Fair Competition

Game Update

Managed to get the spell effects working for healing. We opted to have them spawn on each troop instead of centering one large effect in the center of the squad. Typically healing effects have a caster and a target which would be fine accept that when it’s happening to everyone it’s just simply duplicating the effects for each troop. It’s likely I will still need a spell effect that will be empty to ensure that it still functions and isn’t to overwhelming.

We had enough time to start looking at the issue of flanking, and back attacking squads not changing the attack types. I’m feeling pretty good about this, although it isn’t fixed yet. The grids in the game are five by five and thanks to it being in the computer the numbers associated with each square are 0-4 (a total of 5 numbers for each x and y axis). The trick is we needed to come up with math that would reverse a 0 to a 4, a 1 to a 3, and leave a 2 alone. My mentor came up with logic to test which we take 4 minus the current position and then assign that number. So if a troop is in row 3 the math would be 4-3 changing their position to 1.

The logic is in place but it’s not working yet and so there’s probably one other part of machinery that’s creating the problem. As a code base expands this sort of thing is inevitable. It’s nice when I assume something will take a long time to fix and it takes much less time. I’m reminded of a GDC conference story in which the developer for the original Diablo had to change the game from a turn based game to a real time game. He assumed it would take a couple of weeks and completed it in a weekend.

Personal Update

Moving to day shift has been a bit of a transition but it’s been good overall. There were a couple of times when I had to attend to personal issues which took away time and energy but it’s like I always say, “you have to make your choices.”

My car needed some maintenance this week and that was a little scary as it was riding really rough. What was more concerning was attending to some family issues. Just like the car sometimes you need to take the time to maintain relationships.

Still I managed to push ahead a little further with my board game, although I haven’t done much testing yet. I printed out a bunch of cards and placed them in card protectors for some trial games. I have a first draft of my rules now and I have to wonder how good or bad it will be.

My sister had a birthday party this week for her daughter and my girlfriend made an amazing princess cake for it. I’m so amazed with her artistic ability. I’m glad to be with someone that can really compliment me to support my vision artistically. I want to support her dreams too. She’s someone that deserves to be successful in this world.

Game Development Insight - Competitive Elo Part 1

Sometimes this section is all about things I’ve heard or seen, and other times I leave my personal opinion. This week I thought I might talk a bit about competitive measurement systems. Specifically I want to compare the chess Elo rating system, and Wizards of the Coast Arena Rating System. As a disclaimer it’s been quite a few years since I’ve played competitive all day Magic Tournaments and I’ve never been in the chess tournament scene. This will primarily be some of my thoughts on competitive systems. Before I get started I will say that I don’t think there will be a perfect system for assessing a player, just like there’s no perfect assessment system in business for workers. Having something is better than nothing however.

The chess Elo system starts all new players being given points for an initial rating. That rating increases and decreases based on matches played and the opponents rating. This means playing an opponent with a higher rating can net more points. Players are taking points from each other, and taking a risk each time they choose to play. For some time this was the system that was used for Magic the Gathering however it produced some problems for their business model. Chess is a game in which players make a few purchases. Primarily a chess set. This means that it makes little difference if a player plays the game or not for years, the game simply doesn’t change. It also has no variance like a card game and so it may be a poor comparison to begin with. Still, they did use the same system for a while.

I distinctly remember traveling around and playing at random shops as my military career took me to many different places, often to the disdain of the regular players. After defeating an opponent he was visibly frustrated to lose rating because he would have to make it back up by winning 2-3 games compared to the one game I played him to take it away. It makes players very outcome dependent. This is also addressed in the anime about shogi called “March of Lions.” It creates a lot of drama for sure. It also creates a play pattern in which players play less to maintain their rating, which effectively takes their points out of the pool.

If players are playing less Magic the Gathering that means they’re probably spending less money on new cards, and tournament fees. This doesn’t make a lot of sense for business when you need to sell a new set every 3-4 months to shake up the tournament scene. Again Magic isn’t chess, it’s always pushing new product to keep players interested.

The general public was pretty outraged to hear about how EA is pushing Star Wars Battlefront 2 to match under powered players against higher level players against lower level ones to make them want to spend money on the game. This is the basic idea of all card games however. There’s a price to pay to be competitive, just like anything else. The issue comes in when a company might be eliminating some players due to affluence, but much of the competitive sports and e-sports scene is this way. I don’t personally have an issue with this idea within reason, but I think it’s something that typically gets ignored by most game journalists in both the main stream, and off brand spheres.

The answer for many companies was to move away from chess Elo and to other systems to measure players. I’ll talk more about solutions that have been used next week.

Happy Memorial Day

Game Update

Still working on he mass healing for squads in combat. All the numbers are doing what they are supposed to do but our particle effect isn’t spawning as we expected. The options were to make a large effect that would display on the entire squad or to make an effect that would spawn on each troop.

Now that I’m thinking about it, this might be an issue as we may need more functionality to make it possible for one troop to spawn multiple particle effects on multiple targets. It might be easier to set the center to the squad and just use one large effect. Sometimes walking away from the problem and then revisiting it later helps to clear your head a bit.

The big focus after finishing this particle effect problem will be ensuring that troops that are flanked or attacked from behind are using the proper skills. Right now it would seem that only their graphics are swapping over which is a major issue as that’s a primary game feature.

Personal Update

Happy Memorial day to all our uniformed personnel in the military and civilian sector. It not easy wearing the uniform as there are times when we become the least popular person in the room. I’m happy for the time that I spent in the service and for the ability to keep serving now.

Still looking toward a small vacation in Austin after taking my children to be with my ex-wife’s family for most of the summer time. I’m also hoping to have a small vacation with the boys when they come back to me later this summer. I really need to focus and take advantage of the time.

I really want to get the game to early access, and so I hope that I can line all of that up and get a solid release date soon. The major hurdles right now are getting the new business licence, putting the key art together, and fixing this new bug related to rotated squads in combat. Luckily my girlfriend has really jumped in to the key art role and we’ve been slowly building it up. She out works me and that makes me want to work even harder. She’s very inspirational to me.

Game Development Insight

I deviated a little this week and when I revisited an old idea to make a board game with the idea of building a specific type of business. I’m being vague on purpose. It might use dice rolling, and deck building. The main thing is I had to be inspired to create fun mechanics that also play quickly. I was recently at a hobby shop for a board game with a buddy and we were looking for more players. One person said that, “an hour was to long for a board game.” Kind of a cop out, but I get it. It would seem that attention spans are continually getting worse.

On the flip side we have mega board games and to the same extent video games that dominate all of a players time. Some of these board games take 4-6 hours to play one session. I suppose it depends on what type of player you’re building the experience for. The game I’ve played the most lately has been “Marvel United” due to its 30 minute play time. I’ve also been playing a lot of Root, mostly on my phone.

When I design my board game, time is very much a factor I have on my mind. It comes down to being focused and understanding the core game loop. I’ve decided for this game the core game loop is generating money (probably through dice rolls) and purchasing items to build up the business. The other mechanics like hiring staff, responsive game play from competitors, buying more equipment, paying rent, and getting a larger space are all secondary to that. As far as responsive game play I want to put things into the game which encourage players to build their economy together instead of throwing negative events at each other. It’s possible that’s less interesting than purely adversarial responsive game play. I would need to test it to see how it goes.

End of an Era and New Possibilities

Game Update

Mostly fixed the issue with the mass healing. It was interesting going through the code and realizing that we do healing in a much different way than other games. We give the troops temporary hit points during the combat which take damage first and then restore 20% of whatever is left over at the end of combat if they haven’t been expended. We still need to add the ability to use the particle effects with it though.

I did a little testing to see what all the new particle effects look like working together, and I found a new issue. It turns out that when troops are flanked or back attacked they are rotated on screen but they are likely still reporting their old positions in code. That means that a mage that should be doing a staff attack due to being in the front row due to a back attack is still firing off a fireball. That’s a major mechanics problem although it’s not game breaking I cannot release the game in this state.

Personal Update

For the last couple months I’ve been talking about moving my business licence from Texas to Florida which really means closing out my old business licence there and starting a new LLC here. As of this last week I finally completed step one of closing out my old LLC. This is kind of a big deal but it also means I need to figure out if I want to change the name of my LLC. I have a lot to consider but it’s likely I will be changing to Lancer Entertainment. By moving to this business name I can also use it when I DJ or do any other type of entertaining. I also have considered shortening it all the way down to just “Lancer”.

The next couple of weeks will go quick as I get ready for my boys to go away for the summer. I want to do my best to get the game out the door this summer. It needs to be all I think about. There have been times in my life when I really focused on something. Painting up an entirely new group of miniatures for a Warhammer Tournament, or writing out deck ideas for Magic the Gathering, or thinking about and dwelling on any number of other things. That’s what’s called meditation, not just reading something or doing it sometimes but dwelling in it and on it. I need to be that way or I won’t get this thing out the door.

I can’t wait to spend some time with my girlfriend as well. She’s shown a lot of interest in helping me out with the art for the game. I hope she can get as excited about the game as I am. I also had my musician tell me that he had some time to get a new track done for the boss stage. That said early access won’t have all of the stages. It’s hard to say what all I will be working on once it’s released as it could be a ton of bugs or it could be additional content.

Game Development Insight

Paying it forward to yourself is important. We do this by taking notes everywhere. I spoke earlier about dwelling and meditating on what you’re working on. I’d say that most people in the AAA industry would call that being passionate. It’s interesting because when you are truly passionate about something it can be hard to explain to other people.

In 2019 I found myself severely lacking in social skills that I had neglected for most of my life. After working on it I realized something. It’s really easy to go from zero to pretty good at a skill. Often you don’t have to do that much to get to a place that’s passable or pretty good. As you progress though it takes more and more to reach those higher platitudes. People in self development often say that your friends, and even your family might ask you things like, “Why are you working so hard?” etc... It’s possible they don’t understand or maybe they don’t want to be left behind.

At some point you have to realize that you aren’t the person that you used to be, but you are always the person you choose to be. It’s like I told my son, and my students so many times over. In life you make your choices. You can’t do everything. Count the cost, make your choices, don’t look back. This week felt a little more unfocused and existential than others. I suppose I’m asking myself what I have to show for my work, or some of the choices that I’ve made. Time marches on though, I keep pushing forward. It’s nice to have the luxury to ask questions like this, as I know so many other people are concerned with just getting by. Just remember to pay it forward to yourself.

Scheduling

Game Update

We continue to move forward working on adding more functionality to the combat script as it looks like we only have the ability to do single target healing right now. It looks like we should be able to add AOE healing to the game. We’re at a stage where anything we add to the game can’t be anything that won’t give us a lot of bang for the buck. Cutting down on feature creep is a big deal here.

I spent some time trying to close out my old business licence in Texas this week. I had some issues getting it done and so I might need to make a phone call this week. I also am looking into setting up a business licence here in Florida so I’m thinking about what the new name for my company will be. It might be a good idea to try out some different designs for the logo.

Personal Update

The biggest thing that I completed this week was a new planed schedule for how to spend my time during the week. I needed to build two different schedules as my day job can fluctuate from days to nights and vice versa. I also built in some time to work out which I think will be a a major boon to my productivity. As I run out of other one off chores that need to get done around the house I gain more time that can be poured into game development.

I’m thinking about setting a bunch of alarms during the day to remind me about major scheduled parts of the day. It gets a lot easier to focus when I don’t have to continually look at the clock. I might come up with some work rituals as well to do. It took a while but doing this blog entry every week has become a ritual that keeps me focused. For the first few years of working on my game development skill set I hardly touched it unless I was going to a convention or putting out a major update.

Still looking forward to getting some time away from my kids to focus this summer. Who knows maybe things will be productive enough that I can finally get the game to early access. That’s kind of a big deal as I focused so hard to make it happen last year. I’m glad that it fell through last year. I was in no mental place to be able to handle release. I have the support that I need to make it happen this year. Something I was sorely lacking last year.

Game Development Insight

Momentum and drive to keep working on the game are a big deal. I spent a lot of time running a Twitch and YouTube channel while having many other pans in the fire. Often I would meet new content creators that would say, “I’m going to make one or two videos a day.” It’s not like that isn’t possible, but I would always tell them to make a lower commitment and if they want to do more then they can make that decision if they felt up to it. At the time I set the bar at one 1-hour live stream to talk about news and build a deck for the game Hex the Shards of Fate. I felt it was important to have a commitment, but also to make sure that it was something that was attainable.

I while back I watched a game development conference talk that mentioned setting specific time to work and creating hard stops even when you have momentum. In this way you will want to get back to what you were doing and intensify your interest. I suppose is similar to the concept of buyer and seller/supply and demand. If you give yourself limited time to work then you should make better use of it by being focused during that time. We want what we can’t have, and so denying yourself something can intensify your desire to do it. That said you still have to keep the fire going by allowing it from time to time. It’s a balance. I was hoping to utilize this concept with my schedule in a focused way.

Happy Mothers Day!

Game Update

I’m continuing to work through all the spell effects for each troop in the game and the momentum is building. We ran into a possible new problem when I found a healing AOE effect. I’m not sure if it’s functioning as intended and it’s likely that I may need to add more combat script functionality to make it work. It’s likely that if I have to do that it won’t be in this version of the game and it will have to wait for final release.

I’m excited to see what it’s going to be like to have all the new particle effects running at the same time. It might be a bit of a mess so we will see how it goes. It’s definitely different than your typical tactical RPG which waits for each attack in order to make it a spectacle. We built a spell effect for a punch attack which we purposefully made look less powerful. It might be pretty important to make some attacks more mundane. That’s the typical thing that’s done. We use comparisons to signal when something is stronger or weaker to give the player a sense of becoming more powerful.

Personal Update

Happy Mothers day to all the moms out there! 2020 was tough for everyone, and without the help of my Mom and Dad I would have had a hard time stabilizing to the place that I am now. I’ve always said that my Mom might be the only one that reads my blog entries. A bit of a joke, but it’s nice to know that Mom is always there.

The school year is coming to a close and that means that my kids will be going away for the summer. I really need to pick it up and get this thing on early access Steam. I still have a couple of items that are ahead of it but I won’t have much of an excuse not to finish this year. I’m pretty proud that I’ve come as far as I have mostly under my own power. Sometimes I look at products on the market and I’m amazed at some of the things that are honestly bad products, but somehow they still exist. I need to stop worrying so much about having an absolutely perfect product.

I’m really happy about my girlfriend right now. She recently drew an icon for the game, and I think she’s going to make that key art that I’ve been looking for since 2020 when I tried to initially launch. For the first time I don’t have to worry about the person I’m with. I can just focus on what I’m doing and they support me. She has her dreams too, and I hope I’m adding to her endeavors as well. She’s an amazing artist.

Game Development Insight

Feature creep is a real issue with game development no matter if you’re an indie or a triple A developer. Feature creep is when a developer keeps adding more features to a game, or plans far to many. I’ve seen this with released games that have to many mechanics. Sometimes less is more, meaning that having core mechanics that define your game are the most important thing. It’s all about what makes your game fun. That’s the question you need to ask yourself.

For me in Six Aspects I wanted the player to enjoy fast battles, leveling up, getting stronger, and building tactical squads of troops. Tooling up squads and spending time to let the player feel creative are important. I want to do all sorts of things with the combat like adding a pre-combat phase and character movement on the grid during combat. Those features don’t add enough to the basic game play to make it worth adding right now however. So they go on a features list for future iterations of the game, so I don’t lose those ideas.

Some of those ideas may never happen, but that’s alright as producing an actual playable game has to come first. It’s important to have pillars of development in place to focus. It’s likely that a lot of triple A games have had a major issue with feature creep at times. Of course some of that may also be due to corporate decisions being made without taking into account the state of the game. Expectations of players are a lot higher for triple A games as well.

Asymmetric Design - Root

Game Update

I continue to work on the combat particle effects and just like last week I’m getting a lot done now that we made the pipeline simpler for testing. The newest edition to the spells is a wind storm that only hits the center three rows. I posted a picture of it on my twitter after it was done.

I started with one storm column and placed it in the center. That was OK, but I needed more coverage and at best it looked like it covered the center square. I added a front and a back storm which also looked pretty good. Then I thought what if I rotate around the center? So I found a rotate script that we had already written and implemented that. I kept iterating and eventually I ended up with 6 wind effects rotating around their centers in different directions and speed while showing good coverage over the center column. It was nice to feel like I had really expanded on what I had started out with to make something a little more unique.

I finished up the storms and on my game development night with Chris we worked on an issue where AOEs weren’t spawning on both the player and the enemy groups. After 45 minutes of plodding along looking at three different scripts and setting down a couple of debug statements the issue was in the initial coding. We had a conditional statement in which both conditions were being triggered properly but we were pointing to the same center point no matter which one we chose. So all that had to be done was to change a one to a two and that fixed the problem.

Personal Update

I’ve been getting more and more interested in board games lately as I settle in some more at home. I watched reviews for the board game Root and Nemesis a while back and I found that they started to come to mind more and more. I decided to see if I could pick them up at my local game store here in town. It turns out that everything I was looking for was sold out and I was unable to even order it later. I was specifically interested in Root as it has an Asymmetric Design that I haven’t seen in other games. I also watched some Let’s Plays on the YouTube channel Quackelope and it really seems like they have fallen in love with Root.

They didn’t have what I wanted but I did purchase the new Aliens game. I remember the Aliens 2 movie and the miniatures were pretty nice so it was an easy decision. I also picked up the big box for “Carcasonne” as I hardly see it available and we have played it often in the past. My girlfriend scolded me of course, but she was supportive overall and excited to see the miniatures for Aliens. She said something about them being cute.

Luckily Root is available digitally so I got it on my phone. Wow, this game has a ton of depth and just the right amount of complexity. I even think I could introduce people to it after they have played some easier games like “Ticket to Ride” or “Settlers of Catan.” I wouldn’t put the complexity past what “Agricola” does but it feels like it has more choices. It’s just a great fit of a game for me.

Game Development Insight

Being introduced to Root this week has opened me up a bit more to Asymmetric Design. Although I’m pretty new to it, I find it to be intriguing. The interesting thing is to play a game in which each player is playing a much different game but they are all using the same playing field. A good example of this in Root is how there are factions at war with lots of troops and economies, but then you could forgo all of that to be a hero character in which case the game will feel more like an RPG in which the other players are almost like NPCs.

I don’t know if I could make something quite like this. In the game I’m working on no matter what the basic game stays the same. You are building an army to run stages and complete the game. I can change some outcomes or allow you some agency with player choice but it’s not like I can implement an entirely new system to layer on top of the game in which you can win by forgoing the core mechanics that I’ve already built.

That said even in Root it has a couple of core mechanics that I notice are mostly the same no matter which faction the player chooses. From what I can tell those core mechanics are combat, crafting items, using cards to match suits for some purpose, and scoring points to finish the game. Beyond that everyone has different and unique ways of completing those tasks which makes for some amazing interactions. I would recommend this game to anyone that wants to try something fresh in the war game genre.

There are a lot of rules in the game, and if you manage to get the board game version it’s likely you will make mistakes. For that reason I think that it works best if you get the digital version on Steam or your mobile device. It’s also a lot cheaper than the full board game. It’s a great way to try it out first before you take the plunge. As for me I’m really hooked on it now.

Perfect Imperfection

Game Update

Managed to get some additional game development time during the week which has been rare as of late. I finished all the male character animations for the game which is quite a milestone. I moved on to the female characters and found that the animator for the flying ones was shared with the ground versions. This means that I had to duplicate the animator and make some changes to get it working correctly. It would look a little silly to have the ones without wings hovering during the battle.

I found a new issue with the way that we are spawning the area of effect (AOE) type spells in the game. It would seem that no matter who is casting the spell it always spawns centered on the enemy squad. Obviously a big problem which we will have to change. It will probably be a simple conditional statement to test which team is casting the AOE spell.

I’m not sure when I will move my business licence over but it’s a big thing that needs to get done. I just need to sit down and carve out some time to do it. I should also work on getting a solid schedule together of when I do my game development.

Personal Update

I had an exciting development with my second son who told me that he’s interested in making a video game this week. He said that he wants to make a “builder craft” type of game. Of course he’s drawing some inspiration from Minecraft. I told him that he needs to build a tree to combine items and play some other games in the genre like Stardew Valley, and Harvest Moon. I might build a simple construct for something so that we can go from there. It’s a good thing that I’m already well versed at making large lists of things and doing spreadsheets for my in-game troops.

I couldn’t be happier with my girlfriend as she’s taken a lot off of my plate lately which frees me up to get more done at home and be productive. She’s the reason that I got more done this week than previous weeks. She really likes some of the animations that I was working on and so I’m excited to give her an opportunity to add her own ideas to the game.

Game Development Insight

Perfect Imperfection

I was building all of the spreadsheets for my game and I had a friend ask me, “how did you come up with the numbers for your game?” My answer was that I was mostly guessing at what the values should be for the various skills. One core idea I’m trying to stick to is making AOE damage lower than single target damage unless the AOE is confined to anything less than the whole squad as a target. Something like 3 to 1 or even 4 to 1 in favor of single target spells.

Perfect Imperfection is the idea that if we have enough values and choices for the players we will come up with some things that are lower than the power curve and some that are higher. This will create some things that are simply better than other things. In this way we can make players feel powerful when they optimize and find the strongest pieces. I’ve experienced this a lot with mini-war gaming, trading card games, and online multiplayer battle arena games. Often a character, or item will simply be more powerful and more rare than others.

It needs to go beyond numbers though. Eventually I want to create some skills that are more about changing the board state in the game. I want to create a pre-combat phase which will allow for interesting mechanics like randomizing enemy positions, pushing/pulling troops, status effects, adding/subtracting attacks, etc… Doing this will create much more interesting player choices in the long run. It’s important to have things which aren’t necessarily “strictly better.”

What should we call it?

Game Update

Last week we finished a system to accelerate our ability to build new spells for our troops to use in the game. I don’t think I was ready for the speed improvement that I experienced when we had everything running. We almost finished 3 new skills in an hour last week. The last time we had built skills for the game it would take maybe 1.5 - 3 hours. That’s a massive improvement and so I would say it was definitely worth doing.

The other thing that improved was my motivation to work on the skills. Making them easier to build made me more willing to work on them. I found myself trying to figure out some of the interesting things I can do with skills in future iterations.

One other thing I had thought about that we may have to work on and iterate later would be to build skills that have no damage component or minimal damage due to a secondary effect. I had thought it would be amazing to shift troops during combat. The issue might be the animations when that happens however along with the fact that 3 round combat means it won’t effect enemies until rounds 2 and 3. I’m thinking about introducing an initial first strike round for status effects that will run before combat starts to make things like shifting rows more effective. Some troops only have one round of attacks after all.

I had some other thoughts about things I might be able to implement in the future. Possibly building some sort of random stage spawning mode eventually along with some items that will change the way the player approaches play. Maybe an artifact that improves all the players fire damage but reduces all ice damage as those elements are opposed to each other on the Aspect Wheel. I’m not sure I should call it that.

After showing some of the game to my girlfriend she mentioned that it should be “Elements” or called “Six Elements”. This is the same critique I’ve gotten from my good friend. The thing is the word “elements” is used all over fantasy games and that’s not the point. The “Aspect” idea originated in my RPG make game in which there is one deity (God) that has multiple “Aspects” that surface themselves in the 6 elements. The people of the game worship God using the elements and they all believe that their way of worshiping is best. This was done on purpose to mirror what we see in our own religious communities. One God worshiped by many with arguments about the best ways to serve Him. I should probably spend more time making this clear. A lesson of how being divided hurts everyone in the end. I see a lot of possible parallels in our society.

Personal Update

I realized this week that as I move my business licence from Texas to Florida it might be time to think about changing the name from Lancer Games to something else. I’ll be talking to some people to get some ideas, but I think I have a solid way forward. One of the things I want to do is build a company that I can make games with but also use when I’m DJing or conducting other artistic services. The name “Lancer Games” feels a bit restrictive now.

I recently read the book “Start with Why” which focuses on the concept of finding your why for your company. After reading the book I came up with the why for my company which is, “We Engage Players and Respect Their Time.” This “Why” is something I can apply to a lot of things, even ones outside of games. Maybe something like “We Engage While Respecting Time.” So many things in our world are built to dominate our attention, and maybe that’s better for business. I suppose I’ll find out.

Lots of other transitions going on this week with my girlfriend. Some things were a bit stressful but it’s important to see how strong a relationship is by putting it through some trials and tribulations. It’s painful but that’s how we grow as individuals, and how we grow as a family too. It’s nice to have someone I can really count on. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had that really until now. Being aligned is something that I appreciate so much.

Game Development Insight

Value Doubling for Quick Iterations

One of the concepts that I learned early on from my mentor was the idea of doubling or halving when I fine tune values in games. An example of this might be lining up a spells x/y/z coordinates in 3D space. Let’s say it was spawning around the characters feet and we want it to be centered. Instead of moving the value from 10 to 11 for the coordinate we should try 20 or even 30 to see a noticeable change and then bring it in from there.

We do this for 2 reasons. The first is that we need to make sure that the value is actually having the effect that we want. Often another issue might mean that we’re changing the wrong value. The second reason is to save time as incremental changes can be less than noticeable. Making extreme changes helps to get things done quickly.

Once we go way past where we want to be we can start going halfway between the values or make a judgment somewhere where we expect it to be. In this way we can zero in on exactly where we want the values to end up. We might also use sliders to move it in real time and then save the values or record them in some way to code them in.

Tools for the Trade

Game Update

As we work through adding all the new spells to the game we realized that one of the bottle necks was being able to iterate quickly on the model we were using in combat as well as adding the spell effect. We used to have to make a bunch of spreadsheet changes, then wipe out the save data, and then reload and hope that our new changes took. After making the changes we would have to set up the squad and then save the data and finally go to the combat screen and load in the correct squads for combat to see the spells and troop animations to match.

We shortened this iteration cycle by directly changing the troop and their spell in code. We now only have to change 2 hard coded values in order to get the same effect which should speed up spell creation considerably. This took a lot less time then I thought that it would which is pretty exciting.

I mentioned this last week but it’s always a trade off when making a new tool or learning a new tool. Those activities have to make the development process more efficient in order to have real value. In this case I think that we made the right choice and I’m very happy to have this option available to me now.

Personal Update

Time marches on and my work situation has changed a bit which is kind of a good thing as it’s an indicator that we may be moving away from Covid restrictions and towards normalcy again. I think that a lot of people are tired of it at this point. There has to be some time when we say to ourselves, “I understand the risks, and I will make my own choice.”

My girl friend keeps impressing me more and more each day. I’m very happy that I met her. On top of all the things she does for me, she helps me focus and take care of business. I thought about it and maybe I would have been a lot happier if I had tried working with previous girlfriends to see if we made a good team first. Who knows maybe I’ll write a book on it someday.

Last week was the last week for the new third section “Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer”, and I rather liked it. I’ve decided to convert that section to “Game Development Insight” which will probably just be me giving my take on Game Development industry news etc… I’ll be staying away from any sensitive topics however.

Game Development Insight

Speed running video games has become quite the phenomenon over the past decade or so. I tried to put a couple of things in the game to help speed runners out. Maybe I’ll add an on-screen timer to help out too. I could only be so lucky to have people like the game so much that they want to speed run it.

Moreover I’m intrigued to see the glitches that have to do with memory replacement lately. Ones like the Mario 3 World 7 glitch that moves from the stage to the end of the game, and the one in Ocarina of Time which teleport Link from the starting area to face down Ganon as child Link. It’s interesting to see what kind of memory replacement glitches that teleport the player are out there.

Again it makes me wonder what kind of memory replacement glitches could pop up in my game to teleport the player. That said the amount of scene loading and unloading is only for stages which is different from the games mentioned above. Still I’m curious to see what the public will find and break in the game. It’s not like I have a whole QA department to look for things like that.

Happy Easter!

Game Update

We’re working on a system to speed up the time it takes to get spell particle effects created. Currently I have to make a lot of spread sheet changes in order to test out a new spell effect. The new idea would allow us the ability to designate characters per each row to overwrite the current characters and thus we wouldn’t have to make spreadsheet changes. Figuring out what that will look like, or how many things we need to change to get it done is where we’re at right now.

Whenever something like this is being undertaken the same question comes up. That question is, “will the new process/tool help us build content faster?” Hindsight is always 20/20 here. Ultimately I feel that the biggest win will be setting aside more time during the week to focus on development as things calm down around the house more and more.

Personal Update

This weekend was Easter which gave me some additional time off. My girlfriend helped out a lot with setting up Easter baskets for my kids. I managed to finish up what I needed to do for 2020 taxes which was quite a lot with all the moves I had last year and all the transitions that happened. It was quite a crazy year all things considered.

I’m probably still not focused enough to get this game done, but I keep chipping away at it. The next big things that I need to get out of the way are paying off my 2nd vehicle, moving the title to Florida, closing my old business licence in Texas, and starting a new business licence in Florida. No rest for the weary. I guess in some ways I could consider that when I’m getting my personal life stuff taken care of it’s not directly game development but it’s still necessary to have the ability to get things done on the game.

Sometimes life is all about framing. Instead of looking at most of the things that happened this past year in a negative way I can always re-frame them to a more positive outlook. Even looking at future possibilities it’s important to see them as opportunities and not something to be fearful of. I wonder sometimes if things from my past are holding me back. It’s possible that they are, I need to keep moving forward but also make sure that I’m being mindful about my thought patterns and where they are taking me on a daily basis.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

10. What is the difference between game design and game development? Also, he needs your credentials for video game design as in what is your background and what training have you gone through?

I googled this because to me they're pretty synonymous and something tells me that most people in the industry would say something similar. According to google it says, "While video game designers are involved in all the creative aspects of making a game, game developers or programmers are responsible for the actual coding and technical aspects of putting a game together." So really what it's saying is that designers do the creative parts and programmers do the technical parts. A lot of indie developer teams over the years have come together this way. I'd suggest looking into the original Doom with the legendary team of John Carmack, John Romero Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall. Specifically John Carmack did all the programming and John Romero was more of the hype man pushing the product. More recently if you watch the movie "Indie Game the Movie" the team that made Super Meat Boy is shown there. Again there's an artist and a programmer. Be careful watching this movie as it glamorizes development and makes it seem like all indies are going to be successful and make a ton of money. It's more likely you will fail, and fail over and over. It's important for you to like what your doing while still taking care of your bottom line. You might also look at the team from Vlambeer with Rami Ismail. He's really good at spinning a narrative about how he and his partner "hate" each other. It's not true but it makes for a good story. Still you can see the relationship that the 2 men have.

Efficiency

Game Update

More work done on spell particle effects this week. I managed to get some extra time to finish up the new ice storm effect. This spell is being used for three different classes. It will be a big win to get it finished. I had a hard time finding a good spell sound to use with it. The sound of snow falling isn’t exactly something most people think about.

That said I did notice that I’m starting to get faster at going through the process of making the spell effect. Chris said that there may be some things we will want to create an editor for. It’s a bit of a trade off as I’m not sure how much time it will take to make the tool. I always knew it was going to be a lot of content authoring.

Personal Update

Having the boys out this week was a good chance to rest and get a couple of things done around the house. I missed the boys of course, it’s just not the same in the house without them around. I also had the chance to spend some more time with my girlfriend. It was nice to just relax and get some one on one time. Looking forward to Easter next week as we went out to get some small gifts for the boys together. It’s nice to have someone that supports me in my life.

I feel like I need to spend some more time working out and running. I’m still getting everything lined up here. It’s very true what I was told by another retired friend. He said, “it will take about a year for you to transition.” I still feel very blessed to be where I am.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

9. How do you design a video game?

I have basic ideas and a lot of my designs come from the experiences I had playing games when I was younger. The game engine for "Six Aspects" takes a lot of inspiration from an old Super Nintendo game called Ogre Battle. I loved it so much that I wanted to add on to it. I say that I love it but I still see issues with it. Namely the time it takes to complete a stage which led me to my pillar of 15 minute levels. I also think about who I'm marketing my game to. Because I'm a single dad and I'm older I don't have the time to spend 50 hours on a massive RPG anymore or just throw unimaginable time into a lifestyle game like League of Legends or World of Warcraft. I'm building this game for me and other single dads and moms that are out there. It's perfectly fine that my game will probably take around 20 hours. I'm an independent developer and that's still a pretty big accomplishment. I'm very proud of what I've been able to accomplish.

Discipline

Game Update

Finished up the particle effect connected to the staff attack in combat. Both our Male and Female caster types are using the same effect then they strike with their staff. Of note our Male Wizards do not have an actual staff. Not sure if I want to just add something to the model or not for them. We also added a tinkling sound when the spell effect is triggered which is a nice touch.

One of the issues we ran into was understanding the size of the spell effect that we were creating. I went ahead and dropped one of our prefabs for the wizard in the scene where we warehouse most of our spell effects. It seemed to be a good decision to save time in the future as we will likely be tweaking and full out authoring spell effects in this scene.

I’m happy with what was accomplished but I should get more disciplined to get more done. It’s been lacking a bit and now is the time to start some new habits to get things done. The big time vampire for me has been Arena of Valor but that should be over after this month as I’ve accomplished the things that I wanted to get done. I need to change my outlook on game development and make it into something I want to do instead of seeing it as a chore. So many things in live come down to the narrative that we tell ourselves. After re-reading my response to the aspiring game developer, I think I need to take my own advice and make a calendar and do my best to stick to it.

Personal Update

As stated above I need to get a little bit more discipline and make myself a calendar to get on track. I’ve been spending to much of my off time playing games instead of making them. Maybe they served a purpose at one point in time but I need to refocus a bit. I wonder how many other indie developers go through this.

Good timing to focus this week as I will get some downtime. I’ve also made some headway with working out a couple of household issues out and hope that they will be resolved soon. There is always something else to get done around the house, and it would be nice to make some headway on that. Of course I still need to start the process to get the business licence moved over.

Most of the boys and I were under the weather this week. It was probably something seasonal as it was mostly tied to a sore throat. Luckily my girlfriend knew what to do and she took care of us. She’s really been a great thing for my boys and I. I’m really thankful to have her in my life. It’s amazing what a supportive person can do to improve so many aspects of your life. It’s finally starting to feel like I’m getting back what I lost in 2020.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

8. What are some of the attributes of a good game designer?

Discipline - set regular times to work without distractions and when the time is over hard stop yourself. This will help you focus and keep your interest high. When I say no distractions that means no tv, no phone, no social media, and maybe music that isn't distracting (know yourself). Creativity - when you start out you will clone games, it's how you learn but start asking yourself crazy questions like "what if Mario had one life and couldn't get any more? Could we make Mario into battle royal." I'm using Mario because most kids tend to try to remake what's popular but it will be important to build something all your own. Super Meat Boy is a platformer, Mario is a platformer but they are not the same. That said don't be afraid to "borrow" aspects either. It's a balance. Focus - we alluded to this earlier but it's important to know you can build anything if you spend the time on it and it's within the computers limitations. Just because you can do a ton of things doesn't mean you should. This is called "feature creep". I could build 200 different troops for my game and implement a unique skill for each of them but how long would this take? How long before the characters become to similar that I'm making? Could I maybe make 20 characters and still have just as good a game? Be focused and aggressively cut out things that aren't getting you high value.

Spring Break

Game Update

We’re clipping along with building all the spell animations for the game. This week we started working on some stars that would pop out of staffs/wands etc… This particle effect will happen when a magic user is using their weapon in melee mode. We had to build this effect from scratch but I’m happy with it so far. My mentor Chris has been really good about helping me learn the Unity particle system.

Still looking to move my business licence over to Florida and I think I might have enough time this next week to finally make it happen. It really depends on how busy my kids keep me this week. It’s Spring Break this week and they’re all home.

I’m making headway on the Steam Capsule art as I have a bite on someone that’s interested in helping out with it. I’ll be going through some of the ideas I have to see if they will be able to do it or not this week.

Personal Update

I was kind of thrown off this week as I expected next week to be Spring Break and had planned accordingly. I had to pivot pretty quickly when I found out that it was this week. Luckily things worked out and it’s not going to be as hard as I thought to shift scheduling over a bit.

I had the opportunity to DJ for a friends daughters birthday party this past weekend and that’s always nice when I get to do that. I was thinking that I might want to start a second website just for running a DJ business on the side. It might take more energy away from finishing the game however and so I’ll have to weigh how much time it will take. I’m also not sure of the costs to run a second website with Squarespace. Hopefully it will be a nominal amount. I can’t see myself doing it if I end up doubling my yearly fees for the website.

On the love side of things, I couldn’t be more happy right now. It’s nice to finally meet someone in which I feel so aligned. I keep saying that over and over again, I’m not sure if there’s another way to describe it. I’ve had to deal with a lot of detractors or demons with past relationships and so it’s nice to finally be in one that doesn’t seem to have that factor. It’s really helping me to focus more and get things done.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

7. What are the best tools/resources to learn video game design?

Learn the engine that you decide to work in. For the most part the developers making the engines want you to use them and so they've at least attempted to make something that will help you build your game. For RPG Maker I spent 3 weeks following some PDF's to learn the engine. Some tools I have spend time in outside of game development engines are Blender 3D to make 3D models, character game hub to make 2D sprites, Ableton Live to create music, etc... There are a ton of tools out there that all do all kinds of things as well as plug-ins. Think about how much time it's going to take to learn how to use a new tool and if it will actually make your job easier or not. Every minute you're spending to learn a new tool or plug in is time you aren't making your game. Be jealous about your time, and don't be afraid to walk away if a tool isn't working out. I've had to do this more than once. Also when this happens don't look at that time lost as a "waste of time" it was time spend learning something that could come in handy later or that time needed to be spent anyway to find out that it wasn't the right path.

Game Update

This week my game development time was cut into by an unforeseen circumstance. Still we made the best of it by re-vectoring some skills for launching animations.

The skills on character like the Male Wizard and The Female Ice Queen were to specific saying things like “Cast Fireball” or Cast “Ice Storm”. The issue with this is that we need them to animate as a caster no matter what spell they are casting. Then we add on different spell particle effects which are launched separately and have their own sounds. Additionally, down the line I would like to add items to the game which would allow players a little more customization. Things that might allow a Knight to cast a Fireball for instance. This means that it needs to launch a generic casting animation for all models casting spells just in case.

We fixed a couple of triggers this way, and did some unit testing to make sure they were working. Even with only 30 minutes there’s a lot that can get done.

Personal Update

As stated above we can’t always predict what’s going to happen and sometimes emergencies come up that take precedence. I have a way forward and hope to figure out the problem soon however. The good thing is that I would rather experience this worker issue now before the game goes public, so that I can practice the skills that will be needed if things really get big and I end up having to hire a lot of people.

Super excited to be focusing on one person again. It can be scary but it’s nice to have that focus right now. Of course my kids will always be my priority but it’s been a long time since I’ve had the support that I’m getting now. I expect it will pay dividends in a lot of ways.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

6. What is the best video game creation engine?

There is no one "best" video game engine, they will all have different good and bad parts. I use Unity 3D because it's free to sell the games I make with it. They make their money off of selling assets and if I sell a certain number of units I will owe them money. Unreal had to compete and so now it's free too. Most of the triple A industry focuses on that or adds their own proprietary stuff on top of it. Some other engines you might look into are RPG Maker, Construct, Game Creator, etc... Keep an eye on Humblebundle for some of their Game Creator bundles which can get you some assets for between $15-$25. I find that making solid art is my weak area which why I purchase it or contract it out for the most part. It's not that I can't do it, it's just that my standards are higher than what my skills can do.

Easy Targets Big Wins

Game Update

This week I returned to something that I might have been avoiding for some time. Back when I thought I was ready to release the game on Steam for early access and I was pushing really hard for that I knew that I had to get the spell particle effects functioning. That said after assessing that pipeline there was something like 27 steps in the process to go from concept to fully implemented spell. Pretty daunting when I think about creating 2-3 spells per character and I have around 40 characters. The one saving grace is that I can re-use some spells once they have been created.

After working through it with my mentor Chris last Tuesday it looks like I might have been more scared than I needed to be. For one thing I can batch some steps together which I had done and then refine them. This week we focused on 2 spells in particular. 2 ice spells which we’re calling Ice Blast and Snow Ball. I had already made a lot of updates to the spreadsheet that handles all the spells in the game. Most of the additions are related to changing the “Single Target” spells to one of our multi targeting modes. The modes range from randomly attacking enemies, to targeting specific rows or columns.

When we use an “Area of Effect” (AOE) spell mode it centers the graphic on the target squad and we have to adjust it from there. Snow Ball used to be a single target spell that moved out from the caster to the target. The new mode centered it on the enemy unit and it looked bad. Also the spreadsheet had it tuned for single target. In order to fix this we just reverted it to its old single target mode.

The numbers for damage are pretty fuzzy right now but it seems that generally we want single target to be the highest damage, followed by row/column, followed by random whole squad, followed by whole squad damage. The reason for this should be pretty obvious but hitting 7 troops with the same damage that the player is dealing to 1 troop makes for less decisions in squad creation. We want real decisions not simple answers.

A general idea I’m thinking right now is a comparison of damage. For every 7 damage we do to a single target we should have 1 damage for whole squad AOE.

Single Target - 7 damage

Row/Column - 4-6 damage (depending on how many rows/columns)

Random Whole Squad - 2-3 damage

Whole Squad - 1 damage

This should have some deviations to make some classes notably stronger. Things like typically Whole squad is around 1 damage for every 7 single target, but on a class we might increase it to 1.5 or even 2. This would mean that a single target spell might do 70 damage with an AOE vs a 7 member enemy squad typically doing 10 per troop for around 70 damage. A more powerful version of the AOE might do 15 per troop which would raise its damage considerably to 105. The drawback is when the enemy squad does not contain a full 7 enemies. Later we plan to make larger troops that will count as 2 or even 3 troop spaces in squads and that should change this dynamic a bit creating more choice.

The Ice blast spell hits the front row of the enemy squad. Originally I thought that it might blast out from the caster squad but we settled on an Ice strafing run which looks pretty good. I’m also really happy with the notification message the player gets in the combat log. The drawback to this spell is pretty obvious as it only hits the front row meaning if there are no troops in that row it does nothing. This drawback justifies higher damage which means that if it is hitting 5 troops compared to the 7 troops from a whole squad AOE.

These things aren’t difficult to do nor are they completely ground breaking but they are a big win for player choice and keeping the game interesting and engaging. As I keep working on the spells I can only increase in my speed to get them completed. This will create a better video and better screen shots for Steam. I still have the capsule art on my radar but I need to move my business licence over before I consider releasing on steam and so it’s become less of a priority for now.

Personal Update

Getting back on my feet with meeting new people you never know what’s going to happen really. Things can progress pretty quickly and a person can go from having no plans to suddenly having all the interest. Sometimes all it takes is focusing on the things that are important like family and work while staying open to meeting new people.

I think this is what people say when they say, “don’t look for it, it will happen.” Always a ridiculous phrase to me because it assumes that things are going to magically just fall in your lap without work. I’d prefer to have a little bit more control and be active. Not to say that the strategy of “just sit back and it will happen” can’t work but more often than not it takes work. Looking forward to see how my newest flame works out.

We’re getting to the end of the school year and I’m looking forward to some summertime down time. At the same time I do have some quality of life things that I need to do around the house still. It’s so good to be back in an environment that I love to come home to. I think that it’s helped with stress levels as well as I’ve lost some weight. I look forward to more health and wellness opportunities like running, and working out.

I need to bring more balance to my life with a schedule however. Right now I’m not spending enough time working on my video game, and that is my passion. I’m chasing some things to hard and playing to many phone games. It’s time to bring balance back for a higher quality lifestyle. Instead of playing 10 20 minute games a day, maybe just 2 or 4. Maybe cut it out completely if it doesn’t serve me. At least the phone game side of things will naturally curtail itself in 2 months.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

5. Do you need to know how to code to design video games?

You don't need to know how to code to make games, however you are limiting what you are able to do. Making levels in Mario Maker is game development. That's level design and there are plenty of people that specialize in that. But could you make a new kind of brick with a new graphic and add it to Mario Maker? No you can't because it's locked down but if you had access to the source code and know how to code you could add a new feature or function that's not there. This is modifying the game, and for a lot of young developers it's how they start out. I mentioned this earlier. Additionally, think about how replaceable you are in the job market. Ask yourself "how many good level designers, artists, sound engineers, network engineers, security, and programmers are out there?" How easy would it be to replace them? If you follow this path it's likely that you will need to supplement your income for a while or find roommates with a dream. As an example I've heard of developers that live in California sharing a 2 room apartment between 3 people and hot bunking because of the cost of living there. That said there's a lot of changes coming down the pipe for developers. For me I work on my games in my free time and have a day job to supplement my income to make sure my boys can eat every day. This isn't an easy road and it's not for everyone. Also think about how soon you want a family as that will also effect the amount of money you will need to survive.

Living in Abundance

Game Update

This week we did some more interface polishing and we fixed the positioning of the text on all the characters in the game. The text was left justified and we needed it to be centered. Little pieces of polish like this go on in all games and it’s crazy to think how much of it the player would never even realize happened.

I think that I need to put together a schedule to push myself to get more work done during the week. A lot of my time is going to everything but game development and I have a lot less excuses than I used to have. I just need to set aside time so that things can start progressing. I’m tired of saying the same things need to get done every week. I need to focus a little better.

I got some feedback on the game today from one of my beta testers. He said that he had a lot of issues assigning leaders in the Force Organization screen. I think that I may still want to put together some sort of tutorial video to bundle in and run once. Some simple things like this that should be part of affordance are falling by the wayside.

Personal Update

As stated above I need to make a schedule so that I have times where I allow myself personal time to be social, play games, etc… and other time devoted to game development, and getting household tasks done. I’m not managing my time as closely or wisely as I could be. This week I transition to night shift and I hope that will go well for my family dynamic as well.

I dove back into the dating pool again, and went out this past weekend. I didn’t do the things to make my energy more expansive and abundant. I was inside my head to much. It made me less approachable and I kind of knew it was happening. Maybe I just didn’t want to be social, or maybe I wanted to have a pity party for myself. I had some good friends and family support me after that happened and luckily I didn’t do anything that could have opened up old wounds.

Meeting people again this week over apps has been mostly good. There are some one off poor interactions but overall I’m enjoying the opportunity to get back out and give value again. Having an abundant mindset here is so key. With that mindset it makes it easier to give and not worry about getting back. Of course I can give you value, I’m overflowing with it. Giving value for me doesn’t typically mean something monetary. It’s usually related to sharing emotions, listening, a positive word, or sharing knowledge.

Often in our society we get into a taking scarcity mindset. The type of mindset that says, “don’t allow people in they’ll just hurt you.” “Don’t share with others because then you will have nothing” is another popular trick our mind plays on us. It’s a narrative of fear. 2020 has shown me how divisiveness and fear can take root in our minds and create all sorts of problems.

Eckart Tolle talks about this in “A New Earth.” He talks about how children see their toys not as objects but extensions of their very being. In this way we can become offended when others disagree with us or take our toys. Our very being is being attacked and that means reprisal is in order. He further goes on to talk about how we are not the things we own, our jobs, accomplishments, or so many other things we associate with ourselves. We are a consciousness that is something amazing.

It’s not as though I’m not caught up in the things of this world, but I do think there’s more to it than that. When I do release the game I expect that there will be plenty of people that will have not so nice things to say. When that happens even though I’ve spent so much of my life on this project, it will be important to make sure that I understand that the game I made is not me.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

4. Do you have any advise for a beginning designer?

Absolutely! It's the same advice I would have for anyone that's getting into a new skill.

1. find a mentor and don't be afraid to pay for it. This will give you leverage over yourself to motivate you to work.

2. Think about how much effort you want to put in and what you're willing to give up. I've had to spend a lot of time putting in hours to get where I am now. I may not know what's going on in the latest episode of a TV show but I chose to do this.

3. Find like minded people to connect with that will encourage you to work. You are the average of the 5 people you spend your time with. I'm not saying walk away from all your friends but think about how much time you spend with them.

4. Finally, I touched in this earlier but START MAKING GAMES NOW. No one is stopping you from making something simple and don't let anyone downplay your accomplishments.

Boundaries

Game Update

This week we added a notification to show the player when the leader is dead in a squad. There wasn’t a lot of information to make this clear until now. I feel like this was a big win for us. It’s nice to know that all the information is there in the game, but it just needs to be displayed to the player. More polishing creates a better user experience.

We talked a bit about adding additional information to the squads in the stage so that the player can make good decisions on engagements. As of right now the player has to click on each squad to see the characters that are still left alive and their total hit points. We could total all the hit points and add some other numbers from stats to give the squads a “power level” and then surface that under their name. It’s possible as the information is all there, but it may not be to our advantage to do that as it might take the player out of the experience a bit.

The question is, “when is information to much information?” I can surface a lot of information to the player about what’s happening but every time I do the experience gets less realistic. I guess the obvious response is that, “video games are already unrealistic so why care about it?” I would say that we use numbers to create systems that give the player an engaging experience. If surfacing a bunch of stats and numbers takes the player out of that experience then we should pull it back a bit. A game is more elegant and beautiful with less mechanical logical pieces. Engaging is done on an emotional level not a logical one.

Personal Update

Big plans this week for Valentines Day but it fell through and I had to make a difficult decision. Ultimately it came down to a decision of setting boundaries and what kind of man I want to be. It never feels good to be firm with someone, but it’s very important.

When I was staying with my family a couple of times situations came up in which boundaries were tested as well. Honestly I look forward to having my boundaries tested now. I’ve heard people say things like, “if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.” Having boundaries ensures that I know when they’re being tested.

Often there is a thought that we need to give in to other people to make them happy and keep our relationships in tact. Nine times out of ten the opposite is true. When a person is taking advantage of someones kindness they will actually feel more resentment and contempt for them if they keep folding under pressure. On the other hand when a boundary is set a person needs to be ready for the other party to walk away. The question is what’s more important? Personal integrity or the friendship?

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

3. How difficult is video game design?

3. Computers have limitations, and so do we as human beings. We could build something that realistically makes grass grow, has a social component, and allows you to rob banks but that doesn't help if we're building Fortnite. You have to choose what you want to build and be very specific with the pillars for your game. As an example a pillar for my game "Six Aspects" is fast play time. I don't want the player to spend any more than 15 minutes in a stage. This one pillar guides a lot of future decisions. That said as far as how difficult it is, there's a lot you can start doing quickly. I would suggest taking existing code for a project and fiddling with it first. It's difficult to stare at a blank canvas, it's a lot easier to trace over someone else's art and modify it at least when you're starting out. So I guess it's really as difficult as you want it to be. The first things you're going to want to learn about are how to draw graphics on the screen, checking for collisions between objects and setting an outcome, and the concept of the update function which continually runs as your game runs and allows you to move graphics around or check states actively.

Programmer Art

Game Update

This week we completed the sounds that will be played when the player ends the stage. This was kind of a complex problem as we needed to turn down the stage music and let the other stage sound effects run out. We had to delay the final sound start. We also added some strobe color effects the the “Congratulations.” Timing that and playing with the colors took a little bit as well.

I put out a message on my Twitter to see if I could find an artist to build my capsule art for Steam. I might try to do a little art myself with what I’ve collected from screenshots in the game. It’s possible I’ll find someone that will be a good fit. I’ve been pretty lucky so far with the past artists that I hired.

A good friend of mine suggested that I read the book “Start with Why.” In the book it talks about finding people that believe the same thing you do. Instead of the idea of, “I am someone that makes games because I want to make money, survive, be successful, etc…” I need to have a stronger belief. I’m not sure what it will end up being in the end. For now I think that my why is, “We build engaging games that respect the players time.” So many times in our society companies go commercial and are driven to make more and more money. My company needs to be different. I want loyalty and passionate players.

Personal Update

Things seem to have settled down quite a bit at home. I had a small crisis with one of my children, but he’s good now. Moving to a new place is a lot for a child, and I’m glad that I won’t have to do that again. I’m starting to accept this place as my home as well.

I managed to start a weekly board game club for a social outlet. It’s important for me to have something that I can lead, and give back with. Normally I would go out to the local hobby shop, but with the virus climate that makes things difficult. Also at times it can be difficult to convince people at the hobby shop to play something that’s not Magic. At some point I might try to run a Dungeons and Dragons game.

I’m pretty excited about Valentines day as I have a lot of surprises waiting for a special someone. Crafting an experience has been a lot of fun this past week. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

Question - 2. What degree would assist me in video game creation?

Answer - 2. The best thing I can tell you about learning any skill is to start doing it NOW. If you want to make games start making them. Take a degree that matches the specialization that you want to do. You won't know that unless you've actually built something first. I have a Computer Science degree but there are plenty of professionals that have different degrees in digital art, cyber security etc... in the industry or some with no degree at all. In the programming realm there aren't any certifications like there are in cyber security, and networking. Keep that in mind. Figure out what you want to be really good at and start there.

Hunting for Errors

Game Update

Sound continues to be the focus of my game development sessions with Chris. Meanwhile, the capsule art is still in the back of my mind for completion to get this thing to Steam. The other issue with Steam is that I need to move my business from Texas to Florida. That might be hindering me from putting effort into working on the artwork.

We spent thirty minutes hunting for a duplication of a graphic when entering combat. We couldn’t get the bug to re-surface which is interesting. I’m not sure if I did something to try and fix it before the session. I also have to do some work to balance all of the sound effects with the music as sometimes they clash or the music is to loud to hear the sound effects. It’s likely that we will have to turn the music down a bit globally. When entering combat I have a rotation of 8 random sounds that launch which should keep it a little fresh. There are a lot of things in the game that are like that from the player portraits that represent the same class to some of the other random factors during gameplay.

Personal Update

I’m still trying to get everything lined up with my house and future appointments. It’s difficult for me to want to do game development when the house needs so much attention right now. Additionally, there are other time factors to consider. It won’t always be this way however. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now.

I also had a former military college reach out to me to answer some questions for his son who is doing a research paper for becoming a game developer. I kind of wrote him a book and so I’m going to enclose one of his ten questions over the next 10 weeks. It was a nice feeling to look back at all that I’ve accomplish and how my mindset helped me along the way. I’m still very proud of what I’ve accomplished.

Still excited to see what’s in store next in my dating life. It feels like every day is a new adventure. Of course when you look at fantasy adventures they are all filled with a fair share of conflicts. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

Question - 1. How long did it take for you to code your first video game?

Answer - 1. The first game I finished was a practice game called Brick Breaker and I finished that in about a week. Most of the time when you're learning any skill you're going to do projects that have already been done for practice. This is especially true in the art world. If you're asking about the first game I finished that was an original work then that was Constantine which took me 3 months. It's built in RPG Maker and it took me around 3 weeks to feel comfortable working with the engine. You can still download and play the game today for free if you're interested. It won't take more than 3 hours to finish.

Slow and Steady

Game Update

We’ve been adding a lot of sound polish to the game. This week Chris and I beefed up the combat initiation from the Overworld stages. I put a place holder sound in place during our game development session and went back after to add 6 random sounds that came from a viking pack. It was then that I noticed sometimes when we start a combat it’s trying to launch it multiple times which is spawning a lot of particle effects and now sound effects as well. This sounds like a giant spaghetti mess and so we will be sorting it out this week.

I know that I need to focus on spreadsheets and working on the capsule art but having to change my business licence over from one state to another has kind of taken a little bit of the wind out of my sails to get it done. On the plus side I’m starting to see the end of the tunnel on the things that need to get completed at the house to get everything lined up.

I was thinking tonight while I was grocery shopping and I think that I really need to set a regular schedule for my after hours time to make sure that I’m leveraging it effectively. I do when to devote more committed time to game dev, but I also want to work out. The kids are getting older and so that’s becoming a lot easier although I still have a fair share of my time spent teaching them how to get things done and be self sufficient.

Things aren’t moving as quickly as I like but some progress is better than nothing and there have been many times in which development has slowed to a crawl on the project. Maybe that’s what it’s really about. When you push yourself even though you don’t feel like it.

Personal Update

As I stated above for the most part my household is in order now. I feel pretty good about it as I have said goodbye to the last of my boxes today. I always know it’s getting to the end when I can start hanging up things on the walls. It’s a little bitter sweet doing it right now as I still have to put all the things in my retiree shadow box. It brings up mixed emotions all by itself, but I think I’m finally in a place where I can accept it and feel peace about it.

I took some time to go out dancing on Saturday which is the 2nd time I’ve done that since I’ve been here. I felt a little guilty for not working but I didn’t stay out to late due to church the next day. Meeting people with a passion for dancing was good. Kind of a big win as I now have some people to chill with when I’m out there.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my dating life lately. What I want, where my boundaries are, and how it relates to the other aspects of my life. Sometimes things happen quickly and can catch you off guard. It can be like a whirlwind that’s hard to hold onto, scary and exciting. It’s important for me to remember to temper those fast times with stability being free from outcomes giving the most value I can while setting strong boundaries. I’m happy for everything that has happened on my journey in this area and I’m excited to see what’s in store for me next! That said I need to temper my expectations and time lines at times. Who knows where I will be in 6 months to a year from now? I have to keep slow steady to find out. It’s what has kept me going on my game all this time and so many other things.