Blogs

Hiatus

Posted on 31 July 2018

Hello again, and apologies for the hiatus. Let me share a personal detail. I have a time-consuming job which hinders game development. The good news is that I can easily fund my projects with my own earnings. I just have to finish making Messiah Quest II to release it. Not too long ago, I finished developing the Lunar Spire in my down-time over the last few months. The Lunar Spire is the final level in the Path of Light story line, so the game is now beatable from start to finish. The last few gaps in the game will be filled while I develop the second store line, and then the game will be nearly complete.

Before I can start development of the rest of the levels, I have been planning a new core feature that I wish to implement first. I have been adding a lot of small core features which help the player connect with the game. I made the text scroll so the dialog is easier to read. Players who don’t wish to read the dialog can repeatedly press the spacebar to skip the scrolling text as well. I’ve also added menu sounds to improve haptic feedback. Now, I am working on creating a map system so the player can see a larger picture of the world, and it will help them navigate through the levels. The level maps will work much like standard dungeon crawler maps where only rooms the player has entered will appear. It will help players find their way back to a specific room as well as show doors which lead to unexplored rooms. After this new system is implemented, I will continue with the usual development of levels.

Let me just state this: I am not an artist, I am a programmer. I resorted to pixel art because it is more mathematical to me, and I felt it would be faster for me to create assets with pixel art. I have done a LOT of copy/paste to make the art assets, and there are many monsters that are identical with slight changes to details and color. You could say it is laziness, and I would agree. In my last post, I listed what needed to be developed to complete Messiah Quest II. It was posted in early January, and it stated the Lunar Spire only needed more monsters to be complete. All I needed to do was draw the sprite sheets for each monster, and write a tiny bit of code to spawn the monster and render it. It took me nearly seven months to make those monsters. Sure, I was working twenty hours a week in the spring and now I’m working forty in the summer, but I started adding small core features to avoid creating art assets. When I say I am not an artist, I am not referring to the quality of my art. I am referring to my ability to create images at will. The mood strikes me randomly and suddenly I can envision a concept to the point where I can draw it. I get the mood to make music more than the mood to make art (by the way, I finished making all the music in the game). I recognize my strength is writing, and coding is not too far off. Even now, I am eager to finish the Messiah Quest property so I can move on to writing an entirely new story. I am starting to get more and more ideas in my head as the days go by, and I’m afraid of abandoning Messiah Quest to pursue something else. I’m trying to hold off on starting a new project, because I can’t just throw this away. I’m so close to the end, and I have to remind myself of that. Patience is a virtue, and the future can wait.

Speaking of new ideas, I have been studying video games somewhat. Since I have to wait for the art mood to progress development, I have been filling my down-time with study. I created a Twitch account last September and started watching variety streamers. Most of the streamers I watch are affiliated with Vinesauce. I’ve watched playthroughs of classic RPGs as well as obscure indie games. As for indie games, there is a high focus on bad games, but it is still helpful to see how to not make a game. Mostly, the content I watch is inspiring, and it makes me want to complete my project. It also inspires me to add quality of life features to my project. It has inspired me to try playing games and experience them myself.

Another part of my study is playing games I’ve never played before. I am interested in making a First-person shooter in the future, so I finally got around to playing Doom. I completed Doom and Doom 2, and I moved on to Half-Life. My next game will be Half-Life 2. Yes, these games are old, but I never grew up with PC games that weren’t The Sims. I really enjoyed playing these games in this modern age, because I feel they are just classic and ageless (Doom needs a little tweaking of the controls if played in a DOS emulator, but still incredibly fun). The fun is just the first benefit. The more I play FPS games, the more I start to understand their level design. Half-Life had an incredible yet subtle variety in gameplay while being an FPS. It had puzzle-solving, platforming, exploration, sneaking, and segments where the big guns are needed! Well, that’s enough about other games. I just wanted to share the reasons of my hiatus.

If you don’t know by now, I’m a very quiet person. I don’t like to announce every small advancement, and I’m sorry if my silence causes a loss of interest. Rest assured, Messiah Quest II is progressing slowly, and I am growing as a developer.