Grow - Released

Wow, May was a busy month again. Lots and lots going on but very little game development. However, I did get together we my game dev buddy, Mr Gavin Parkinson, to knock out another game for the One Game a Month challenge.

May's theme was, "Grow". So quickly I came up with an idea for a simple platformer where you have a charcter that can throw down seeds and grow plants to climb on. In fact I had ideas of picking up different seeds to grow different plants to help you solve the level. I really liked that idea and in fact still like that idea. However, after getting together with Gav and realising we both were time restricted this month we decided on a simple idea of one seed that grows a plant to climb up. We then have randomly generated platforms and a scrolling screen that goes on for as longs as you can jump to the next platform.


This approach helped us out a lot because we only had to worry about one level and limited amount of artwork and sounds. In creating this game we really only had two nights together and the rest was done in isolation. Already we are working well together and I think that has a lot to do with knowing more of what we can do and our limitations at this time with the tools we have. With such a limited amount of time too I think we have achieved a simple but very playable fun game.

I must give massive praise to Gav for his awesome music. I really like it and think it fits well with the game. If you listen closely you can even hear birds tweeting in the background; they are from a recording in his back garden. He has also now got a SoundCloud account and a NewGrounds portal where he is posting music. Please go check them out.

The nice thing about this months release is the game assets. All but the platform art and the font were created by Gav and I (With a little help from my wife drawing of the main character). I think that was the most satisfying from my point of view. Taking a static drawing and animating him to run and jump felt really good.

I think are games are only going to get better and better the more we do this. I still can't believe we are actually making games that people are playing, rating and commenting on. Please, please go and check out the game on NewGrounds by clicking here. Give us a rating and feedback is always welcome. We have already had some things pointed out to us that we could do better and I think we will probably add a few updates to this game to make it even better.

One of my favourite things is the scoreboard. We have a scoreboard where your high score can be listsed, you do have to have a NewGrounds account but it is worth it, they have a load of brilliant games, art and music you can consume.

Anyway, enough from me get to NewGrounds and play our game. Enjoy!

Super Mega Flashing Ball - Released!

Gav and I have worked pretty hard all of last month to get this game released for #onegameamonth. We're pretty happy with the result. Gav has done a great job on the art and music as well as getting us through some tough developing.

We developed it using Stencyl and used some, free to use tiles. Most of the sound FX are down to me using as3sfxr again. All the music is by Gav using whatever tools he uses! I keep telling him to get a website up so I can link to his site/blog. All the background art is also produced by Gav, I did help with this game, honest!

As stated in my last post it was pretty hard going at times but Gav and I have produced, what we think, is a nice little game. There is definietly more scope for improvment and the game could be expanded on. In fact we had a lot of ideas that didn't make it into the game but that is largly due to us wanting to get the game done inside a month.

Now it's the start of May we need
to move onto the next game. We haven't really even thought about that yet but watch this space.

Now please play the game!

Dev Weekend With A Friend

Wow, what a weekend!

Started around 20:00 on Friday with my good friend Gav. I have started on the one game a month path but have wanted to develop a game with my mate for ages. We decided to get together and use our skills to do April's one game a month entry. The idea was to get the bulk of the game idea and mechanics sorted within a 72 hour period.

We set off with good intentions and came up with a interesting idea and game mechanic. The main bulk of our Friday night was spent getting our main game mechanic working. The early hours of Saturday morning was an adventure into finding limitations in what we could do with Stencyl. That is not to say that Stencyl could not do what we had imagined  it might well be able to, but we just couldn't get it to work without breaking our main mechanic. We called it a night/early morning with a hope of having fresh eyes on it in the morning.

Now Saturday morning proved to be an eye opener to me. I can see the benefits of working on your own; You have your own ideas and the skills you have will either make those ideas a reality or not. If you see yourself failing you might cut and run early and come up with a new idea that you feel is more achievable  So the benefits are easy to see, you make all the calls and you don't have to worry about anyone else.

Working with someone else is different to going solo. You do have someone else there with their own skills and ideas. You're just finding a balance and making compromises on ideas and hopefully you're both getting something you want. But the hardest thing I found was on Saturday morning when I was thinking we should change what we were doing. With all the learning and fiddling with different game mechanics I was worried we were getting bogged down and not moving forward. I would have called a time on our idea long before we both did. In this case it became a huge benefit to be working with someone else because where I would have moved on, Gav carried on. We stripped everything back to the main game mechanic and made a level. Turns out what we had was pretty good and what we originally wanted. If I had my way I would have ditched the whole thing.

So the rest of Saturday and Sunday was spent moving the game forward. Now we have, what we think, is a strong puzzle type game. We have only made two levels so far but we've had fun playing them and creating new levels will take no time at all.

What we have left to do for release this month is the sound and level design. I believe the weekend was a great success and we achieved what we set out to do. We were thinking of doing a Ludum Dare 72 hour game jam in the future and this was a great way of finding out what we're good at and where we need improvement. To finish a game within those 72 hours is would be a tough task but teams are doing this all the time.

Watch this space for screens and a very early development revision of our game.

One Game A Month

Games - www.onegameamonth.com

Hello all, as promised in my first post I am here to talk about a fantastic idea and fun website, www.onegameamonth.com. One Game a Month is a website all about... Well creating one game a month. It is all about motivating game devs to actually get a game up and working and ready for public consumption every month. Sounds crazy, like too much hard work? Well people are on there and doing it.

Armed with my new tool, Stencyl, I decided to finish my Space Rocks game and enter it on the site as my first game. It was very rewarding due to the way the site gives you XP for various actions, including releasing a game. The XP rewards get bigger and bigger if you keep releasing a game every month. Not that you can do anything with your XP but lets face it, geeks love XP.

My profile and XP

There seems to be a nice little community forming too. There are twitter accounts to follow and a reddit plus other various ways of getting in contact with like minded people. I've already got a few new followers on twitter and my game keeps getting played since putting on the site, so I'm really happy about that.

I'm really looking forward to April. I fully aim to release another game to the unsuspecting gaming community. The more experience I get at making and releasing games the better I'm hoping to get.

Watch this space...

Next time I will be talking to you about April's gaming project!

Welcome to ISK Productions

This is my new blog site to tell anyone out there a little bit about myself and my game development endeavours.

I have been wanting write computer game for sometime but I found that the learning curve is pretty steep, especially with a young family and, to be fair, my really bad procrastination problem (this is the main cause).

So over the last few months I have been trying to learn to program in python and java but I quickly find I don't have enough hours to fully get to grips with it and produce something quickly. I understand that it is not easy and if I want to release my dream I would need to spend a lot more time learning to start off with. But I found this frustrating and then I came across Stencyl. Well that was it for me. I downloaded this great bit of software and with in minutes of the first tutorial you can get a working game. It is fast and ridiculously easy to get to grips with. I understand that it might be limited in what it can produce and I'm sure I'll have to move on at some point. Although it does seem early days for Stencyl and they seem to be fitting more and more features into their system.

If you haven't had a look at Stencyl I would really recommend you go and take a look. If, like me, you want something fast and easy to deliver playable games then this is for you.

So with my new tool in hand I started to create my first game, Space Rocks. It is basically an Asteroids clone and where a lot of first time developers start. It has taken me the best part of a month to get it working like I want but that is with me dipping in and out of it. I've not spent hours every day trying to get it working, it's been an odd hour here and there tweaking what I already had.

The best thing about it is that I've not just used someone else's artwork or sound effects. I've even created them myself. I downloaded a pixel art program called Pixen (Mac OS). I then used an online resource to create my various sound effects called as3sfxr.

So I urge all you aspiring games developers, get out there and look at the tools on offer. Stencyl is my choice at the moment but I know there are plenty of other tools now I have looked around. I think with a little bit of effort anyone can get an idea up and running. Good luck!

Next entry I will talk about OneGameAMonth. Sounds like hard work but I think it might be fun!