Development

Prototype: Murakami Progress #17

| Taro Omiya

Progress has been pretty slow, but we’ve now got a set of actions and animations to show the player is hurt, as well as adding particle effects for the enemy dying. While all of it is still a work-in-progress, the enemy exploding on the player is perhaps the most interesting visual effect:

PrototypeMurakami17

Anyways, a lot still needs to be implemented for the enemies. For one, they do not currently have one-hit weakpoints, which makes their 6-hit health points (an entire load-out of your pistol before reloading) absurd. Their hit animation that the enemies play every time the player successfully scores a hit is not very juicy yet. And a lot of sound effects are still missing. There’s still a lot of material to cover, so stay tuned!

Prototype: Murakami Progress #16 (February 2015 #OneGameAMonth)

| Taro Omiya

We’ve been slowly developing Prototype: Murakami, largely focusing on the enemy functionality and animations. We’re pretty happy that the old Game & Watch-like animations for firing and reloading the gun are now gone. Additionally, the enemies now operate correctly, although they currently don’t hurt the player.

PrototypeMurakami16

The following animations has finally been fixed:

  1. Enemies now slowly walks toward you
  2. When close to the player, enemies will start sprinting towards you
  3. Enemies has a bizarre death animation (which is intended)
  4. Firing bullets at enemies will make them briefly stop, along with an accompanying “ouch” animation
  5. Player animation for firing bullets is now much more smoother and organic
  6. Fixed the player reload animation, which lets you see her face

Adding blood and explosions is next on the list of things to do. Fun stuff!

Prototype: Murakami Progress #15 (February 2015 #OneGameAMonth)

| Taro Omiya

Well, I’m finally back developing Prototype: Murakami again. This time, I’ve started adding enemies into the game. They’re not functional yet, but with a nice fog effect, they can be very creepy. Especially their glowing eyes. Eww!

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Incidentally, as the title implies, development has been delayed until the end of February. Mainly because I under-estimated the amount of work that goes into the Ludum Dare voting session. It’s also delayed beyond January because I’ll be at MAGFest to attend Global Game Jam.

Laundry Day’s Voting Results

| Taro Omiya

So Ludum Dare 31 voting period finally comes to a close. How did Laundry Day do? Pretty darn well, actually:

ratingsRevised

First off, I might as well leak this “secret:” yes, the game is a satire of freemium and social games. It was designed like that from the beginning, from the mundane, boring activity of putting clothes into a dryer, to the comically juicy process of collecting coins and trinkets from the lint trap. This isn’t the first time we’ve posted a satire to Ludum Dare — Not a Clone was also a satire — but seeing that this time around, the game was deliberately uninteresting, this developer had very low expectations.

Not so, it turns out. A lot of people, both within and outside of Ludum Dare have found the game to be oddly addicting. Many commented how hilariously boring the game was, and still managed to find something fun about it. And a few people even managed to figure out what the game was satirizing about.

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(That last comment is there because the user clearly figured out our nefarious plan to create a sequel. See, dreamlogician? I told you the volcano was an awfully obvious place to have an evil office!)

Anyways, I’ve got to give my thanks to all of you who played and voted for our game. We had a lot of fun this time, and hope to make more games in the future!

P.S. Our favorite comment may have to be this golden gem from Newgrounds:

commentsNewgrounds

AbleGamers’ live stream on Letters From Secret Santa starts now!

| Taro Omiya

Check out AbleGamers play Letters From Secret Santa live on Twitch.tv right now! The developers will be commentating while they play, so you can hear a few things about us!

Watch live video from Ablegamers on www.twitch.tv

The AbleGamers Charity, is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit public charity that aims to improve the overall quality of life for those with disabilities through the power of video games. They do some cool stuff, so check them out!
www.ablegamers.com

December #1GAM and #LDJAM: Laundry Day

| Taro Omiya

Phew, what a Ludum Dare adventure that was. We got nearly the entire Tech Valley Game Space crew to make a satire of free-to-play social games called Laundry Day, and it’s now up for voting right now! If you can, please rate the game, and let us know what you think!

As usual, here are the screenshots:

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And for those interested, we have a time lapse, too!

#ScreenshotSaturday: Untitled Game

| Taro Omiya

I apologize for the ridiculous number of private posts popping up on this blog. To compensate, here are a few screenshots of a currently-untitled game I’m working on:

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Character artwork is by 1001.com

Prototype: Murakami Progress #14: Delayed to End of January

| Taro Omiya

Today, I’ve worked on implementing gun fire. Left-clicking while aiming will fire a bullet. Additionally, firing the seventh bullet will cause Unity-chan to reload the gun with its own (terrible) animation. This leaves enemy implementation, combat upgrades, and smoother animations left for the combat portion of the game.

PrototypeMurakami14

While major progress is being made on the game, I have to delay it’s release to the end of January. Unfortunately, I’m swamped with multiple projects for November and December, and need to shift my focus on them. Until January arrives, you can expect sporadic updated on this project (if any). I apologize for the delay, and thank you for understanding.

Prototype: Murakami Progress #13 (November 2014 #OneGameAMonth)

| Taro Omiya

Today, I finally ironed out a lot of bugs I had left-over on the point & click puzzle portions of the game. The items being dragged around different puzzles now rotate to the correct orientation. The cursor now changes based on what action you take. Finally, the cursor appears in the game only when it needs to, i.e. when buttons appear, or you’re in a point & click puzzle portion. This means that I can finally get started on the combat portion of the game.

PrototypeMurakami13

Actually, I take that back. I plan on taking a break for a few days due to certain circumstances (a birthday to celebrate, a few unfinished choirs, etc.). At least this time it’s a scheduled break from development. I plan to be back on this project Monday next week, so stay tuned!