Amazon.com Widgets Indie Life
Yac on May 5th, 2009

I’m skipping the regular update this week due to time pressure, but I’ll be back next week with two week’s worth. Don’t worry, I’m keeping notes. Here’s a preview:
Last week: worked on the demo.
This week: working on the demo.

Continue reading about Quick Update

Yac on April 29th, 2009

Indiecade announced on Friday that their deadline was extended to May 15th, giving everyone another two weeks to submit. I actually have only one extra week to improve my demo because my next deadline is PAX 10 (May 9th 2009). The stress is still on, but it’s weird working so hard towards a deadline and [...]

Continue reading about Dev Diary 35: Slight Reprieve

Yac on April 21st, 2009

Yup. Crunch time. Lots and lots to do, so I’ll keep it short this week.
Work Done Last Week
I fleshed out the audio manager a bit further, but then had to put that on hold. Still want to get back to it, but the very basics are done, and other areas need my attention.
I improved some [...]

Continue reading about Dev Diary 34: Crunch Time?

Yac on April 14th, 2009

One of the things I’ve done recently is to keep the game as simple as possible. I’ve spent a lot (A LOT) of time brainstorming, designing, testing out ideas, trying to come up with cool concepts. Many interesting ideas have come up – almost too many. It got to the point where I didn’t know [...]

Continue reading about Dev Diary 33: Keeping it Simple

Yac on April 7th, 2009

To continue to push the game forward and keep things rolling, I’ve decided to submit to IndieCade and PAX 10. The deadline for IndieCade is April 30th (with PAX following up a week later) so the clock is running. Shouldn’t I wait till I actually submit to announce this? Yeah, maybe. There’s a chance I [...]

Continue reading about Dev Diary 32: The Month Ahead

Yac on March 31st, 2009

I’m keeping it short this week. I’m putting a new build together to show to a few friends who haven’t yet seen what I’m working. This will hopefully generate some useful feedback from fresh eyes (and talented developer minds). It’s also another step towards a publisher demo.
I’m a bit nervous about putting my baby on [...]

Continue reading about Dev Diary 31: Small Update

Yac on March 24th, 2009

The annual GDC event is taking place this week, and while I would have loved to attend and mingle with indies, the travel and hotel costs were simply too prohibitive. I prefer to sit at home, work on my project and attend next year when I actually have a product to show.
Rather than wallow in [...]

Continue reading about Dev Diary 30: GDC Nostalgia

Yac on March 16th, 2009

As mentioned last week, when I face design challenges, I routinely turn to games that inspire me. I believe it’s worthwhile to share some of these games here, to give you a window on what I strive to achieve, and to recommend some amazing titles to the readers who may be unaware of them.
Today, I’ll [...]

Continue reading about Dev Diary 29: Inspirations, Part 1

Yac on March 10th, 2009

I naturally spend a lot of time thinking about my game and how it could play. I’ve got an endless list of features to prune. Cool features, stupid features, unique features, gimmicky features and completely ripped off features. Some are not even implementable; others would completely change the direction of the game. Some are both [...]

Continue reading about Dev Diary 28: Simplicity in Design

Yac on March 6th, 2009

A few days late, but here’s the Milestone 3 review.
The goal of this milestone was to produce a first playable demo, consisting of these major tasks:

Working Editor.
A finished level, with a start, and a goal.
Basic gameplay implemented.
A basic HUD (life, etc).
Completed test level art.

I estimate I’ve reached about 80% of [...]

Continue reading about Milestone 3 Review