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There and Back Again
Welcome to day one of full-time development of BONES of the LOST GOD! A few weeks ago, I resigned from my web developer/devops role at Unnamed Small eCommerce Company, worked out my notice, and left, just so I could be here today, starting work on BotLG full time. This is it. This is what I…
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Mapping BotLG
It’s October now, so that means NaMuBuMo is upon us! This seems like a perfect excuse to take some time to plot out the world of BONES of the LOST GOD; luckily, I have some geography already, from it’s first incarnation as a play by mail game. I’ve started a Twine project to help with…
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A few new sprites
I’ve been doing some edits to Quale’s Scroll-o-Sprites to create some new creatures, I’m particularly pleased with the cat wizard and horse soldier. The bear-man is also kind of interesting; it makes me wonder if I could eventually come up with something to represent an owlbear. I’m thinking of chopping the sprite sheet up further…
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Upcoming game jams
There are two game jam events coming up in the next couple of months that are of distinct interest to me. Next month, the Mud Coder’s Guild are holding a month-long jam in association with the folks at Written Realms, the first National Mud Building Month (or namubumo, if you’d rather). NaMuBuMo challenges you to…
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Tiny constraints
Yesterday I dashed off a quick, flippant tweet about developing mobile-accessible web apps and ultimately how folks in past managed so much with so little: sometimes I catch myself thinking URGH making this RPG work on mobile is so painful, maybe I won’t bother. Then I remember what folks managed with a 320×200 display and…
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Pathfinding, redux
This evening I got pathfinding working around a larger, scrolling map. I thought this would be best demonstrated in motion, so here’s a little YouTube video of it in action: I had to turn the sprites down to 32×32 from 64×64, as the view seemed too claustrophobic that zoomed in. This has some unfortunate knock-on…
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Numbers getting bigger
Here’s a fascinating article on the math behind incremental games; Numbers Getting Bigger: The Design and Math of Incremental Games, by Alexander King. You know what it all boils down to? It’s this handy formula: Price = Base Cost × Multiplier(#Owned) It works particularly well, psychologically, if the multiplier is set between 1.07 and 1.15.…
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What makes “Clicker Games” good?
Here’s a nice little YouTube video from RealityEscape on what makes a clicker game good: Just in case the name didn’t give it away, Bones of the Idle has a strong idle/clicker component. When you’re gathering materials There’s a few points raised that I want to briefly talk about in the context of Bones‘ design:…
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Point of view
Last night was the inaugural meeting of my new after school study club, and it was a very cosy, pleasant experience. We went around the table and talked about our various works-in-progress, discussed the merits of various database/model frameworks, and eventually settled down to work on our individual projects. I spent the time getting field-of-view…