It's like a time machine

I've been doing some touching up on Siphon Spirit to get it ready for the demo, and it's a lot like I'm working in the past.  I got the game working quite some time ago, and made March to the Moon while I was waiting. March to the Moon was made with the FlatRedBall engine.  I decided to go the engine route because I was concerned that I wasn't using screens for Siphon Spirit and the whole game was basically in a single file with switch statements checking what 'screen' was currently active and running the related update and draw functions.

Using FlatRedBall taught me a lot about how to use the current game state and a lot of other things.  I was happy with it for March to the Moon, but near the end of development I started to get tired of it.  When you made changes with the program for controlling entities and screens, Glue, it would delete the related file and recreate it with the changes.  But for me, sometimes it would throw an error telling me that it couldn't make the file.  But it had already deleted the file first.  I would lose a good chunk of time because I developed most of it on the train with no web access so I couldn't just grab my latest backed up copy.  Then I had issues with how slow it was loading stuff in on the Xbox.  March to the Moon isn't a very intensive game, but every time I did something for the first time it would take time to load it all into memory, freezing the game during the process.  I had to make a new loading screen which I had to just loop for 14 frames after each group of objects loaded their art so that the rats showing the progress would actually move.  This baffled me, but the lead developer of FlatRedBall wasn't part of the creator's club anymore and couldn't run ccgame files on his Xbox.  I started making the Japanese game with FlatRedBall, but had issues with getting Japanese to display.  I eventually gave up and started building my own set of tools to help me make games.  It's slowed down the development time on the Japanese game, that's for sure, but now that it's becoming more mature it's so much nicer to use.

Siphon Spirit hasn't taken much from it yet.  I did go through and make everything into their own separate screens, but haven't changed much else.  So when I do go back and work on Siphon Spirit I need to remember that I don't have a Sprite class to handle positioning, and when I do position things it needs to be placed at the top right of the image instead of the center.  I don't have a nice text manager, but I can still write text to the screen.  Development's come easier than ever for me with these nice new tools.  We have a smaller puzzle game being planned out to pull people into looking at Siphon Spirit, and I'm excited to get his art from it and see how quickly I can build it into a full-fledged game.

This has been on my mind recently because I have been working on a new screen for Siphon Spirit.  It is going to be the most complicated one in the entire game by far.  More news on that next week.

Artist's Introduction

I'm Peter and I'm doing the art and lead design for Siphon Spirit! This piece of art shows off the game's art approach and one of the demons you'll face in the game.
From now on, I'll be helping Califer keep you up to date on the game's progress as it relates to the story, art and design. Check back often!

Now at blog.califergames.com

If you look at the address bar you'll see that the blog is now at blog.califergames.com.  We're going to make a lot of changes to it soon to make it look much better and mesh more with the rest of our site.

For Siphon Spirit, Peter's been keeping busy with some nice wallpapers and other artwork.  He's sent me some early sketches and I think they look great.  He tells me that he would rather post the art himself so hopefully we'll see a post from him soon!

The Japanese Game is making a little progress.  I've written out the first lesson and am getting ready to put it all in the game.  After I have the second lesson in it will be a pretty solid build that allows you to get to all the screens without crashing.  Hopefully I'll get some new art for it soon so I can get it to the indie game night coming next month.

Demo draws nearer

Peter's been getting me more and more art for the demo.  Not only are there some impressive cutscenes, but there have been a number of art upgrades to some of the older screens.  I'm hoping to get all of his changes in today so we've got something nice and new to show at indie game night tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to go so I won't be showing the Japanese game.  Which is a shame.  Last time I showed it it spent a lot of time crashing because it was all set up for me to test and make things in it.  So someone would click something and BAM, it wouldn't be ready for that yet and crash.  Now it doesn't crash nearly so much and I've added much more control functionality.  The mouse now works on all screens.  You can play the game with an xbox controller, the keyboard, the mouse, or any combination of the three if you are quite bored.

But what we've been the most busy with is figuring out the whole kickstarter thing.  We definitely want to do it right.  So we're going through and adding a level of polish to everything.  We're going to be going crazy* with that over the next few weeks.

*May or may not actually already be crazy.

Life came up and bit me.

The astute of you may have noticed that I haven't really updated the blog in a month.  I have been rather busy, but not as busy with making games as I would have liked.  Peter probably could have said something, but he doesn't seem to like blogging.

It all started one Sunday when I came downstairs to feed the cat.  Carpet by the bathroom was wet.  I was annoyed at the cat, assuming that she had done it, but didn't have the time to really take care of it right then.  When I came back down I realized that the cat didn't have enough fluids in her little body to have made the mess, so I started wondering what was going on.  I soaked up the water as best I could, but in the evening we found that the water was back with a vengeance.  We had someone come out to figure it out and after a number of cuts in the wall he found a broken pipe behind our shower.  It was coming from our dishwasher and the sink, so the water was pretty dirty.  It had been going on long enough that it had soaked all beneath the bathroom all the way through to the carpet on the other side.

After we contacted insurance and had another company come out to look at tearing up the floor and replacing it we thought we were doing alright.  We just had to wait for the stars to align so that things would happen and things would get fixed.  (The broken pipe that was causing the flooding got fixed, but the mess it left behind is still there.)  Then, Tuesday last week my youngest child threw up all over me (and the dishes I had just washed) right after getting out of the bath.  I figured it was about time for me to take a shower so we got her cleaned up again.  She threw up three more times that night and I was on clean up patrol for each time.  I got to bed late, and woke up a lot during the night to check on her.  Our other daughter wasn't feeling well and was coughing in our bed all night long, which helped me wake up to go check on the younger.

So, Wednesday last week, I was very tired and figured it was about time I did another blog post.  Just as I was about to start my wife called and told me I needed to come home right away for and emergency.  After some prying, it turns out that ANOTHER pipe had broken.  This one wasn't a drain pipe and it was soaking the basement.  She managed to get the water shut off before I got there, but more than half the basement was sopping wet.  Having no water with two sick kids wasn't an option, so my wife took the girls to my parents house for the night while I stayed to clean up and wait for our handyman, who I was really hoping would be able to fix the leak so we could turn the water back on.

Thankfully, he was able to cap the pipe before the leak so we could turn the water back on.  The pipe had been installed wrong, so if he had just fixed the place where it was leaking it would just happen again.  In the end I was up until 1 in the morning soaking up water, moving things and pulling up the carpet to dry.  After that I had a well-deserved dinner and a shower and realized that I was working in the morning.  After 5 hours of sleep I was back up and getting ready for work.

Now that my excuses are out of the way, Peter tells me that we are very close to getting the demo done for Siphon Spirit.  He's given me more art so I can tidy up a few screens, and we're mainly down to audio issues now.  I'm looking forward to the kickstarter.  One thing we're going to do is introduce a smaller puzzle game that backers will get early access to the demo.  Peter will have just about all the art finished ahead of time so I can actually have things looking nice from the start.

The Japanese Game has also made progress (expect for a name, of course).  I've been adding mouse support since that makes much more sense to do things that way.  I just have four more screens to add it to, and of course I saved the hardest ones for last.  Even with all these problems, I think we should have two games ready for being shown off at Indie Game Night next week.

Here's hoping that we'll make enough money to help pay back what it's costing to fix my home...

Reviewed by Indie Gamer Chick

Indie Gamer Chick reviewed March to the Moon and it got on the leaderboard!  Very glad to see that happen.  Now that I'm on the leaderboard I can use the seal to show that she approved of the game.  My favorite line from the review was "March to the Moon is unquestionably fun."

Curious, I checked The XBLIG, and I'm on his leaderboard as well.  So that's good!  I don't think I had a single negative review of the game and most reviewers have really liked it.

So... uh...

When do I get paid?  No, seriously.  Even with these good reviews, I've only earned a dollar.  And that's because someone gave me a dollar for a code because they didn't want to buy MS points.  I'm below the payout limit on XBLIG, and for my homepage store as well (although just barely for the homepage).  I've got it up on Indie City as well, but even though it's still on the front page and has 4.3 stars out of five all I have are a few hundred views and a single demo download.

This is pretty discouraging.  A small part of me says that I should give up and just go work on that list of games on steam that I haven't played yet.  It's a pretty small part though.  I have plans for more games to make.  I think there are two major problems that make the average player want to just pass it over.  #1 is the art.  #2 is the music.  Maybe #3 is the marketing, because I have no idea how to do that right apparently.  I've been learning more about making art and I can make something better now, and I think I could make something much better music-wise as well.

Anyways, not giving up.  Going to make something better.  Siphon Spirit is coming along and when that's finished I'll be able to work with a real artist on a new project again.  Though to be perfectly honest I fully plan on making another smaller game before I'm back on board with Peter again.

March to the Moon now on Indie City!

March to the Moon is now available on Indie City!  What's different now?  Not a whole lot, it's just about the same exact game, but now there are achievements!  Most of them are the same as unlocking outfits, but there are new achievements for mastering certain skills and some more for playing as a pacifist.  Hopefully I get some more feedback from a wider audience so I can make the next one much better!