Episode 40: Project Monkey's First Trailer

    Hi guys! So I've been working on my first video game since April 2012, so it's been a bit over two years now. Twenty six months to be precise. All this time, I've been posting small updates and screenshots, but I've never actually posted a trailer for the game. I decided to finally do so, so without further ado, here's the trailer. You can read more details further down in this post.

Episode 37: Project Monkey, Cost and Shaders

     Hi guys! I decided to talk about the progress I've made on Project Monkey and realized I haven't posted anything about it since January 2013. Sixteen months ago! How time flies. As I said earlier, I had to take a one year hiatus from actively developing the game so that I could face my final year in the university properly, but I continued to passively work on it by recording my ideas, searching for better methods and tools for the project and using my compulsory final year thesis at school as a whetstone for my game programming skills. You can read more about (or download) the software I created in the process here, and if you don't know what Project Monkey is, you can check out my earlier posts. In this post, I'll be talking mainly about shaders and how they affect the look of the game.

Khuutra screenshots. Left: Cel-shading. Right: No shader

Episode 28: Project Monkey's fastest character

      When it comes to racing games, one of the first things people want to know is "who's the fastest character?". In my game, speed isn't everything because there will be all sorts of terrain and some will be better suited to swimming, burrowing or flying characters. But in any case, I want to present to you the fastest character in the game, Khuutra!

Khuutra, the half wolf, half fox

Episode 26: Project Monkey Returns. Let's pick a final name together

          So it's been 3 months since I took a break from working on my game for reasons I explained earlier. I wanted to resume in November but work actually resumed a few days before the writing of this post. I'll still try to have the game out by March 2013 so I think it's high time I chose a name for the final product.

If this was the box art for the game, what would you write at the top?

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

Episode 14: Project Monkey

    When I first started this blog, one of my major reasons for setting it up was so that people could keep track of the games I would develop as an aspiring game developer. I haven’t posted anything related to that, until now. I have gotten tired of waiting for the rest of my team to get their act together so we can work on our game. The thing is we’re all busy with school and don’t have the extra time needed to work on a game. I am more passionate than the rest of them about making games, so I have decided to make my first game without them.

       This brings about more limitations. I have to make a simple game with simple game mechanics that I can actually complete all on my own. Also, I can only develop the game for Windows as I haven’t learned how to write programs for other platforms yet. So I decided to make a simple racing game. If I had to describe my game in one sentence to a fellow gamer, I would say that it is like a Mirror’s Edge or Prince of Persia racing game, or Mario Kart without the Karts. If I had to describe it to someone that knows little about games, I would say it’s an obstacle course racing game.

 A screenshot of the game running in real time. I know that's a bland energy bar at the top, but I won't fine-tune visual details until the gameplay works.