August 16th, 2010 by Josh
The prologue level (sort of a tutorial level and intro to the story) is playable, and now I’m in the process of designing the first official level of the game.
The new level is subtitled Omen of the Moon, aptly so as a red, broken moon hovers eerily in the background throughout the course of the level, forecasting the shadowy story events to soon follow the level’s end.
Some new creatures (some friend and some foe) will be debuting here, among them a type of flying dragon known as a Ropedragon. It looks a bit like a Baby Sea Dragon from my Seeds of Time series, but it’s decidedly more animated, waving around in the air like a rope. In fact, I didn’t name him until after I finished his animation and saw it play looped– the name came to me then and seemed very fitting. Anyway, the Ropedragon you’ll see in this level is mostly just there as scenery to add to the environment; he’ll suddenly fly by as you’re progressing the level. He doesn’t have much more purpose than that.. or does he? You know how I love easter eggs.
I’ll be posting an actual screenshot from the level in the near future.
August 2nd, 2010 by Josh
A college buddy of mine is drawing monster sprites for Season of Dreams. Take a peek at the first monster, a simple enemy known as a Landshark:
Landsharks look pretty badass, but they’re cursed with Goomba-esque AI, dooming them to an inevitable fate of utter stompage. Oh noes!
July 11th, 2010 by Josh
I’m going to open with a mysterious screenshot…
Hmm, what could this mean..?
I’ve made some major breakthroughs in Season of Dreams in the past few days. Some of the engine modifications I was dreading most are now complete. Because I’m keeping many of the game’s vital details secret until later in development, I can’t say much right now, but the above screenshot does have something to do with it.
I also made an amateurish mistake the other day. I had a very nice wooden sign drawn and entered into the game, and then I accidentally erased it entirely from my hard drive when I modified and saved an older version of the tileset over the newer version. 32×64 pixels of shiny, new pixel art instantly evaporated into thin air, never to be seen again. Oh well, it shouldn’t take long to redraw.. but still.
July 10th, 2010 by Josh
Has anyone ever noticed the uncanny resemblance between famous game designer John Romero (right – responsible for DOOM, Quake, and others), and Jonathan Davis, singer of the band Korn (left)?
July 4th, 2010 by Josh
Here’s a quick screenshot from Season of Dreams.
Some of you might recognize the huts in the background. Yup, those are from my still unreleased, indefinitely postponed game Ultimate Tower Defense from a few years ago. Speaking of UTD.. I should finish that game up one of these years.
June 27th, 2010 by Josh
I’m working on a new platformer in Flash entitled Season of Dreams.
Without going into too much detail yet, here are a few things I can say about the game:
- the main character is the guy on the left in the above image (the guy on the right is just some NPC)
- a certain gameplay mechanic will have the environment changing in real-time
- I have loose ideas for two sequels (with titles, basic storylines, and some gameplay differences already decided), making this series span a trilogy
June 20th, 2010 by Josh
Changes in the port:
- uses Facebook names/accounts for high scores.
- individual players can hold multiple high scores on the scoreboard.
- more data is stored on high scores, so later I can add high score filters like “Highest scores today,” “Highest scores this week,” “Highest scores this month,” “High scores among your friends”…
June 19th, 2010 by Josh
It’s been forever since I last posted here. Life’s been busy, and game development sort of took a backseat for a while. But that’s all different now. I’m back and developing games head-on once again, with hopes of eventually earning enough of an income to consider game development an enjoyable part-time job.. and eventually a full-time one if all works as I’ve planned.
I’m dividing my game development time between two areas of interest at this time:
- Facebook games. I’ve been studying Facebook application development for the past couple of days now, and I plan to work my way up from small games to larger, more exciting projects.
- A single-player RPG. Written in Java, this game was formerly known as Rage of the Dragon Emperor. I’ve rewritten the story from the ground up, although a few pieces of the original story have indeed made their way into the new screenplay.
Let’s talk about Facebook games some more. I was surprised to see just how little Facebook and its API’s have to do with Facebook game/application development. Generally speaking, when you create a “Facebook game,” you’re not really creating a “Facebook game”– you’re creating a Flash (or PHP/whatever) game and then spending a tiny fraction of your time integrating it into Facebook. Therefore, anyone with a bit of web programming experience (PHP/MySQL or otherwise) and experience in Flash/Java/Silverlight/similar can develop a so-called “Facebook game” without spending much time on the Facebook side of things at all.
Given that my RPG is written in Java, which just so happens to be a web-embeddable language, I’m considering throwing it onto Facebook as an FB application as well– maybe as a way of enabling players to show their Facebook friends their in-game progress or something. It might seem slightly pointless to do so, but hey, Facebook is a great marketing tool. A little easy promotion is always nice.
January 28th, 2010 by Josh
Say hello to
Aquamouse, just one of the three new monsters I’ve released into
Seeds of Time Online in the past week. The other two are Vulcan and Jayroller (a mutation for Jaywalker and Janewalker). Of these three monsters, two of them have unique, never-before-seen abilities.
Evidently, I’ve changed my mind since the time I said I wouldn’t be developing new content for SoTO. The game has been incredibly successful since I relaunched it a month ago, which has come as a bit of a shock, given the financial crisis that once existed (which played a huge role in my decision to take the game down in March 2009).
Aside from the three new monsters (and a few new items that were released alongside them), I have more plans to expand the game. In particular, I’ve been developing a new dungeon which is sure to be a crowd-pleaser. The new dungeon, known as the Twilight Temple, will be played via a heavily updated version of the current dungeon engine. The new dungeon engine, which will eventually be ported over to the older dungeons as well, features Ajax and other modern-day technologies to accomplish features that will impress veteran SoTO players: refreshless dungeon-crawling, sound effects, and even music. I’m
hoping to release it in February, but it’s highly possible that it won’t be ready until March.
December 28th, 2009 by Josh
I spent a few hours of my Christmas Eve working diligently on something many fans have been requesting: bringing
Seeds of Time Online back!
As a result, on the night of Christmas Eve, the game was available for the first time in about nine months. It’s doing well so far; at this rate, it seems I’ll be able to keep the game up indefinitely.
You can check it out here:
http://www.seedsoftime.net
jk….let me know if you need a beta tester, tho