Deep sea fishing demo!

posted in: Flash | 4

I’ve been quietly tinkering away on a deep sea fishing game lately.  Fix is still under way and moving along wonderfully (and my artist is settled down for a while again, so he can do more work and we can make more progress).  The exciting news is that it’s time to start playtesting the fishing game!

Hit the “Fish demo” tab op top to try the current version.  WADS moves around, aim and shoot with the mouse, collect dead fishy parts with the spacebar. Bigger chunks are worth more money. Larger (more valuable!) fish can be found as you dive deeper.

There’s no actual goal right now. I just need to be seeing if everything is starting to make sense to players (ie, you). If you have time to play it for a few minutes, be sure to keep an eye out for anything that’s noticeably counterintuitive. Positive and negative feedback are equally appreciated, but dishonest feedback is worthless, so don’t worry about my feelings.

If you can’t think of anything to say but want to help out, try answering any of these questions:

1) What do you wish you could do in the game?
2) What element of the gameplay was the hardest to understand?
3) How does hunting the fish make you feel? (no, really)
4) What’s your general strategy for getting the most money out of a fish?

Thaaaaanks

Lots of progress…

posted in: Flash | 0

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while.

Fix is still coming along nicely, but I don’t have anything to show for it at the moment.  I’ll most likely put up a video to explain some features soon, but I need to get some elements a little more polished before it’ll be worth showing off.  Things to expect:  character art by Ben Jelter, interactive lasers, switches/doors, and more!™

Since there’s nothing cool to see for Fix, you get a playable demo of a new prototype I’ve been tinkering with.  I don’t have a name for it yet, so for the time being, you can find it in the “fish demo” tab near the top of the page.  It involves an infinite ocean and randomly generated fishy creatures, and I think you’ll like it.

Oh, also, I took down the Grief demo because I’m not working on that game.  It was originally going to be the sequel to Company, but the story I had in mind doesn’t need to be a sequel and the gameplay wasn’t shaping up to be compelling enough.  Fix is going to be much better.

Terrain and character control

posted in: Flash | 0

I started working on the terrain rendering for Fix today.  The general idea is to make it similar to how I did it in Company, but update it to support more gameplay features and overall coolness.

Aside from that, I’ve been fiddling with the character controls to see if I can make Kathryn a bit more agile.  I tried some wall hangs and such, but ultimately decided that the best solution is a simple double jump.  Anything more complicated could distract from the more important elements of the game, since the only real goal here is to make getting around slightly faster.

I’m also playing with some fun lighting effects, but it’s nothing particularly serious or interesting right now.

Here’s a screenshot (but only if you promise to keep in mind that all the textures and the character are still very much placeholders).

Starting to look a little familiar?
Click for full size

New smoke, and a picture of a crane.

posted in: Flash, Photo | 0

I think this is the fifth time I’ve tried making the smoke for Fix work.  It’s been slowly getting closer and closer to something usable for a full game, and I think this version is finally the one!

It’s very simple, but it looks totally beautiful from where I’m sitting.  I’m going for more stylized and less realistic look than before, because honestly, I think it’s prettier (mostly because it escapes an Uncanny Valley of sorts this way).  It’s also by far the most efficient of any of the methods I’ve tried so far, so it should run well on all kinds of hardware.

I’m not putting up a playable demo of this one just yet (needs more userfriendliness), but for the time being, here’s a screenshot.

Look at that blueness.

I can’t wait to let you guys see this thing in motion.

Oh, and like I said in the title, here’s a photo of a crane.  It’s not related or anything.  Cranes are pretty cool, though, and this giant one has been looming in my hometown for a while now.  Sorry the file is so huge–JPG artifacts make the background really awkward.

Click me.

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One Response

  1. Nice idea with the musical instruments, that’s suuuuuuper important for learning something completely. Like you’re going to know about different materials and how sound works, thats cool. I learned about how meat dries, and now I have an idea of how things dry. Also, for the cell game, (maybe) making it more realistic, by like making it kinda like a 3d osmosis jones will make it more visceral and real. maybe. Yea but it’s gonna take you a while to make anything, just like my cousin who’s an artist, each mosaic takes like a month, depending how big it is. A big project, like on the side of a building took him like 8 months, but his work is…. rigorous and detailed and very thoughtful and carefully crafted. His works are good, old museum art good, like roman vases good. Anyway, yea it’s good that you are making your own instruments because i’m doing the same thing, but with economics. It really helps you understand precisely how the physical world works. It’s nice.

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