Annotated Rock Paper Scissors Released!

Hey everyone! Long time no see! I'm here on this fine Halloween night to announce the release of my 11th #1GAM game! This time its a game I made a while ago, a simple implementation of Rock Paper Scissors! But that's not all...

The (non-transparent) title image!

I decided to rehash this older game (which I made about a year ago, but never released) and to release it in source code form. I also went through and heavily commented the code, so that any up-and-coming pygame developer should be able to learn at least a little something from it :) I didn't edit my code much, so some of it is still quite sloppy. Nevertheless, I feel that it is a pretty good representation of what I cobble together each month, and I hope it is useful to someone :)

Here's a MediaFire link to the source code (in zip format): http://www.mediafire.com/file/ppq8u4ia6ex6rsp/Annotated_Rock_Paper_Scissors.zip 

The game was made with Python 2.7 and pygame 1.9. Check it out if you have the time!

That's all for today folks. See you when I see you!

Dev Blog #21: Announcing Tic-Tac-25!

Hey! Erik here, back again to bring you an announcement! My #1GAM game for September has been chosen! Let me introduce you all to: Tic-Tac-25!

That's a lot!

Tic-Tac-25 is a simple re-imagining of Tic-Tac-Toe (Noughts and Crosses, to some) as a four-player game on a 25X25 board. Each player takes a turn putting their symbol in one of the empty squares. The first player to line up three either up/down, across, or diagonally, wins.

The symbols available are X's, O's, Triangles, and Squares (wonder where I came up with those, huh? ;P ). The big takeaway with the rules is that 3-in-a-row (not the 5-in-a-row that the board size might suggest) is needed to win. This keeps the game highly tactical, and helps minimize stalemates.

Tic-Tac-25 is a very simple game, and for good reason. I will be experimenting a lot with how I create this game. Primarily, my goal is to make it an HTML5 browser game that is also playable on mobile, and to implement up to 4-player local multiplayer. Wish me luck! :)

That about does it. I'll leave you with a few more screens, as a preview:

See you in a week, Internet!

Chroma Road Released!

Hey hey hey! I'm back today, and super excited to announce the release of my ninth #1GAM game, Chroma Road! Thats right, after all this time, you can finally play it! :D

The title screen

​
Play it on Gamejolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/chroma-road/184631
or Itch.io: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/chroma-road

Welcome to Chroma Road, where speed and reflexes are king, and color coordination is the name of the game! Chroma Road is a tough-as-nails, fast-paced color-puzzle/endless-runner hybrid where you must match colors with gates in order to proceed. Use the Z, X, and C keys to change to any primary color (red, green, and blue), and combine them to form secondary colors! Think fast and stay sharp as you pass through the gates, gaining score and staying alive along the way. Keep going to get a high score and ace the best time!

Chroma Road is a major first for me: Its my first game made using the HaxeFlixel framework. This is pretty important, since this is going to be my development methodology going forward. I'll even use HaxeFlixel to develop commercial games pretty soon, hopefully (more on that o come, though).
 
Anyhow, I've made 9 games so far! Woohoo! This has been a crazy year of development, but I'm on track to finish the #1GAM challenge in November. Here's hoping!

If you play Chroma Road and enjoy it (or not), please let me know here in the comments on the respective game pages. I love me some feedback! :D

See you all next time!

Dev Blog #20: Short Update on Chroma Road

Hey, y'all! I don't have too much time to whip this post up, so I'm gonna just leave you with a few of my recent screens and a short commentary. Chroma Road is coming along swimmingly thus far! Check out these images :)

Here's the first screen. Notice the UI enhancements at the top,
particularly the timer.

The number in the top left is a score counter. You gain 1 point
for getting through a gate.

When you die, this is what you see. The screen keeps scrolling, by the way.

As I said, so far, so good. The music I'm making for the game is nearing completion, and as soon as I finish the main menu (a feature I am notorious for leaving til the last minute), only polish will remain! I'm aiming for August 30th as a release date, currently.

See you later everyone!!!

Dev Blog #19: Chroma Road Progress Report

Aloha! How is everyone today? I'm pretty good, myself. In case anyone missed it on my twitter (or, I should say, since you probably missed it) I'll mention here that I've decided that my weekly blog posts will come on Mondays from now on, instead of over the weekend like before. That's when I've been getting around to it lately, anyway :P

Anyway, hello again, and welcome to the 19th edition of my dev blog posts! This week I have some fun and exciting news regarding my upcoming #1GAM game, Chroma Road! What's more, I have screenshots! Whoopee! Read on :)

First and foremost, I have running, lane switching, and color changing all implemented in the game. Chroma Road is a 3-lane endless runner/color puzzle game, so these are the main things the player can do. Here's a sampling:

The background scrolls by, and the player runs forward automatically.

Press Z, X, or C to change color, and try to correspond them to the gates.

You can activate more than one color at a time to turn to a secondary color!

 
So far so good with the game! The scrolling gates are just images for now, but in the final game they'll be obstacles that are impassable unless you are the correct color. Also soon to be added: a timer, a score tracker, incremental difficulty, and improved graphics :)

Also, I've been using this game as an excuse to learn to use the HaxeFlixel framework. It has been going well so far. HaxeFlixel has a bit of a different approach to what I am accustomed to with game development APIs, in that its approach is sort of to have everything packaged and available if you choose to use it. HaxeFlixel has a learning curve, especially if you haven't got any experience with Flash ActionScript, but it is well worth the effort of learning. I'm hoping to be able to contribute somewhat to the project in the future, once my Haxe chops have improved.

Quick screen of my IDE, FlashDevelop. Check out that sick color coordination :0

(By the way, if you want to support HaxeFlixel, they currently have an IndieGoGo campaign going on right now. Support them if you can!)

That should do for today :) Hopefully I've given you something to look forward to when my game comes out later this month! See you soon!

Dev Blog #18: Announcing Chroma Road!

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the first dev blog here in over a month! I'm a day late today (yet again), but that's partly because I was waiting for the first day of August so I could announce my next #1GAM game! :D This month's game is called Chroma Road! Read about it below! :)

Current logo for Chroma Road! The pink will be transparent in the game.

Chroma Road is an endless runner/color puzzle game that features multiple lanes you can run in. You control a player character that has the power to change primary colors, which allows you to navigate through colored gates that block your path. The game will be very fast, and the puzzles get harder and harder as time goes on!

I'm making this game in Haxe, using HaxeFlixel. I am really enjoying using these tools so far, and I think that HaxeFlixel is going to become my go-to game development instrument.

I'll have more to discuss about Chroma Road in the coming weeks :) Until next time everyone! Peace out!

Games on the Menu #2

Hello hello everyone! I'm back again, but I don't really have too much to say regarding game development. I'll have a bit about that at the bottom of the article, but first, I thought this would be a great chance to talk again about the games I'm currently playing! I did this once before back in April, and I'm playing some different stuff now, so I figured I should update you all :)

As I said back then, I'm no professional reviewer, and I've kinda decided that I'm not really so much reviewing these games as I am trying to describe what I like about them and why you, the reader, might want to check them out. After all, I'm not going to play games I don't like for long periods of time, and these are all games I play regularly, which means that any "review" I might do would be pretty pointless since there's no chance of me saying the game is bad :P

Anyway, that aside, let's move on!

THE CROOKED MAN

FREE HUGS!

The Crooked Man is a horror/exploration game by Japanese indie developer Uri, who created it using the WOLF RPG Editor (which is kind of like RPG Maker). I love RPG Maker horror games (Ao Oni being far and away my favorite), so I had been meaning to try this out for a long time. I finally got around to playing it the other day, and it's pretty cool! I won't spoil anything, but safe to say, if you are into horror games, check it out. It's not really SUPER scary, but it's pretty compelling and interesting, and the monster is creepy. I'd probably have already beaten it by this point, but I keep forgetting to save for an hour or better at a time, and then dying, thus losing lots of progress. Always remember to save, kids!

COBRA TRIANGLE

Now all that's missing is David Wise's awesome soundtrack!

Not too long ago, I busted out my NES for the first time in over a year, and had a look through the games I had to play. I had several that I had never actually tried (I had been given several cartridges a while ago, and wasn't playing the NES at the time). One that caught my eye was this early Rare title, Cobra Triangle. I gave it a shot, and I'm glad I did! Cobra Triangle is an isometric action game with shooting/racing elements. You pilot a speed boat through various levels and try to accomplish different tasks while watching the clock and attempting to avoid damage. It's very fun, and each of the levels is unique and well-designed. It is also SOOOO HARD. This game will whoop your rear end every time you try to play it, and then some :) It's very good though, and as long are you aren't put off by the difficulty in other classic games (Cobra Triangle is hard, but not the hardest on the NES and definitely not the hardest ever), give it play or two. I consider it to be an underrated title, along with some of my other NES favorites like Section Z and Legend of Kage.

BASTION

Did I mention I'm behind the curve? Yeah, well, I am.

Bastion is an action adventure game by Supergiant that was released way back in 2011 for Xbox Live Arcade. I remember seeing it there, back in the days of 360 yore, but I never tried it (I was too busy trying all those atrocious Minecraft knock-offs that were in the Indie Game section of Xbox Live). I finally got this game a few weeks ago on Steam, and I like it so far. The game looks beautiful, of course, and it makes for an engaging dungeon-crawler-esque game. I like the customization and upgrade options. It's a pretty good game all around.


So, that will about do it for this week's games :) But before I go...


So, here's my plan for #1GAM this month: I want to take part in a game jam! :D I've never actually done one before, but after having gotten some practice under my belt, I feel compelled to finally give jamming a chance. I want to take part in the LudumDare, but that isn't until the end of next month, so I've decided that instead I'll go for the One Hour Game Jam! 


For those unfamiliar, the One Hour Game Jam is, just like its name implies, a game jam that lasts for exactly one hour, held every Saturday. At the start of the hour, a theme is announced, and the participants must turn in a complete (though almost certainly microscopically small) game after just 60 minute. This is a pretty extreme challenge to undertake, but I have a decent backlog of code that I can shape to fit any game I'm making. I observed the action this past week, and I'm looking forward to participating myself, either this coming Saturday or the next. Stay tuned!


Well, that should about do it for today. See you around! Remember to save your games!!

Star Fall Released!

Woohoo! I'm back already, folks, and I'm overjoyed to bring you my seventh #1GAM game, Star Fall! That's right, you can play it yourself now, free of charge, as always! :)

The once and future title image of Star Fall

You can download the game on Game Jolt here: http://gamejolt.com/games/star-fall/160883
or on Itch.io here: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/star-fall

From my description on the game pages: Star Fall is a lovely, relaxing game about catching stars as they fall from the night sky! Play as an adorable stuffed bear in a dreamy world where the stars are within your reach! Watch the spinning stars as they drift toward the clouds on which you stand, and score points by catching them in your net before they hit the cloud. Be careful, though! Some stars are large and magical, and if you miss these, it's game over!

This game was a lot of fun to make, primarily because I got to collaborate with wonderful artist (and stellar girlfriend) calmcalling on it :) Her artwork is far and away my favorite part of Star Fall. I think once you play the game, you'll agree with me!

Thanks, as always, to those of you who follow my blog! I couldn't 'a done it without'cha! If you play this game (or any of my others) and enjoy it, or even if you don't, please comment below! I'd love to hear from any and every one of my readers and/or players :)

See you next time, everyone! Ciao!

Dev Blog #17: Quick Update

Hey, everyone! I'm here to offer a brief update on the status of my upcoming #1GAM game, Star Fall. This week has been pretty busy, but I've managed to find some time for development, and now the game is nearing a completed state! Check it out!

There isn't TOO much to show off this week, since the main gameplay consists of a static screen you move around on. However, you will surely notice that the wonderful artwork by calmcalling really brings the atmosphere together :)

The art is a major focus of this game, and it's looking great so far!

Another screen...

Some art still needs to be done (namely, the main character sprite), but the programming is actually about 95% done. I'm hoping to release in the middle of next week, so stay tuned! :)

See you then, everyone!

Dev Blog #15: Announcing Star Fall!

Hi! I have returned once again to announce my current #1GAM game. This month's project is called Star Fall!

Check out the fancy logo!

Star Fall is a game about collecting falling stars from the night sky. You play as a bear with a net on a mission to catch the plummeting stars. You navigate around, left and right, trying to catch the stars as they fall. Smaller stars will give you points for catching them, but watch out for the big stars: you must catch them, or you will lose!


Gameplay-wise, Star Fall is inspired somewhat by older arcade/home console games like Joust or (to a lesser extent) Breakout. I'm making this game because I feel like my recent #1GAM games might be a bit too difficult, so I want this to be a more chilled out, somewhat relaxing game to play.

Also, I should mention, the artwork for this game is being done by a very special guest! My girlfriend, who goes by calmcalling online, will be making all the art and animations for Star Fall! She's waaaaaay better than me at art, so this game should be the best looking one I've put out ;) Check her out on deviantArt here.

That about does it, I suppose. I'll keep you filled in when something new comes up :) Until then, take it easy!  

Torso Ninja II Released!

Hello everyone! I'm super excited to announce the release of my sixth #1GAM game, Torso Ninja II! That's right, its out! Hooray! Just in the nick of time too ;)

The logo, which I still like :)

Torso Ninja II is the sequel to my December 2015 #1GAM game, Torso Ninja. In this game, like its predecessor, you play as the brave (and armless) Torso Ninja, who is beset from all directions by his enemies, the Red Ninjas. You, the player, must use your mouse pointer to guide Torso Ninja safely through his enemies' barrages of bullets (err, shuriken), all the while collecting power-ups and and trying to get the highest score possible! You must also beware, for the Red Ninjas' evil leader, Goemon, might just make an appearance to try and destroy our heroic shinobi himself...

Play the game on Game Jolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/torso-ninja-ii/153329
Or play it on Itch.io: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/torso-ninja-2

This is the biggest game I've made since Cargo, and I would probably consider Torso Ninja II to be the best game I've ever made. I think I've come a long way since starting #1GAM, and I hope this game exemplifies that somewhat :)

Most importantly, though, I hope you, the audience, like this game and find it fun! I certainly had a great time making it, and I would love to hear from any and all of you who read this, and/or play my games :) Leave a shoutout below here on my blog, or comment on my Game Jolt and Itch.io game pages! You can even find me on twitter @HellaMagellan!

See you next time! Hope you enjoy this new game! :D 

P.S. As a side note, remember that you can edit the levels yourself using the level config files in the data\lvl\ directory of the Torso Ninja II folder. There's a short help file in there, so check it out! :)

Dev Blog #14: Almost Done!

Hi! How's everyone's week been? I've had a pretty good one, not the least because I made a ton of progress on my next #1GAM game, Torso Ninja II! It's very nearly done at this point, and I'm aiming to release it this coming Tuesday (the last day of the month, in fact). Here's a sampling of what I've gotten done this week!

First and foremost, the main menu has been improved significantly. It now looks halfway presentable :)
 

Yay! Main menu!

Next, I also completed the backgrounds for all three of the levels, and got all the music, level transitions, and game over screens working.
 

Level 1: The Forest

Level 2: The Plains

Level 3: The Castle

 
Many, many other, more minor things were completed this week, as well. This has been a very productive week. Good thing too! I'm running out of time! :)

That about does it for now, ladies and germs. As I said, I fully expect to release this game on Tuesday, so you'll be hearing from me pretty soon!

See you then!   

Dev Blog #12: Busy Weekend!

Woah! Hey everyone, how's it going? You may realize that I'm a day late with my blog post. Aaaaahhh! D:

It has been a very busy weekend for me, but to be honest, I just forgot, so it's completely my fault! But, I'm posting this as an update right quick, so nothing lost! (I hope!)

Development on Torso Ninja II has been progressing decently. I spent most of this week creating a method that will allow me to script enemy spawns and bullet patterns for levels, independent of the source code. What does that mean for you? It means a certain level of client-side customization! If you're willing to learn a simple markup language (and calling it a "language" is a real stretch), you can modify the levels yourself!

I made this scripting method to speed up development on TN2 ("Hey, Erik, cool acronym!" they said. "Hey, Internet, thanks!" I replied). I have big dreams for it, and hope to maybe expand it into a sort of development method for making simple scrolling shooters. I used to mess around with the M.U.G.E.N. fighting game engine, so I was thinking of doing something like that (on a much smaller scale, of course) with shmups. Who knows if I'll be able to actually get around to it, but if so, hooray! :)

On another note, I've also been working on the music to I'm going to be using for TN2 a lot this week. I make my music in the Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS, Windows version in my case). Following is a picture of LMMS as I use it, since this article needs some visuals ;)

My DAW of choice, the wonderfully free LMMS.

I feel like I've generally been improving with my music-making skills as time has went on, and I hope for Torso Ninja II to be my most musically-accomplished work yet. I'm making the music early (unusual for me) and I've already got a couple of songs that sound okay, or so I think. At the very least, the soundtrack should be better than the original Torso Ninja (not that it's much of a horse race).

So there ya go, my day-late update :) See you next week, hopefully on-time!

Dev Blog #11: Scrolling and Shooting

Hello again! I'm back this week with a little bit of a status update on my work-in-progress game, Torso Ninja II. I've also got a couple of small screenshots to share, more to give a rough idea of the way the game will work than to provide any concrete details. So, let's get to it!

My goals for this past week were a bit subdued, as my Spring finals are going on (only one more week to go... ;_;) but I got the visuals up and running. As I mentioned previously, I'm making this game in Pygame, so I'm very familiar with what needs to be done at this point.

Here are the screens:

 

The screen scrolls and Torso Ninja follows your pointer, like in the original.

That cryptic blue dot is a bullet. No hard patterns up and running so far.

 

I should also mention that the bullets are going to have much more complex behaviors in this game than in the previous Torso Ninja. I'm drawing inspiration from my favorite curtain fire games, and I've got simple trigonometric movement working for the bullets already, so stay tuned for crazy spirals of death ;)

So, there's a taste of my past week of work. I hope to eventually include 3 total levels, and maaaaayyyyybe, just maybe, a boss at the end of the final one (that one's on the 'dreams' list for now though).

See you in a week or so :) Peace!

SKRMSH released!

Surprise! I'm here to announce the early completion of my April 2016 #1GAM game, SKRMSH! This game (which, by the way, is pronounced "skirmish") is a simple card game for two players that I cooked up yesterday afternoon, and implemented in a BASIC script today over the course of about 3 or so hours. It is playable with a standard deck of 52 playing cards. Read on to find out the rules!

In SKRMSH, two players are each dealt a hand of 6 cards. Both players choose one of these cards to "bet" and a second one to "play," and lay these face down.

Standard 6-card starting hand.

The player (spoilers: me) has placed a "bet" card and has his
hand on the "play" card.

Both players flip their "play" cards at the same time, and the winner of the round is the player that has the higher value "play" card (Aces are low, face cards are scored as follows: Jack=11, Queen=12, King=13). The players then flip their "bet" cards, and the winner gains points equal to both "bet" cards put together. In the event of a tie, nobody gains any points. 

The players then set aside both of their "bet" and "play" cards and continue to play with their now-smaller hands. The "skirmish" ends when both players run out of cards in their hands (that is, after three rounds), and the cards are then shuffled back into the deck and another skirmish begins. There is no hard limit to the number of skirmishes that constitute a game, but at the end of the game, both players tabulate their scores, and the winner is the one with the higher total score.

Whew! Quite a wall of text, but SKRMSH is actually a very simple game. I didn't actually set out to make a new card game for this #1GAM game, though. I had actually intended to simply make a BASIC type-in game!

I'm 23, so I was born long after the microcomputer boom of the 70's and 80's. I have, however, always maintained an historical interest in this period, especially in the types of games available on these machines. I began thumbing through 101 BASIC Computer Games (an early edition of BASIC Computer Games) by David Ahl last month, and I was inspired to try and make my own simple BASIC game. I conceived that I would write the code, take a screenshot of it, and upload that here on my blog, thus preserving the "type-in" (that is, you, the end-user, have to enter the source code yourself, by hand) nature of these games.

I was originally going to implement the simple card game War, but I soon decided that doing so would be too easy. It also would be repetitive, because this game had already been created numerous times in the BASIC language. I then set to work fiddling with a deck of cards in my house, and came up with SKRMSH while trying to add more tactical depth to War. 

I finished my BASIC script for this game earlier this evening, and here is the promised source code screenshot!

Part 1

Part 2

There it is, in all its immune-to-copy-paste, probably-horribly-done-because-I'm-a-novice-at-BASIC glory! :) In all seriousness, I made this game as more of a personal hobby-project for myself, so I understand if nobody wants to go to the trouble of typing this in. Hopefully you can learn to play the game physically from my instructions above, even if you don't run the BASIC script. I played it with my family, and it seems to be pretty fun :)

If you DO decide to try to input the script above, I recommend you run it with the Vintage BASIC Interpreter, as it is what I used. I unfortunately do not have access to a real home computer that implements BASIC natively, but if you do and you get this program running on it, I would absolutely love to hear from you! Stuff like that delights me, cause I'm a nerd ;P

That's all for this week! I'll get this uploaded to the #1GAM site tomorrow, but right now, its already past my bedtime. Goodnight, everyone, and have a pleasant day tomorrow!

Keyro: Arena Lockdown Released!

Helllooooo, everyone! Today I'm pleased to announce the release of my March #1GAM game, Keyro: Arena Lockdown!

 

The title screen, featuring a redesigned logo.

This is my fourth game in four months, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. You can play it on GameJolt right here.

This is the first browser-based game I have ever made, and I admit that I'm not much of a web developer. I've tested the game pretty extensively across several browsers though, and it seems to work okay.

A small note: I mentioned this on the Keyro's GameJolt page, but I'll put it here as well, just in case. This game's sound will not work in Internet Explorer because of the way that browser deals (or, rather, doesn't deal) with the HTML5 Audio object. The game runs fine in IE, but is unfortunately silent. The game's sound will work just fine in other major browsers, however, including Chrome and Firefox.

But, anyway, I would love to hear from any players, as always! :) Leave me comments here or on GameJolt (I check both pretty frequently). Feedback is my lifeblood!

See you next time, everybody!

Dev Blog #6: Plitka Powers

Hey, everyone! I'm back again, this time with a little bit of information regarding my upcoming #1GAM game, Plitka! I've completed most of the necessary artwork and implemented a lot of the basic gameplay already, so look for a release much sooner in the month than my previous #1GAM offerings.

There are five different colors of plitka available (blue, red, green, cyan, and yellow). You must match up four blocks of identical colors, either horizontally or vertically, to clear them, thus earning points and keeping you in the game. Here are a few select screenshots from the in-progress version:

Plitkas fall from the sky, and you manipulate them with your
highlight arrow.

 

You use the highlight arrow to move the plitkas left and right.
A second arrow for moving them up and down will be in the final version.

As you can see, it can get out of hand...

Plitka is actually based on a game that I made when I was younger (also called Plitka), with
much simpler gameplay. That game was one of the first I ever completed to the point of it being genuinely "playable." Unfortunately, the original Plitka was lost when my old laptop gave up the ghost. This new version is something of a tribute to that earlier idea of mine.

The rest of the game should come together pretty quickly. Keep a look out for the release!

See you next time!

Dev Blog #5: Announcing Plitka!

Hi everyone! This has been a pretty busy week for me, but I did manage to find time to squeeze in a bit of game dev, and I'm pleased to announce the fruit of my efforts and my third #1GAM game, Plitka!

Current logo of Plitka!

Plitka (плитка, roughly Russian for 'tile') is planned as a straightforward puzzle game in the vein of Tetris. Individual tiles (called plitkas) fall from the sky, in groups or alone. You, the player, will control them by moving them up, down, left, and right as they fall, trying to match up four or more when they "settle" at the bottom and become immovable. If four or more are matched, they are cleared and disappear. As time goes on, the rate of plitka spawns and the speed of falling increases. You score points for clears, and the game ends whenever the game board overfills at the top.


I'm making this game in Python, using the Pygame API. Some basic progress has been made already, and, hopefully, next week will be less busy and I can make some serious progress. The main design goals I have for Plitka are to be A.) smaller and easier to make than my previous game, Cargo, and B.) smoother to control than either of my previous games.

That about does it for this week folks! As always, any comments are welcome. See you later!

Cargo Released!

What's up everybody? You ready for some high-speed highway traffic-dodging action? Then look no further, because Cargo is officially out now!! After taking nearly the whole month, I've finally finished it. You can play it on Game Jolt here: http://gamejolt.com/games/cargo/122511

Cargo is an arcade-style driving game where you play as a trucker out to make it rich on the long-haul circuit! You control an 18-wheeler cargo truck barreling down a highway congested with traffic and patrolled by watchful police cars. Your mission is to reach the end of your journey as quickly as possible, collecting pickups and dodging other vehicles along the way. At the end of each day you can use your hard-earned money to buy upgrades for 
your rig. Your ultimate goal is to save up $1,000,000 and retire to a trucker's life of luxury!

This is far and away the most extensive game I've ever completed. Many hours were sunk into Cargo over the last few weeks. Here's hoping you enjoy playing it as much as I've enjoyed making it! :)

As always, if anyone out there plays the game and likes it, please leave a comment, because I would love to here from you!

Onward and upward!

Dev Blog #4: Doin' Time

Howdy howdy howdy! Time for another exciting developer blog from yours truly! This has been a pretty cool week for Cargo, as I've finally implemented what I knew from the start would be the trickiest core feature: Police chases! That's right, now you can lead the cops on an exciting chase down the highway! And that's not even the only thing I've accomplished this week...

The first batch of screenshots I'm sharing is an overview of the saving and loading screens. Cargo uses a simple save file system. You have three save files to choose from:

The save menu, accessible from the end-of-day menu.

And the load menu, accessible from the main menu.

Incidentally, this is the aforementioned main menu, in
all its huge-titled glory.

The next few shots show some details about police cars and their behavior. It took a lot of fine-tuning to get the cop cars to perform at the level I wanted them to. Probably no other feature in the game took more time to get up and running, hence the punny title of this week's blog.

Here we see a police car, relaxing in its natural habitat. Notice
the "legality" icon at the top-center of the screen.

You'll never take me alive!!!

Or, you know, maybe you will...

I've made a lot more progress as well, but that's about all I want to reveal at the moment. Not much stands in the way of this game being rolled out, aside from some assets (the game still woefully lacks music and sound) and final touches. The next dev blog is due in a week, and I may or may not already have the game released before then!

I'm gonna take an aside here and actually talk about this blog for a moment, since these thoughts have been on my mind and have no doubt influenced my development process (see, I'm still on topic!). I started this blog as part of my New Year's resolution to become a "real" game developer, since I reasoned that if someone out there read about my games and was expecting me to actually complete them, it would give me more incentive and focus. It is still quite early on in the year, but I'm pleased to say that my plan has worked well thus far. I've been a coder for a while, and I've made little (usually unfinished) games for five years now. I can honestly say that I've learned and grown more as a developer in the last two months than I ever have before.

This blog and my other social media outlets have taken me out of my comfort zone. I'm actually a very introverted person, but my ultimate dream is to be a game designer, indie or otherwise, professional or otherwise. I'll probably never become a hotshot developer, but I can at least say now that I'm a "real" developer: I have a game out there that you can play, and another on the way. I'm not in it looking to make a fortune, but I do want to be the best game developer I can be. Making games makes me happy, and part of making games is trying to get people to actually play them. You have to talk and be visible as well as code, draw, and write, no matter who you are, and I've realized that over the last few months.

I also realize that I'm rambling a bit. :) All I'm trying to say is, if you're a potential game developer, don't hide in your shell like I did for half a decade. Make something! Put it out there! Make something else! Talk about it! And do it because you love it!

So long! See you next week, or maybe before!!