I realise I’m being rather vague but that’s just because everything is in such a high state of flux. As soon as things have a clearer direction, I’ll begin to share some details about what you actually do in the game.

The majority of my time this week has been spent on a first-pass at some of the artwork. This has also meant listening to lots of indie game soundtracks since I find these good inspiration without being too distracting. (I’ve mainly been listening to the Binding of Isaac and Portal 2 soundtracks).

The look I’m going for is simple, elegant, and clean. This usually means laying the initial structure of the tiles, colouring them, building up detail and then checking them at 1:1 zoom. At this stage I start reducing the level of detail to achieve the look I want. This may sound slightly protracted but I think its working.

The tiles above represent a partially complete setting for the first level. The UI is missing so I’m sure its not immediately obvious how the game plays out. I’m still playing with colours (the trees in particular) and detail so chances are these will change before the game ships.

I have a staggering number of tiles to create across the various tile-sets and themes. As a result, the style I choose needs to be fairly quick to reproduce. Whats important is that when viewed at its correct resolution it conveys the correct image and leaves your imagination to fill in the rest. When the tiles are blown up you can see that some of the detail is fairly crude. Detail at this scale isn’t visible when playing the game so elements need to be exaggerated if you want them to be seen (for example, the shadow in the front facing roof struts or the lack of horizontal planks on the gate).

Next week I’m implementing the player movement and the new mechanic I mentioned above. I’m slowly creeping towards a playable level 1 (sans RPG mechanics). See you next time.

I’ve opted to make them web-based (using HTML5 and JS) rather than build them as a desktop/mobile App. Hopefully this will give me the ability to develop levels anywhere I have an internet connection (including on my mobile device).

So far I’ve setup the basic structure, designed the basics of the GUI, and figured out some of the behind-the-scenes stuff needed to manage the grid (currently a series of 35 div’s). Its in its early stages but the screenshot below shows what I have so far.

The panel on the far left is the level itself (sharing the same screen dimensions as an iPhone). The middle panel contains the sprites available in the currently selected tileset. The panel on the far right is for editing the level metadata – name, reference, tileset, etc.

As you can see, the level editor is far from complete. At a minimum I need to be able to place sprites from the selected tileset, save the level to a database, and generate a plist from it. My plans are that eventually I’ll have a suite of tools for creating/editing levels, determining the possible routes through the game (a kind of level storyboard), and editing quest information.

This is all really very early stuff but I think its nice to see how things change throughout development, eventually becoming a very polished mobile game (hopefully!). Next week I’m leaving the editor for the time being to focus on some early graphics. Hopefully I can share some of this with you next time.

Thanks for reading.

This week the vast majority of my time has been spent getting a basic inventory system up and running and interacting correctly with the game world and level parsing. Visually its the ugliest thing ever but that’s because I’ve made the conscious decision to focus on the core programming first.

Anyway, as part of my promise to share an image in each of these updates, you too can share in it’s ugliness. It’s always difficult to know whether to share this sort of stuff because you don’t want to put people off. Anyway, I expect most of my readers are programmers anyway.

This is literally week 2 of development so you’re seeing stuff in its totally raw form.

The work on the inventory system has mostly been methods for adding and removing items and for returning current quantities.

-(void)addTilesToInventory:(NSDictionary *)tileDictionary;
-(void)addTileToInventory:(NSString *)tileToAdd withQuantity:(NSNumber *)quantity;
-(void)removeTilesFromInventory:(NSDictionary *)tileDictionary;
-(void)removeTileFromInventory:(NSString *)tileToRemove withQuantity:(NSNumber *)quantity;

The methods above are for adding and removing items from the Inventory. In their basic form they take an NSDictionary as input, containing item type -> quantity to add. I also have convenience methods for adding/removing a single item (without the need for an NSDictionary).

To highlight some situations where I’d use one over the other. When the player finds loot, I’ll often want to give them multiple items. Likewise, i’ll do the same when parsing initial data from the level.

When using an item from the inventory, you’ll only use a single item.

Sounds simple but in reality its actually pretty tricky to get right.

Elsewhere, my level data is taking shape. I can now parse a plist to generate a level, select the tileset, and populate the inventory (where required). This is important because its serves as the output for my level editing tools.

The game itself is rather basic at this stage. I still have lots of game design decisions to make. The core mechanic works but really needs some more thought and I only have vague ideas about how I’m going to stitch in the RPG elements. I think that I really need the ability to build levels quickly and test them during this phase of figuring things out. That’s why I’m focussing on level data and tools so early on.

This is the stage in development where theres heaps to do and success comes easy. Work is fairly erratic because I can flit between various tasks and challenges. Later on things will really slow down but equally it will look more like a game.

Next week I’ll begin working on a first pass at some of the graphics as well as hopefully dipping into creating my level editor (which will be built in HTML5 and Javascript).

See you next week.

I suspect that the initial posts will be fairly dull since there isn’t much to show (and won’t be for some time). Still, they’ll help to keep me motivated and also give me some accountability.

So what have I been working on this week?

This week has been all about laying down some of the foundations. I want my level editing to be an integral part of the development process, so that the tools (and level quality) evolve at the same pace as the gameplay.

I’ve been working on the level layout/rendering part of my engine. I’m using a plist to store level data so at this stage I’ve mapped out a basic data structure and have some basic parsing working.

The engine is currently capable of rendering some placeholder assets specified in the plist. Since the assets are placeholder, there’s not much point in showing you anything yet. Instead, here’s a screenshot of the early Class structure (I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions from it :) ). Not very exciting I know but we are early in development.

My next step is to flesh out the above code to enable me to specify more information in the plist. In conjunction with this I’m going to start working on the level editing tool. I’ll also be focussing on adding the first of the gameplay mechanics.

Since I’m doing everything in this game myself, I’ll also be dipping in and out of creating the graphics and writing the story.

Something else I’ve settled on is my project management tool. I’ll be using pivotal tracker for this project. I had thought about using Brainwave again but it needs more development to get it to the point where it does everything I need. For now it makes more sense to have someone else focus on building the PM tools – after all, I have plenty on my plate!

See you next week.

I think it would be kind of silly to throw away what I’ve learnt over the past 2 years so I’m settling on 2D for my new game and I’m going to stick with cocos2D as my engine. This means I can focus on gameplay and story rather than tools and technology.

There are still plenty of challenges ahead. Whilst I know that the art style is manageable for me in 2D, there is a lot to create. This is also the first level based game I’ve created and as such I’m expecting to need to create level authoring tools (hopefully web-based).

Its a tough decision to make but I think that its sensible to switch the challenge away from learning new tech and continue down the road of honing my game design skills. 3D is something I mean to revisit in future. Who knows, I may even dabble with it on the side.

If you’re considering 3D, from what I’ve played with, Unity is a great option.

… and with that out of the way, and a basic prototype under my belt, its time to begin development for real. Yep, it’s time to start laying the foundations. File->New Project…

First up, as is tradition (and by tradition I mean I’ve done it twice), a bit about the site.

One of my goals for 2011 was to revamp my website again (the fruits of which you are looking at now). Its important to me that the website reflects who I am and I’m fairly happy with it for the time being.

Stats-wise bytesizeadventures.com continues to go from strength to strength. Here are the visitor numbers for the whole of 2011…

28,604 visits from 18,669 unique visitors – both up 30% on last year.
48,773 pageviews – again, up 30% on last year.
368 visitors in a single day (at its highest point). This was 23rd September and coincided with my post “From Idea to App store in 6 months“.

Just to indulge myself and reflect upon that for a moment, over 18,000 individuals have visited this site in 2011. To me that’s incredible and acts as huge encouragement.

The 5 most popular posts of 2011 were as follows.

1. iPhone game development toolkit (An old post but still popular apparently)
2. 10 don’ts of iPhone game development
3. A beginners guide to iPhone game development
4. App development: The Testing
5. App development: The Wireframes

Honorable mention: From idea to App Store in 6 months (contains some of the most popular posts this year, bound to be favourites of 2012).

Moving on from website stats, I said I would do a lot of things in 2011. I anticipated more updates for Astro Noughts, 2 new games, and a new version of Brainwave. I’m not going to lie, you got none of that :)

Here’s what actually went down!

1) Coffee Cellar

My big project for 2011. Loads of words, loads of code, and loads of coffee!

Coffee Cellar was all about taking something I’m passionate about and producing a slick App from a simple idea. You can read about it in much more detail here.

Coffee Cellar has been my most successful iPhone App to date. Its hasn’t done amazingly well financially (I’m only about one sixth of the way towards that new espresso machine). However, Coffee Cellar has been mentioned in The Guardian’s App Rush feature, It’s been T3′s App of the day, Its also given me my first ever print magazine review in Tap! Magazine.

Not to mention some really nice coffee community coverage from the likes of coffee works, tasteologie, coffee-rock-thought, and mentions from coffee peeps on twitter.

I’ve already released 4 updates in 2011 (including the most recent Christmas update) and I have plans for further updates throughout 2012.

2) Rocket Santa Remix

In a last ditch attempt to produce something else in 2011, I totally re-wrote Rocket Santa from the ground up – adding game center integration, fancy particles effects, revamped gameplay, and totally new sound effects and music.

Rocket Santa Remix launched as free game on 5th December. It’s not intended to light the mobile games world on fire, its just a fun distraction that I like having around :)

Over Christmas its had a few hundred downloads.

3) Astro Noughts

Astro Noughts was my first iPad game and launched at the end of 2010. In 2011, I updated it with a new difficulty system as well as some improvements to the planetarium.

After playing around with a free promotion early in the year, I ultimately decided to make it permanently free late last year.

The Postmortem I wrote was featured on Gamasutra which was nice.

I don’t intend to keep updating Astro Noughts. It was a fun project and I’m happy with the game but it doesn’t hold any interest for me any more and its unlikely to ever be successful financially.

4) Attended a conference

In January I attended an indie game development conference called “World of Love 2″. Overall it was an interesting experience and one that I’d definitely repeat. Off the back of that conference I started One Eyed Cafe with a friend.

I take full responsibility for not producing anything worthwhile from that endeavour. Ultimately, I’m not quite ready for working on a joint game project – there are too many facets that I’m eager to learn for myself. One Eyed Cafe isn’t disbanded, it’s just parked for the time being.

5) Removed Rocket Santa and Star Fusion from sale

As I mentioned above, Rocket Santa was replaced with a revamped version. Star Fusion was my first attempt at iOS development. It was well past its prime, no longer worked correctly, and, at over 2 years old, I don’t want the upkeep.

Essentially I’m tweaking/housekeeping my iOS line-up. I now have 3 products – Coffee Cellar, Rocket Santa Remix, and Astro Noughts.

2012

2011 has taught me a lot. Its taught me about what I can achieve in a year. Its taught me even more about the App store and what its becoming. Its also made me re-evaluate what it is I want from this (this currently being a hobby). As a result, here are my plans for 2012.

1) Release one new game.

2) Continue updating Coffee Cellar.

That’s it!

That is my realistic, streamlined plan for 2012. I’m in this to write games because I like writing games. The time has come to produce something that’s a little more ambitious than my previous efforts. I’m putting aside the pressures of trying to turn a profit to instead focus on producing a game that I can be proud of. This means I need time. Joyfully, 2012 has popped up and looks like an ideal amount of time for such an endeavour.

Oh yeh, I’m getting married in 2012 too – its going to be an awesome year!

If you still need convincing, read this review from Tap! Magazine.

The sale will last over the Christmas period and then it will return to its original, although still reasonable $1.99 (£1.49) price point.

I hope you can take advantage of the offer. If not, perhaps you’ll consider buying a copy for a friend or loved one.

As I covered last time, I’ve settled on a puzzle RPG as my next game. Its an attempt at a meatier, although still manageable, game.

I’ve been playing around with some prototypes for the past few months. These have been both paper-based and cocos2d game prototypes. During that time the core mechanics have changed considerably. Even at this stage I’ve been thinking about interface and control elements since they’ll be crucial for an enjoyable game.

The core mechanic is just about there so I’m moving on to adding some light RPG elements to test how they work. I’d say its currently interesting but not yet fun.

All of this is still prototype work that will be scrapped when I move into production. Its a fun time of messy repeated code, massive chunks of commented out code, one-off variables all over the place, and a general disregard for performance :)

Early next year I’m going to put some time aside for playing with engines and 3D modelling. I’m still trying to settle on technology. I’ve played with some early 3D and some 2D sketches and I have a general “look” in mind.

Once thats out of the way, i’ll begin building both the core engine and the tools I need to author the game. Custom authoring tools will be crucial for this game – I’m thinking level editing and perhaps even basic story weaving and/or quest modelling.

There’s still a very long road ahead. This is easily a 12 month project. Its a daunting prospect but, with all self-imposed financial pressures removed, its a journey I’m really looking forward to. The length of this project is what has seriously made me consider technology. I want maximum players but in an ecosystem where quality is valued.

As soon as I’m past the prototype phase, I’ll start to share more on this blog. Once in production, I’ll be writing weekly updates to keep me motivated – I’d postulate that production will begin sometime in February.

I guess I need some kind of mysterious working title. Lets go with Project PRPG (Puzzle RPG). In fact how about a step further and just PPRPG.

See you next time.

For those of you who don’t know, Rocket Santa is a game I created in collaboration with a talented pixel artist in 2009. The aim was to test the Christmas market and… well… it kinda failed.

Back to my riveting anecdote. I went ahead and released Coffee Cellar with its cool Rocket Santa mug icon. I also thought, I haven’t played Rocket Santa in a while, I’ll download it. Well, I did and it crashed upon opening.

So, I thought I’d just fix the bug and update it. Cutting an overly long story short, my code was a mess and really out of date. I had a go at fixing it but ultimately settled on a better idea. I’d re-write the game for scratch with zero code re-use.

It turned into a bit of a challenge. Trying to re-write the whole game with superior gameplay and no new graphics (whilst trying to keep the dev time short). A few weeks later and that’s what I’ve done. The same awesome graphics with a new engine. Here’s what’s changed…

+ Brand new sound effects and music across the board.
+ New gameplay based on delivering as many presents as you can.
+ Cool particle effects including… Snow!
+ A more dynamic landscape.
+ Dynamic difficulty.
+ Game Center leaderboards.
+ Better performance.
+ Re-worked controls for smoother gameplay.
+ A new icon.

Oh yeh, the best bit. Its Free too. No Advertising. No IAP’s. No virtual currency. Just plain ol’ Free. A gift from me to you. Happy Christmas.

Grab it here.

Instead, I’ve been fighting a bit of a battle in my head about what my next game should be. Not just in terms of idea but also in terms of monetisation. I recognise that lots of developers are going free in a bid to reduce the barrier to entry but at the same time this means monetising the game in some form other than a one-off purchase (in-game currency is becoming more and more popular). I also recognise that I should be jumping on this bandwagon. Whilst Freemium (that’s what the “cool” kids call it) probably won’t be THE future of gaming, it will almost certainly represent a large part of it.

The problem I have is that I kind of sigh when I see a freemium game in the App store. I rarely buy in-game currency or IAP of any kind (unless its additional content for a game I really like).

The dilemma I have is that I’m finding it difficult to come up with a concept for a freemium game where I myself would pay for the virtual currency. As a result I’m stuck between building a game for others (and maximum revenue) vs building it for myself (and others like me).

I’m not against freemium but I’ve decided to park it temporarily. Instead my next game will just simply be a game (the game its meant to be). Monetisation will not be part of my design process and I’ll decide what to charge once its built. That may be a one-off fee or it may be free. It won’t however be riddled with virtual currency.

With money removed from the equation it all starts to feel fun again – which is kind of why I’m doing it. I know its not that easy for a lot of you, especially those who do this full time. But for now I have the luxury of a full time job and this is a hobby.

So, I’ve thought a lot about the type of game I want to make. RPG’s have always been something that I’ve enjoyed. I like that they offer choice and exploration, along with a story that I can lose myself in.

More recently I’ve been enjoying the new-ish sub-genre (or perhaps genre mashup is a better name) that is the Puzzle RPG. This was popularised by Puzzle Quest but recently there has been a bit of an explosion creating equally enjoyable games such as Dungeon Raid and King Cashing.

I’d love to create a full RPG but I simply don’t yet have the skill or resource to complete it. The Puzzle RPG is the perfect fit for me because it could be much smaller in scope.

So, once again making a promise that I may not keep, that’s my next game – a puzzle RPG.

I haven’t decided on platform or the tech i’ll use to create it. I’m seriously considering targeting a desktop platform and also looking into cross-platform engines.

That said, I’m currently prototyping with cocos2d on iPhone because its what I know so its faster for me. I have a basic prototype (with the core gameplay mechanic). The problem is that it isn’t quite fun. My next challenge is to knock it into shape so that the core mechanic is enjoyable before I begin to design the additional layers of complexity.

I’m also going to start to play around with Art. I haven’t decided on a visual style for the game as yet and I may take this opportunity to delve into 3D modelling.

The remainder of this year will be about prototyping, sample visuals, and making that core gameplay mechanic fun. I want to start 2012 ready to go into full production mode. If all goes to plan, this will be THE game that I want to make with no monetisation concerns overshadowing its production.

I’ll aim to share bits and bobs from the prototyping phase this year so stay tuned for slightly more regular posts.