Gallivanting Games Devlog

Happy new year!

Dylan — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 08:50:27 +0000

A new year, and time for an update on Loot Pursuit. It’s currently about 97% done. While that may seem like its close to release, there’s still a lot to do! Especially because the last 10% of a project often seems to take the longest.

It is, however, getting close to the point where I’m going to start advertising it more. For now, in case you haven’t seen it already, here’s a gameplay video showing some of the abilities in battle.

IGF dash

Dylan — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:49:34 +0000

Cat: Pet me!

Me: No! Too busy!

Cat: I said pet me!

Me: I said no!

Cat: Pet me NAO!

Me: ARGH KITTY

One of the most frusterating things about game development…

Dylan — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:00:46 +0000

…is how often I break parts of the game that were working fine, and have to fix them.

Again. And again. And again. And a few more times after that. And then maybe again.

I feel like I’ve coded this whole game at least twice sometimes.

Development continues

Dylan — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:49:09 +0000

Sorry I haven’t been updating this devlog more often. I’ve been trying hard to get the game done, but unsurprisingly it’s taking longer than I thought it would. Just thought I would let everyone know that it’s still in development!

Free indie game tools – Construct

Dylan — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:37:36 +0000

Loot Pursuit is being made with Construct, a free game maker.

Hold on, let me rewrite that.

Loot Pursuit is being made with Construct, an AWESOME free game maker. Some of the reasons construct is awesome:

- It makes game logic much easier to make and follow via its events system, no scripting required (though it does have Python if you want to use it). Code is written in close to plain english, which means that it’s very easy to understand. Since conditions and actions are selected from lists, there’s little syntax to know. While that sounds limiting…

- It’s powerful. Any type of 2D game can be made with it, and practically any 2D game at all can be made with it. The event system might seem limiting at first, but combine the events with the behaviors, and you can make practically anything.

- It’s quick. Quick to get something up and running, quick at runtime. It has a hardware accelerated DX9 runtime, and has no problem throwing around a thousand onscreen sprites on a pentium 3. Behaviors (like the platform behavior) make it faster to make games, because they do a lot of stuff for you, and do it so well, most of the time there’s no reason to make your own version. They’re also very customizable.

- It’s free. Yup. Free.

There are a few downsides, the main one being no cross-platform support. It also requires the latest version of direct X 9. Which is made all the more confusing that microsoft never updates its version numbers for DX9 even after updating it, leading some people to think they have the newest version when they don’t.

Regardless of those faults, it’s an excellent program that’s a joy to work with, and I recommend trying it. However, save often, because it’s still in beta, and still has some bugs.

Welcome to the devlog!

Dylan — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:39:08 +0000

Hi! My name’s Dylan. I’m a not quite one man army (featuring some incredible background work from Karen Petrasko) making an RPG, and this is where I’ll be rambling about the various aspects of game development. First up, I might as well talk a bit about the game I’m working on.

Loot Pursuit is a humorous, lighthearted RPG-lite. It’s about two best friends, Ria and Renae, searching for the elusive “mountain of money.” Well, mainly it’s about Renae searching for it and dragging Ria along with her. Renae’s the one with the map.

Making an RPG is a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. I’ll be talking later about design, art, coding and various other aspects of making a game, and showing more screenshots and art as well.