In my previous blog entry i reviewed most popular scripting solutions, with Playmaker being number one as a one of a kind solution for making games easily. As noted, while being extremely useful for rapid prototyping, you can encounter multiple issues that i wrote about. As far as i know, few people are working on it, so the development is going really slow, with some major problems still existing in the current codebase after many years, such as global variables…
I was contacted by someone regarding Playmaker development and it inspired me to write a blog about visual scripting in general and how few programmers are actually using visual way to make games. It’s fast and easy to learn, but comes with its own set of caveats. I never inteded to make games. I grew up playing video games on C64, Amiga and PC but that was it. A while ago (like 7 years ago) i wanted to change my…
While Rick Henderson is happily being ported for Xbox, Playstation and Switch, i decided to make a small spin-off game that will be free for all existing and new Rick Henderson owners. It will be available to buy separately and i have yet to decide on pricing, but it will be somewhere between $0.25 and $0.50. What, am i nuts? Consider it a small experiment, i want to see how much traction and sales can a small and cheap game…
Current Early Access version contains: ■ Three player ships with different special abilities and stats■ 40 different enemies■ 5 levels■ 5 bosses in three variations each (15 bosses total)■ 25 weapons■ 250 unique waves■ 5 random events (Warp Malfunction, Asteroid Field, Minefield, Laser Barrage, Meteor Storm)■ 20 perks to choose from at the end of each level
The most important thing, the flesh of the game, are enemy attack waves. In this short log i will show you how they are made. The process is a bit tedious and probably can be automated to a certain amount (which i will probably be introducing to add some random variety) but it serves me well and gives a decent amount of control over what i do. First, i choose what enemies will the wave contain (out of 40 enemies,…
I’m proud to announce that Rick Henderson has been selected as a participant in the Game Development World Championship 2020 in the commercial title category. GDWC has been (to my knowing) been held since 2012., and it’s a great way to help developers gain visibility. In today’s video game market, which is overly saturated, it’s quite hard to get your game noticed unless you have a strong publisher, so every bit counts. That’s why, my dear subscribers, i need your…
I’ve been postponing this for a long time, but some time near the end of the past year i realized another overhaul is due, this time for optimization purposes. It’s a long and tedious process and can get you into a rabbit hole that can be hard to get out of. My recommendation is not to overoptimize, but do take care of bottlenecks as soon as they appear since they can get you back to square one too late in…
As the early access draws near, i need some people for testing the game and giving me their opinions and bug reports. All testers will get access to latest version in the dev branch and a steam key when it gets to early access. You can apply by posting here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1023790/discussions/0/2865909716042511185/
I posted a small video of an enemy from Rick Henderson on Twitter yesterday and it gained a lot of traction so i think it would be interesting to post some stuff on enemy design and how i do it. When i started making Rick Henderson i wanted it to be something unique with easily recognizable enemies defined by their faction, design and modes of attack. With something so ambitious as a one man project that works on more than…
Making the weapon itself First thing we need to do will be making the weapon that will actually be launching those missiles, right? It’s a plain and simple contraption made of two FSM’s i called FiringSystem and FiringTimer. Firing system will handle the missile creation, and FiringTimer will take care of giving the weapon a rate of fire. It’s basically a countdown timer of cooldown between two missile salvos. It’s a really simple setup. Firing System FSM Here’s the graph…