Episode 21 - Project Monkey - Gone till November

         It's sad to say, but I hard to make a tough decision. Me and my love decided that maybe we needed to take a break because she caught me spending more time with someone else. I've been spending a lot of time playing basketball this semester. We've been training hard for the pre-NUGA (Nigerian University Games) which should be in December and in the last two weeks, our team (University of Ibadan basketball team) has played five matches, just to get us in shape for December. The thing is, with all that time spent on basketball, I can't do much programming this semester and still get good grades so I've decided to stop programming until after my exams in November. This means I'm also taking a break from Project Monkey.
          I still want to get the game out in the first quarter of 2013 so when I resume in November, I think I'll get a friend to join me in coding the game, and then I'll get my second brother to learn modelling and join my other brother who's already making the models for the game. He just went back to school by the way, but he was able to complete the model for Mmiri (picture below) before he left. I'm trying not to get too many people involved in this project because this is supposed to be a learning experience for me. I could even use some of the default code that comes with the game engine I'm using, but I'm coding everything from scratch so that I'll learn how even the default codes work.

The model of Mmiri my brother made. Compare it with the original concept art

Concept art for Mmiri

Episode 19: Project Monkey - Weeks Fourteen to Eighteen of Development

        Ahem...... Hi guys! Finally I'm through with exams and I can resume work on my game. I know I said I'd post last week (Sunday the 15th) but I had a paper postponed and couldn't write any posts yet. For over a month now, I haven't done any work on the game at all, so progress is right where I left it in the last blog post. I did do the research I said I would do on using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio to make my game, instead of Atari's 3D game Studio. If I work with XNA, I would be able to make the same game for Windows Phone, Windows PC and the XBox360 all with the same lines of code. Almost the same lines of code, with slight adjustments to adjust to things like the touchscreen on phones which isn't available on PC and XBox360, or the pad vibration features on the XBox360 which isn't on the other two platforms.

     I've decided to stick with 3D Game Studio because while it isn't as powerful as XNA, it is much easier to use (emphasis on the much), and I am trying to make a low budget game after all. The thing is XNA isn't a game engine, it's more like a game engine designer. Using XNA, one can make his own template to base his games on. I don't want to bore you with technical jargon, so let me just explain with one example. In Gamestudio, I can use one of the default camera's already present or I can make my own. You know, like the zoomed out camera in soccer games, the first person camera in most shooting games or the third person camera in most adventure games. In XNA however, I would have to create my own camera. Things like this mean that there is a higher level of customization possible in XNA but it will take much longer for me to make a game with XNA. I'll work with XNA when I'm working with a team, but for this solo project, I'ma stick to Gamestudio.

       So this week, I'll reveal one more character and then from next week, I'll start posting screenshots and videos of the gameplay. My younger brother just got back for his summer holidays. He's still in high school and he's the one that's creating all the 3D models that will be used in the game. By "model", I'm referring to a solid object within the game, such as the characters, doors, vegetation, obstacles, etc. I can do the sprites (flat, 2D objects) by myself because they require much less time. So really, work on the game will resume after the time of this writing. I've lost six weeks of work so I'm really pumped about continuing!

 

Episode 15: Project Monkey - One month into development

        Hi guys! This weekend makes it five weeks since I started working on my first video game. In case you didn't read episode 14 of this blog, let me recap a little. After waiting for my team (a group of friends) to get serious about making a video game, I decided to go solo and make a game all on my own. It's an obstacle course racing game with cel-shaded (cartoon styled) graphics and until I decide on the final name, I'll be referring to it as Project Monkey. Since I'm making the game alone and want it out by December this year, it will be a low budget, simple game that I hope will still be fun to  play.
        Now that the introduction's done, let's dive right in. I had access to a friend's Samsung Galaxy Note so I decided to draw some concept art for Project Monkey. I will upload one image every Sunday from now on until further notice. The images might not look as good as my regular pen and paper drawings as I had to draw on a phone with a stylus but the color definitely looks better than what I could have done on paper and also reflects the cel-shaded visuals I'm going for. Maybe I'll do some black and white concept art with a pen and drawing pad and upload those later.

   Remember this screenshot from episode 14? See concept art below