Category Archives: my games

behind the scenes, competitions, games, MAGS, my games

Breakdown behind the scenes – Part 1 – Idea

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SPOILERS ALERT! If you’ve not played Breakdown yet go do so before reading these posts as they contain, amongst other things, a full walkthrough!

“The theme of this month’s contest is a classic sci-fi setting – you must have your main character(s) on a ship afloat in space that is, for whatever reason, unable to move (other systems may be malfunctioning at the creator’s discretion). Are the characters scavenging the ship? Or is their own ship out of commission? The cause of the malfunction is up to the creator.”

It’d been a while since I’d entered a MAGS competition and, as is often the case when you already have a project on the go, I was feeling inspired to do something different. When SpacePirateCaine’s very open ruleset came along I decided to think up some possible games I could make to it.

My first plan was to do some kind of horror game, big on atmosphere. I’d love to do something serious that really grips the player, but ultimately decided I couldn’t pull it off in the time. Next idea was to return to my game-making roots and do something in an RPG Maker style – top down tiled graphics with a focus on exploring and environmental rather than inventory puzzles. Again another idea I’d love to return to in the furture, but some quick attempts at drawing tiles went badly and it would have been cheating to have used someone else’s free tileset.

I have a general rule of 5 days planning for MAGS. If I’m going to make a game in such a short amount of time I’ll need to know (more or less) what I have to draw, script, test and so on. So on the 5th of April (a Sunday) I had a last ditch attempt at coming up with a game idea and opened up Graphics Gale and started pixeling characters…

To be continued…

competitions, game updates, games, MAGS, my games

MAGS April 2009 Finished

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Well ok it was over days ago but I’ve been busy recently. There were three entries in total, but my entry, Breakout, managed to secure the most votes. This means I get pick June’s competition rules – this month is special because it marks the 5th anniversary of Klaus being the MAGS host.

I’ll write a more lengthy ‘The Making Of Breakout’ type entry at some point which might interest some people. Stay tuned and thanks for your votes!

competitions, game updates, games, MAGS, my games

Breakdown released!

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After many hours of hard work Breakdown, my entry to this month’s MAGS competition, is finished and released! You can download it from the games page.

Here’s a couple of screenshots…


I should have posted this earlier, but I’ve been busy catching up with all the things I should have been doing while I was making it. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, although I had several interesting ideas that never quite made it into this version. I also wanted to do another commentary, like I did in Erk, though I ran out of time. When MAGS is over I’ll probably write something about how I went about making this game and what I focused on, but in the meantime please download and play the other two entries, and vote for your favourite of the three!

competitions, game updates, games, MAGS, my games

The Cat, the Player and the Cupboard

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I’m now more or less tied in to entering this month’s MAGS competiton, having spent at least 3 solid days working on an entry. My main problem at the moment is how much I want to put in, and how little time I actually have to work on it. This evening I managed to spend an hour or two implementing a puzzle involving a cat and a cupboard…

game updates, games, general, my games

April whatever day

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So it was April Fools day today and I suppose I should have knocked up some fake screenshots of an awesome looking game and released them. Instead I just went “Huh? Oh” at several websites and the 6 o’clock news. Unfortunately there was no big AGS prank this year, though there was the odd smaller one pulled by various forum members.

Progress on mystery project since my last post has been one bug fix and one cool extra bit of code. The game is loaded with fancy and unneeded effects and rather lacking in actual game because fancy additions are quick to add and generally not very many lines of scripting, and once in they usually work first or second time. The main engine (if you can call it that) that I should be working on will take hours and hours and will need a lot of testing and fine tuning once done. Further delays may come in the form of this month’s MAGS competition which looks very interesting. If I can come up with a good, unique idea I may well enter…

On a completely unrelated note here’s a video of a water balloon being dropped in slow motion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XngQJzAmVm8&feature;=related.

art, game updates, games, my games

Latest game developments

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I said last post that I’d write something about the games I’m working on at the moment. Since then my web hosting went down and then I got distracted. Still, here we are.

Aside from the millions of ideas floating around my head (most of which need an artist and writer to ever get anywhere – hint hint) I’ve got two games on the go. The first one which, owing to its secretive nature, I’ll code name ‘Secret Project’ has been around since October last year. Its something of an experiment created as a sequel to another experiment and I’m not the only one working on it. In fact I have no idea what’s happened to it so far. For a game that was supposed to be finished in a little over a month it’s certainly been around awhile…

The second game is, owing to its surrounding air of disappointment-dissipating mystery, code-named ‘Mystery Project’. I’m reluctant to reveal too much about this one because although I know (nearly) exactly what I want to do with it, I’m not sure if I can actually do it in AGS. I will say that while I’m making it in my favourite game-making program, Adventure Game Studio, it’s not an adventure game. But it does have something to do with adventure games. Also its at 640×480 resolution, so if it ever gets done I’ll have done a different res in each of my main games.

Also here’s a small cut out from a screenshot of Mystery Project…