2024 Archives

First… Scratch N Score has finally moved into the beta process. What does that mean? A month of never-ending bug reports where people press the weirdest combinations of buttons known to man, that no user will ever actually do, all in an effort to break things. So now we sit back and wait for the reports to start coming in so we can work on fixing all the little things. I’m pretty sure the most common ones found have already been taken care of ahead of time, but there are those people… *ahem* that I know will find more. Hopefully it’s a quick process overall so this can get a scheduled release date. On another note, I also switch to a different video production software that’s much easier to work with than Corel’s and gives me a much better end result! Considering my level of expertise in video editing, I am quite impressed with Wondershare Filmora. Good price for the value, definitely worthwhile. A ton of projects in the works I have a ton of projects in the works, but a lot of them need more thought and fleshing out on paper (well digital paper) before I start work on them. A couple board games and the like. They should definitely be fun and great products for the table, but for now I decided… Dice games! Why? Because I just did one and enjoyed it, and thought WHY NOT? And having certain people kind of try to talk me out of it just made me want to do it more! Sorry J! lol We’re talking about your simpler dice, party type games like Over Under 7, Ship Captain Crew, etc. And since they are simple, we’re going to group them in packs, starting with 7 games in the first one. I started development on the first of the seven, and it’s the one that will take the longest. It’s not complex at all, as a matter of fact it will probably be the quickest of them all, but it’s all the other stuff that goes into a new project and choices that will carry through every single included game. Things like the user interface, sound effects, particles, the general programming structure and framework. That all takes time to develop, even when you’re using components designed from other stuff, and it all has to work and be reuseable. Once it’s done though, it’s a simple matter to adapt each piece to the next game, change the rules and write whatever specialized code is needed for that game. I’ll still have to do GUI’s for them, but the basis of what that looks like will already be done. Simpler games Another thing about simpler games is while they are fun on their own, you have to amp that up with your sound and effects to capture a player’s attention. If you’re just rolling dice and there’s nothing else going on, it’s going to get boring and guess what, you lost a sale but more importantly you lost a customer’s confidence in your past and future products. One thing I chose to do to help amp it up a little is to add some AI generated voice narrations. Playing it with and without those is almost 2 different worlds, even if it is just some simple words being spoken. Gameplay on the first game is nearly completed, it just needs a few more FX touches as well as a game over / play again option, and the in-game settings menu. After that we can move on to the next game. I’m hoping, with the market and audience the table has, that this will be a success, but that’s something only time will tell. I do have plans for at least one more volume if not two of these dice game packs. There’s a lot of cool simple fun ideas out there that wouldn’t work as a standalone game, at least not something you’d want to pay for by itself really. It also pays to listen to people, as one game I had been thinking about doing was just asked for by someone who just picked up a table. There’s a ton more going on in the background, but this will see light of day soon! Simple projects are fun, and it gives me something to work on and think about while working out the details on the bigger ones!     Well, time for bed.. for now…

Debating… Firstly, Gremlins Grotto is a similar type of strategy game, it hit the market mid-September and sales have been a lot lower than I had hoped, netting (after commission) less than $400 in almost 3 months.    It’s enough to pay for the assets within the game, but it’s not enough to recoup any of the time spent on development. In time sales may pick up, one never knows, but I doubt it; it will remain one of those little niche games. There’s nothing wrong with that, I had just hoped it would have performed better. That being said, Rogues is a very similar type of strategy game, and while yes it’s fun at times, it can also be very frustrating at others, combined with the fact that it is not a very fast paced game, it’s lacking something that would make it stick out. I have a ton of ideas and titles on the drawing board, and I’ve come to the conclusion a couple of times over the past year that this is probably one that is just going to get shelved. Maybe someday I’ll come back to it, but I don’t think the market is there for that type of game right now, at least on this platform. So! What do we do instead? MOVE ON! One of my first projects I was going to do for the table was a dungeon board game titled To Delve So Deep. It looked good, played nice, ran like crap on the table, and I moved on to other projects planning to revisit this one someday. Well, that day has come. This platform is aimed at board games and the like, and now is a perfect time to revamp the gameplay entirely, make it more into a board type game with a dungeon theme. Plans are already in the works and being written out of the good ol’ Remarkable tablet already. It’s still a pretty big project so it’s not next on the list. SLOA –  the Secret Life of Aliens is also a board game, and I have a fair majority of its rules and gameplay already written out, and I’m slowly tweaking and adjusting things here and there.  This is also a pretty hefty project (for one person in their spare time) and it needs time to be developed properly, not rushed. Ideally it should take me roughly 6 months at my current pace? Maybe 8… And I want to do it right. What do we do in the meantime? In the long run, it is about making games and making a little money on the side to help keep things moving, buy new assets, training, software etc., so we do smaller fun stuff that should definitely be a hit on the table! I was thinking about doing some dice games and trying to figure out the best way to balance everything. I have to think about everything here, including release schedules, the beta testers, QA, the development, the sales, all of those and more factor in. I had the intention of doing some smaller games and putting them up for .99 or 1.99 each, but right now I have 8 different ones and more in the works. These are all fun, simple to play and easy to develop, but if I did 8 individual games? I’m pretty sure I know a few people who would get really irritated trying to fit in 8 titles into testing, not to mention the release schedule for that.. Then I’d be trying to avoid doing the same UI’s etc. for each one, and even though they are completely different games, they might all end up looking identical and actually end up a detractor from sales. I think the value here lies more in a multi game pack. Easier for everyone from testing (well maybe not, now they test 3-5 games in one) to release, plus it’s better value for the customer. $5.99 and you get like 5 different games, each with its own unique gameplay style and rules: not to mention the variety. Tired of playing Ship Captain Crew? Let’s go play Macao instead! Or how about Triple Chicago, Pig or one of many others! I’m still trying to determine what’s going to be the best value / combo for the cost, but I think it will depend on how many games I include in the bundle. There are tons that can be done, so at least 3 per pack. And if I do 3, I might just aim for a price point around 2.99 or 3.99 which puts each game at roughly one to two dollars each. Then I can release pack 1, 2 and 3, they can stagger the releases or do it all at once and bam. Games that everyone will love (we hope!!) Just have to come up with icons, marketing, titles for the packs.. ugh, it never ends! Don’t ask me to explain how my brain jumps around, I just decided to do this after going to the store the other day, seeing something and going… Yeah.. that’s what we’re going to do! Bonus points because it gives me something to put out while I flesh out and make both Delve and SLOA (among other titles) even better before I release them!

Another lesson in coming back… Another lesson in coming back to code a year later. Over time, no matter what kind of software you’re developing, you almost always get better. Then you go back to finish a project you worked on a year ago and for one reason or another, put on hold. Looking at the code, you wonder what on earth you were thinking?! So Rogues N Riches, a game mostly coded in late 2023, nearly completed and go put on hold for a multitude of reasons. Most of the game was complete, but there were a few minor issues that needed to be addressed still. Some of the effects appeared on top of windows that should be on top, so of the effects obscured things for other players, not to mention how I was handling the games cards, dealing, discarding, just the animations alone. Bandages… Going back and trying to fix some of that has turned out to be a much larger challenge than I thought. Don’t get me wrong, I tried and succeeded on most of it, but I still don’t like how it looks or feels. I’d been thinking about scrapping the gameplay script and scene and starting fresh with some new tricks and assets, but the thought of giving up all that work just didn’t appeal, so I tried to bandage it. Well, bandages only stretch so far and I have definitely come to realize that I need to break down and just rewrite the gameplay. There are just so many enhancements and easier ways of doing things this time around, it’s just getting the courage up to say ‘Hey, I wasted all that time.’ And even then, I guess wasted isn’t really a good word considering the lessons learned and how much easier and quicker it will be the second time around. Next Up? Now the hard part is, do I focus on Rogues or do I move to another project that I think will probably sell better? It’s a fun game, or at least it could be, I just have to fix it and that takes time. But I suppose, better now than never. I have plenty of time to think about and make a decision on it’s fate. Besides, it would be a huge waste to give up the resources already put into it, code and assets included. This will give me a chance to change out the 3d models and tweak the speed. Even for a strategy game, right now it just feels too slow, along with a slew of other changes I want to do but the current setup just wouldn’t allow for it without a lot of trouble.  I still have that itch to start a new project though and scrap this one completely, or once again shelve it until later. Hmmm…. Something to think about this long weekend that will probably keep me from coding anyways…

Scratch N Score Another game ‘rolled’ out to the eval group (pardon the pun). Since the process was never truly explained, and because it’s pretty self-explanatory, that’s where a game goes to live or die.. Does it feel like it has a home on the table? And is it good enough. My biggest fear is that that same eval team is going to come back one day and say, nah, we don’t think this fits. Normally that would be fine and dandy, except for the fact that I don’t publish anywhere else now. It’s just not worth it.  One of my big things with all the major stores is the tremendous amount of shovelware and reskins, hundreds of thousands of identical games with different names, and at least 60-70% of it is trash. Sure, there are some gems out there, but you have to shovel through bad to find the good. One of the things I love about the platform I develop for is generally, most of the games are higher quality stuff that feels like it belongs there. Ok, there’s a couple that probably shouldn’t have made it, but hey… 😉 So I do my damndest to make sure my stuff is at least a couple notches above average. They may not be perfect, but I do my best to polish the hell out of them and I try to avoid using and of the thousands of prebuilt templates out there. This weekend I finally finished up and pushed out Scratch N Score to the eval group. Yes, it’s a clone, but it’s also one that doesn’t exist in their ecosystem, plus it’s one requested by many owners of the device on different facebook groups I have seen, so I am pretty confident it will be a success! Well, fingers crossed! I even added multiple gameplay variations and a lot of options for choosing your playstyle to give it that extra little boost. So once the eval team tries it out, makes their holy determination, then we go to the beta team. Those guys… MONSTERS!!! They can find bugs where bugs don’t exist. It’s my firm belief that they have a backdoor to my pc and are secretly coding the bugs in so that I have to go fix em. Honestly, they have an amazing team over there, and a ton of dedicated testers who really put a game through its paces. Every now and then something slips through the cracks, but wow! So that’s the next step, we wait, we let the testers get their hands on it and then we sit back and wait for the reports to roll in. I’m sure a certain tester will find something, probably some obscure combination of button presses on screen that no normal player would even try, and another one will find my spelling and grammar errors… But that’s what makes it a great team. Those guys deserve a lot of credit, because while I consider myself a great programmer, I readily admit as a one man team doing it all, I miss a lot sometimes. Just like this game, I originally wrote the gameplay routines, the scoring and then after a couple weeks realized I had completely screwed it up and had to rewrite 90% of the game play code. It’s better now, but that’s a big hit.

Opânico Released! Woohooo! Another game released after a long and arduous beta process; but in the end it was worth it and the game is definitely better for it! In what spare time I have been able to scrape up, I managed to get the vast majority of Scratch’n Score gameplay done, so now it’s mostly minor cosmetics, adding the splash and polish that a good game needs, along with all the boring mundane stuff like the player select and instructions.. the list goes on and on. I have some ideas on enhancements to make on this one before release, including a couple additional game modes I have been contemplating. Coming Up Next… I still have a multitude of ideas and projects in the works, but I’m going to be focusing on five main titles in the upcoming months, roughly in this order… Unless I come up with a different better idea that strikes my fancy at that particular moment, in which case everything below is out the window. Short attention span and all… 😉 As for timelines? With my schedule, who knows.. But I am aiming to have the first out the door to the beta testers in the next 30 days. After that there, I’ll get back to working on Rogues ‘n Riches since it’s mostly complete and send that over. It’s not a fast paced game, so hopefully it will still be well received. The others haven’t even been started yet, so I have no idea on any kind of schedule. Scratch’n Score Roll the dice and race against your friends to reach the target score first. With each turn, match combos to rack up points and strategize your way to victory. Roll as much as you like as long as you don’t scratch out! Rogues ‘n Riches A strategy board game where you’re dealt a hand of cards, some may unlock doors while others may blind your opponent. Can you make it to the vault and escape to the exit before getting caught? * * This one is mostly done. I’m hesitant to include an AI in this since you can play single player. I just need to do a little more testing before sending it out.  Frustration Remember that game you played as a kid where you had to fit the shapes into the holes on the board before the time ran out and everything exploded? We’re doing it! This one will be great for adults and kids alike with varying difficulties! Can you beat it or is it just going to frustrate you some more? SLOA It’s 9pm, your sitting there watching the intergalactic news like you always do, the only difference is your child just told you they have a science project due tomorrow morning… Great.. Another middle of the night abduction to take care of… When will they learn to let you know ahead of time that they need another human to probe? Pathways A strategy game on a grid where your goal is to make it to the other side of the board. The only problem is your opponents and they walls they can place up at their whim as they try to block you! Be the first one to make it across and be declared the winner! Not sure if or how I am going to theme this yet, but I’m leaning towards sci-fi / tech.

One major thing most developers do – myself included – is to fail to target the right platform. And by that I don’t mean the whole android or iPhone or windows debate, I mean those all-important system specs. Do you focus on your end user’s system specs to start? Or is it better to tweak later? You have a shiny new super powerful computer that you do all your coding, your graphic design, your entire game on this amazing machine, and it performs beautifully. But then you realize it must run on ‘normal’ systems. All those amazing glows and animations, are they going to look good, much less perform decently on a lower end device? That’s the big question! I know I am guilty of doing the same thing and I have a bad habit of developing almost the entire game to completion before I upload it to my target device to test, and then it bombs. Ok, so most of the time it doesn’t bomb, but I have to go back and make numerous performance tweaks and adjustments to get it to run acceptably. Same thing with the latest project, Scratch’n Score. It’s a pretty simple 2D game though using some 3D dice that use physics to roll. It runs great on my system and in the editor with everything on screen at around 6-800 fps. Amazing! Then you remember the device you develop for is a much lower end device, think entry to barely mid-level android devices, and bam, now you’re struggling to hit 60fps during some of the ‘cool’ stuff. I just did exactly that. In fact, I spent hours on one animation, slicing and aligning the images, designing the animation, all to play when the player scratches and loses all their points that round. Does it look great? Yep! Does it play on the device? Well, barely. By the time the device catches up, the whole animation is over halfway done and then bam, it’s gone… Not to mention, now that I see it playing on the device, I really don’t like how it looks. But that’s a developer’s dilemma. It takes time to save and compile everything and deploy it to the device in question to test, depending on the project it can take anywhere from 3 minutes to an hour. Is it worth it to do this on a regular basis or is it better to develop and then tweak it later after testing. That’s up to you and how valuable your time is. On the bright side, deciding out of the blue to test it on the device today (mostly because I wanted to show off a bit), I realized I don’t like that animation anymore and thought of a much better solution, AND saved myself some time since I was thinking about doing some other animations the same way. Overall, testing it on the device probably saved me several hours of designing more animations like that that I would have ultimately tossed out anyways. Well, since the wife is out of state for the weekend, I am going to take advantage of her absense get back to some coding! This project is wrapping up nicely and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The gameplay is essentially done, it’s all the polish and animations that I need to work on now, along with a couple game variations just to add some spice and keep replayability up there! Then all the boring stuff, settings menus, etc.. Ugh.. 

Amid all the distractions last night, not the least of which was standing in line for several hours to vote, I did manage to get some coding time in and made significant progress on Scratch’n Score, eliminating the issues with the old codebase. It took a couple days to truly get over it and delete the old code completely and rewrite it. I know I’m stubborn, but I backed up the two files thinking to use them as a reference, but the problem came when I kept going to them, trying to just copy and paste to fix it, rather than doing what I had intended, a rewrite. Once I was able to get my brain to cooperate, and after several heated internal arguments with myself, I convinced all those nagging thoughts that a rewrite, from scratch, was the better way to attack this. And the result? A lovely dice rolling simulator, that lets you roll until you scratch, or until you score your points and pass the dice to the next player. I amended the score calculating code to keep track of which dice in a roll were contributing to the score to eliminate players trying to cheat… For example, you roll and 5 of your dice are scoring, but that last one wasn’t. Well, you could cheat the system by just selecting all 6 and then boom, next roll it would think you scored with all 6 and let you reroll 6, instead of one. Not anymore. As a matter of fact, I think it’s going to be a default ‘house rule’ that if you try to include a non-scoring die in your take, it will be an instant scratch.. The rewrite also allowed me to handle some other things that would have been harder with the old code like having wild dice where if you’re lucky you could change one of the die values to anything you want, among other variations. In the long run, this was worth it, but painful. I hate doing a complete rewrite as I feel like I have just wasted all that time, but it was worth it. Hopefully this weekend I’ll get back to the code and finish up the gameplay portion. Time will tell!

So, one of the first things you learn in a learning environment for game design, is the game design document. A sometimes-vital work that gives you all the information and plans for a game, its features, everything about it at a glance. Depending on the game this could be a single page in a notebook or a multi hundred-page document. I hate design documents. Who needs em? My preferred method is to jump into the gameplay, start designing and coding on the fly, more often than not using actual production art. If I can’t see it, I can’t wrap my head around it. Now occasionally I do make up a design doc, but usually only on more complex projects like SLOA or Roll’N Bonez. In the case of Scratch N Score, I did not. I jumped in, started coding gameplay, had a whole thing already done and implemented and working… and then I realized I was wrong. My whole plan and process for each player’s turn was broken and just wasn’t going to work. Then I started a new job, plus I had two games in with the beta testers who kept sneaking bugs into my code… *ahem* Well they did an amazing job finding bugs, which I had to fix, then they found more, which I had to fix. So, the project for this sat dormant on the hard drive, collecting virtual dust until recently when I grabbed the vacuum, cleared the dust away and tried to figure out one burning question. ” WTH was I thinking?! “ Now that I’ve opened it back up, I figure I can re-use about 50% of the existing gameplay code, the rest is a scrub. Now this is a simple game, so we’re only talking a couple hundred lines of code. If it were a larger one like CashFlo was? Then we’d have some issues. I have plans now and have already started reimplementing part of the scoring display, which will lead to reimplementing the other parts of the code I had to scrap. It’s a work in progress but I can at least see now how it should flow and that will make it a lot easier to move forward. Word of advice for anyone who randomly stumbles across this post and reads my ramblings, design your stuff. Even for a simple game, it can save hours of refactoring, sometimes even days or weeks. I guess it depends on how much you value your time! In my case since this is a hobby, no big deal. Had I had a deadline with a publisher tapping their fingers? That would have been a problem!

Welcome! It’s time to roll out the latest version of the website! Easier on the eyes, and definitely easier on me to maintain. I also stripped it down a little bit, removed some stuff like logins, ability to comment, etc. None of that was worth the moderation time since 99.9% of all the signups and comments left were all just spambots anyways. The site worked before, but I never really cared for the layout much. It was cobbled together and yes, it worked but it had issues. Now I love dark mode in most apps normally, but the site felt way to black if that makes sense. So now, we have a brand-new design that will make it much easier to update in the future! Today also marks the release of our latest title for the Infinity Game Table, Roll’n Bonez. This pirate themed dice game is fun for all ages and full of surprises! Roll your dice and let’s just hope the Kraken doesn’t come for your booty!     Click the image above to check it out!