Week of Awesome IV

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, the judging for the Week of Awesome competition is in! I came in sixth place out of sixteen (technically seventh out of seventeen: the organiser entered, but was of course excluded from any prizes or official placing). While I'm not entirely happy with my performance there, I'm not entirely unhappy either, and it's given me somewhat to think on for future jams, I believe.

I intend to write up a post-mortem for my entry soon--I'm pretty much waiting for one judge's feedback before I do, I believe.

This week has been largely devoted to work on the sounds of A Door to the Mists, so I don't have much visual progress to show. As a result, in place of this week's screenshot, let me share a little of the game's current--very much work-in-progress--soundscape. It's not a full, uncut recording, for which I apologise: there are a few sounds that I'm not sufficiently happy with that I'm content to include them here, and there are a few sections that I chose to skip over.



I've decided to try a slightly different approach to this week's blog entry than I've been using thus far: I've felt that the simple listing of progress was perhaps a little boring, so I'm going to attempt a slightly more "narrative" style:

Continue reading "Sound Decisions!" »

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, a quick update regarding my Week of Awesome entry: I believe that I mentioned in my "Day 6" post that I intended to make a decision regarding the future of the game on Monday of last week; as might be apparent from the unchanged project-page, I have yet to do so. In short, I've decided to wait for further feedback (including the final judging) before I make a decision.

Relatedly, I intend to write a post-mortem for my entry, also set to be done once the judging is in and I have further feedback on the game.

However, back to A Door to the Mists! It feels like so long since last I wrote a blog-entry for it!

For this week's screenshot, the new look of the forest behind the pyramid:


As with the preceding few weeks, this past week's progress was a bit of a miscellany:

Continue reading "Tweaks and Adjustments" »

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, a quick screenshot to accompany this post, as per usual:


I mentioned in my previous post that I had encountered a potentially game-breaking bug. I'm glad to say that I seem to have circumvented it successfully! That done, I've been able to move on and create a complete entry; it's rough in places, I fear, but one can play through from beginning to end, fight a final boss, and receive a short epilogue text in reward.

So, what did I get done today, and what was left aside?

Continue reading "WoA IV, Day 6: The Final Boss!" »

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, today I have two things to show: one screenshot, and one gif, showing the new model for the first enemy-type and a piece of level in motion, respectively:

Week of Awesome IV: Not a dead world, an >un<dead world. #gdnjam #indiedev #gamedev #screenshot pic.twitter.com/z9R7tYWoQ9

— Ian Eborn (@EbornIan) August 12, 2016

As to today's progress:

Continue reading "WoA IV, Day 4: Shadows and a Moving World" »

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, today's screenshot/gif, showing the intended level-aesthetic (in line with the "Undead" theme), and the new ranged enemy:

Week of Awesome, Day 2: The environment aesthetic, and a ranged enemy. #gdnjam #indiedev #gamedev #screenshot pic.twitter.com/XKo09iVFfF

— Ian Eborn (@EbornIan) August 11, 2016

As to today's work:

Continue reading "WoA IV, Day 3: The Undead World" »

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, today's screenshot/gif, showing my first-draft of the game's combat:

A first-draft of combat in my Week of Awesome entry: #indiedev #gamedev #gdnjam #screenshot pic.twitter.com/EdrV5WHe1w

— Ian Eborn (@EbornIan) August 10, 2016

So, what did I get done today?

Continue reading "WoA IV, Day 2: Combat!" »

Greetings and salutations!

Thus ends the first day of this year's Week of Awesome competition! To start with, a quick gif, via my Twitter account:

The end of the first day of the Week of Awesome jam! #indiedev #gamedev #gdnjam #screenshot pic.twitter.com/sseIYqCFbQ

— Ian Eborn (@EbornIan) August 9, 2016

This year's themes are an interesting set, I find. The basic idea, as I understand it, is this: There are two "gameplay" themes, and two "aesthetic" themes; players are then required to pick and use at least two of those themes, with use of the themes being a scoring element. Participants may choose any two, whether both aesthetic themes, both gameplay, or one from each. (To the best of my knowledge, there is no additional score given for the use of more than two themes--unless one of the judges decides to use that criterion for their personal scoring element, I suppose.)

The themes are these:
Gameplay: "Shadows" and "Evolution"
Aesthetic: "Undead" and "Ruins"

I went through a number of partial ideas based on these, but in the end I settled on two relatively-whole concepts from which to choose:

Continue reading "WoA IV, Day 1: Fighting for a World of Undeath" »

Greetings and salutations!

Before I begin, let me note that the GameDev.net "Week of Awesome" competition has begun, and that I'm entering! As a result, expect to see daily blog posts during this week, detailing my journey through the competition; I intend to post the first such entry later today/early tomorrow morning, by my time (GMT+2).

On a related note, I've updated the "Projects" page (see the button in the menu-bar above) to support multiple projects. Specifically, each project now has its own page, with the "Projects" page providing buttons to lead readers to those.

Naturally, A Door to the Mists remains the main project, and is displayed both on the "Projects" page and on its own page.

As my Week of Awesome entry doesn't yet have a name--indeed, at time of writing it doesn't even have a solid concept!--its page is currently just titled "Week of Awesome IV", although this will likely change once I do have a name for it.

For this week's screenshots, a look at some lore-entries. The text and images may not be final--I want to go back over them before I decide.



The title of this post is "Closer, Ever Closer..."--and indeed, I feel that I am creeping ever closer to the completion of this first level. As with the past two weeks, this week's progress was somewhat of a miscellany:

Continue reading "Closer, Ever Closer..." »

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, this week's screenshot/gif: a full combat encounter with the second major enemy:

A little combat against the second major enemy. #ADoorToTheMists #indiegame #indiedev #gamedev #screenshotsaturday pic.twitter.com/rmAwlVVcjo

— Ian Eborn (@EbornIan) July 31, 2016

Now, the topic to which the title refers: If I have it correct, next week (from time of writing) is the start of the fourth "Week of Awesome" competition at GameDev.net, and I intend to enter! The Week of Awesome is (as the name might suggest) a one-week game jam. At the start of the jam the themes will be announced, and each entrant is tasked with designing and implementing a game based on their selection from those themes. More information on the jam should be available in this thread on GameDev.net.

So, what does this mean for A Door to the Mists? In short, a one-week hiatus, much as was the case during my work on The Crypt of the Dark Heart. However, the strict one-week duration of the competition makes it unlikely that the digression will run beyond that period, even if I decide that I want to polish my entry further after the conclusion of the jam: it seems to me a game that calls for more than a few days of additional polish is unlikely to be sufficiently complete by the end of the one-week jam that it's worth carrying on with.

If you want to follow the jam on Twitter, I believe that the appropriate hash-tag is #gdnjam.

Finally, part of the jam is keeping a blog to chronicle the progress of one's entry; as a result, expect to see daily entries here during the Week of Awesome--albeit that they might be a bit shorter on average than my usual entries.

So, what did I get done in this past week? Once again, the week's work was somewhat of a miscellany--and indeed, I imagine that this will continue to be the case through to the completion of the prologue level: this close to said completion, progress seems to tend to be less a matter of working on a single, large feature, than of dealing with several smaller bugs, features, and elements of polish.

The full list is rather long, so let me stick to a summary of the points that I feel are most salient:

Continue reading "A New Digression Nears!" »