Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Why Pokemon Go has my highest recommendations.

So...Pokemon Go.

Team Instinct here, for those players who might ask.

I could go on about the missing game mechanics like trading or battling other trainers directly.  I could write whole rambles about how this game is basically a fancy GPS with Geocache points on the map and a spreadsheet that currently only has the first gen pokemon critters.  Or how the ball throwing mechanic is basically a copy of those "put the paper in the trash can" apps combined with the catching luck of pokemon.

But over my first weekend playing it, I have realized that to boil Pokemon Go into such mechanics would be to completely discredit the real power of what Pokemon Go has done, seemingly overnight, nationwide.

This game, and it's positive effect on people as a whole, is simply put, amazing.

Last evening me and a couple siblings walked downtown.  It's got a lot of historical buildings, which become "loot" points in the game.  They refresh and players can also use items to make a beacon call that causes more pokemon to show up around that point.

The  main block downtown had players on nearly every street corner.  A few "hey you are on the other teams, we'll get you someday" rivalry comments was about as far as the supposed rival bashing went, despite a major take over of all the control points by a team during the evening.

Mostly people were passing on game tips and pointing out cool pokemon.  There were families there, kids and parents passing phones to play and take turns catching pokemon.  There were the 40-50 year olds, who grew up with Pokemon Yellow/Red/Blue back in their high school or grade school years.  There were teens, from the Black and White gen of games.  Fans of the anime, who've never played any of the video games.  And lots of players who didn't know what a Pokemon was till their friend roped them into this latest "free app for their phone".  Many were local, a few had driven to the block after discovering it through playing and meeting people there before.

Regardless of where they came from, the in game team color, genders, ages, race, or religions, everyone was polite and generally helpful to each other.  Everyone would look out for each other, keeping over eager players on the sidewalk or calling out when a rare pokemon showed up at a certain corner.  There was a spontaneous togetherness about the whole downtown, and even the random strangers walking by without the game were pleasantly surprised how polite and kind everyone was.

It was very wonderful to see everyone not only outside, but together, eager to greet new strangers, and just having a good time.  For the whole evening, and well into the night, everyone in the city finally had a common goal.

For once, we all put aside our differences and talked.  I had many conversations last night.  All started with "What team you on?" or "What pokemon are around here?" or "What's your strongest?".

But while they all started with the game, many drifted off elsewhere, such as the cool hidden historical monuments even locals had forgotten existed.  And a few touched on even harder subjects, like shootings, or race, or even a light conversation on religion.  No one was insulted or told their view was stupid.  We all had a glue, a common goal, a common thing that we could fall back onto if the conversations steered into strange or uncomfortable directions.  Everyone was here to have a good time playing Pokemon after all, first and foremost.

I, and probably the rest of the world, are still processing what has just happened overnight with the release of this game.  Suddenly everyone actually wants to go outside.  They want to see new places, to fully explore the parks and trails in their local area.  They are using maps and going to places they always drove by on the way to work, and taking the time to explore that area.  And in doing so, they find others, and connect with them.  Their first motivation may be just to catch that pokemon, but now that they are at that location, suddenly exploring the rest of the park doesn't feel so far away from home.  They end up stumbling on new hangouts they didn't know before, or meeting new people they never would have talked to otherwise.  Things outside the little game universe in their cell phone, that will last much longer then the little digital critters in their hand, and are just as precious.

People are outside, united with a common goal, and a little touch of friendly rivalry to keep each other motivated.  And the Pokemon game's brand and virtual world has reminded them all to value being civil, kind, and understanding of each other, while also giving them a common ice breaker subject to strike up conversations with.  One that doesn't involve a sensitive topic or a negative toned jab at anyone or anything.  Except maybe the virtual critters that have evaded their pokeballs.

I have no idea how this Pokemon Go thing will turn out in the future.  And I'm not saying it's all roses and sunshine.  There will always be those idiots who use it wrong or cause accidents because of the app.  And of course the entire USA's data plans have been slammed through the floor with it.

But I also see a lot of good coming from these little critters, and it reaches far more then the little phone screen.  People who normally would not talk to each other are instead sharing all the cool spots they've been to.  People are taking the whole family for an "evening walk", meeting other players and learning more about the neighbors around them, instead of sitting down to watch a movie or the news channels alone.

Best of all, the entire game is free to play, free to download, and doesn't suffer the geocache syndrome of having real life boxes that can be trolled by players/weather/nature/ect.  It's like Geocache 2.0, with so much more to it.

(Parents may want to take note of or disable the In App Purchases, the items sold can also be gotten/earned for free.  They are mostly boosting items that can be dropped rarely off collection points as well, and the currency can be earned by helping your team with control point battles.)

And so, I can only heartily recommend this game, to parents and kids alike.

Play responsibly, always be aware of your surroundings, and find some other family members to play with.  Enjoy your own pokemon adventures, and strive to catch em all, together, in the most world wide definition of the word.

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Small Status Update

For those following me, not too much has changed this past week in my game projects.  I got sick with something big on Monday and it took me out till around Friday evening to get well enough to work on anything that would take more then a few minutes time again.  I've spent most of the remaining week and weekend just trying to recover myself or catch up with things I've fallen behind on.

I know this isn't the most exciting update.  I wanted to post something so those that follow me know I haven't vanished.  I'm still here, Drake is still a thing, my other projects are still happening as well.  It's just been a bit of a "forced vacation" from game design this week.

I did manage to snag RPG Maker MV during the free weekend discount.  I'm a bit too tired right now to write up a proper review.  So far I've liked what they did to improve it, even if most of the improvements are just super tiny things.

Most of my up time from my sickness was spent pouring over it's engine/tools/plugin system and learning how it ticks, since I could do that in very small bursts when my eyes would let me.  I have a little wip dungeon generator plugin that's not quite ready for alpha release yet.  I have been able to dive right into the code running this time since the language is Javascript instead of ruby.

Anyway, signing off for now.  I intend to hit the ground running tomorrow.  Next week should be a bit more productive.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Drake Work In Progress Report

I just want to say I am still chugging along on both Drake and a top secret project.  Top secret is not ready for revealing, and has hit quite a few bugs along the way.

Level 2's layout is almost finished for Drake, and in polishing stage.  The level introduces a few new game mechanics that were not implemented in the itch.io jam version.  Namely boss fights, and a system for "level tasks" that open special "doors".  Since these were not in place for the contest version but are needed for the final version, I have done a lot more behind the scenes work then level design the last few weeks.  Moving forwards, these new systems will let me fill out the rest of the levels faster now.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a gif of Drake helping out a cute little phoenix friend who had an unfortunate encounter with the invaders.


I will keep working, and will try to regularly post updates to this blog as I get the remaining levels in place.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Drake - A 64x64 jam entry

I recently made this little game called Drake, it's on my game page now under flash games.  Or you can just click here:

https://darkgriffin.itch.io/drake

It's a single level of what was meant to be 6 levels around that size, so it's not complete.  But it's fully playable and should entertain for a little while.

I'm now working on the rest of the levels.  Those will be coming in an update as well, but very slowly.

Mostly this post is about showing you Drake, and letting you all know I'm still working on stuff.
---

Friday, April 1, 2016

Playhack winners announced! Robo Racer got Special Mention!

http://blog.playcanvas.com/playhack-with-playjam-winners/

My game #roboracer got a Special Mention, just below the contest winners!

No prize money for me, but it's really great to see it get recognized! "Good solid entry" is about the best praise I could have asked for from the judges. :)

A big accomplishment for me considering I had not touched Playcanvas engine till I started the contest, and am a single developer. :)

Go play all the entries, and enjoy! The blog has a link to a special "play games" page that has nothing but the contest entries. Some of them are really good, most are worth checking out. I won't link directly here, so you have to view the playcanvas article to find it.

Congrats to all who managed to make a game in time! It was a blast!

Friday, March 11, 2016

Robo Racer is out!

Yay!  Another Game Jam, another actual game release!

I've added it to the game page for the blog.  If you are super excited to play it, or super lazy, or can't find the page link cause it's glorious blue on blue at the top right of every single blog page, you can click below to get there.

http://gawaingames.blogspot.com/p/games-ive-made.html

I think I'll let the game speak for itself really.  It's been a blast making it, and my mind is still in a flurry of thoughts and design concepts, so anything I write about it won't make much sense for now.  Plus I've been promoting and repackaging the promotion material so much over the last 2 days, I don't really feel like spouting it all twice just for this blog post.

Not Robo Racer related news after the break.  If you are just here to check out my games, you can stop reading here. ;)


Thursday, February 25, 2016

Robo Racer - My PlayCanvas Work in Progress Game

https://playcanvas.com/project/375628/overview/robo-racer

Wondering what I've been up to the last few weeks? Wonder no more! Go press play and try the last mostly stable build I pushed as I make them.

Or just use this below permalink to the game and skip all my efforts to keep a development blog on the project. The below link will open the latest "stable" build directly:

http://playcanv.as/p/XtUBSVpS

It's still very much a work in progress and has no help menu, so here are the controls: Arrow keys to steer, hold spacebar down to charge up a jump. On mobile: touch the sides to steer, and HOLD the middle of the screen to charge a jump. On both devices: press and hold both left and right at the same time to boost.

Feel free to follow my dev log on playcanvas and watch the game take shape. The playcanvas project is also set public (cause I'm broke and they charge for private projects), so you can poke around and learn from it as well. Though keep in mind anything you see in code is also from me learning and on a contest deadline, and thus may not be the "best" way to accomplish the task.

Enjoy!

Friday, February 5, 2016

My PlayCanvas Contest Project Link

Here is the url for the contest entry project I am working on for PlayHack:

https://playcanvas.com/project/375628/overview/robo-racer

That will land you on the project page, allowing you to play it, view it in the editor, and read all my exciting (or not) posts as I progress!

It's keeping me pretty busy, so I won't have much time to keep up with here during the contest.  So follow that URL above and keep checking it for updates as I get further.  And while you are there, browse around Play Canvas and watch some of the other devs too.

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

PlayCanvas Competition - I'm in!

One day late to post this, shame on me.

PLAYHACK with PlayJam competition link:

http://blog.playcanvas.com/playhack-with-playjam-starts-today/

So this is quite a distraction, and will delay Chapter 2 of Mothrina.  I had gone back and fourth yesterday about it, since I really want to get the more polished engine done.  But I think I'll try for it.

The publicity and practice will certainly help, and the pressure of the contest will help me to "break in" my new home's "office" space.  The prize would be nice but I think I need to be a bit realistic and say that with no mobile games under my belt yet, I doubt I can really pull off a winning entry.  Hey, I can dream. :p

Mothrina Chapter 2 is currently in a bit of a bog down while I try getting an editor built using Multimedia Fusion 2.5 and the Mothrina Engine v2 "talking" in the same file structures.  When I get that all working, I'll have a guide to setting it all up here on the blog.  I actually have a draft but it's not ready for publishing as I have since discovered several better ways of doing things along the way.

PlayCanvas in general seems like a pretty fun tool so far.  Not sure how it stacks up professionally, but I've been having fun building the basics of my contest game concept today.  Nothing ready for publishing just yet on my contest entry.  I intend to publish a Work In Progress on PlayCanvas as soon as I have something remotely playable.

Part of the contest is to keep a regular dev blog on PlayCanvas during the development of your game, so the actual game updates will be over there.  I don't want to keep up with cross posting here.  The dev blog will be open as soon as I publish a version of the game, so for now there is no link I can hand you.  But I will be sure to post the link to this blog once I've got that started.

Anyway, super excited to be attempting this and learning yet another toolkit.  I'm sure I'll have a much better idea how PlayCanvas all works after the contest deadline passes.

Wish me luck!  And if you are entering as well, I wish you the same! :D