Oh man, just added speech bubbles to the game and it adds a ton of personality. I'm gonna reward myself with a break!
It's not letting me install the latest version.. Something about a "provisional profile has expired"... Looks amazing though
Changes that have happened. -Ports are now safe spaces in the game. While in a port, ships cannot shoot or be shot. This makes the game a lot less confusing, and also makes the "store" element of ports easier to deal with. -Ships are 3d! I was deliberating how best to deal with ship variety and ships leaning and other art stuff, and 3d ships solve many problems I had. I haven't done much 3d modeling in the last several years, but I'm glad to make this decision. -Progression and persistence. I'm starting to implement long-term persistent elements of the game. It seems all the best games take you through a journey, and that journey is often through slow accumulation of items and experiences. -Focusing on ships. I saw the design director of Dead Space 2 talk last week, and realized that the interesting choices within my game all relate to combat. Exploration is not what makes the game fun. It's all about encountering and maneuvering with various ships on-screen. This means I might have to do some slightly deeper AI work [very scared], but I think it'll be worth it. -- Anyway, here's a new shot of the game. It's starting to bear some surprising mechanical similarities to Dead End, so fans of that, be excited.
Gonna do some Twitch playtesting of iOS pirate game in about 15 minutes if yer interested: twitch.tv/randallion :]
Hi Randyo, Rogues lags sometimes(3 FPS)on my iPod Touch 3G 32GB that runs IOS 5.1.1! Also, how do you shoot your ship's cannons?
@sirhanet: you flick in the direction you want to fire anywhere on screen that's not the wheel or throttle. I am also trying to keep things sped up, but I have a feeling that this game may not work on pre 4 iPods and iPhones. I have a 3rd gen iPod as well, and it struggles a lot while my iPod 5th gen is running a constant 60fps. I am going to keep working on optimizing, but I may not be able to support 3 and earlier. Hopefully will know in the next month.
Stumbled across this game recently: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pirate-dawn/id903585850?mt=8 and it felt a lot like the sort of game you're trying to shoot for with Rogues (at least in its newer, streamlined/arcadey form). Thought you might want to check it out. It's rough around the edges but has some fun parts.
Oh man Jared, that game scared me! But sadly, as great as it looks, it feels rough and, at least on my ipod5, hard to actually battle. Always happy to try out people trying similar things, though, and it's a pretty big cool world that guy built! And it definitely gave me a couple ideas for visuals. Speakin' of which, maybe I should post this little GIF update here! This is the end-game screen. I'm also considering titling the game "The Risky Reef". Thoughts? I hope to get back into weekly updates shortly, but the past couple months have been interesting and busy and stressful!
Almost 2 weeks without an update.. bad me. NEW GAME NAME! Scoundrels: The Risky Reef That's the ship wheel you'll be using to steer your pirate to glory or guts. (Untextured) I took the game with me to IndieCade a week ago to hear how people felt about it. There was a lot of good feedback, and I'm at the point (or very soon) where I just need to have people play the game. When you make a game, there are so many directions you can take it. Simulation vs arcade, permadeath vs lives, quick vs slow. I have been trying to figure out where this game fits on the spectrum, but as a designer I generally don't stick to one side of a coin. I'm really into balance, and this is the deepest set of mechanics I've built. There are a bunch of moving parts, and I'm going to be dissatisfied if I don't hit several nails on the head. The big challenge right now is mid-term motivation. Even getting a score at the end of the game is secondary to why you keep playing. What makes you enter a battle? What makes you stay out of a battle? Why do you want gold? This is tied into the behaviors of everything. Your enemies, the ports where you purchase and sell stuff, etc. I think I took for granted how much everything matters. Anyway, so, the game is getting better, but I'm simultaneously uncovering new challenges. But writing this I just had a [hopefully] good idea! So, if all goes well, the next post will be more positive! Cheers, Randy O
Good election Tuesday to y'all! Risky Reef is movin' along. Things are shifting in style, such that the game is moving more and more into the arcade/quick-play realm, which I think is good for an iOS game. I've been making the game harder, because I like the idea of faster replays. It also ties into the idea that you're a pirate, the bane of society, the target, not the hero. So you actually start in a worse position than all of your opponents. Maybe that's bad, I dunno. I've also integrated treasure collection, and it's starting to feel cool and satisfying. Here are 3 of the treasures that I drew that you can steal from the ports. One thing that still isn't there is a good feeling of progression. You need to feel good the first time you get a quarter of the way to the end of the game. And halfway needs to feel better. And the first time you sink a port boss needs to be super cool. Also sorta considering converting all the ingame to 3d... Anyhow, that's what's up these days. Designing a game from scratch is hard work, and the quicker this game gets, the more I also hope to some day make a deep, slow pirate roguelike because this is not a simulation any more, but a completely different type of game. If enough of y'all buy Risky Reef, then I can afford to make that roguelike.
So I hate to do this, but I have to put Risky Reef on the backburner. I don't have the money or time to work on this. Being an indie is tough and often games don't make their money back. This has 4-6 months of full time development to make it into the game I want, and I can't afford that. I do have a couple bigger games that I'm really excited to be working on (Spider 2 and Soulcaster 3) and a board game in the Scoundrels universe that is going to kickstarter in a few months. So please, pay attention to those projects, cause they're all gonna be awesome. I will be doing bits of work here and there on Risky Reef to move it forward, but first and foremost I have to pay my bills, and this won't be doing that for a while. -Randy
Oh man, that sucks, this looked fun af, but hey! A man's gotta eat. Best of luck, I'll wait up for this one all the same.
Very sorry to hear Randyo. This is one of those I had on my (short)list. I fully emphasise with the situation, we've had some similar issues recently as well. It will get better
