Flash Game Dev - 5

This week the goal was to follow the set duedates and try and get as much done as possible. We had a discussion on how to get things moving faster. Since there is so few of us, am we cannot dedicate our fulltime to this project things have been getting rather slow. But I managed to finish up all of my ship sprites, plus try some animation. Shannon the made the first version of a possible theme tune. Zach created a wiki to put all of our ideas together, which made the whole project seem more tight. Alex started working on the tilesets for the islands. And Steve did a great mock up of the UI. This is all great, but its not like we have moved on much further from where we have been. One idea for geting things moving faster, is to imrove comunication between the team, So Zach has set up a group chat on mibbit.net where we can go whenever and chat as a group. After one session we have come up with a decent plot, and a story board for the first mission.

Making something so simple as a flash game, is much more time and thought consuming than one would think.

Bouncing Balls

Flash Game Dev- 4

The week started of with another skype call on sunday. The main points of discussion was how to get thing moving faster, since we are behind schedule. I suggested more specific deadlines. Since we havent got any actual personal goals for each member other than the main one. So Zach came up with a calendar for each member with specific deadlines for each of the required game assets that the memeber was assigned to. This made things so much easier and clearer.

During the week I had my first try with pixel art, since thats what we decided that the units and assets be like. With a quick tutorial from Alex i put together the players ship in 100x100 pixel resolution.
I found this different art style very fun to work with. But unfortunatelly later in the week we had to change the game size due to some technical problems Zach came across. Which ment my ship had to be remade into a smaller resolution. We also came up woth a table of sizes for each fo the assets.
During the week Steve was working on the game UI, and also asked me to come up wth some concepts because we decided the menu will be in the style of an interior of the ship. In the end of the week, we have moved much farther, and things looked steady. I started working on another pixelart ship.

In the next conference call, Zach told us that Jaime had to leave our project. This ment we dont have anyone to work on backrounds and tilesets. Which ment we had to look for another person. Zach took charge of that. Meanwhile me and Alex have devided work among us two as to who will do what pixel art assets. In the end I was going to continue doing ship designs, and alex will do villages and enviroments. With more and more things coming together we have finally moved on. But now that Jaime is not here, more work will fall on us three.
Zach has found a musician who might be able to help us with the music in the game, plus a very talented artist who might be willing to take up Jaimes place. Meanwhile I finished some pixel art ships and started working on more:

Life Drawing

Flash Game Dev- 3

In the first week we communicated through a personal forum, where we posted threads about each individual part of the game. Like Concepts, Game name ideas, Schedule, Various Spreadsheets, General idea pot, Testing.

During the first two weeks everyone started putting up sketches and concepts these are some of mine:

Ship Designs

Sketch of the players home

Environments

Ship Concept

Flash Game Dev -2

Our Game Development started of with a Skype conference call. Our Team consists of 3 artists, 1 programmer, and 1 audio person.

Things we discussed in the meeting:

1. Basic Game play/mechanics - Our game will be a 2D shoot em up/Tug of war/Strategy. Basically the player takes control of a ship which he can fly around in a level, him and his enemy each control a village, from which they can sen out units to attack the enemy town. Or they can attack the village themselves. One f feature discussed was mining, or the possibility of sending out a mining bot to mine for minerals, another feature was neutral capturable villages

3. Story/Theme Ideas - Many ideas discussed, From amnesiac robots, to Steampunk zeppelins.
I Came up for the idea for the theme, A dieselpunk post ww2 world with flying islands and zeppelins and planes. Inspirations: Metal Slug, Crimson Skies, World of tomorrow, Fallout.

2. General overview of the game play - Since we have a playable mock up done already we knew how the game relatively plays, But this was just to get things straight and to add ideas.

3. Timeline - We will be shooting to 4-5 weeks to get this done. First two weeks is concept art and ideas. than we start to get things done.

4. Game size - We are limited to 10mb of space for the entire game.

5. Jobs: Work split:
alex - characters
jaime - backgrounds, and tiles
martin - characters (with alex)
steve - UI (with martin)

6. Monetization/Legal/money: Monetization is primarily through sponsorships, organized through Flash Gaming License (FGL). There is also an option to self-publish and make money from advertising and microtransactions as well if we get in a really bad situation where the game is too big. (larger than 10mb)


7. Legal Agreements

Flash Game Development - Intro

So a few days ago I was contacted by Zach Goldstein. He said he is looking for some artists to help him develop a flash game. He himself is a programer and has already made a rough playable mock up of the actual game, all he needs is artists to help him give the game some style.

The deal was, we have a few weeks to get a "demo" of the game out. Publish it on this one website where flash game websites can "bet" on the game to beposted on their website. If our game is good enough, we will get sponsored.

Ofcorse, This seemed like quite a blind shot that in the end might bring me nothing. But I decided to go for it. Take the shot, and even if we dont get through in the end, At least its experience.

So I decided I will post up the development of our game here on my blog. Since we are curently learning about the development of games in small studios and all that. I can now link the things I have learned to my own personal experience.