Friday, November 29, 2013

Lucidity Log 5: RATS!

I've been meaning to blog about this for quite a while now but somehow managed to skip over it so bare in mind that I programmed the AI for the Rat Enemy a Couple Months ago. When I first started programming the AI for the rat enemy, Raid+'s lead designer David had a rough idea of what the rat was supposed to do but most of the rats AI was not specifically written down. The way I programmed the rat was when the player would come into a certain range of the rat, the rat would become active and it would move forward while rotating towards the player.As shown by this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lovLT_dhXOs
Later David told me that the rats should have a home point that they return to when they are out of range of the player. This wasn't to big a feature to add and it wasn't a problem but it would have been nice to have had that information from the beginning.

Lucidity Log 4: Now That is what I Call a Clock GUI

My most recent task for Lucidity has been to get an analog clock face and a digital clock to show up in the GUI. It was relatively easy and I had both done the day I got the task though I did still need to tweak a few things. I still needed to change the type of font,size and color of the text. Again this was pretty easy and designer probably could have figured this out but at this point in development there aren't a whole lot of tech tasks left.
Also please not that the font type is not Permanent.

Friday, November 1, 2013

MicroDude Log 4:Promoting Your Indie Game and Other Annoyances

I new going into developing a game that I would have to work with other organizations besides myself. I would have to rely on other people to distribute my game, To advertise my game, Etc. At first I was very cautious to do this, I was afraid of seeming unprofessional and being mocked, because I had never done this before, because I didn't have much promotional material, because Micro Dude is made with an engine and isn't used all that often in a professional sense. Then as I became more acquainted with self publishing I realized that the process was less involved and easier than I had imagined. I did still manage to make some mistakes.

Mistake Number One:
Be consistent with the title of your game. I know this one seems like common sense yet I still managed to make it anyway. On Desura the title is "Micro Dude". On Facebook the title is "Microdude".On twitter the title is "MicroDude". The title is all over the place. I wish I had just Picked one title and then just Stuck with it because every time I see a title that isn't "Micro Dude" I kick myself.

Mistake Number Two:
Make sure that the other organizations that you work with know when you want to release your game, also be specific I totally messed up in giving one of the developer relations guys that I work with an approximate release date even though I already had a preferred release date in mind. I made the terrible assumption that releasing Micro Dude was simply a matter of uploading a file setting a date then setting a price. When you go to release a game on any platform tell the dev relations guy what date you want and then ask him exactly how to make your game ship on that date.

I've made many more mistakes than just those two but these two seemed probably the dumbest. Micro Dude hasn't actually been released yet so I'm sure there are plenty of other mistakes I made that I just don't realize yet but I will be sure to never make them again.