ranger · Post by **Pepsi Ranger** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:39 pm

Hey Guys,

So, I've noticed that discussions have fallen by the wayside around here lately, and given that my own participation (and even my lurking frequency) has dropped significantly this year, I can see that spending even two weeks away at a time does not reveal the message blitz or produce epic catching-up sessions that it used to. And that's fine. We're all busy.

So, I thought that this might be a good thread for keeping each other in the know about where are projects are, what might be slowing us down, and whether or not it's realistic to see updates or releases in the near future.

For me, I've cut progress down on The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition and Entrepreneur: The Beginning V1.3 in a major way since May, and have instead put most of my creative focus into e-books. Story-telling has always been my main motivation in anything I produce, and I've written so many things in the last two decades that I've never given a fair chance to find an audience, and I just think it's time to see what kind of legs they can grow. So, I've been updating and converting old stories into e-books through a site called Smashwords, which bypasses agents and publishers and distributes titles to companies like Barnes & Noble and Apple (for its iBooks catalog) as if you had gone through those people, even though you haven't, and actually giving complete strangers a chance to read those stories that I've held back for years. Nine days from now, I'll be taking a chance on a novel I've just finished, called The Computer Nerd, that's based on a short story I had written eight years ago about a man who finds out the wife he had committed to a mental institution has recently escaped, and she may be coming home to cause him some trouble, and unlike most everything else I've unleashed online, this one I'll be charging for. And it'll be neat to see what comes of that. (FYI, James has offered some technical input and some relevant feedback on key moments in that story, so special thanks to him for that. He also supplied an example code in C++ that I basically used shamelessly in the story, so thanks also for that.)

And that's been my focus as of late. Even now as I type this, I keep thinking I should take a short break from writing and work a little on one of these games. But then I think of the commitment I've made to myself, and to potential buyers, to have three more books done by the end of the year (one's a seasonal short that'll take just a couple of hours to prep and release, and one is a flash fiction story with novel-sized complexity that would honestly work better as a novel, using real-life celebrities as important characters, and something I may ultimately postpone or cancel if I can't figure out how to do this in a "fair use" kind of way), and the three novels I need to have ready by April, June, and August 2016 respectively.

As you can see, it's a lot to take in.

So, my OHR progress is pretty much stalled for the time being. I'm no machine, of course, and I need to change gears from time to time. But it's looking unlikely that I'll have anything new released or significantly updated on the OHR before 2017. No project is ever dead in my mind, but it's a fair bet that all projects are taking the long way to completion. And though my stock for anticipation has been low for the last few years anyway, I still think it's fair to leave an update for those who are curious about progress on my games.

I will say that none of this (so far) affects my plans for Heart of the OHR 2016, which is less than five months away. For those of you looking forward to it, it's still on the schedule.

So, that's my progress in a nutshell. What are you guys up to these days? Are you working on anything? Have you stalled on anything? Are you working on something when you "have the time"? Give your mini-progress update here. Let us know if we should be holding our breaths.

Gizmog · Post by **Gizmog** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 11:10 pm

I want to be working on stuff but I'm not. I'm piled sky high with stupid errands most of the time, and when I'm not I really don't want to be doing all the stuff I'm bad at to try to get a game out of it. Maybe when an idea comes along. As always, I consider myself semi-retired, but I've been feeling a little more semi than retired lately, so who knows?

Spoonweaver · Post by **Spoonweaver** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 11:27 pm

I'm currently working on Dungeon Bout. I've talked about it on here before, but I suppose I can talk about it again. It's basically a more chess like fantasy tactics game. Basically, you get a set of 5 pieces made up of a variety of 6 different types of pieces that can move and attack in their own ways. These different pieces and the way they move and attack are based off of common fantasy classes, like knights, archers, and rogues.

I'm planning a trailer for this soon, as well as a beta (local multiplayer only) release. A kickstarter and a steam greenlight are in the games future as well. So that's some of what is holding the game up. I've been working on some of the marketing things for the game rather then the actual game.

Also, a new job and a new baby have really cut into my game development time.

Anyways, the local multiplayer for the game is almost 100% functional. I'm ironing out some of the bugs, adding effects, and polishing things up. After that, I'm going to release a limited version of the game. The full version will include a 1 player story mode with AI, puzzles, and Boss Fights. I hope to finish the full game early next year.

Willy Elektrix · Post by **Willy Elektrix** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 12:42 am

I hardly every post but I read the forum daily. It seems to me that there have been less posts and less new games this year. I believe it is because people are working on much larger projects now. The emphasis in the community seems to be making monolithic games (even if most of them never get done).

In any case Shea Kennedy and I have been working on a game for one year, and it is very nearly done. I am finishing the final area and fixing bugs. He is doing graphics, and is a bit behind me, but I expect we will be done in a couple of months (hopefully).

It's called Void Crypt (maybe Void Pyramid). It's a dungeon crawler set in a futuristic version of ancient Egypt. I am very proud of it and I find it very fun to play, which is surprising since usually I would be sick of a game I had worked on this long.

Feenicks · Post by **Feenicks** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 12:53 am

I don't really feel I've got all that much done with many of my projects this year. Harpy game hasn't had that much done with it, and my other projects (the ssci-do one and the 3d maze one) haven't had that much work done with them either.

Anyway, if it gets to winter break and I haven't accomplished much of anything with harpy game, I might have a go at wrapping up the sci-fi one I was doing, since that one's relatively small (and doesn't really need all that many more graphics drawn to be comprehensive)

(Huh, I made the 3d maze script this year? Feels it's been a good bit longer than that)

Fenrir-Lunaris · Post by **Fenrir-Lunaris** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 1:50 am

This year has been the year where I've been working almost exclusively on art assets for the two major non-Vikings related games, specifically with maptiles and large character "portraits" (really just transparent backgrounds). All things considered though, I haven't been able to get much of anything done on account of having exactly zero free-time during the last 8 months. For what it's worth I've managed to revamp ALL the graphics of Meh 2.0 to a much more colorful palette.

Back at the very end of August I decided I needed a lifestyle change, and finally left my retail job to work as an independent commercial artist. In addition to making somewhat more money than I was, also has the nice added effect of giving me a much MUCH greater amount of free time to work on other projects. The one OHR-related project that's received the lion's share of attention in the last month as been the notorious "Raep Dungeon", if only because that's the one that my fans have been frothing at the mouth to get their hands on for the past few years. It also happens to be the one game that I'm not working on alone, which has been a blessing and a curse. It's also the one project that for reasons that should be fairly obvious, I won't exactly release on any official game list.

At any rate, I've advanced too much effort into these projects to give up and never finish them, though the content of the former seems no longer relevant to my situation, and the later will absolutely be off-putting to just about everyone. Both of those projects are effectively nearing the 80% mark of their development process, and are really just awaiting a whole bunch of art assets so they can be within a hair's breath of completion. In sort, they're at the same stage as a certain OTHER project of mine...

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 1:57 am

Hollowkeep is on hold until I feel inspired to work on it again. I'm lacking the conceptual cohesion to really bring it to fruition at this point. I went in with a 'feel' of the game I wanted and an aesthetic I was shooting for and I think I did succeed on those points so far. But making it a well rounded game isn't gonna work at this point. Also, I've been art averse lately, drawing things has been hard.

Work on my ongoing RPG project (still untitled after 17 months!) is tentatively being resumed; playing Undertale inspired me to get working on my passion project again. I've been doing a lot of 'screenplay' writing and drawing concept sketches for area map layouts and monster designs. I started carrying my laptop with me everywhere again so I can bash out ideas with FocusWriter on work breaks.

Post by **TMC** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:19 am

Good initiative, it's really nice to hear about all these projects. I'm looking forward to pretty much everything mentioned here, so I won't bother to name them all.

Pepsi, I say work on whatever you want or need to. Don't work on your games for our sake; obviously it'll take years more either way.

But wow, it's nearly HotOHR time again! That borders on terrifying.

Sadly I have done very little work on the OHR for the past months/half year, which I always feel bad about. I've been saying that the next OHR release will "probably be this month" for months, but lets make it this month! There are just a few bugs to look into; we've almost learnt our lesson to not stall releases for new features. I really don't know how we managed to go so long without a release.

I found myself collaborating on a traditional roguelike programmed in Lua called nush. We were aiming to release it for the Annual Roguelike Release Party (ARRP) last month, but I decided I was too busy, and haven't done anything since. It was far too much fun working on it to allow it to die.

I spent a few weeks doing some prep work for the new HamsterSpeak interpreter, reusing an existing Lua virtual machine. So working on nush has been very helpful for motivating me to read almost the entire Lua manual.

I was theoretically working on a game with Giz and Hawk but actually the passion was gone the next morning. If only you could create a baby in one night.

Earlier this year I spent a few days working on an amusing OHR tech demo, but I hate to release it until it gets a lot closer to its potential; it would be a wasted opportunity to amaze otherwise.

In recent times I worked on two other non-OHR games, one of which exists solely as a comprehensive design doc, the other is my game for Willy's Ultimate Challenge contest. That actually got fairly well along, and I hope to finish it one day because I very much like the idea.

Carcere Vicis is not dead, but I'd rather not work on it until we have the new HamsterSpeak interpreter. It will be a test subject.

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 4:02 pm

I have enjoyed this thread. I really like reading about how people are doing on their long-term projects. Here is what my project queue looks like (it seems to behave like a LIFO queue)

Cursed Potion Of Resist Ice (cpori)

In spite of the fact that I have scripted hexagonal grids and A-star pathfinding for this, I hope to keep the scale of this game small and simple. The last time I tried to work on this game idea (using python in 2012) I let things get to big and got overwhelmed. What really got me motivated on this again was playing <a href="http://crescentmoongames.com/wordpress/ ... ">Microgue by Jason Pickering</a> which manages to be a really great game in spite of being very small-scale.

Vorpal Florist

I only lost one set of enemy sprites in my hard drive crash, but it was still discouraging. I want to add one more boss for a total of 3 before calling this game finished (especially since nobody has given me any feedback on boss #2 yet)

Bob the Hamster Dirt Dig

I only need to make like 3 more levels and I will have 50. I only need to put a few finishing touches on the level editor. I have steam greenlight. My Mom keeps asking me to finish this one.

Wandering Hamster

Never give up, never forget :)

Maybe by the time I have enough free time to finish this my daughters will be old enough to playtest for me :)

Right now their respective computer skills are:

3-year-old: Has mastered the (A) and (B) buttons but still presses the tip of the Wiimote directly to the television screen

7-month-old: drools on my wife's keyboard while trying to drag herself closer to Grandma on Skype

It is going to be a while before they are ready for traditional retro 2D console-style RPGs

Matokage · Post by **Matokage** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 8:04 pm

It's good to see some progress around this place.
Me? I'm not sure at all. I try to focus on my games, at least I try to get something done but I feel desencouraged to work on something after so much happened in my life this past few years. Changed work 3 times, get a block on music production, all new things happeing at the same time and some times it seems it does not worth working on something anymore, but I try to.

Agaresta: Lands of Nobody
I'm still working on the walkabout graphics and all. Just need to plan some new races and build the classes. After that is finnaly working on the scenario, that seems to be... I don't know... someday. Apart from graphical work, I got everything planed for a full Charater Sheet using globals and some smart but simple scripting, even lame at some point.

GTA - Connected -
A restarted that project countless times and I still want to produce a working freeroam, Urban, Political incorrect, game.

Isometric
It started as a simple game, but it took too much criativity from me! And I didn't started to a write a story for it, just a scenario and a complete Crossed paths system, allways passing by the same map, but from a diferent entrace.

And thats all for now, and I'm starting to think that returning to the OHR by the end of the year is not just coincidence.

Sorry if I commited any grammatical mistake.

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:27 pm

In the past week or so, Master K and I have started work on a collab game of our own. It started out with very little direction, but as we talked and threw out ideas, some pretty fantastic things began to form. The player takes the role of a time travelling protagonist who appears much more youthful than he really is as a side effect of meddling with the fabric of time. In his endeavours to stop the plans of a mysterious villain with seemingly limitless powers, he meets friends across the timeline. Some friends include a gunslinging law enforcer, a lonesome magician who deals with the dead, a carefree bard with tunes of a Norwegian based culture, and a veteran knight who runs a tragically unsuccessful tavern.

Ultimately, this game will be a traditional RPG with a dual party system which alternates between past and present. The protagonist travels through time, but his friends do not join him. This will produce unique challenges in the present and past as you must adapt to which party members are available to you. We have great hopes for this game and actually have much of it planned out already. We hope to have it available as soon as possible, and based on how it's coming, I don't think it will be too hard.

I've been working on some stuff independently as well. I've mainly been trying to weed out projects which are unlikely to reach an end and find projects with a small enough scope to complete. Thankfully I think I'm finding a gameplan. I recently started development on a kind of 'base-builder' game where you play as a man with a plot of land in the forest and you attempt to setup your buildings for living, farming, working, etc. TMC, you helped me get the menu system working, actually, so if you were wondering, I am still using it, so thanks again for the assistance.

Other than that I still plan on finishing Return, as I feel that's one of the most interesting projects I've started. Although I began to burn out on drawing every single screen, so it takes some serious motivation. Hopefully soon enough I will be needing James's help porting it to Android. There are a few other game ideas I have floating around, but I need to research into how big the scope of them really will be before I start on them.

Bob the Hamster wrote:Vorpal Florist

I only lost one set of enemy sprites in my hard drive crash, but it was still discouraging. I want to add one more boss for a total of 3 before calling this game finished (especially since nobody has given me any feedback on boss #2 yet)

I hadn't realised there was an update! I redownloaded it and got to the first boss, but then I got stuck and had to leave. I find the game incredibly difficult, but I decided that it's a good kind of difficult. It's not cheap in many ways. Typically when I get hit, it's because I messed up. I love where the game is going and I will try to get to the second boss and provide more feedback on the original thread soon.

Foxley wrote:Hollowkeep is on hold until I feel inspired to work on it again. I'm lacking the conceptual cohesion to really bring it to fruition at this point. I went in with a 'feel' of the game I wanted and an aesthetic I was shooting for and I think I did succeed on those points so far. But making it a well rounded game isn't gonna work at this point. Also, I've been art averse lately, drawing things has been hard.

I genuinely believe that you can make a fantastic game out of Hollowkeep. If you just draw the next few scenes to get them out of the way, you may find it much easier to find inspiration for the rest of it.

Gizmog wrote:I want to be working on stuff but I'm not. I'm piled sky high with stupid errands most of the time, and when I'm not I really don't want to be doing all the stuff I'm bad at to try to get a game out of it. Maybe when an idea comes along. As always, I consider myself semi-retired, but I've been feeling a little more semi than retired lately, so who knows?

Hey, I thought Who Left All These Clowns Here (is that what it was called?) was really cool. I mean, sure it was silly, but if there had been a bit more to it, it wouldn't have mattered, because it was fun. I'm not sure what you mean by the stuff you're bad at, but I like the stuff you make.

@Fenrir: I love the looks of the game you've been working on lately. Can't wait for it.

@Spoonweaver: I'm excited for Dungeon Bout as well. I'm going to get as many friends to play it with me as I can. I need to get more friends.

@Pepsi Ranger: Thanks for making this thread, it's good to hear from everyone and be able to talk about my own stuff.