What have I been doing this week

Adding new weapons and playtesting with a friend.

I can officially say my new favorite way to kill zombies is to to use freeze grenades, then shock grenades.

What have I been playing this week?

A little Super Meat Boy but thats it.

What have I been watching this week?

More Mad Men: It’s still the 60′s!

More Six Feet Under:They bury dead people!

Dexter season 6 finale: The most interesting stuff was left unresolved!

So in this blog post I’m going to show start to finish how I add a new gun to the game.  In this case it’s going to be a sniper rifle.

So first I add the items name to the code in an enum called itemNames.

I called it simply sniperRifle1.  This is just a simple name for for the back end of the game.

Next I add it to the item database. There are 11 fields I must fill out for it here.

• Name: This is the simple name I used before.
• Clean Name: This is the name I want to be shown in game.
• Description: This is the item description used in game. (weapons do not have a description)
• Weight: This is the items weight.
• Buy Price: The items default buy price
• Sell price: Default sell price (It’s easy isn’t it?)
• Type: This is the item type. In this case it’s weapon.
• Chance of being in a building: This is a number that represents how common the item is. The higher the better.
• Chance of being in a store: Same as above but for stores.
• Max amount: This is the maximum amount of the item you will find when raiding a house. This stops you from finding 4 of the same shotguns in a house.
  
• Level: The level represents what street the item should start appearing in stores and items.  There is still a chance of it appearing before then but it is very slim.

Once the sniper rifle is in the items database I add it to the weapons data base as well.  There are 19 fields in the weapons database.

• Name: Again this is the name we put in the code. (sniperRifle1)
• Damage: This is the default damage of the weapon.
• Shots per second: This is how fast the gun fires.
• Range: This is the horizontal range of the gunfire.
• Width: This is the vertical range of the gunfire. for example the rifles have a very low width where as the sawn-off shotguns have a very high one.
• Penetration:  This is the percentage of damage left as the shot goes through each zombie.
• Ammo: This is the type of ammo the gun uses.
• Stun Time: This is how much time a zombie is stunned when they are hit by a shot from the weapon.
• Melee stun time: This is how long a zombie will be stunned if you melee them with the weapon.
• Vol: This is how load the gun it.  Load guns will alert nearby zombies to your presence.
• Gun Sprite height: This is where the gun is on the player sprite sheet.
• Flare sprite: This is a number which represents which muzzle flare is to be used when the gun fires.
• Gib: This is if the weapon “gibs” the zombie when they die or not.
• Sound: This is the sound the weapon makes when it’s used.
• Reload Sound: This is the sound the weapons makes between shots.
• Ammo used: This is how much ammo is used with each shot.
• Fire: This is if the weapon sets zombies on fire or not.
• Shock: This is if the weapon gives zombies and electric shock or not.
• Freeze: This is if the weapon freezes zombies or not.

Now it’s time to do the sprite work.

I separate out the legs, head and body to make things easier.  Each new kind of weapon needs it’s own set of body frames containing 6 frames.

• The 1st is the normal idle frame.
• 2nd is the melee frame. (This frame is twice the width)
• 3rd is reloading.
• 4th and 5th is for throwing grenades.
• And 6th is for the gun firing.

Of course this is just the frames for one character. Currently there are 10 in the game so sprites for all of them must be done. So each new type of weapon needs 60 frames, but if it’s a similar weapon to something else i can use the same set of sprites for multiple wepons.

Finally I test it and make changes as necessary.

And thats how it’s done.

Everything is very playable so I’ve been doing lots of playtesting.

I’ve played through The Solution in both single player and Co-op, and while there is still tweaking to do, it is fun. (God have mercey on anyone that trys to play this on the new hardest difficulty.)

There are currently builds uploaded to the playtesting section of the app hub for anyone wanting to try it out.

What have I been playing this week?

Orcs must die: Finished! I really loved this game and I’m now oign to try some levels on the harder difficulty and try some of the DLC levels.

Halo Reach: Finished! I enjoyed it.  It’s probably the best Halo game, but I felt like it could have been more.

Fallout New Vegas: Finished! Being an evil cannibal was fun but constantly choosing the bad options meant that many quests were shorter than if I had been a goody non cannibal.

What have I been watching this week?

Mad Men: I watched through season 1 and really enjoyed it.  If ever I have an office I’m going to decorate it like a 1960′s American office, and I’ll parade around in a blue suit with horn-rimmed glasses.

TV and all the consoles I leave hooked up all the time. I keep pads/cables/unboxed games in in red and black boxes.

Model 1 Sega Saturn, N64, Xbox 360, HD-DVD drive(oh yeah!), PS2, Orginal Xbox, Dreamcast and Gamecube with the gba player.

First shelf and a half is 360 games and the rest is original Xbox games.

Gamecube games in the center and 2 Playstation pads, 2 Gamecube pads, 2 dreamcast pads, and 2 original Xbox pads on the outside.

DVD’s and games. Master System 2, Game Gear, Model 1 Megadrive, 32x, model 2 megadrive, model 2 Mega CD, model 2 Sega Saturn and Dreamcast are on the top of the shelves.

Sega Saturn games on the middle shelve (Japanese on the left and European on the right) Boxed Master System games on the bottom shelf with boxed GBA and DS games.

Top shelf: 32X games, Mega CD games and boxed game gear.

Bottom two shelves: Boxed mega drive games.

Top shelf: Dreamcast games. (European on the left, Japanese in the center and US on the right.)
Center shelf: PS1 games.
Bottom shelf: PS2 games.

Lastly Wonderswan Color with 1 game inside and 2 boxed games.

What have I been doing this week?

Looking back it feels like not too much was done this week,  but I have done a lot to the back end of dead pixels to hopefully make the new modes feel better.  Hopefully I’m going to do some apphub playtesting in the next 24 hours.

A more detailed explanation is that I gave the AI director more control of the game. This way it can control some of the changes between game modes without every part of the game getting sent information on each game mode.

I also spent a day working on a new game.  It’s not really worth showing off just now, but I could easily see it becoming my next project after Dead Pixels.

What have I been playing this week?

Binding of Issac: It’s not prefect but it is a great game to play for 10 minutes at a time.

Deadly Premonition: Finished it this week.  While it goes very Japanese towards the end it, it was a wonderful ride. If there is ever a sequel, expect me to get it day 1.

Halo Reach: I bought this in June for my birthday but because of working on Dead Pixels, and none of my friends wanting to play it with me in co-op I decided to play myself.  I’m about half way through and so far I’m enjoying it. It reminds me a lot of American war films unlike the previous halo games , and I would possibly say it’s the best of the series.

What have I been watching this week?

TNT Jackson: Finally got round to watching this.  I thought that I had gone over board with the film scratches in Dead Pixels, but it was nothing compared with  this. Overall the film was pretty entertaining although it was only 68 minutes long.

Yeah back to Saturday reports!

What have I been working on in the few days since the last weekly report?

More playtesting, bug fixing and adding polish.

A little bit of work went into adding an alarm to the powerplant stage

Also there was the Post Mortem on Dead Pixels Xblig here

http://csr-studios.com/2011/11/23/dead-pixels-xblig-post-mortem/

What have I been playing in the few days since the last weekly report?

ORCS MUST DIE! I really love this game. I just wish it was longer.

What have I been watching in the few days since the last weekly report?

Community: I don’t watch many US comedies but I’m glad I gave this one a go.

It’s been 2 months now since Dead Pixels came out and all through it I’ve been wondering when the best time to do a post-mortem.  While the game is not dead yet, every week it gets less sales, and cant help but feel its’ better to do this while everyone still remembers the game rather than when it’s been forgotten.

Sales from September 16th – November 13th.

• Trials: 45170
• Purchases: 22607
• Purchase/Trial Ratio: 50.05 %

What Went Right.

I made a good zombie game

I went into Dead Pixels with the idea of making a zombie game that was not shovel-ware, and that fans of zombie films would enjoy.  Most reviewers and gamers got that and it made me happy that everyone that payed realised I wasn’t just trying to cash in on zombies.

I built a fan base

By making a facebook page and listing the URL on the main menu I made a way for me to interact with fans of the game very easily. This has been really useful for seeing what people want and being able to ask them directly about stuff has really sped up decision making.

Bowfingering it

Okay, that sounds dirty if you have never seen the film Bowfinger ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131325 ) Basically I done everything for as cheap as possible.  I used free sound effects and music, and all the coding and art was done by me.  This meant that there very few costs that ate into my profits.

Learning new skills / techniques

I learnt a lot working on Dead Pixels.  Some of it was to do with making sprites, and the presentation of the game and some of it was to do with the way I coded the game.  There are so many things that I would do now in a game that I wouldn’t have even thought of back in February when I started Dead Pixels.

Constant playtesting and taking in advice.

I feel that the large amount of playtesting I did from April onwards really helped with how polished the games was.  I would rarely ignore what the playtesters said and if a few said something that I didn’t agree with I took it as a sign that I was wrong.

What Went Wrong

Underestimated how well the game would do.

With so few games sharing their sales stats I was expecting rely on the long tail to make any money. I was hoping for 4000 sale in a month and I ended up getting that in 3 days.  With all these sales came a lot of popularity, emails, tweets, messages, friend requests and all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for.  A big mistake was to not have a proper website and email address setup when the game came out. All I had was an empty blog and twitter and this forced people to google my name, and find me on a variety of sites.

Promising DLC

Don’t get me wrong, have no problems making free DLC, but because everyone knew I was doing it, and because I was taking so long, it put me under more stress.  Many people felt that their $1 gave them permission to  complain if I tweeted about anything non work related.

No online co-op

The no1 asked for feature was online co-op.  This was completely down to the fact I don’t play online games on my 360 and I like local co-op.  This is not true of most other people, and some people bought the game presuming they could play it online with friends.

Competition from other zombie games.

After Dead Pixels came off the new releases list and was only on the top selling and top rated list, every time a new zombie game that sold well came out my sales took a dip.  It’s easy to understand why.  If a gamer was looking through the top downloaded they would have to pass by CastleMiner Z, The $1 Zombie Game, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 and Zombie Estate, before they got to Dead Pixels.  The more original your game the less competition you will have.

Little to no attention from big sites.

Maybe I didn’t email as many people as I should have, or maybe I should have sent out press releases, but I felt like few sites gave me much attention, and many of the sites that did ask for review codes did nothing with them.

I am very thankful of all the sites that did did choose to do reviews, interviews and write articles it kept me from feeling like I was invisible.

What went ??? ?

The cover art.

I love the cover art of Dead Pixels, but I felt like the trial downloads were lower than some other games, and I cant help but feel my box art might have been to blame.

Whats next?

1. Finish updating the game.
2. PC version
3. Profit
4. Side projects
5. Sequel
6. More profit

I’m going to finish post-mortem here before Dead Pixel’s wakes up and bites me.

Sayonara!

What have I been doing this week?

Mostly playtesting and bug fixing.  Things are moving along much faster now and I don’t think it will be long until I get Dead Pixel’s update out.

I got a couple of posters done for the new game modes. These are used when loading a game, and when selecting the game type.

I also done a few bits and bobs for my next game but more details on that in a few weeks.

What have I been playing this week?

With everyone playing and talking about Skyrim I decided to go back into the wastelands of Fallout New Vegas. I’m about 25 hours in and so far I’ve eaten 126 corpses.  It’s great to be a cannibal.

I played a little more Deadly Premonition. That game just knows how to keep me interested.

And I finished Sunday night off with some TF2.

What have I been watching this week?

Six Feet Under: I love this show.

Soon to be watching TNT Jackson and Return to Horror High.  Two films I picked up on DVD for a couple of pounds each.

I’ve been wanting to do a weekly blogpost for a while, but I’m not particularly good to writing, so I have been putting this off as much as possible.

I feel doing something like this is important to those waiting for DLC because it lets you see that I am still working, and it’s also important to me, because it lets me see that I have accomplished something each week.

What have I been doing this week?

There has been a lot of bug fixing this week.  I would like to be able to do some playtesting, and without getting rid of all the bugs I know about it would be a waste of time.

Speaking of wastes of time, I used up the whole of Friday fixing 1 bug.  It was an important bug, and it needed to be fixed but I really wish it hadn’t taken me as long.

Most of my time this week has been put into working on cut-scenes and my cut-scene system.  The system I had in place in the original game was fine for the 2 cut scenes in the game, but as I was adding more it became a mess.  I felt it was better to remove the whole thing and start fresh.  The new system is so much nicer and gives me much more control.

I’ve been working on the sprites of the people that donated during my extra life gaming marathon and I should be emailing everyone within the next couple of days.

What have I been playing this week?

I officially have stopped playing borderlands. I got half way through one of the DLC packs on my 2nd play through and felt like I just want enjoying it as much as I had been.

I’ve been playing the brilliant flawed gem that is Deadly Premonition.  Some will hate it some will love it.  I definitely love it.

Last night I put about half and hour into The binding of Issac.  I’m rubbish at it but I want to put more time in.

What have I been watching this week?

Six Feet Under: It’s strange seeing Dexter not killing people.

6 days to air: Very awesome documentary about the making of a South Park episode.

Walking Dead: Bloated zombie in your water supply means use a different well.  Even if you fish it out, I wouldn’t drink that water.

I raised $537 for charity by doing my 24 hour gaming marathon for charity. A big thank you to every one that donated!

I’ll be sending emails out to everyone that donated $15 or more tonight, and I’ll get the sprites done ASAP.

Big thanks to everyone that suggested weapons. Some are probably too complicated to add without me spending days working on just them, but I’ll try to add the ones I can.

DLC-Wise I’m still working on it. Tomorrow will probably be spent doing play testing, and making sure nothing has been broken when I’ve been making changes. There is still no ETA, just understand I’m spending as much of my time as I can on it to make fun and as polished as possible.

And lastly I’ve set up a proper domain name for my site, CSR-Studios.com, and a proper email address J.Common (at) CSR_Studios (dot) com.