December 2020 Goals and Progress Thread

[BreakerZero]

Major update. I have finished the Xbox build's save file manager so that it relies primarily on local storage in the filesystem (as opposed to the default which is browser-based storage). This required some serious research to implement between the game code and the host app - not to mention the WinRT component structure that I had to build. And that's before you consider that MV's base64 encoding system doesn't work at all, meaning that I had to store everything in its raw form (thereby forcing a "behind-the-scenes" version of an MV save file to be used for the disk-based part of the storage system).

The only thing I'm not sure of with this requirement is how the legal concerns pertaining to MV will be impacted, and it's not like everyone is going to know where the game's data is stored. But either way, the save data is now being stored both on disk and in the host app, and both affect each other equally (which was the primary goal in the first place, so that a missing disk-based file results in the deletion of its browser-based twin on every launch of the game). The ultimate goal with this save structure is to eventually allow for the data to sync up with cloud storage while accommodating the limitations of MV code that occur when running off the WebView root definition that is used by the Xbox platform.

 

[slimmmeiske2]

I've decided to join the Spooktacular jam. I've got an idea to do a game about witches. Still working out some details, especially the gameplay.
Since my cats were able to leave my lap for a few hours, I got to actually open MZ and design the protagonist:

(Kids are scary right? )

 

[l8rose]

Starting off, I didn't really have too many high goals for this month. Mostly just getting back into the groove of artwork and writing now that things are a lil more settled. Started planning another revamp of my Starshard/Riverlord combo game but that's on pause as I decided to join the Game Jam (good excuse to test out MZ) so getting an hour long game completed and properly submitted is my goal.

Other than audio and a couple of basic plugins, I'm just sticking with the tilesets from the MZ demo or minor new stuff. Might come back to bite me in the behind later timewise. Regardless I've frankensprited most of the forest tileset to what I want. Tomorrow is finishing editing the small items and Town tileset as well as creating the additional characters.

So far the game is about 3 minutes long (woo) with a small cut scene. I've already worked out the main mechanic in the game to show the character is being affected by events in the game so here's hoping I get it all cohesive and making sense by the cut off date.

 

[BreakerZero]

A quick update on the status of my project. I'm waking away.

Okay, maybe not completely... though I am having to drastically change my project schedule. Reason is that I just got a job at the local food market, so obviously I'm not going to have as much time for this as before. Needless to say, I'll have to plan my project time based on my work schedule before I have any further updates.

In the meantime I'm continuing to research the requirements for my Xbox build and have added code related to account services relative to some recent intel on certain requirements. I'm hoping to have the storage capability fully debugged on Xbox at the earliest possible time, which may take awhile to figure out between my schedule change and the research itself.

 

[Marquise*]

Got a few more poses done. ^^

(Daughter Cat asks me to not forget to "mmmHI!" to you all. ^^ )

 

[l8rose]

So mid-way through the Game Jam's game development and deciding to do an update here.

Progressing a little slower on getting maps done as I keep wanting to redo tiles (that being said, I've now got a taller door, grouped up pots, black dogs and an assortment of other little things). Also redoing some of the initial stuff as I've decided that the Main Character will now only post one of the Balloon icons during a few of the "cinematics" but otherwise will remain silent.

Got some faces done, may make alternate emotions for them later but that's an end thing if I have time.

Overall, I'm mostly content with where I'm at. Next couple of days will pretty much just be map/puzzle making I think.

 

[BreakerZero]

Well, it finally happened... someone in my building got Covid. Thankfully I'm not showing any sign of being hit myself so until I hear otherwise my schedule is not anticipated to be impacted (although I'm probably going to have to isolate from the community when I'm not scheduled to be out there).

In terms of progress I'm working on adding the license and privacy information to my Xbox build, and should have that taken care of by evening (or at least I hope so). I'm also making several adjustments to the opening scene to better emphasize the special abilities which have been gifted upon the party (to the obvious tune of some serious mayhem).

 

[TSR]

Hello all!

I finally got the time to make and post the thread for my game The Last Continent.

​

For the next couples of weeks, I'll be doing the mapping for the next part of the game, while coding a Plugin for another user.

Have a nice day, everyone!

 

[Lihinel]

Not gonna post a screenshot of it yet, as its missing meaningfull entries at the moment, but I got the basics for the skilltree/skill unlock system done.
Need to fill the whole thing out, which requires having finished most of the battle system and some other stuff, so I guess thats my goal for the rest of the year.

Gonna post screenshots/videos once I got some substantial progress done.

 

[BreakerZero]

Took longer than expected to finish the updates to my Xbox build, but that's primarily because I had to account for more than I planned for (and more specifically, I had to account for offline mode) but at least it's almost done. I also ended up rewriting the in-engine portion of the opening scene and finished my gameplay preview for my next go at the special clearance provision (read: I'm thinking of making another run at the ID@Xbox evaluation).

 

[gabrieldiastche]

Unfortunaly, this month was a little bad for me...BUT I AM GONNA FOCUS!
MY MAIN GOAL OF NOVEMBER IS TO PRODUCE EVERYTHING THAT I DIDN'T DO IN OCTOBER!
LET'S GO!

But I still put the results from this month on here for you to see it!

 

[Ninjakillzu]

Unfortunaly, this month was a little bad for me...BUT I AM GONNA FOCUS!
MY MAIN GOAL OF NOVEMBER IS TO PRODUCE EVERYTHING THAT I DIDN'T DO IN OCTOBER!
LET'S GO!

So say we all.

Anyway, I haven't worked on my main project much this month, but I have been converting a small side project to MZ. Inspiration comes and goes as usual.

 

[Lihinel]

Got the main ability menu done and filled.
All the items are still missing the entries though, except for water, which got some test entries.
October goal kinda sorta semi done I guess.
Yay!

Still thinking about reducing the font size for the main description window, does anyone have any thoughts on that?

 

[BreakerZero]

Okay, I lied. My schedule is all over the place with work and just a few days per week so I still have enough time in between for my project.

In the meantime I now have a flipboard game in addition to the slots, and have decided to do a more vertical slice and use only one quest within the game since my second outreach attempt (and the first not directly sent to Xbox) just fell flat on me. I may post it as a demo for community analysis before sending it off to the next potential servicer since I'm shot for ideas with the whole package.

 

[Marquise*]

Will try finish all my couple poses and also my diagonal poses for my AH Lettership.

 

[Frostorm]

November Goal: Release 1st Alpha Demo! I'm aiming for these minimum requirements:

• Descriptions of all skills/spells for the Skill Trees (but some may not be functional yet)
  • Currently ~2/3 completed
• Opening scene + 1st battle + (maybe tutorial if I learn how to)
• 1 side quest
• 1 dungeon
• Mining + Blacksmithing
• Armor Layering system
• Soul Core system*
  • i.e. WeaponUnleash+LeTBS
  • *may not make it into Demo

 

[l8rose]

So, still laid up from my fall in October which means less time at the computer (who knew knee injuries don't do well in chairs where I cannot reach the floor...) which has prompted me to decide to focus on one game as opposed to my usual 2...ish.

Currently, I'm going to put Starshard: Riverlords back into stasis while I finish the actual script for Verloren. What I learned from Noavel Manor will also be transferred to SR when I start it up again. Unremembered is on hold as it is as I'm going to wait for a copy of MZ to continue that.

So goal is at least 40k words in November which should be doable for me, hoping for the 100k mark but we'll see how that goes. On the good days, I'm going to do some more GUI art and programming in VN Maker as right now it's pretty barebones with a custom message box and a mini-map to larger map. Still, pretty happy with what I have. Who knows, maybe I might actually put out something this month instead of 'maybes'.

 

[gabrieldiastche]

Guys, I am back posting here in this thread

So, I had a bad October month I think, I was so lazy and I was going the same way in November, but I am coming back, I realized that I need to focus and keep working, I was a little unmotivated because I am looking for jobs in game industry to leave my country once and for all and work only on games, but sometimes I think my portfolio or myself am good enough for some companies, at least here in Brazil I worked as a Game Designer and Programmer in games and as a teacher of Game Design, Level Design and Programming in a lot of different languages and engines, but I am scared that my resume and portfolio isn't good enough out there... By the way, if someone that has this thoughts I would love to hear about your experience with this and how to deal with it better.

But hey, let's focus on the good things now! So, I didn't post my achievements from October, so I will post everything from October to this day of November (here in Brazil it's 14/11/2020), so let's go:

GAME JAM (LUDUM DARE 47) ACHIEVEMENTS

• Participated in Ludum Dare 47, the theme of this gamejam was Loop.
• I did the whole game alone in 3 days basically, called Phil Alone and released it! Here is the link to the page with Phil Alone
• Played the games of a lot of people in the Ludum Dare 47 and send my ratings to these games.
• The final results of my Ludum Dare game was this and I am really happy with this, it's not in the top 100 or top 10, but for a lot of people that participated I loved my results (There was 3206 submissions, so seeing my game with ratings like 598 for theme, 660 for mood and even 1154 for overall it's amazing for me)
• After the Jam a lot of people from Brazil wanted to play the game too, but I didn't do a Portuguese version so I decided to add that in my plans and released a PT-BR version.
• Ah, I forgot to tell you this but thanks to Phil Alone, I could see this number in my itch.io page and made me so happy! In one day my page of itch.io had 150 views for my games!

SOCIAL MEDIA ACHIEVEMENTS

• Twitter - The October month was really good because I decided to do a little "list" on my Twitter posting everyday one game from Brazil that I played or that I want to play it, so I could show to my followers how many great games we have! (Btw, close to get my 100 followers!) Here is the link if you wanna see the list and follow me too - Link to Twitter
  
• YouTube - So since I released the Demo from Luke Inn, I received a lot of views and that made me really happy, I received a notification from YouTube about this in October with this image!

The Numbers of Luke Inn

• Number of Download of Luke Inn since the release of the Demo = 65 downloads
• Number of Views of Luke Inn page since the release of the Demo = 642 views
• Number of Views of Luke Inn Youtube video of the Demo = 419 views

The Numbers of Phil Alone

• Number of Views of Phil Alone page since the release (October) = 546 views
• Number of Download of Phil Alone since the release (October) = 74 downloads
  
• Number of Browser Plays of Phil Alone since the release (October) = 245 plays

And now I will be adding my goals as a game developer to the end of 2020:

Goals to end 2020

• Get a job (fulltime or part-time) in Games to move and work only on games.
• Get 1000 views on my Youtube channel at least.
• Get 2000 views on my itch.io page and games at least.
• Get 150 followers on my Twitter account at least.

But that's it guys... I wrote a lot but I needed that to keep myself up and focused, thank you everyone that seeing this journey, I know it will pay off!

And to end my Goals and Progress thread of the month of November, 2020 it's a little fan art of my game Luke Inn!

 

[BreakerZero]

Finally decided to move away from Google Sites and set up a more appropriate configuration so I went into my GoDaddy account and set up both hosting and site security, and also configured my game's page on the site for proper lockdown (which is primarily because of the dialogue in my game being of a mature context meaning f-bombs and the like) and the basic configuration that I get from Google just doesn't cut it anymore. Also had a kind of brain fart and decided to mix up the game's opening scenes to where the tutorial ends with a forced escape sequence to really crank things up.

 

[Lihinel]

Working hard on the battle system, but I am not too optimistic on finishing this month and might not have that much time to work on it come december.
I'd love to get a tech demo for the batttle system out by the end of the year, but I highly doubt thats feasible.