27/06/2008 by admin.

Welcome back and I hope you have had a better week then me.

It has been a really rough week this week, the day job has been really brutal and I’ve been coming home, just wanting to sleep, so it’s been a test of my metal this week to do anything.

GoGo Digger:
Trevor has sent some more tunes (riffs), which sound really nice and I think will work well with the game (Isaac is going to stick them in the new build).

  I’ve created a couple of backgrounds for the various menus, which again will be tested in the new build and Isaac is busy adding polish to the game.  I think beta testing will be starting next week (fingers crossed), so if any of you guys are interested, sign up to the news letter and I’ll send out an open invite to the news letter members to become play testers and you may even get your name in the credits.

 Shuffle Blocks:
Dave has been busy rewriting the game in XNA V2 (it was in V3, which isn’t allowed for the competition) and rewriting some of his code and changing the coding structure (at least that’s how I understand it, but I’m only an artist and big words confuse me).

  I’ve been working on the game design and trying to work out what we can and can’t get in to the game with in the time limit for the competition.  I know that doesn’t sound interesting, but I don’t mind it and it needs to be done.

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20/06/2008 by admin.

It’s that time again for another update (only just made it this time).

Weekending 20/06/07

GoGo Digger:
It’s been a busy week at work for me this week so project time has been really split up for me this week. I’ve done a bit more work on menu gf/x’s and other bits ‘n’ bobs, but nothing to write home about. Isaac is busy adding lots of little details in the game (for example, if you click on any of the spare men with the mouse, they react to the mouse). Trevor is working away on the music and we may have something for you to listen to next week.

Shuffle Blocks:
As you know, it’s a rough week, but I’ve finished the picture I was working on last week (I even took last Friday off to help catch up with the project work), which is okay (I’ll attach it to this post). I’ll update the down loads page soon and add some of the game artwork to it for wall papers.
Dave has also been busy with his stuff, so hasn’t had as much time as he would like to work on the game (none of us do =) ), but it’s still progressing on at a nice steady pace.

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13/06/2008 by admin.

Another week, another blog post!

It’s been a busy week for everyone this week and we have a new person on board.

Weekending 13/06/07

GoGo Digger:

The big news for the GoGo Digger project is that it now has a musician for the game, Trevor. He’s been busy cranking out music examples for the game and little riffs for various actions. His examples are really nice and the overall gaming experience will definitely be enhanced for the player due to the help of Trevor’s relaxing tunes.

Isaac has also been busy programming away. In fact I think he’s sent me a new build almost every other day, which is always nice to see. The game is really coming along now and is starting to feel really solid. In fact I ended up playing the latest version for over an hour without even realizing the time which is definitely a good sign for the quality of the game play, even more so when you realize I have been playing this game on and off for the past 6 years now on my mobile phone and the game is still missing a lot of polish and user interface refinement. It’s going to be really good when it’s finished, I promise you that (as long as you like puzzle / logic games of course).

Shuffle Blocks:

I’ve been working almost none stop on Shuffle Blocks this week. Mainly on creating a new Island picture for a mining colony you can visit in the game. To be honest, it’s been a real pain to do (well it’s not totally finished yet, but it will be by the end of the day). I didn’t really plan the picture as much as I should of, I just had a good idea for what I wanted and dived right in, which is normally never a good idea, especially if you are doing a picture that shows a large environment. Still it’s almost done now and it will look nice when it is finished (fingers crossed).

I also received the first build of the game from Dave. There’s only the basic movement rules implemented at the moment, but it’s amazing how much fun it is just moving stuff around on the board. It opens up a lot of other game design ideas I have for other games =). Of course the fact that Dave has everything moving nice and smoothly is also a big bonus and adds greatly to the gaming experience. It also feels a lot more arcadey then I expected it to, I know arcade and spelling games don’t really go together often, but this is definitely going to work. I am really chuffed about how well it’s turning out.

It’s a huge relief to know that what you thought would be a good game idea, does actually end up been a really playable game as no matter how long you work at the game design, until you have it in your grubby little mitts playing around with it you can never be totally sure it will all come together, and trust me, I do spend weeks and weeks working out how the basic game mechanics go together. I’ve often wrote down a game mechanic idea and left it for a couple of years until I could use it in something.

Dave has been beavering away coding again the whole week and keeps telling me about “classes” and other things that I don’t really know about to be honest (I am an artist after all ). We are also thinking about entering Shuffle Blocks into the Microsoft XNA competition to build a game for Xbox Live, so Dave is getting himself an Xbox 360 for testing purposes of course.

I’ll also start to update the download section with some art work picture from both the games soon, and I’ll tidy that page up as well as I’m doing it.

Well have a good week and see you next week.

Mike.

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06/06/2008 by admin.

Hello again,

Another week almost over and it’s almost the weekend again!!!

Right time for some quick updates I guess. To be honest, work has been really hard this week and I’ve not had much of a chance to do that much, at least not as much as I would of liked.

Week ending 06/06/2008

GoGo Digger: Isaac has been busy refining the core game, ironing out all the bugs and basically getting all the core elements in place. It’s starting to feel like a real game now with a start, middle and end. The next part is all the polishing and getting the flow of the game to feel nice and smooth. This is the long boring bit, where you spend lot’s of time worrying over little things, just to get them spot on. The things you don’t notice if it’s right, but start to annoy the player if you don’t take care of it.

For my part, I’ve mainly been working on Shuffle Blocks this week, but I have started to create a nice big font in the same style of the logo (which you will be able to see as soon as I get the web page up (duh!)). I’ve got lot’s of stuff still to do and things to tidy up for the game, but the game is really going to be nice when it’s finished.

Shuffle Blocks: Dave has been busy coding away like made again this week and every day, he seems to ask me for some other gf/x’s that I’ve forgotten about, but is so obvious when you think about it (the stuff that’s a bit boring to do when your mocking up a game, but is still vital). Dave’s also got a smart little particle system going now in the game for some of the special effects.

As for me, well I’ve been knocking out various sprites as requested and I’m currently starting to work on a new island picture and a nice big font as well for the game (yes I’m in a fonty mood this week, but it won’t last, it never does).

More next week and I hope to see you soon.

All the best,

Mike

WWW.BadBumble.com

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