The Proper Undead

Pretty Dead In Here

2010-02-24T10:03:00.000-08:00

Hopefully you are all enjoying Skullpogo on the iPhone! <3 Well I haven't updated on here in awhile, mostly it's been Chevy doing the updating (because he has something worthwhile to share with everyone). That and I am way too busy with school. Speaking of school, for my Digital Imaging class painting project I decided to do some Skullboy art. Except instead of our typical Skullboy art, I drew a sort of humanized Skullboy. Yeah, lots of flaws in it but oh well. Done with a mouse in a couple hours, we had like no time to work on it.

Skullpogo 1.1 in the App Store!

2009-12-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

Skullpogo 1.1 features another gameplay mode, as seen below, with new enemies, powerups, and achievements to be collected. Happy pogoing!

GET IT NOW

FlashPunk nearing release

2009-11-14T22:08:00.000-08:00

Holy, lack of updates...

Anyways, that doesn't mean lack of work. I've been getting plenty done over the past couple weeks. The first update for Skullpogo iPhone is coming soon, and will feature a tasty new game mode. There will be pitchforks, flying pigs, growing cows, and a setting sun! The gameplay for this mode will still be pogoing, but it still plays very very differently from the other modes (first and foremost: no levels! ... ?) so expect that to come in the next few weeks here, we'll see how things go.

In other news, I'm coming very close to releasing my Flash game engine!

You can click on that image above to go to the WIP website I have purchased for the project. Hopefully I can get a few dedicated folks working with it in the first while, so then I can start pumping out some awesome extra tools and updates for it in the weeks and months to follow.

Speaking of which, I should explain. For those of you who aren't aware, it will be a free Flash engine that you can use to create your games in. It's similar to (and largely inspired by) Adam Atomic's Flixel, and is meant to be a competitive (although friendly) alternative to his engine. You do NOT need to have Flash to use the engine, all you need is to download FlashDevelop (although Flex will work just as nicely) which is free and open-source, so you can make Flash games with a fast and clean framework provided by me, and without paying a cent.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to. I'm excited to release it, and really hope to see some cool games come out of this!

Get Skullpogo NOW!

2009-10-22T16:44:00.000-07:00

Seems Apple was right on top of things! Skullpogo is up on the iTunes Store a lot sooner than we expected, so...

Get it now!

iTunes Store Page
The Game Website

Skullpogo Newsletter!

2009-10-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

I've started an official Skullpogo Email Newsletter over at www.skullpogo.com!

What does this mean? It means that as soon as we release the game, everybody on the mailing list will get emailed right away. It also means that if there are updates, new versions with extra achievements, game modes, or perhaps a new enemy or two, subscribers will be the first to know! I'm also considering use it to just share general "stuff" about the game, such as people's uploaded videos, who the top scorers are worldwide and countrywide, and even fanart if I get any.

Also, if we every do any promotional stuff, such as giving free copies away, reducing the price for sales, or even release whole new games, guess who's gonna find out first?

So SUBSCRIBE NOW, what are you waiting for? Jeez.

Halloween!

2009-10-06T05:12:00.001-07:00

First off, Skullpogo has a brand spankin' new website of its own! Having a game that warrants its own website is such a cool feeling, I could care less how well the iPhone game does. This is already too cool.

www.skullpogo.com

Our target release date for the game is October 31st, this Halloween. How appropriate is that? Everything's wrapping up nicely, and I'm really happy with how polished the game's turning out! Here's a few iScreenies for you guys...

And a gameplay video at last! This is me playing Halloween mode with the 2-button control scheme. You can also play the game using Tilt or Seek controls instead.

More Skullpogo Artwork

2009-10-01T17:22:00.001-07:00

More Steampunk Revolver

2009-09-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not much screenshots for dev info, yet. Will be more of that once I finish some mad prototyping sessions. For now, more sketching:

This one drawn by my good friend Paul Veer, who is also working on the project.

Steampunk Revolver

2009-09-29T11:33:00.001-07:00

Some more concepts, woo.

Steampunk Concepts

2009-09-29T01:36:00.000-07:00

Some quick doodles, getting some ideas for an upcoming game. Hopefully I can pick up somebody to do some concept artwork for me, as mind ends up being a bit too plain in design usually. Still, it's good practice for me.

Character concept

2009-09-28T18:44:00.000-07:00

I may be planning a new game. This may be the main character.

Tower of Heaven Artwork

2009-09-27T11:32:00.001-07:00

I did a piece of Fanart for my buddy Dave Zhang and Tadakuni Amano's recently released game, Tower of Heaven.

You can get the game over at their website, and see some more fanart as well.

New Hosting Plan

2009-09-19T00:30:00.001-07:00

First off :) big thanks to everybody who donated so graciously, Proper Undead will be running for another year now, and will likely see several new game releases before that period comes up!

This is also partly a test post, to make sure that everything transferred over alright. If you experience any problems with the site, such as downloading files or accessing pages, please please let me know so I can fix the issue. You can contact me via the following email address.

chevyray@properundead.com

And, because I don't usually like posting without giving you guys at least something pretty to look at, here's a picture I made. I'm trying to get the hang of digital painting, so this is mostly a practice piece, but I'm happy with how it turned out, despite a few obvious flaws.

Some characters and a donate button

2009-09-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some more cute character designs from Brittney, who doesn't have much time for drawing her own stuff these days, so it's quite the treat for us. My personal favorite is the franken-nerd on the left!

You'll also noted that I added this little button at the top...

Host and domain renewal is coming up, so a million hugs to anybody out there who might be interested in helping out via donation. It's not really my kind of thing to do, but I'm cutting it pretty close nowadays, so I thought I'd give it a try.

More interestingly, release of our upcoming iPhone title, Skullpogo, still nears. It's really difficult to tell when you're done, because there's always something else to tweak, always some little misfit in the design that needs played out a bit more. I'd definitely like to give big props to Bennett for helping test the game and giving me pages of valuable feedback and considerations.

Now, back to work for me. Leave a shout!

Ludum Dare 15 Results

2009-09-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

Ludum Dare 15's voting has ended, and the results are up. Thanks a million to all the folks who voted for Beacon, I love you all!

EDIT: Also, leave a shout in the comments, folks! If not 'cause you have something to say, just to make me feel good. ;) I've had tons of visits this month so far, but everybody's so quiet!

The time nears...

2009-09-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

BEACON: Version 1.10 Update

2009-09-02T19:06:00.001-07:00

Another Beacon update.

VERSION 1.10

ZIP (3.36 MB)
RAR (3.13 MB)

+ Added ambient background track courtesy of Ronan McGrath.

+ Spikes no longer kill you when hit from the side.

+ Fixed tiling issue with certain tiles next to spikes.

+ Some more difficulty tweaks made to the later rooms.

BEACON: Version 1.05 Release

2009-09-01T06:24:00.001-07:00

I've just released Version 1.05 of Beacon, which made some important fixes to the game. You can download the latest versions from the links below:

ZIP (3.36 MB)
RAR (3.13 MB)

I have also uploaded a gameplay video, showing off some of the special effects and things you will encounter in your dark cavernous journey.

VERSION 1.05 CHANGES:

+ Your progress is now automatically saved each time you enter a new room. If you quit at any time (or the game crashes on you), you can restart it later and will have the option to continue from the room where you left off. Be aware that if you choose NOT to resume your previous game, your previous progress will be overwritten. I don't really see the need for multiple save slots now, but will add them if I get requests.

+ Tweaked the difficulty in the final two stages to make them less annoying for people on their first run of the game. Later versions will feature a harder mode, but for now I want more people to be able to play through the full game without just quitting out of frustration and missing the ending.

+ Cropped the loading image, because I didn't like the extra black around the bottom. Minor change, not really worth noting.

+ Added two new creatures you will encounter, and placed some more of the existing creatures in some of the rooms.

+ Added one new sound effect.

- Fixed: Escape now actually leaves the pause menu, like it says it does in-game.

New Game: BEACON

2009-08-30T20:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend I participated in the 15th Ludum Dare competition:

"Ludum Dare is a regular accelerated solo game development competition. Entrants develop games from scratch in 48 hours, based on a theme suggested by the community." -- www.ludumdare.com

The theme chosen for this competition was Caverns. I had 48 hours to build my game from the ground up based on that theme, and I managed to make the deadline! The result isn't what you'd expect; I spent the first several hours coding myself a game engine that would be really easy to maintain and create levels for, and be as bug-free as possible, to save myself agony as the hour of submission approached. And it worked.

The result: Beacon, a game about fear and reliance.

In Beacon, you awaken in total darkness, somewhere deep beneath the earth's surface, unexplored and unknown.

But a Beacon of light appears before the darkness (or whatever dwells within it) swallows you up, returning your sight and giving you hope. You must follow the beacon through the darkness, using its light and the luminescent crystals of the cavern as guides in your desperate attempt to escape this dark prison.

I will upload the game to the website later, but for now you can grab it over at its entry page at Ludum Dare. Make sure to check out the rest of the entries as well while you're over there!

Loading...

2009-08-27T00:24:00.000-07:00

First off, sorry for the lack of posts for... three weeks now! I'm still getting used to this whole devlog thing, but I try to do 3-4 posts a month (at least!) The more I get the hang of doing it regularly, the more posts will show up. I'm still not sure really what I should be dedicating this website to: should I lean more towards developers' interests or gamers? The problem with the latter is (besides the fact that we haven't finished many games yet) that I'm not much of a gamer myself, and what I am is a pretty poor one, so I oft have a hard time connecting to gamers and seeing things through their eyes.

The engineering of games, from their approach and theories right to their presentation and flow, is something that interests me far more, so that's what I tend to write more about. So for now, I suppose, that's what I will keep doing, and hope that I can keep readers interested.

So you know, I haven't been posting, but development has been progressing on all sides at a rapid pace! Here's what I did just today:

Clicking on it will take you to my DeviantArt page. This is the first thing you'll see when you boot up your version of Skullpogo on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The game only takes a few seconds to load, so I concentrated on making it simple and cute, not too busy. You might recognize it, you might not -- but either way, it was based on this original sketch by our very own Brittney Cloud:

The gameplay is basically finished now, just finishing up the last 5-10% of development tidbits (many developers agree that the last 10% is 90% of the work), stuff like title menu, high score submitting stuff, organizing sound effects and getting them the right volume, and a few more other art tidbits (that's me!) Here's a shot right from a running version of the game (off my PC, not from an iPhone):

It's pretty clear that the HUD is still unfinished, mostly because I have to chalk up the assets for it still. Everything is pretty much operational at this point, just not perfected. In this particular game mode, killing pigs makes it more likely for zombies to pop up, and killing bats makes it more likely for ghosts to come up from the ground, both which you can hit. Ghosts move upwards, unlike the rest of the horiztonally-moving enemies, and actually are great for getting up high. But what kind of reward do you get for getting off the top of the screen? If you played the original game, you'll have some idea.

I've also been making a lot of progress with my Flash programming, which is coming along wonderfully, but I'll save that for a later post.

Cheers, all!

iPhone Pogo is Go

2009-08-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Alright, after more discussion and some preliminary coding, Skullpogo for the iPhone is definitely a go. At this point, the game physics are already working, and you can already hop around on pigs and bats.

If you're wondering who this mystery programmer is, his name is Justin Smith. If you haven't heard of him, he is the creator of a lovely PC game called Enviro-Bear 2000. The game is as you see it below:

That is a bear, and yes, it is driving that car. In the original version of the game, created for the TIGSource Cockpit Competition (which it won), you play with the mouse. The goal of the game is to drive your car (using only a single paw, which follows the mouse) around the forest so food, such as fish and berries, fall into your car which you can grab and eat. The result: an utterly hilarious, awkward (you're a bear, driving a car), yet strangely captivating romp of a game. Justin tells me that 80% of the time working on the game was spent just tweaking the small stuff, refining the design of the game to as perfect as any bear-driving simulator can be.

The mouse-driven gameplay made Enviro-bear translate nicely into iPhone, which is exactly what Justin did with the game. Now, the game is available in the App Store, and fared quite well selling for only 99¢.

Having played and enjoyed the original Skullpogo, he sent me an email asking if I'd like to work with him to produce an iPhone version of the game, and I agreed. The game is coming along quite rapidly, and I am heading into Vancouver this Monday and meeting up with Justin for some serious dev jamming. We'll be fleshing out the core gameplay, as well as refining the more important aspects of the game, such as the player control and enemy behaviour/timing.

Let you guys know how things go! I've got some powerups to sprite now. Peace, and thanks for reading!

Skullpogo on the iPhone?

2009-08-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

First off, sorry for two barren blogless weeks! I got tied up with some summer activity and didn't have much time on the computer, and Marius was off at the first Berlin Indie Game Jam (www.bigjam.org). He was barely back for five minutes before taking off again, this time for France, so I guess that leaves me to hold down the house.

I'm trying to get back in the swing of working on Skullpogo. It's always hard to get back into development after being away from it for a few weeks, but I managed to get a few more animations done and tweak some of the code.

And now, preliminary planning of an iPhone version of Skullpogo is on the go.

The game is still in the early planning stages. While we're not quite sure yet if we'll follow through with it, after a few emails back and forth with the programmer who will be coding the iPhone version of the game, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about it!

So far, it's been decided that the game will be largely based off the first Skullpogo (as found on our games page), but using the newer graphics that I've developed for the upcoming Flash version of the game. It may have a few more features, though, based on some ideas and critiques I've received through email and internet forums regarding the original game.

What do you guys think of an iPhone Skullpogo? What do you think would work best as a control scheme? Any special features this version of the game should have?

Procedural Generation 3: Cave Source

2009-07-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

I wrote an article awhile back, which is still the most visited article on this site, and I was really proud with the efficiency and look of the caves that the algorithm in the second part of that produced.

Anyways, now that I'm also working in Flash, I decided to write an ActionScript3 version of the algorithm. While doing it, I also made some improvements. Now, it's even slightly faster than before, you can set the minimum or maximum size of cave you desire, and I've added some security features to prevent stack overflow with certain setups.

I've taken a couple of maps created with various settings changed. And, because I'm in a good mood, I'll give out the full source so you can all have a look!

DOWNLOAD SOURCE

That has two files, Main.as and Map.as. The Map class contains the algorithm and functions used to generate the cave. I have commented the file as thoroughly as possible, and wrote a big explanation in Map.as explaining a bit how the algorithm works. The files can be opened with any plain-text viewer if you don't have a Flash editor. If you make any use of it, or re-write it in another language, please email me and let me know! I'd love to see what you've done with it, and hear about any tricks of your own you might have come up with.

After I posted that earlier procedural-generation article, I've been getting pretty steady responses from a topic at TIGSource from people who are creating their own dungeon algorithms, and others who are adapting mine into other languages, such as AS3, Java, and Python. I figured I'd share some of what's going down over there, because even recently there's been some pretty neat stuff popping up!

First off, here is a Flash version of the map-generator, created by Kneecaps. You can click on the map to generate a fresh one.

He was also kind enough to post the source, which you can get here. Next up, forum member Cthulhu32 wrote a version of the same algorithm in Python.

He also posted the full source, which can be viewed here at your pleasure. Such awesome folks!

Then, things started to mix up a bit. Zaratustra created an island generator, which was apparantly for an unfinished game. But it was very cool nevertheless! Click on the picture for the full (4000 x 4000) image.

Epitaph64 was next up, and posted a simple Java terrain generator that uses basic recursion. He also posted about it on his site, with the source files.

Fifth decided to try his hand at creating the cave algorithm, and it worked out really well. In the second shot below, he gave the algorithm slight inclination to spin counter-clockwise, which was a really neat touch. The flexibility is part of the reason why I like the algorithm so much. According to him, the generation time was always instantaneous too, which was great to hear.

Next up was hagel who, inspired by the topic, had decided to experiment with some algorithms written in FreeBASIC. The results were cool, and the source can be downloaded here. His was similar to my cave algorithm, in that it used creeps that moved around and "carved" out the trails. While mine only uses one, though, he set it up so you could change the amount of creeps issued, so the caverns where fairly expanded and less linear than my own, as can be seen below.

He also posted some pics of a platform-level generator as well. The first has only 45-degree slopes, and the second shot uses 23-degree slopes as well.

We had another Java setup from Ina Vegt. She made a maze generator, which creates a maze of boxes that you can navigate through with the character. Be aware the this file will not work in Opera, though. You can play it here.

Finally, another Game Maker user, pgil, came along with a GML version of my cave generator, using tiles and entry/exit points in a similar manner. He even posted the EXE and GMK files for those who want to see it in action or check out the code.

Very recently, roboprez posted another Flash version of the map generator, which can be seen here. Click on the image to iterate, and press space to iterate backwards. The land starts to take more shape each time you iterate.

And finally, Hayden Scott-Baron (also known as Dock) has been working on some procedural generating room techniques, and has come up with some very nice looking results.

And that's it so far! I'm delighted with the response so far, and I've gotten plenty of inspiration and ideas seeing how other people have adapted my scripts and also come up with their own. Hopefully anybody else who is interested will learn a two or things from these source files.

If you like the article, please leave a response! The previous ones got plenty of views, and the better response I get to each post, the more I'm likely to write more related articles and do more research in the future.

Thanks to the folks at TIGSource, and all the visitors! :)

Testing...

2009-07-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to get code blocks working on the site. It seems like every time I want to update the site, I have to re-learn CSS. So bear with me if this post looks strange for a few minutes/hours...

Testing...

And I'll also make a black one...

Testing...

There! Now those are working, if I ever feel the need to write any coding tutorials or just post some snippets on the blog, it'll be easily distinguished.

Prioritizing & Motivation

2009-07-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

To start off, here's a shot of the latest stage in development:

This is the Pigpens level, where a notorious vampire fiend has gotten to the livestock. Yes, you heard it right -- you'll be facing off with vampire pigs, chickens, and cows in this area... not to mention a few other unexpected goonies.

But the real topic of the day is Prioritizing & Motivation!

I've basically got most of the things that need to be done for the game listed off by now. It's just trying to work out what order to attack this checklist that's the real challenge. Should I finish all the enemies and powerups first, or tackle it one stage at a time? Etcetera. Either way, I've made it my goal to get at least one thing done every day, and have been successful in this over the past week. I find that if I can get just that one thing finished, I tend to have no problem getting a few more, because by then I've gotten myself into a good work mode. So I'd like to suggest this to you all!

When you're working on a project, it can get tough when you have a whole bunch of things to get done; you might feel overwhelmed, or you might just lose interest in the project seeing it all laid out so simply. So just try my method, and don't push yourself too much, just tell yourself to finish one thing off your list. Just one! This might make it seem like your project will take forever, but there's a bit of science to how this works, and it does!

That one thing turns out AWESOME!
For starters, with a whole day (theoretically) to work on just one thing, you'll find yourself putting a lot more thought into it than you would normally! Instead of "just another" thing to do, it becomes "the" thing to do. It becomes a whole goal in itself, rather than a small part of a much larger goal, and this will spark your brain in places you didn't even know existed. You'll look at this item objectively, and see where it stands in your project as a whole, and this makes it really easy to fine-tune it to near perfection.

Suddenly, I'm feeling motivated!
That's right! When you allow your mind to focus like that, it really helps "clear up" all that other junk that was distracting you, whether it be the recent argument with a family member, a surge of negative feelings towards your project, feelings of self-resentment, intimidation over finishing something, or whatever. Your mind focuses in on what you're working on, because you've exploded it into something bigger and more important, and just that little thing becomes a worthwhile endeavor. When you finally finish it and step back, you suddenly realize that you've done an excellent job, and that this is just part of your project as a whole. But your brain has now been turned on in all the right places, so instead of that being an intimidating thing, your mind will immediately focus in on what needs to be done next, or maybe you've already got that planned out. Either way, jumping into it is no problem. It's like running down a hill... it's not that you can't stop, it's that it's just easier to keep running than even trying to stop!

In the end, it's worth it!
Look at your project, after all is said and done. It will be a masterpiece unto itself. Every little detail will have had its turn, been thought out, massaged into something even better than what was conceptualized. Not only that, but you'll find you've learned a lot on your adventure. While working on one aspect, you'll find that the research involved in improving that one particular thing is now part of your own knowledge base, and is something you've learned and will never forget. Now, you are a better designer, a better artist, or a better programmer than you were before.

But the game didn't turn out so great :(
So what? As I said in the previous paragraph, you've developed and refined a whole new range of skills! Your projects can only get better from this point on. If you fail 10 project, your 11th project will be far better than that first one could ever have dreamed of being. So even if you do lose this battle, you gain so much that it's hardly worth even noticing.

Hope you enjoyed the article! I've got a thing to do, now, so wish me luck -- hoping the best in your own endeavors!