roymakes
27 posts
Latest Posts by roymakes
Talking about the level design in ‘Jak & Daxter’ on the PlayStation 2. Source: Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine Demo Disc 51. Support us on Patreon
hi guys guess what, this game i worked on has a demo coming out soon and you can finally wishlist it on steam !! so if you were waiting please go ahead and do that, and i'll let you know when you can play the demo :---3c
Listening to the Sonic Hysteria soundtrack by NicoCW while I work on Stardust Survivors! Some of the best music from the Sonic fandom. I'm a particular fan of the various Launch Base Zone tracks, especially the underwater variant that builds on the PC marching-band version. The Hill Top / Mystic Cave mashup is also *chef's kiss*.
Here's a weird optical illusion I found while modelling: the two black lines in the center are completely straight, yet there's this bulge in the middle. :'V
Used to see a lot of 3D art back on Twitter, glad to see others like @molegato keeping it going on other platforms. If you haven't played their game Frogun yet, go grab it on steam! Great, classy platformer. I love those low-res pixel textures; they tend to come out quite crummy when I try making them, so I appreciate the talent.
I saw one of their tags as "WireframeWednesday", so let's give it a bash. MR's spawning in to blast some crazy alien noggins!
I’m 34 now! Depression is striking, but we can’t let that stop us from Making (for long)! Bounder Games has been active for a good 10 years, and we’ve still yet to release a fully-featured game (beyond a simple puzzler, Combo Carts). I have to admit, this is a constant blow to my self-confidence. In 2017, we were jetting all across Europe to show off Armoured Engines. But that steam seemed to run out of our indie dream. Honestly, it’s a struggle somedays to even sit at the computer.
Throughout social media I see developers working whole-hog on their games, so many amazing projects that I want to be excited for. Yet that excitement hurts, poisoned by my own inability to do the same. A toxicity of my own making, something I need to work hard to clear out of my system.
We thought switching to a new project would re-light the fire, and it did for a time. But even that stalled out half-way down the track. The development curve is steep, and I’m somewhat at a loss as to how to surmount it.
That’s not entirely true, I do know what the solution is: "elbow grease". Nothing gets done unless you do it. So I’m gonna keep working through my checklists, one step at a time. That’s the only way anything gets made. I’ll make Version 34 of myself better than the last iterations, if only by the merest of margins. That’s enough.
Wildly different characters (Quark, Dr Nefarious, Andrew Ryan) who share the same actor: Armin Shimerman.
I don't really play Hearthstone anymore, but I've always loved it for the different ways it portrays the World of Warcraft. I love Mean Streets of Gadgetzan so much that I wish it was a part of WoW (I'd love to make a Starcraft 2 mod inspired by it, but I'll talk about that later).
The most recent Hearthstone trailer had two great parts. The first is this Tortollan volcano city, which looks rad as hell and has a bunch of cute turtle people. The Tortollan are fine in WoW, but they look a lot livelier in their Hearthstone art.
Chromie pulling alternate-timeline versions of heroic characters has a vast amount of fan-theory potential. There were certain character skins in Heroes of the Storm that had different backstories, such as Thrall's "Ashwolf Chieftain" story. From what we saw in the trailer of pre-banshee Sylvanas and Lo'Gosh Varian, I'm certain they won't take that particularly wild direction, but who knows? There may be a mighty surprise.
Following on from yesterday's post, another interesting presentation came from Victor Paredes of Moho. Moho is an animation software that does quite a few interesting things with vector art. Two things really caught my eye; the first was pairing recorded "actions" to control bones, causing really smooth 3d motion for 2d objects. Full on head turning for 2d characters can be pretty challenging, but Victor made it look effortless.
The second was "Line Boil", which reanimated the art applied to vector lines, giving it a really nice, natural, hand-drawn look. There's a certain stiffness associated with vector art, and this completely masked it.
I'm gonna keep my eye on it; there's a 30-day free trial if you want to have a go. The demos they had on display were immediately eye-catching, so if you're interested in a bit more "art" on your vector art, give it a gander.
Hey friendly reminder that I made not one but two games in which you've got a grappling gun that's a frog! They're lowpoly platformers and you go up against Beelzebub himself <3
Popped down to Edinburgh for the MOVE Summit, a series of talks on the UK Animation industry. The Thursday portion began with a talk from Christopher McDonald from Framestore, showcasing the technological pre-production (or "Previs") done for movies, with Wicked Part 1 as the example.
They start by using overhead "Blocking Maps" to figure out the space of a scene, where each character is going to stand, position of objects, camera locations, field of view, etc. Then they make CG mockups of characters and locations, using concept art as a base, then animate based on the director's vision. It's sort of like the next step up from storyboards.
This helps them gauge the spacing and stage setup required to pull off practical effects ("Techvis"). For example, the scene where Glinda is sailing to the university, the camera is underwater, showing her hand beneath the water's surface. This means that for the camera to be below her, the actual prop boat needed to be several feet off the ground, something they might not have caught if they just started shooting.
"Postvis" is of course the post-production of adding all the effects together for the final shot. This was also the first time I'd heard the term "Plate", for the base shot that all the effects are later layered onto. Like a sandwich, I guess. Big thanks to Chris for that talk.
MeaBea 🧡💙
bitch this is all you’re gonna get. this life, this face, this body. you better not ‘maybe in another universe’ your way out of everything. sit your ass down and face this. go make tea and have a picnic and read a goddamn book. kiss your loved ones, send that damn text, and hug your siblings. this is all you’re gonna get.
We use Trello for our dev work organisation. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done. Each card is a task, broken down via checklists into steps. It helps us keep track with what the other is doing. When only my face is on a task, I know I can just get stuck in. And if it turns out I can't do it on my own, I just put CodingDino's face on it, make a note, and move on. The cards are useful, but in a great mass they can be overwhelming. Sometimes it's easier to just look at the game and see what's missing. However, a place like this is necessary to write down things you know you should get done sometime, but just not now.
Will all the tasks get done? Heck no! That's realistically impossible; the goal is to HAVE a goal, written down and visible. Otherwise you're just shooting in the dark.
Most recent character for Stardust Survivors : M.R.! A space-enthusiast who can call down rolling, flaming meteors. From Space™! These meteors can be upgraded to split into shrapnel, cause impact explosions, or leave a burn!
This makes... five characters so far. Once we've got her working in Unity, there'll be only one more to complete our first set of characters. After that, I'll be focusing on level design.
Rediscovered this treasure. My bible circa 2009; discovered I still use most of the tricks I learned from this book today. Animating waves using masks, proper gradients, animation principles, etc. Its advice is still relevant even after Flash's demise.
I had a lot of game ideas I wanted to make in Flash, most of which never escaped their notepad concept. Had a few successes, a Tetris-blackjack combo called DiceJack, and Rawrysaurus, a kaiju game where you escaped from a tidal wave. My first forays into game dev.
Thanks Chris Georgenes.
I've been called into college to fill in for an animation class. Looks like they're using Illustrator to make art and After Effects to animate. It's pretty early on in the term, so I'll start from the basics to see what they know already. I use Inkscape for Armoured Engines (main art) and Stardust Survivors (icons).
I'm not that familiar with Illustrator; Inkscape is my vector art program of choice. I'm going to be helping out the students with their work, so I've got to familiarise myself with it. There's a few oddities; you have to use a different tool to add nodes instead of just double clicking. But it's functional so far, once I looked up a few shortcuts.
A little snowman should be easy for them to make, simple shapes for a simple character.
Magic Trickery! 🐇🐇🐇🐇 Oldtimer and UFOh My!
WISHLIST Magic Trickery on STEAM! Pretty please and thank you!
testing particles
DnD today. Running a party of four through Curse of Strahd. Last session: they entered the Amber Temple and faced off against the encounter in the big room. I always feel as if I'm going easy on them, but I did my best to be ruthless. Yet these are seasoned veterans; they still pulled through. Now after that grueling fight, they have to decide if they want to continue exploring. They're technically a level below the minimum for exploring this dungeon, but I feel like they can handle the rest.
I just hope they remember about the Flaming Skulls :'\
Happy Valentines day! A good excuse for chocolate (for any relationship), and for me to talk about my partner, Coding Dino https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@codingdino. Not to gush, but she’s the smartest person I know, full of passion for her craft, and keeps pushing herself to improve.
I’ve learned a lot from her over the 11 or so years we’ve been together, and I’d be a far worse person without her. <3
She's been obsessed with Ascendance of a Bookworm for the last couple weeks, so here's some Rozemyne.
Now that my indie game has a map and fast travel it is really satisfying to see just how much of the world is finished so far~
Let’s start with what I’m actually working on. Stardust Survivors is a “Survivors” game, a sub-genre made popular by 2022’s Vampire Survivors. If you don’t know what that is, it’s like a twin-stick shooter, except you only have the one stick. The goal of the game is to outlast an infinitely-spawning series of enemy waves by destroying them to level up, gaining new abilities and attacks, most of which auto-fire without your direct input.
At this point, we’d barely touched Armoured Engines in over a year, and we figured a new project would be just the thing to get us out of our rut. Stardust Survivors takes that original concept and puts it into a magical space setting reminiscent of Moon Dreamers and Sailor Moon. The Stardust Survivors are a group of magical girls and boys who protect the energy of planets from the insatiable and unending tide of Constellar creatures.
It’s still early days; we’re mostly working on adding playable characters and abilities. However, we intend to streamline the survivors gameplay with short, 5-minute runs that extend down a rogue-like track. You can try out an early demo that we prepared for a local games showcase on our itch.io page here: https://boundergames.itch.io/stardust-survivors. Can YOU beat the boss!??
Following on from what I said yesterday, I’ll be posting daily on Tumblr (here), Mastadon (https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@RoyMakes), Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/roymakes.bsky.social), and the Bounder Games Discord (https://discord.gg/3DZKj2Ex). I also looked into Instagram, but I’m not entirely sure how that place works for this kind of post.
It doesn’t matter what I talk about: current work, old projects, interesting videos, observations, etc, as long as I’m posting. There’s no real goal; I’d just like to improve myself.
On that note, the ADHD meds shortage is coming to end so I’m hopefully going to get some help for my broken brain and focus more. But I’m not going to rely on that. Sure, ADHD is a massive pain in the ass, BUT I’m the one who chooses to let it control me. I have that power to choose already; medication will just make it easier.
I got this document from an ADHD support group I went to; I have it blu-tacked to the wall behind my monitor. I forget it’s there half the time, but it’s good advice.
Hey all! I haven't been making much progress with Bounder Games lately, mostly due to GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT (fill-in college lecturer). But that's no excuse! Here's where we stand:
I've been reading Hideo Kojima's "The Creative Gene", a collection of reflections on the books and media that inspired him to make games like Metal Gear. In "The Moon Over the Mountain", the main character feels he has failed to capitalise on his talent and describes his unwillingness to publish imperfect material as "timid pride" and "disdainful shyness". His following quote hit me pretty hard:
"No, whether the poems are good or bad, I would not rest easy in my grave without passing these poems on to later generations, since the represent my deepest passion in life, even to the point of losing my fortune and my sanity."
It's been almost 10 years since we founded Bounder Games and began work on Armoured Engines, and that decade of shame floods through me like toxic oil. I felt like I'd let everyone down, not working hard enough or focusing on the wrong things. I have so many ideas; to build, to design, to write, to act, to create, that I'm overwhelmed by the cavernous silence of my portfolio. The more I thought upon my neglect, the more I mired myself in doubt.
That quote struck me, and I could feel what Li Zheng could feel. That need to pass on what I make. Shame is the great assassin of creativity. If I could be a fraction as confident as Kojima-san, I might be able to look at myself with pride.
For me, no more excuses. Time to Make!
Hello GameDevs! I'm Roy from Scotland, an indie dev working as one half of Bounder Games (alongside CodingDino)! You might have seen us at DevCom, Insomnia, and EGX Rezzed.
Currently working on three titles; "Stardust Survivors", a survivors game set in a bizarre space land, "Gobbos, Hunt!", a monster hunting card game, and "Armoured Engines", a wacky side-scrolling tower defense in the wild west!
I'll be posting some of my work here in the future, hope to see all the wonderful things people share here! <3