Latests events
I feel like I am playing a coop game where multiple disaster cards has been drawn and you now have to deal with it. So here are the recent news of what actually happened during the last 6 months. In fact, at the pace things are going, I seem to be writting on this news page twice a year. I think it's because it's the only free time I have to write between school semester. So I might continue this way until school is finally over ... even if school is somewhat a curse for me, its never over. Afterwards, maybe 4 times per year would be appropriate.
So the first bad news that you are probably aware of, unless you were not living on the earth, is the presence of a new virus in our ecosystem. For me is just a cherry on the top of the sunday, that was already full. Still, from my perspective, the covid was less problematic because I was already staying at home and practicing social distanciation before the virus arrived. It's almost a way of life.
Speaking of home, I had to move recently which added a lot of work to do in my new living area including painting and repairs. So it eats up a lot of my time, but it's essential I finish this before September as the school semester will be starting again ... from home. At least I'll save the transportation time from home to school.
Speaking of school, The semester ended weird and I still have some homework to do. Any free time are prioritized to those home works rather than personal projects. So again, stuff are not progressing as expected.
There are many other factors that are slowing down any progress. One of them is that I need to do more transportation than before to go to work and school, which gives me less free time. I currently lose between 60 and 90 min per day(on work days). Still, I could do some things on the bus. I am currently reading and writing, but there is a limit on what I can write on paper. At some point I will need to code something, input data or make assets in digital format.
So I have been thinking that maybe a tablet or a portable computer could help crunch some work on the bus but vibrations are problematic. Painting on a tablet for example could be disastrous. Inputting data and maybe playtesting video games could be the only things I would see working. Programming requires either too much resources and a certain mindset I might not have on the bus. I would need better tools and software on mobile device to actually do something from the bus.
Projects
Here is what I have been working on during the last 6 months:
Bubble Burst
This is stock market game based on St0ck T!cker. I made a digital prototype to simulatate games and play the game as a digital prototype. It's very complicated to balance such game, and good for me that I have a computer, it should make the game much more solid. I found many bugs and issues and I am much closer to make the stock market have the behavior I want, something I could not do with simple paper prototype.
The next step would be to implement it with my Black Book engine. My friend has some trouble in windows to run the command line program I made, so using Black Book could solve this issues as I create a terminal window. I will also not have to manually record transaction in a spreadsheet which should speed up play testing while making it more convenient to play. As long as you are willing to use the command line interface. If you are interested in playtesting a simple stock market board game with a spreadsheet, let me know and I'll give you access to the digital prototype.
Afterwards, I will be looking for making physical prototype on gamecrafters before finally releasing it. My goal was to make at least 1 game crafter games, and it will probably be this one. Not sure if I will be making other gamecrafters games in the future.
Deep Space Colonisation
The second project I have been working on is Deep Space Colonization video game. I originally tried to make a board game out of it and it did not really work. It is inspired on the Overlord NES game and I intend to keep a similar tradition by making it a real time strategy game. One of the few RTS ideas that I have and that I can play.
It's a game where you colonise a new stellar system and try to manage your colony, colonise new planets and create a colony ship to win the game. I decided to to have direct opposition with another AI and the real time aspect of the game makes implementation of AI more complex. Instead, the player will need to deal with a series of random events that will challenge to the management of his colonies.
In order to have more experience with Android development, I wanted to make an experimental game that is easy to do and would allow me to experience the entire Android game development process. So that when I decide to make my pixel board engine, I could reuse some portion of my code and become much more comfortable with the environment.
I did a bit of coding and the tests I worked well, but I don't have a working game. The engine behind will be simple to code, as the game is basically a series of control panel where touching areas of the board triggers certain operations.
In theory, I finished a large portion of the design of the game. In fact, anything that could be written during my bus trip is done. To complete the design, I need to have a working game I could play it to make the finishing touches. For example, it's hard to design random events that the player needs to deal with, when you have little idea of how the game will play out itself. Since it's a real time game, I cannot plan ahead easily what will be happening like in board games. For example, it's more complicated to know if for example buildings will be built too fast or too slow because there is a time variable in the equation.
So if things go well and after I finished my homeworks, I could try spending the little free time I have to complete this game. I hope I could finish it in 2020. But with 2 big classes coming up this fall, and I cannot guaranty anything.
I hope you enjoyed this post, stay turned for another news flash this winter, and contact me if you want to manually test a stock market game.