Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Goodbye Mediafire, you were pretty good until you sucked.

Well, it's been a good run, but Mediafire has begun taking down my files.

So, I've made the switch to some paid file hosting. This means I have to pay for outgoing bandwidth, but it also means you don't have to go through any BS external websites to download my files, and I don't have to worry about takedowns. In other words, everybody wins.

Edit: Well, that didn't last long. I'm now looking for another file hosting site. Certain things about the one I chose just didn't cut it. Though I'll probably keep using it for the Unlock files.

We'll see how the next one I'm trying goes.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Updated demo (difficulty)

Edit: Tweaked the difficulty again. There is now hard, normal, and easy. (Also fixed an oversight that prevented the easy difficulty from being saved)





Controls are,

Spell: Up + Attack
Dash slash: Down, Right,  Attack
Downward spin: Down + attack in air
Downward stab: Double tap down in midair.
Block: Hold down on ground.
Dodge: Spacebar is the default key

Known glitches:
- The options aren't fully implemented yet.
- The blue crystal things are wonky.
- Apparently Rocks are capable of feeling love.
- A bunch of graphical stuff.

Things that will be in the game later:
- Animation for jumping and using spell.
- Gallery
- Enemy arena
- Unlocked CGs as higher-res files, free of gameover text.
- Missing graphics and music. (such as when you run out of health)
- Working options
- Timer for speedruns
- Beginning and end of stage graphics
- Boss H animations
- H animations will have affects (thus the red and blue bar)
- Other stuff

Take note of when you die the first time, if you do at all. I'm interested to know how difficult the game actually is for other people (for me it's just too easy, and thus hard too balance). If you want to take the time to screencap your first playthrough, that would be even better.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Demo for mini-game

Alright, here's the demo. Keep in mind that it's still pretty rough around the edges since I just wanted to get something playable released for now. There's still quite a bit of graphics, sound, and music missing. Some of it is temporary, like the boss music, which was slapped together in around 15 minutes just to have something there.







Controls are,

Spell: Up + Attack
Dash slash: Down, Right, Attack
Downward spin: Down + attack in air
Downward stab: Double tap down in midair.
Block: Hold down on ground.
Dodge: Spacebar is the default key

Known glitches:
- The options aren't fully implemented yet.
- The blue crystal things are wonky.
- Apparently Rocks are capable of feeling love.
- A bunch of graphical stuff.

Things that will be in the game later:
- Animation for jumping and using spell.
- Gallery
- Enemy arena
- Unlocked CGs as higher-res files, free of gameover text.
- Missing graphics and music. (such as when you run out of health)
- Working options
- Timer for speedruns
- Beginning and end of stage graphics
- Boss H animations
- H animations will have affects (thus the red and blue bar)
- Other stuff

Take note of when you die the first time, if you do at all. I'm interested to know how difficult the game actually is for other people (for me it's just too easy, and thus hard too balance). If you want to take the time to screencap your first playthrough, that would be even better.

Also, keep in mind that this is supposed to be simple. Very simple. If you're expecting game of the year, you're going to be disappointed.

Now, sleep time. I'm exausted. -___-

Friday, February 15, 2013

Progress, donation button.

People keep emailing me asking if there's anyway to donate money, so I figured I may as well put a link to it on this blog. There's been a link to it on the Overture Site, but I suppose nobody really goes there but to buy Kurovadis, so it's easy to miss.

Other than that, not much to report on the game's progress. It's coming along. Right now I'm doing CGs for the demo. Would you prefer if the demo were released in the next day or so without all the CGs (there are two, and three left to draw), or would you rather wait until all of them are done? Up to you.


Friday, February 8, 2013

Possibilities...



Excuse me for a moment, just thinking out loud again.

I've been thinking a bit lately about what it would be like to work with a team of people on H-games. Working alone, a single game's profit is enough to support me an entire year and then some. Assuming that I make multiple games in a year, this means that I would have enough money to basically fund a project, and hire artists who are far superior to myself.

Assuming I'd be making a 2d game, I would probably be hiring..
1. A spriter.
2. A background/tileset artist.
3. A CG artist.

Either the spriter or the CG artist would be responsible for designing enemies and character's. I would then do the programming, the (level/game)design, and the soundtrack myself, since I wouldn't really trust somebody else with any of those other than soundtrack.

Assuming the games produced would be of higher quality and polish than Kurovadis, which made around $30,000 in less than a year, it would be a fairly safe bet to make $30,000 my budget. How the budget is divided between the team would be based on the number of hours it would take each member to complete their work.

CG ARTIST
Let's say there are 30 enemies and CGs for half of them. A common commission price is around $70, which is absolutely pathetic, so let's assume they would at least be making around $20 per hour. If it takes 10 hours  for one CG, that would cost a total of $3000 for all 15, which is reasonable. $6000 for 30, if they could take the workload. (or if I hired two artists)

SPRITE ARTIST
This is a little bit harder to determine, since I only have myself as a basis for comparison. On a bad day, I can finish an enemy's animations in a few hours. However, the hired artist could be much better than I am, and yet take more time, or maybe less. If there are around 30 enemies and each one takes 4 hours, that's 120 hours of work. Add another 20-40 for the player. If I'm paying the sprite artist at the same rate as the CG artist, that would be $3200. The industry standard is around $30 for an artist, however, which would be a total of $4800, which seems more reasonable.

TILE ARTIST
At least for me, tilesets take a lot less time than sprites. But then, my tilesets are pretty economic since I work alone, and are far from the quality I'd expect from someone who considers it a speciality. In other words, I have no idea how long it would take, however I assume the hourly rate would be about the same as the sprite artist. So for instance, if there are 4 areas, 4 tilesets in each, and a tileset takes 8 hours, then that would be 128 hours of work. So around $3840.

Of course, assuming I pay the two artists 30 per hour, I suppose I'd have to pay the CG artist that as well. Bringing it to $9000.

TOTALS
CG Artist: $9000
Sprite Artist: $4800
Tileset/ background Artist: $3840

In total, that's only $17,640. If I give them more money to cover income tax it's still only around $20,000. Let's also assume that such thinking is too optimistic and bump it up to $25,000.

That would leave the rest of the budget to me. Alternatively, I could spend the entire budget on the team and only receive the profit from the game. (Meaning I'd make money once the profits exceeded $30,000)

To put it simply, working with a team seems a lot more practical financially then I first thought. Even if I make less money myself, ideally the games would be of higher quality since each artist would be dedicated to his/her own position. The only problem would be finding people who are skilled and reliable. It would also be difficult to find someone who doesn't have a full time job initially.

Anyhow, just thinking out-loud. It would be a while until I attempt something like that anyway, since I'll have to finish a few games myself first.

Time to get back to it.


Monday, February 4, 2013

Added a work log.

Lately I haven't been working on the game as much as I should be. Yesterday I only worked on the game for three and a half hours, for instance. Not nearly enough.

So, I'll be updating a work log and keeping time each day in an effort to stay more focused, and on track. I'll also be adding goals for the following day.

That's about it. *Starts stopwatch app.*