It's a slow day in Mexico

Been a little shy with the updates recently, mostly due to the fact that not much has really been going on. Trying to finalize a lot of puzzle based aspects and it's very time consuming and confusing to me, especially trying to break the whole ADVENTURE GAME MOLD of click everything possible until something works.

Creating unique puzzles in adventure games is a pretty big challenge as a lot of adventure games recycle similar formulas for their puzzles. It consists of "Click everything until something works, "Combine Items Until something works," or "Talk to Someone until they give you the answer." Everyone wants to do something unique but it's not really going to happen. I think people are too afraid of using a formula that a game has already used in their independent games and that could often be their downfall. But in the same sense you don't want to just force the user to click everything until something works.

Let's look at the opening puzzle of a game I played recently (and got bored of after the first screen, switched off and never played again.) "The Longest Journey." We open up with our main character on a cliff face, you examine everything in site to get two items, Stick, and Shell Piece. (Possibly not the correct names but that is what they are.) Talk to a tree to be given an objective, for no apparent reason combine the two items you have to create "Funnel" of all things which pretty much gives away the answer of what you need to do next. Use it on the only other object around (Diverted Stream) to divert the water back to the tree to give it life.

It was an illogical pointless puzzle that almost gave you all the answers but still didn't make sense. Combined with boring dialogue I promptly uninstalled this game and deleted the .ISO from my computer, I wont be playing that again. Now how can I learn from it's mistakes.

Yeah Yeah, Shut up and give us some Game stuff...

In regards to the score aspect of the game that I mentioned in my last post, I have been working pretty hard on this front. I've totally revamped every piece of music I had composed up to this point and I think it's starting to sound slightly professional quality if I do say so myself. I'm really happy with it considering the amount of time I have put into it (lots) so I'll definitely throw up a WIP I have going right now that any of you may be interested to listen to:

Cold Stone.mp3

It's work in progress but I'm happy with how it is sounding.

Music has the right to children and men with moustaches.

UPDATES: have been slow lately. Mainly because of that whole "Forgetting to Plan" scenario and having to go back all over again to sort out that. But I am back and better than ever with a nice pro written design doc, as far as I can tell. (I think it is pretty pro anyway, but I'm no expert so don't trust my opinion.)

After taking me about four days to write I am taking a break from the writing stage to focus on another aspect of the game. Music.

Probably my strongest point but damn is it time consuming? (Answer: Yes.) I'm really happy with the score for the game so far though. I am taking a lot of inspiration from my NUMBER ONE COMPOSER INFLUENCES Mark Morgan and Clint Mansell, so it is fairly ambient with some nice string/ethnic vibes. I've even included some of my electronica pads but it's all for mood and hopefully doesn't sound too modern.

I'll probably post some soundtrack samples in the posts to come. Just got some finishing touches to add to the pieces so far.

Moustaches however are a very important subject.


Meet Professor Richards.

Who would have thought making a game was hard?

Apparently it's not. I just opened up my latest issue of GAMESTM magazine and found a nice four page article about random internet dudes RPG MAKER GAME. Super Columbine High School Massacre or something. Yeah he obviously took the controversy route and gained instant stardom, for those of us who would rather make GAMES, well it's a little bit harder.

• BunnyMilk'r inyternet tip on how to make good game NUMERO DOS: And let me tell you I only just figured this out today. Plan ahead, and plan far. Plan your game to completion before you even think about starting work on it because boy does it suck when you get to the half way point and realise that your game is not that good simply because you didn't plan. Good advice imho.

So today I learnt that planning ahead is a good idea. When it comes to thinking about the Project I tend to skip over meaningless things like Story and Dialogue when thinking up the basic concept of the game. For this project I said to myself, Right, I need a short game that I can finish in two weeks and for this reason I neglected trying to create a good storyline. I rushed and I got too far into the project and now it's not looking as great as it could do storyline-wise.

Luckily for me this is a fixable problem for I am now going to definitely take a step back, look at my project (which is very pretty if I do say so myself.) and Frankie is putting in the extra work to help me out with it. Things are shaping up after all.

I might even try and call in a few writer friends of mine to get their opinions and possibly help beef up some elements/dialogue.

So yeah, Working on a project yourself? Don't try and get it off the ground faster than it can move.

Frankie is Good at art and I am bad at game?

So I had two weeks to make a game for this competition and I sa id to Frankie "HERE IS A LOT OF WORK YOU HAVE A WEEK TO DO IT, GOOD LUCK I'LL SEE YOU THEN." I am not good at planning and I am not good at a lot of other things and I should know that this is a bad way to go about getting stuff done but I didn't know because I am not good at knowing things.

Anyway needless to say we missed the deadline for the competition but we decided to carry on with making the game anyway, this way we could take our time and make it better and THINGS.

We did some planning of the basics of what we would need to get the game done, yet still keep it short and possible. A problem I have always had with creating games in the past is that I get far too overambitious and end up writing down things that I want to do but there is no way that I possibly can do. Or I write far too big a project and it ends up being too much to handle. (If you are reading this looking for tips on how to make game btw this is a big one from me.

• BunnyMilk'r tip on how to make good game and get it completed No.1: Don't bite off more than you can spit back out again because then you choke and die just like your project will.

You are probably sitting there thinking "Man that is fucking obvious, even I could have told you that." But man I did it myself, and I know 10,000 other internet nobodies who aspire to make games and just bite off more than they can chew. And it SOUNDS obvious but everyone wants to make epic adventures with heroes and swords and FANTASMIC GRAPHICS THAT MAKE YOUR HEAD EXPLODE WITH 10,000 FRAMES OF ANIMATION PER WALK CYCLE AND SPECIAL EFFECTS AND A FULL MUSICAL SCORE COMPOSED BY JEREMY SOULE and it's just not going to happen.

Seriously No.1 Piece of advice, Start small and that way you will get you project finished.

Increased Success Chance: 50% (Confirmed Statistic from BunnyMilkTM)

SO I AM SURE YOU GUYS ARE NOT INTERESTED IN ME JABBERING ABOUT GAME AND TIPS AND STUFF THAT YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU JUST WANT TO SEE THE PRECIOUS SCREENS RIGHT?

Well Yeah Frankie put a lot of work into these and he did it REALLY WELL. I don't want to give too much game information away right now so this is just some taster graphics for you guys to drool over and possibly get you all to KEEP READING MY GAMEBLOG UPDATES.


So this is one of the first backgrounds you will encounter in the game, sans objects/characters/overlays and effects etc. Frankie is an amazing pixel artist and I am so glad to have him on board with this project because I really think it would go nowhere fast without him.

This is just some teaser material for anyone interested in the project about what the graphical style is like. The game plays like a basic adventure game right now. Click around and pick up objects and talk to people and solve puzzles. I think, one of, if not THE main attraction of this game will be Frankie's awesome art work. FUCK MY WRITING CAPABILTIES, FUCK MY PUZZLES, FUCK MY CODING...

Frankie is the star of the show...

This Post was Brought to you by Jasper McCool and the VR BLOG MACHINE

Let's Start at the Beginning...

I guess I'm not sure what I'm really supposed to be talking about in these BLOG things, I have never really done one before. I guess I will just use at as a way to record everything that is going on with the game as I have a pretty short attention span, even with my own projects and will probably forget what is going on and lose the plot entirely...

oh yeah.. blog...

The Fantastic Project Mexica, What is it? Where did it come from? I heard that it is good..... Where can I buy a copy? and other useful information you may need in times of strife..........

Well I guess the best place to start, is at the beginning. How did the project come to fruition. Well I had been throwing around the idea in my head for quite a long time (years in fact) that I should probably knuckle down and make a game, after all it's something I've always wanted to do and that is swell. The problem is I am fucking lazy and I just basically never got round to it. (Always more important things to do, like masturbate and talk to internet strangers about videogame.)

So then this project turns up on GAMINGW FORUMS with the challenge to create a short game in the space of two weeks, and I say to myself "HELL YEAH! I can do that!" So I open up notepad or whatever generic Windows 3.1 piece of notepadding software I am using on this stoneage PC and I start brainstorming some ideas.

• What kind of game do I want to make?
• What era will it be in?
• What will the characters be like?
• How can I keep it short?
• How can I make it challenging but not frustrating?
• How the fuck can I get it done two weeks?

And that's pretty much the basis of where the game originally develops from. If you want the answer to those questions by the way they are as follows: Adventure Game, 1920's, Rambunctious, I don't know, Be good at making game? and finally, I didn't.

I caught up with Frankie on IRC (Internet Relay chats for the web based something something.) and he said he would be willing to make some nice pixel graphics for me (for a price) so we agreed to work something out because I am now unemployed and poor and he needed his fix of money for videogames. (This is where I have run into problems before!)

Anyway we got all that out the way and the game got down to action, which I think is pretty fantastic!