Scurry Game Dev Log – New Game!

New Indie Game project!

Scurry is an HTML5 browser game where you play as a beetle who is running through a grocery store. Run as fast as you can, pull off daring jumps, avoid shoppers, roach motels and other treacherous obstacles! How far will you make it?

Here is what Scurry looked like right after Eric added in my character sprite:
Scurry Game early screentshot

The project is a two-person team effort; Eric Lathrop is doing the code, and I am working the artwork.

We just met up at a coffee shop for our first session and got a lot done, I am very happy with how it is turning out so far.

Here is a shot of the game with some shelf art and grocery store props added:

Scurry early artworkAs of now, Eric has about 12 hours in of Dev time, and I have spent around 6 hours doing the artwork
I have some videos below that show the progress taking Eric’s engine and adding in the art assets I have been creating. Eric is working on generating infinite levels using repeating and randomized artwork, resulting in a new experience for the player each time.

Squid Game Dev Log – Pill Sprites and Video

Awesome things:

Using Orthello to achieve 2d sprite animation in Unity3D I found a cool setting called “Start on random frame” on the Animating Sprite which allows me to have my pill spites rotate independently – which adds a cool little visual.

Also I am learning how Hinge Joints work for attacking my seaweed sprites to the floor and allowing the player to collide with them and cause them to jostle a bit. I set the z axis (depth) to different amounts for each seaweed, and some are jostles more or not at all depending on the depth relative to the player.

I am obsessing over tiny details, but really fun!
Unity3d is crazy on options.

Squid Game Dev Log – awake meter and seaweed

Okay so, here’s where I’m at with the squid game.

I have added and have been working on a debug level where I will try out different physics stuff, objects, terrain types, and eventually enemies.
One of my friends had a cool suggestion that though the course of the game you upgrade your bed to a full, queen and eventually king size, seems like the perfect nonsense for the game!

Squid Game Dev Log – Animated 2d spites in Unity3D

After  spending about 5 hours total trying to figure 2d sprite animation AND keyboard controls in Unity, I think I finally have a decent workflow setup… – its also my birthday today!

I am using a free add-on called Orthello (WyrmTale Games) which has several great components for handling animated sprites, and a free app called Texture Packer (Code’n’Web – Mac, PC, Linux) to  create sprite sheets. Texture Packer generates an xml file that Orthello can read to map the sprites and give them unique numbers – which makes it easy to choose what frames go to what animation.

There was a bit of a learning curve, but I feel like I am much farther along, even though the end result is not as complete as my javascript browser version.

Here are a couple screens!

Indie Game

So I noticed this movie when I was flipping though Netflix and thought I would check it out, it’s called Indie Game The Movie, ( you can check it out here: bit.ly/Km3WmG )

Indie Game: The MovieThe movie itself was really well made, and followed the surprisingly interesting and emotional stories of some unique game developers. These developers don’t work on 1000-person teams for the big guys like EA or Nintendo, instead they work from home or in small offices with teams of one or two people. They are passionate about their creations, and all of them spoke of some part of themselves going into thier work. The great thing about the Indie realm is that they made a big distinction between where (mainstream)games have gone, and the games they loved as a kid. The all talked about Mario, Megaman, Metroid, Zelda – the classics, and were quite frank when giving their opinions about games like Call of Duty and Halo being crap. The movie stirred up the plan I always had when I was a kid, my first dream career was always a video game developer. I used to draw characters from games I loved, but mostly my own I dreamt up, I even tried to make some of my own games in the past using flash but never got too serious with it. After watching the movie  I was inspired again and I started a new side project – a game.

Game Concept Sketch

Squid  HTML5 Canvas jQuery javascript Game PreviewMy plan is to create a game using HTML5 Canvas and jQuery/JavaScript that will be playable in browser, or on the iPhone. Another part of this goal is that the game works well, and fits a comfortable button-mapping to an SNES controller.  The underlying reason for this project, like with TouchTint, is that in addition to it being a possible source of income, it will be a big learning experience. I don’t yet have a goal of how big or involved the game will be, but I will include a link to the in-progress version so you can check it out if you want, and see how far along I am.  Hopefully there will be much more to come as I continue on with this idea!