Quick update

While I haven't been updating this blog as much as I would like, I have however been doing coding but also nowhere near as much as I like! I'm still struggling with an illness I was hoping would be fixed, 15th of sept I have a procedure that should improve my life dramatically.

During my time off I've constantly been thinking about game development and what I could add to my game. I've been talking to my artist who is still chugging away with great art work and willing me on to finish our game.

'Drag Racer' we've decided to stick to just the one game, I originally wanted a few on the go but found this to distracting, I want something that will completely and utterly wipes the floor with 360 Video Poker not a high benchmark but still a goal, also a goal of at least 1000 sales, believe me in XBLIG this figure is not an easy task!

I've been focusing a lot on HLSL and while I'm still a beginner I do understand it now, I've developed a water shader, drunk effect shader, and the light shader.

Summary:
HLSL massively improving.
Sticking to the one game Drag Racer (Isometric Drag racing)
Desire higher than ever!

HLSL another steep learning curve.

What did I achieve this past week? Well! Not only did I complete the tutorial on HLSL 2D Lighting (Having very limited experience here), I more importantly LEARNT it, too many people copy and paste or just data entry and that leaves people not knowing what they are putting into their games and unable to customize it, could you be happy to use somebody else’s words/work and say “I did that”?

It’s amazing what lighting brings to the table in games as I’m sure everybody knows, but even the simplest and humblest of 2D games greatly appreciate light. In fact to make the darkest of game, light sets the scene, a bit flicker and the recipe of a good horror game emerges.

With HLSL I learnt about 2DRenderTargets to render one scene with the mask and the other with the overlay, deciding how bright an area is on screen depending on how light the colour is beneath it. Which is not explained in the tutorial sadly but once you understand this it opens up many opportunities  from colour to shape to EVEN dynamic lighting, but one step at a time!

I have had some major things happening in my personal life and being personal we’ll stop it here, but I do promise mostly myself that within the next few weeks I’ll be making more effort with my two prime projects, “CHICKEN” and “Isometric Drag Racing”, both names being place holders as quite frankly.... they are crap.

Even my artist who I have known nearly 12 years now has set up an office at home bought 30mb broadband is brimming with good ideas and most importantly desire, it’s contagious to say the least! I’m very much looking forward to the next few months and I hope to deliver SADGames 2^nd title, it’s a race (pardon the pun) between Chicken and Drag Racer, both in the racing genre, however not in the traditional sense, something I’ve never touched before, always up for the challenge though!

I wanted this blog to contain a lot more pictures, I’ve not tried as of yet being new to 'Blogger' but I'll be adding more art assets once I have them in my gritty paws.

Quite frankly an awful screenshot but the best demonstration of 2D HLSL light I currently implemented.

 4 lights in this scene, one screen light and then 3 "spot", the character without a light is controlled to see how light effects it, as you can see it darkens where relevant and how it should. I'm happy with the effect, but the background image makes it look fairly ugly. It's late and I really want to show the effect off so here you go!

Sighing out!

One + One = Two

I have another member of SAD Games, my best friend Matt Davis has decided to jump on board and lend me his graphical talent and I can tell you it’s been a massive help and provided me with huge inspiration for our next titles. We both have the same mine sets in regard to realism, we aren’t going to set unachievable goals, but this does open up a lot more opportunities to develop games that I’ve shied away from through lack of man hours and lacking artistic skills. I’ll post some screenshots of his work here soon.

We both like the idea of our next game (SADGames second game) to be an Isometric grame, I’ve been learning a lot with this view expecting it to be difficult but it has so far proved much harder than anticipated. I’m going to approach a second tutorial which can be found here.

Wish me luck!

360 Video Poker

This is SADGames first fully released game for XboxLive.

360 Video poker was created firstly because it was a simple, easy project and secondly to understand the business side of Xboxlive Indie games. 

The game features a simulation of Casino Jacks or Better game of Video Poker and it’s “hook” was the “Gamble feature” this meant that when you had a winning hand you could choose to double up by picking one card from 5 face down that had to be higher in value than the “Gamble card” which is face up at the beginning of the Gamble Feature game, I believe this to have helped it made sales. 360 Video Poker also featured what I consider a very smooth control scheme however very few people branded it ridiculous considering holding down two buttons to be too challenging. The control scheme has the player holding down the left trigger to start the gamble selection and then dependant on how far he/she moves the left thumb stick the highlight would go over the corresponding card. This stops pressing right on your thumb stick 4 times to get from the first card to the last and made for much fluid game play. The biggest flaw is that some people aren’t great with hand eye coordination and maybe I should have put a simpler control system in place for these people.

The trial featured 5 credits, max of 20 credits and just 4 hands dealt then the Nag screen would ask you to buy or you go back to the start, I felt this was fair as you got a feel for the game but didn’t play it to the point of not wanting to buy it.

The full game featured 25 credits, unlimited maximum credits and no Nag screen.

While 360 Video Poker wasn’t technically challenging I was worried that spending months working on something really complicated only to find out I couldn’t share it would have been tragic for me.

I was surprised by the sales of 360 Video Poker, I’m aware that the sales on Indie Game market on the 360 is very low for average games and for this reason I gave 360 Video Poker a goal of reaching 100 sales in its full life cycle so I’m proud to announce in 2 months 495 people decided they liked 360VP so much that they paid money, while I’m surprised I am proud.

It had normal reviews nothing criticising it too much and nothing really saying it was that good either which it hurts to say I can totally agree! Some could argue I was lazy by the lack of features and that there was no options but I really wanted to concentrate on moving forward with SADGames and developing games that people wanted to play and not just quick projects to understand business.

360 Video Poker

360 Video Poker Review 

Introduction into SADGames.

Hey well this is my first blog post ever, I’ve never had a blog before so bare with me!

SADGames is a one man game development team specialising in the Indie section. We..errr “I” basically do this as a hobby and since SADGames has its first game currently surfing around the wonderful world of Xboxlive, I felt I should provide some sort of communication into what goes on here, I hope to provide tutorials for beginners, screenshots of current games, information of upcoming games/ideas/stupid things like hamsters with Nazi helmets.

I’m always open to comments whether negative or positive preferring the latter of course and I’d consider extra help in developing computer games, I will echo this in upcoming blog posts if I was to ever gain more than one reader.

The ultimate goal of SADGames is to develop games that are fun and original, if it can make a few quid on the way even better but it has to stay a hobby, if I feel it’s becoming a drag then I wouldn’t enjoy it leading me to not bothering, however since finding programming 12 years ago on a simple language known then as Div game studio and not looking back since I doubt that day will ever be upon me.

 SADGames first game is 360 Video Poker which I will go on to describe in my next blog. I'm currently working on a few games hoping for one to shine enough for me to focus on full time but right now I'm enjoying 3 game ideas, I'll keep you posted when "The One" makes itself known.