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!!!

A Quick Retrospective on Tips & Tricks Magazine

Hey everyone! I'm here for a quick post for the week, and I decided that I would take this as an opportunity to bring some attention to a subject that isn't talked about too much anymore: physical-copy video game magazines. Specifically, I wanted to talk about Tips & Tricks Magazine, which is in my opinion the greatest gaming publication of all time. This isn't meant to be a long or in-depth feature about Tips & Tricks, but rather just a moment for me to give some props to a bygone era of gaming journalism, as well as perhaps introduce some of my readers to T&T if they've never seen it before. :)

A sample Tips & Tricks cover, showcasing some awesome games.

Tips & Tricks was a magazine that ran between 1993 and 2007. Unlike most gaming-related publications, Tips & Tricks didn't produce reviews or anything like that. Their main focus was on providing readers with gameplay help and lots of cheat codes. The magazine was famous for its cheats, which were featured in huge, alphabetized lists in the back of each issue. They also had huge features and walkthroughs at the front of the magazine that provided plenty of assistance to those that might purchase the games they covered.

T&T had something special, though, and it wasn't just the cheat codes. Where as most gaming magazines even then functioned as hype-and-review machines or specialized newspapers, T&T was always about playing the games you already had :) It had an interesting perspective and was an invaluable tool in the pre-Game FAQs era. Tips & Tricks also had numerous columns throughout the magazine that focused on specific gaming communities (Halo, Final Fantasy) or on peripheral aspects of video games (such as Japanese imports or game collecting). In short, Tips & Tricks was the ultimate hobbyist video game publication, and was, for me personally, an amazingly enriching lifeline into the broader gaming community, especially before the internet got into full swing.

A selection from my own Tips & Tricks collection. I had lots more as
a kid, but I'm slowly building back up :)

 
But, alas, all good things must come to an end. Like many magazines, Tips & Tricks wasn't able to handle the oncoming of digital media very well. The aforementioned Game FAQs site largely made their walkthroughs pointless, and it wasn't long before huge catalogues of cheat codes sprang up around the internet as well. In 2007, T&T made the switch from a monthly magazine to a quarterly (then semi-annually) "Codebook," or simple collection of cheat codes. Even this was not enough to save them, however. The Codebooks themselves ceased publication in 2011, and just like that Tips & Tricks passed with the wind into the realm of history.

Nowadays, Tips & Tricks doesn't get much remembrance. There is an excellent in-depth history of the publication on GameLosers.net, which features interviews with several staff members. There are also a few scans of some early issues available from the Internet Archive. Chris Bieniek, Editor-In-Chief of T&T and the mastermind behind much of the magazine's greatness, runs a site called Video Game Ephemera, where he showcases some of the items in his jaw-droppingly huge collection of gaming paraphernalia (he also gave a really cool interview to Atari HQ many years ago where he talked about his early career and gave some insight into T&T's predecessors and founding. Worth a read!). And... that's pretty much it! Like much print media before the internet era, it isn't new, so it isn't tended to.  

Tips & Tricks magazine is something of a relic at this point, but its pages still brim with a wealth of information for anyone courageous enough to brave a paper-cut :) It was a huge part of my childhood, and in many ways, I wish that it or something like it were still around. I have yet to find a game-playing-focused publication either physically or digitally that truly recaptures the sense of pure hobbyist enjoyment that T&T had. Maybe that doesn't exist anymore, but in this era of rampant clickbait, multi-year-long hype that ends in bitter disappointment, acidic reviews, and constant gamer infighting, the peaceable world of Tips & Tricks, where games are just about having some fun, is something I personally can't help but long for.

Whew! :) That's about all I have to say this week. I promise next week will be more on topic of my usual fare, such my upcoming game Chroma Road. See you then!

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!

Some Links for Everyone!

Hello hello! Sorry I'm a day late! Not much has been happening in the realm of game design for me this week, so I wanted to use this week's post to give back some knowledge to you folks! Unfortunately, the article I was going to write is not done just yet, so I decided I would post some links to articles that have helped me out a lot instead! Hopefully these links can help you all out too :)

I'm gonna sort these links into a few categories. In keeping with the theme of the blog, all links will focus on game development in some fashion, particularly indie development. Several of these links go to articles on Gamasutra.com, which you probably should bookmark, if you haven't already. It's the premier source of information for game developers of all stripes.

Game Design

Mark Overmars' 'Designing Good Games' - This paper was written by Mark Overmars, who was the original creator of the Game Maker software. In it, he discusses good practices for designing games. It's particularly interesting for its strict definition of what a 'video game' actually is (Sim City would not be a game, by its standards, for instance). This was one of the first pieces I ever read about game design, so its near and dear to my heart :)

Jon Jones's gamepitches.com site - This is a great resource for finding GDDs and other design assets from game studios throughout history. The site has tons of reference material for your own design work (especially if you are being formal about it). Check out the early design document for Grand Theft Auto (at the time called Race n' Chase), for instance. I highly recommend this site.

Assets

Jason Yu's 'An Examination of Leitmotifs and Their Use to Shape Narrative in UNDERTALE' - The asset section pretty much exists just for these articles :) This is an excellent 2-part series about the construction of the soundtrack of Undertale, written from the perspective of a classically trained musician (but related through language that anyone can understand). I personally started looking at my own crappy little music pieces through a whole new lens after I read these articles. I think anybody who makes their own game music will benefit from what Yu has to say here.

Programming

Pete Shinners' Line by Line Chimp Example - I've already mentioned this on the blog, but it bears notice here, as well. This is the ultimate one-stop crash-course in Pygame by the creator of Pygame himself, Pete Shinners. It assumes a basic knowledge of Python. If you want to get involved in making games with Pygame (which I wholeheartedly recommend), this is the starting point.

Lars Doucet's 'Flash is Dead, Long Live OpenFL!' - Haxe is one of the most interesting programming languages available right now, and this article by the creator of Defender's Quest offers a great, enthusiastic look at the advantages and disadvantages of using it. It is mainly written for those who have been developing in Flash, but even if you've never written a line of Action Script (I sure haven't), this article has a great deal of good info. Read it, and then get to making great cross-platform games with haxe! :)

The Games Business

David Galindo's 'How Much Do Indie PC Devs Make, Anyways?' series - This frank look at making it in the indie games business, presented by David Galindo of Cook, Serve, Delicious! fame, offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at indie financing. The author honestly looks at his successes and failures during his quest to make it in the business. Highly recommended. Should be required reading for those who want to be independent game developers.

Tanya X. Short's 'The Secret to Scrappiness' - This is a great article that is equal parts inspiration and sound advice. Its all about finding your own way to survive in the games ecosystem. Short talks about the ways she had to get creative in order to carve out a place for her company in a world of low discoverability and information overload. Read the whole article, it is definitely worth it.

Independent Developer Resources

J. Kyle Pittman's 'Booth Hacks' series - In this series, J. Kyle Pittman covers an under-discussed detail of marketing your game that is crucial to indie devs - setting up a booth at conventions. This is a very specific set of articles, but they're just what someone like me (who has never even been to a con and who fears the idea of running a booth there with passionate fervor) probably needs to read. Check it out!

Jeff Vogel's entire blog -  I honestly probably don't need to direct my readers to Vogel's work, but I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention the godfather of all indie devs, on the off chance that you haven't heard of him :) Just about every article on there is loaded with wisdom, even if some are outdated by this point. I recommend just browsing through the archives and reading what jumps out at you. Jeff Vogel has produced a lot of content, so there's surely something there that will help you.


There ya go! A few quality links from across the web that I've come into contact with in my time :) There are lots more articles that I've read that have helped me, but that I didn't include for one reason or other (almost always that I forgot the name and couldn't find it :/ ). I hope you all get something out of these links!

See you later!

Still Kickin'

Hey all, just checking in to let you all know that I'm still at it. I have been pretty busy with a few things related to game development (namely, learning a new programming language), but all in all not much has changed. This is just gonna be a quick post to let you all know I'm still around :)

I have been making plans lately for the future of my game development endeavors. One thing that I definitely want to do over the course of next year (my first year post-college) is to try and get a game out of commercial quality that I can sell for money. I have actually been developing a GDD, but all details are unfortunately bound for the future. Just have to wait and see what I come up with!

That about does it. One more thing, I finally broke down and got a Facebook page! Here it is! I friend pretty much everybody, but its also completely barren for the time being :)

So long for now! See you all next week!!