Arowx.com - Indie Game Dev

Link: /brainagon

What shape is your brain in?

Play Brainagon to find out - once it's completed!

I know silly name but I have managed to get the look I'm after in Blender!

So now I just need to build up the pieces of the game and hopefully some animations to make it look nice!

Hope to have a placeholder webpage up for the game shortly and then I can get back to building the game.

UPDATE *** Website up Brainagon.com

Link: /ALPHAoneIsGo!

Well after posting here, in facebook and on indiegamer forums for feedback and after banning some spammers who were trying to join my forum page I've decided to go with the puzzle game...

Mind you I did managed to check out some of the GDC10 conference stuff online, maybe someday I will be earning enought from games to travel around the world to conferences, or even afford some of the local ones!

But I did come across one conference talk where the developer/speaker on "Finish your game" where he wanted developers to complete their game but ensure that they explore all of the gameplay possibilities and depth of the game before releasing it!

His examples were prolific indie game developers who literally churn out games in less than a day and braid (a platform game with a time twisting mechanic) which cost about $200k usd and 3 years to make!

But at the end of the day you need to make the best out of your game and make sure you explore some of the depth of your gameplay mechanic, but it comes down to time and money a lot of indie games come out intially with a smaller level set and then build on that exploring, expanding and improving the game.

Now I've started working on the graphics for the puzzle game and as I'm a big fan of the shiney gadget look (great example) tried to get my handy and free 3D modeling and rendering software, Blender, to generate a nice shiny tile, at least this time I stopped short of the glass/gem effects you can spend hours playing with simple renders and caustics (I used Povray to do glass effect cubes for Qbix and had the beard to prove it

Unfortunatly I'm not quite getting the look I'm after from blender, the trouble is with a 3d model and renders a lot of the work is setting up the lighting, camera, environment and materials to get the look you want so it's very easy to get it wrong, however I shall persivere and hope to have nice shiny things appearing in a puzzle game soon!

The core mechanic of the game works so I just need it to look amazing and then build and bolt on some meta game mechanics!

Link: /3wayALPHA

Hi there just to let you know that I now have three games in the development:

Save The Silly Earthlings, Cupids Quota and 'Brain Gym'*

Now I plan on releasing each of these games at some point but I have decided to try releasing early versions via my forum as ALPHA versions!

An ALPHA version will play but is a game in development, so it will change and will not have all of the gameplay/features or polish of the finished game.

If you would like to vote on which game you would like to see first please VOTE at my forum:

Vote for an ALPHA

If you would like to take part and play test the ALPHA versions please join the forum or contact me via this blog!

* Title may change

Link: /BrainTrainingUpdate01

Well the bad news is that I've kind of missed my target of Launching a brain training game but I have managed to write a brain training prototype 'game' that works.

Only the puzzles were completely random so there was no guarantee that they could be solved!

So I have persevered and after working through a random problem solver that would cycle through all the permutations possible to generator a solution. Which was very slow on occasion (10+ seconds).

Well in theory there could be up to or over 100 elements in a puzzle (worst case or best case if you like hard puzzles) and they could be linked together in 4 possible ways well that's 4 to the power of 100, combinations which is a lot really.

Now due to the type of puzzle that I'm using I was able to write a much simpler step by step solver that would use a heuristic to test each of the links and try the first one that kept the solution on track!

NB this is a depth first search.

Better still it works and it's blisteringly fast (relative to the random breadth first search).

Now I divided this aspect of the problem of generating a solvable puzzle from the actual games puzzle, which meant I could focus on the problem and not get distracted by the puzzle games code and it worked!

Well I'm going to complete this game and launch it, but should I delay launch until all the puzzles are done ( I have though of a few variations and alternatives ) or launch the game as a beta and work on it until a full release version is ready?

Link: /BrainTrainingGame

I'm going to write a 'Quick' brain training game and release it this week so I had best use the Keep It Simple Stupid approach and get on with it.

Project: 'Brain Trainning v0.1'

Started: 14:22 24th Feb 2010
Finishes: 23:59 28th Feb 2010

Development Language: BlitzMax

Just re-iterating my statement from the iThink blog stream...

Update the Brain Training Game now has a basic design, I tend to design the core game concept then build up from that, unfortunatly I also hit issues when pesky details cause changes or major road blocks I did not think through...

Think of building a bridge and desinging great arches only to get stuck with the fiddly bits like road/rail/power lines and joining both sides.

Or 'The devils in the details!':Anon.
Anyway I've designed the core, now I just need write it!