DnD Today. Running A Party Of Four Through Curse Of Strahd. Last Session: They Entered The Amber Temple

Used to see a lot of 3D art back on Twitter, glad to see others like @molegato keeping it going on other platforms. If you haven't played their game Frogun yet, go grab it on steam! Great, classy platformer. I love those low-res pixel textures; they tend to come out quite crummy when I try making them, so I appreciate the talent.

I saw one of their tags as "WireframeWednesday", so let's give it a bash. MR's spawning in to blast some crazy alien noggins!

Following on from yesterday's post, another interesting presentation came from Victor Paredes of Moho. Moho is an animation software that does quite a few interesting things with vector art. Two things really caught my eye; the first was pairing recorded "actions" to control bones, causing really smooth 3d motion for 2d objects. Full on head turning for 2d characters can be pretty challenging, but Victor made it look effortless.

The second was "Line Boil", which reanimated the art applied to vector lines, giving it a really nice, natural, hand-drawn look. There's a certain stiffness associated with vector art, and this completely masked it.

I'm gonna keep my eye on it; there's a 30-day free trial if you want to have a go. The demos they had on display were immediately eye-catching, so if you're interested in a bit more "art" on your vector art, give it a gander.

testing particles

I’m 34 now! Depression is striking, but we can’t let that stop us from Making (for long)! Bounder Games has been active for a good 10 years, and we’ve still yet to release a fully-featured game (beyond a simple puzzler, Combo Carts). I have to admit, this is a constant blow to my self-confidence. In 2017, we were jetting all across Europe to show off Armoured Engines. But that steam seemed to run out of our indie dream. Honestly, it’s a struggle somedays to even sit at the computer.

Throughout social media I see developers working whole-hog on their games, so many amazing projects that I want to be excited for. Yet that excitement hurts, poisoned by my own inability to do the same. A toxicity of my own making, something I need to work hard to clear out of my system.

We thought switching to a new project would re-light the fire, and it did for a time. But even that stalled out half-way down the track. The development curve is steep, and I’m somewhat at a loss as to how to surmount it.

That’s not entirely true, I do know what the solution is: "elbow grease". Nothing gets done unless you do it. So I’m gonna keep working through my checklists, one step at a time. That’s the only way anything gets made. I’ll make Version 34 of myself better than the last iterations, if only by the merest of margins. That’s enough.

Hey all! I haven't been making much progress with Bounder Games lately, mostly due to GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT (fill-in college lecturer). But that's no excuse! Here's where we stand:

I've been reading Hideo Kojima's "The Creative Gene", a collection of reflections on the books and media that inspired him to make games like Metal Gear. In "The Moon Over the Mountain", the main character feels he has failed to capitalise on his talent and describes his unwillingness to publish imperfect material as "timid pride" and "disdainful shyness". His following quote hit me pretty hard:

"No, whether the poems are good or bad, I would not rest easy in my grave without passing these poems on to later generations, since the represent my deepest passion in life, even to the point of losing my fortune and my sanity."

It's been almost 10 years since we founded Bounder Games and began work on Armoured Engines, and that decade of shame floods through me like toxic oil. I felt like I'd let everyone down, not working hard enough or focusing on the wrong things. I have so many ideas; to build, to design, to write, to act, to create, that I'm overwhelmed by the cavernous silence of my portfolio. The more I thought upon my neglect, the more I mired myself in doubt.

That quote struck me, and I could feel what Li Zheng could feel. That need to pass on what I make. Shame is the great assassin of creativity. If I could be a fraction as confident as Kojima-san, I might be able to look at myself with pride.

For me, no more excuses. Time to Make!

Hey friendly reminder that I made not one but two games in which you've got a grappling gun that's a frog! They're lowpoly platformers and you go up against Beelzebub himself <3

Let’s start with what I’m actually working on. Stardust Survivors is a “Survivors” game, a sub-genre made popular by 2022’s Vampire Survivors. If you don’t know what that is, it’s like a twin-stick shooter, except you only have the one stick. The goal of the game is to outlast an infinitely-spawning series of enemy waves by destroying them to level up, gaining new abilities and attacks, most of which auto-fire without your direct input.

At this point, we’d barely touched Armoured Engines in over a year, and we figured a new project would be just the thing to get us out of our rut. Stardust Survivors takes that original concept and puts it into a magical space setting reminiscent of Moon Dreamers and Sailor Moon. The Stardust Survivors are a group of magical girls and boys who protect the energy of planets from the insatiable and unending tide of Constellar creatures.

It’s still early days; we’re mostly working on adding playable characters and abilities. However, we intend to streamline the survivors gameplay with short, 5-minute runs that extend down a rogue-like track. You can try out an early demo that we prepared for a local games showcase on our itch.io page here: https://boundergames.itch.io/stardust-survivors. Can YOU beat the boss!??

Talking about the level design in ‘Jak & Daxter’ on the PlayStation 2. Source: Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine Demo Disc 51. Support us on Patreon

Rediscovered this treasure. My bible circa 2009; discovered I still use most of the tricks I learned from this book today. Animating waves using masks, proper gradients, animation principles, etc. Its advice is still relevant even after Flash's demise.

I had a lot of game ideas I wanted to make in Flash, most of which never escaped their notepad concept. Had a few successes, a Tetris-blackjack combo called DiceJack, and Rawrysaurus, a kaiju game where you escaped from a tidal wave. My first forays into game dev.

Thanks Chris Georgenes.

We use Trello for our dev work organisation. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done. Each card is a task, broken down via checklists into steps. It helps us keep track with what the other is doing. When only my face is on a task, I know I can just get stuck in. And if it turns out I can't do it on my own, I just put CodingDino's face on it, make a note, and move on. The cards are useful, but in a great mass they can be overwhelming. Sometimes it's easier to just look at the game and see what's missing. However, a place like this is necessary to write down things you know you should get done sometime, but just not now.

Will all the tasks get done? Heck no! That's realistically impossible; the goal is to HAVE a goal, written down and visible. Otherwise you're just shooting in the dark.