We have sent what we hope is a final build of Open Fire Gold to an unnamed portal that we have been in negotiations with for a while now. We had to add some spesific scoring code to the game so it would work with their portal and they had no examples of the code running on a game built with our engine. This ment that Joe had to work some wizzardry and figure out the API from examples built in a tecnology he has never used. Thankfully thats all over and now its just to see if they don’t find any show stopper bugs, we pray that they don’t and that OFG 1.0 can go live on that portal soon!

In other OFG news we have been working on some added fun! A number of small additions to the gameplay to make the experience more enjoyable this version is code named OFG+. We are looking into other options for distributing it, possibly some more portals, maybe even a stand alone.

CT Update

As noted by Joe in the last post Chicken Target (CT) has been delayed, this is due to the fact that we decided the scope of the game was too large for a team of 2, also we were unpleased with the gameplay in our early betas. We have gone back to the drawing board so to speak and are working on a new design for CT that should be simpler, far more enjoyable and more attainable. We will release more info on this when we are ready, possibly not until it hits beta.

General Development

Post Production Gripes:

I had never really thought of game dev as having pre and post production processes, similar to working with video. Its obvious that game dev has pre production because that is the planing stage, then you have production which is building the game, and finally there is post production which in the game dev world seems like working out bugs, finding publishers, fulfilling the publishers requirements, and a bunch of other slow processes before a game can finally be released.

This post production phase seems to be the hardest one, you would think that it would be simpler because basically 90% of the work on the game is done. Yet from my experience on both Open Fire and Open Fire Gold it is the one phase that seems to drag on the longest, and with the least amount of visual progress. In part I think that is what makes it the hardest phase, you never seem to get anything done, and when you do its not something obvious, this in turn effects you as a developer emotionally: its dificult to keep working hard on something when you can’t see that your getting any where.

For example I used to cut grass during my vacations as a form of income, think of game dev like cutting grass, if the grass is long and messy you cut through it and leave it all nice (similar to the production phase), you can visualy see all the progress and how nice something is turning out. But if the grass isn’t very long and you are cutting it often its hard to see where you have even cut, this in turn makes the job hard, and more discuraging (like the post-production phase).

Changes to our Toolset:

So we have decided to change our modeling toolset, we were previously using Maya which for those that don’t know is a quite expensive 3D package. I like Maya and am decently familiar with it, it is powerful and once you get used to it, fun to use; the problem of corse is the expense. Seeing as Joe and our unofficial 3rd dev guy Micah both have a linux background they have been pushing me to use blender. Blender has the huge advantage of being completely free open source software. I had looked at it before but I was blinded by its disadvantages, a GUI that is unlike almost any commercial 3D package, and keyboard shortcuts that are not at all standard for my host operating system (which is Mac OS).

I have forced myself to look beyond these annoyances and give the package a real try and with the little I have used it so far I like it a lot. It is quite fast, works great with my 3Dconnexion 6 axis mouse and has a number of handy features maya is missing by default. Hopefully the transition won’t take too long for me, and all art assets created for CT from here on out will be created with Blender!

Thats all for now guys, keep giving us feedback, praying for us and generally supporting us, I now have lots of work to go and do, catch you all in my next post! - Jeff McArthur

BlueGill Studios is pleased to announce Chicken Target (Beta)! This screenshot is the result of about four (more or less) weeks of work.

You can play it on the Beta Program web site.

Background Story*:

Two chickens José and Andres are co-pilots for Aireopollo flying a medium sized cargo plane delivering goods all throughout the chickendom. As they were flying a shipment of roller skates through a chain of small volcanic islands one of the volcanoes erupted and a chunk of hot lava knocked out the starboard engine. The two pilots were able to fight the plane and crash land it into the last island in the chain.
The two downed chickens consult their charts of the area and notice that the farthest island from them is home to a radio repeater tower, if it is still functioning it would be their ticket to call for rescue. The dilemma would be getting to that island. One of the chickens suggests swimming. As he approached the water he places his toe in it and pulls it out in disgust at how wet it feels. Just as he pulls his foot away a large toothy fish jumps out of the water snapping.

Turned off by the hungry toothy fish that populate the waters the co-pilots are left to devise their own plan. Eyeing the roller skates that are scattered all over the island and the steep volcano slope, Jose suggests skating down the volcano. This would launch themselves into the air, allowing them to glide to the next island. Andres eyes the volcano skeptically and then grins as he says “who ever said chickens can’t fly?” The chickens then proceed to locate a set of skates, and work their way up the island to get onto the volcano slope and launch themselves to the next island, using the crashed cockpit as a ramp!

* Story might change in the future.

 Open Fire Gold should be up as soon as we are accepted by a portal, then you all can enjoy our very first internally developed game!

 So its been a very full week for me, mostly to do with non game dev related stuff (blah). Thankfuly I did get a decent bit of work done on our next project! As Joe mentioned in a previous post I decided to take this next game (which we will code name CT for referencing in this and later posts) in a very different art direction than anything I have worked on before. Its going to have a rather cartoon look with bright colors and a friendly warm emotional value to it.

 I have started on the art style and have a number of art assets completed. I must say it has been a blast to see them come together, a far more artistic feeling experience than working on Open Fire Gold artwork. On CT I’m using Ambient Designs wonderful little painting app ArtRage2 for texture work. This in combination with my wacom tablet allows me to get a good painted/cartoon feel in a rather short time, my painting classes in University are starting to pay off, which in turn helps me to be more motivated and focused when I am in class.

 Something that will be new for me in this project is rigging/binding and animating characters. I have one character partially modeled out already and will be continuing to work on it until I’m done with the mesh, texturing and the many varying animation cycles that will be needed.

 In other areas I have been spending a large amount of time getting familiar with the Drupal CMS, this has more to do with some contract work I have been doing (have to pay the bills you know), the good thing is that all of this knowledge will in turn be useful for improving our beta program site!

Current flying controls are, move left/right, up (a limited distance), down (down to the water), speed up, slow down (which makes you descend). I’m not sure if speed up should make you descend and slow down should make you climb a little or if it should be the other way around. Oh well.

I’m trying to use a race-car control script to move on the ground. It wasn’t working very well until I raised the rigidbody’s mass to 3000. Now it doesn’t fly all over the place like a toothpick with a jet engine strapped to it. :p

A good day’s work. Next step: 3D adventure gameplay! (And constantly tweaking the flying code/environment)

We layed out some gameplay and prioritized items that need to be worked on first. Hopefully they won’t be droll, it kind of takes some of the fun out of game devving.

Using placeholder art is annoying, because Jeff’s looks so much better ;). I’ll have to remind him to upload his project folder tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll finish the basics of a <censored> soon so that I won’t have to use a truck model.

We tested basic multiplayer and it works… somewhat. It works better than the gameplay at the moment though. Had trouble getting the master server to connect us to each other though.

(This is just an excuse to see what the front page looks like with more than 1 link)