Ludum Dare organizes like twinkie game jams where developers make a game based on a theme and being under a time limit… It’s rough, maaan. This jam’s theme was “minimalism”.

But, like always, I was out when the jam began. After being crying for being on another state and not being able to join the fun…

…I (somehow) managed to arrive five hours before the Compo ended and I managed to finish a very, very small game about 20 seconds before the countdown ended.

I almost had a heart attack.

Now, Perspective.

I don’t want to say much, just the description I gave it:

This is a game about perception. 
How can we perceive objects and figures no matter how minimal the resolution is.

There’s not much to explain, just go and play it, play it, play it.

• DOWNLOAD LINK TO THE GAME
• Link to the Ludum Dare entry
• Link to the Ludum Dare post

It’s been a while now since we worked on the game, you know? Almost a year, yes, on that Christmas charity event we did. The game recently got noticed thanks to a very well know site with indie game-related news, it was great, for all of us I guess; but I, specifically, felt a little bit mad: “Oh no! Don’t play it just yet! The game’s form of playing is not even close to that!” The game is not what I had in mind, but I haven’t gotten an opportunity to work on the game. This project was made by my team during a live stream and with a challenge, and we’re so going to work on it that way, so we’ve got the last weekend of october, before Halloween ends. We’re going to have new challenges to work on before our time runs out, these would be:

• Make a whole new scenario.
• At least 50 new Halloween-related characters (if you’re going to be watching us, we could get some help from you through the comments, we may need some suggestions).
• New fighting mechanics.

 We’ve also gotten a new domain for the game: TheMillionCharacterGame.com      

So, last night I was chilling on the PC, when suddenly:
The Million Character Game reached the top 14 trended games on IndieDB last night, we got 650+ downloads in two days and we got to IndieGame.com’s front page with a post!

Including comments I loved, like:
“Wow, I’m surprised at how many I can pick out from only a few colored pixels. I guess that speaks wonders about the power of good character design.”

“Hopefully the game evolves a LOT. The alpha is… ridiculously basic.”

That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about in this post, the game is beginning to get attention while the game’s gameplay is unfinished, or I should say: really far away from the main idea. That’s why it is tagged at the Pre-Alpha stage, because the main mechanics, gameplay, etc. is not even finished yet.

You: “Then why did you post it to IndieDB if you didn’t want this? It was going to get viewed sooner or later?”

Well, that’s a really good question, specially beacause you didn’t ask it. The Million Character Game was an unimportant project that I really wanted to make, so two mates and I made the game in a 24 hour live stream to get money for charity (we got $1 ._.), this happened on december 10-11 of last year. We made it and posted it to IndieDB at the very end of the stream, and no one heard of it until a couple days ago.

I recently posted news of all my games, all these together, including The Million Character Game. This was the first news of the game since almost one year, and the only update since the previous version of the game was that it added NES controller support :3

No change at all, but somehow it got some attention this time, and boy, we’re are gonna seize it.

So, yeah, people is getting to know the game by playing this build of the game. Well, it’s not going to be that way, not even in the slightest way, it is not going to be a platform shooter. It is going to be more as a fighting game, SSB’s endless mode style, I think you get the idea:

Obviously, there won’t be very detailed battle commands for every character, there are way too many characters and way more comming! So I reduced this by two buttons: Attack (Z) and Jump (X).

Every character will have a set of these two buttons. Let’s say: there will be one character that punches (Z) and jumps (X), another one will shoot (Z) and fly (X), and some others could explode (Z) and double jump (X).

Variations that are not too complicated, so it is not so hard to make each character and more importantly, that the player knows fast what the character does. Your character will be randomized every 10 seconds, so we want the player to know his controls as soon as possible. This will, of course, be tested. Don’t worry, this definitely won’t be another SSB clone.

Now that we all know what the game is about, I would like to talk about next update. A couple mates recommended to make the game in 3D, it could be interesting, so I decided to make the test.



There is no source of light, so it may be hard for some people to recognize the 3D depth (sorry, I made the scenario’s sprites :S), so I made the color blind version.



That should be better to see how the 3D depth looks like. So why don’t you give a try to these demos? Play them, feel them, and tell me what you think, so we together decide if it stays in 2D or 3D.

3D Demo:

3D Demo [Color Blind]:

That should be all for today. Don’t forget to vote on our poll to see which topic we’ll base on to make new characters for the next update! It would be great:

VOTE NOW!

So, yes, as I said before, that should be everything for today. Thanks for reading this post, you can expect more news really soon, we are getting really big plans for this game but we don’t want to show them because we’re not 100% sure about those. We also got our game’s website domain name, and it will be cleaned and renewed later.

Anyways, take care! 
-TheGreenTie

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It’s been a while since I went to IndieDB. What? Like, since april. Yes, that’s a lot of time, and a lot has been happening recently. So let me tell you what happened:

I’ve been drawing, a lot:

Then, I got my very first tablet (tho other one was for Dennot).

With this, I could improve the way I work and make it even faster!

And I’ve even made some comics! But I consider them too explicit to show them here ._.

I’ve traveled three times since april, to: Miami, Orlando and Cancun.

…And seized those travels to gete these:

I also joined a couple drawfag threads on 4chan…

And yes, these are way more explicit, so I won’t be showing them here, sorry.

Game Maker: Studio came out, and I decided to check it out:

Video here.

This is going to give us all a lot more opportunities at game design!

Oh, talking about opportunities, I had the opportunity to join Brandon’s amazing gaming group: TheGamersCave! Working as their official artist, I’ve done lots of spriteworks for their YouTube channel:

It’s really been a great time, and I enjoyed most of this half-year. I did a lot of things and I’m pretty comfortable with it.

And now, games stuff:

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Viral

Viral changed a lot since I left IndieDB. In fact, it evolved a lot. First of all I created a whole new perspective by introducing 3D into the game.

From this:

…to this:

Yes, this required beginning from zero, but it didn’t affect Dennot’s neat spritework because I wanted to keep the squared aspect of the game. And so, we went on…

Dennot and I built an acceptable 3D house. I did the code and modeling while he made the art. We were proud, since it was the first one we made.

Then I wanted to change the aspect of our little buddy…

We both failed sometimes, either code or art…

…But it didn’t matter, because it all can be fixed with some effort.

The game was starting to get a nice looking shape, but it didn’t last long.

Dennot and I had some troubles, he stopped making art for the game and I was all by myself.

I noticed that I had made a huge error on the game’s script, something that required to remake the whole script. So I headed for it, it required a different kind of script, I hardly handled it:

The more I advanced with the code, the harder it was to make. It was a nightmare.

Then, I had a discussion with Dennot, where we both agreed that the game didn’t had an objective at all. I got desesperated, and literally couldn’t sleep because I was way to worried about it.

So I considered changing the game’s orientation and style.

But I didn’t. I simply couldn’t stand it.

So I kept the original style of the game.

I was planning to add another character to the game, a girl?

I was disgusted with my designs, always, they were horrible. This also kept me worried. So, instead of working on something that didn’t matter at the moment, I tried to make something that was really important for the game: enemies.

So, yeah, I managed to make a cute little zombie based on the character’s model, it wasn’t that hard. I even made it to follow the character using the exact same code from the previous Viral script, but it was way to bugged, and I couldn’t figure out why.

Then I, stupidly, attempted to begin multiplayer commands for online plays and that. I’ve succesfully done this before with 2D games, but never on a 3D game. When I ran the game, it crashed, in all my years of game programming I’ve never managed to crash any game, and I couldn’t figure out the reason.

Every single aspect of the game was getting more hard to program each time I advanced (even the inventory system had way too many problems), and keeping me worried more and more. So I quitted. I quitted because I couldn’t stand being mortified all the time with a project that didn’t make me happy the more I advanced. It was horrible.

Being an indie developer means that you can freely choose whatever you feel like doing, and more importantly, being happy with it.

You can freely download the lastest versions of the project below:

Viral: Pre-Alpha 2 (A)

Viral: Pre-Alpha 2 (B)

I have quitted on making Viral, for now. I see myself in the future more experienced and I’m so going to do it, because it is one of the games from me that I consider not a gimmick. I will bring Viral back to life.

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Ooni

It’s been a real while since I last updated Ooni, in fact, its development was stopped way before we began Viral, but it has not been cancelled. I’m still looking forward to finish it someday, but not now.

One of the main reasons it was stopped was because our idea was stolen, one of my followers on Twitter made a rip-off of my character and it’s now getting profit from it. That’s why I’m going to get copyrights for it soon, not because I want to sue him, simply because I want to keep my stuff mine so this won’t happen again.

As I said before, Ooni’s development is currently stopped.

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The Million Character Game

After we finished our live stream of doing The Million Character Game I decided to make a couple changes on the game:

• Controller support
• Bug fixes

• More intelligent AI
• Real fighting enemies
• Adventure Mode (TBD)
• Challenge Mode
• Battle Mode

In order to make the game more interesting we’ll let you choose the kind of new characters that will be added on the next stream, where you can choose now between: Pop Culture Cartoons, Pocket Monsters, Video Game Culture and Anime. The most voted topic will be used on the next stream.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE NOW!

Instead of making 24 hour streams, we’ll make smaller ones. It’s a pain to be doing that. Stay tuned, we’ll reveal the next stream’s date when we get it planned correctly.

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Candypede (name TBD)

The iPhone 5 just came, in some ways it was a gimmick, but in other ways it wasn’t. It’s most important new feature was it’s larger screen.

I wanted to seize this new screen with a new game and, of course, the Retina Display for x2 quality. So I tought of Candypede (name to be determined):

It is a game about a cowboy tooth riding a giant flying centipede shooting peanuts to onions in ships to recover its candy.

I currently have a pretty basic example of the game’s looks and definition, you can get it by clicking below:

This game is currently being developed.

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Running Seed (name TBD)

The Running Seed (name to be determined) is a considerably hard game, not only because it requires agility to be beaten, but it also needs your memory. Remembering which path is the correct one and also having small time to think makes this little experiment a success.

It has been growing since I first made the prototype, now it has lots of various unfinished new sprites that will be added to the final build. However, since I’m currently working on Candypede, and I consider Candypede more important to be done than this one, Running Seed’s development will stay in stand by until Candypede gets to the AppStore in Beta.

But you can still download the current version of the game below:

Running Seed is a game planned for Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad.

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Pocket Dungeons (name TBD)

I’ve been playing Delver for a while and I got obsessed. Really, it IS good. That game reminded me of that game I’ve been waiting to do, but I’m too scared to do. So I got energy to make a randomly generated dungeon mechanic using the free Oryx sprite set. It is the same spritepack that Leyends of Yore and Realm of the Mad God uses.

Yeah, sorry for the minuscule images, you can see bigger ones here.

This game or prototype or practice or test is nothing basically. It is just a randomly generated dungeon with a couple enemies (press spacebar to attack).

You can test it by clicking here or below:

Oh, by the way, Delver is on Steam Greenlight now, and I would really love to see it on Steam, so why don’t you give it a thumb and support them?

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What you just saw was just the pit of the iceberg, or at least what I consider the most important things I’ve done recently.

Writing this made me browse my current and older blog, and I found this:

“Dear new blog….

….I would like to change the world, just a bit. I’m not sure how I am going to do this, but I would like to try.”

This quote may sound very closed. People think that the only ways to change our world is by doing wars, revolutions, inventions, etc. Most of us, that 99.99% of the planet, do not have access to do so, either because we can’t or because we did not route our lives for those directions. For example: in that point of view, I can’t change anything, because I’m a game developer or a cartoonist, my way to contribute to the world is to create joy, games brought me joy when I was a little kid, now it’s my turn to return the favor.

So, here’s the new quote:

What’s your way to change our world?

I just had a conversation with the guy I’m working for at the moment, also the main player of TheGamersCave. They now require way more help with me spriting and doing artwork for their channel. Specially because we’re now doing animated series (shhh!) and apparently they are going to do more things directed to their fans. So the staff and I are stretching ideas in order to make the channel way better.

But when am I going to work at making games? Making animations take a while, plus all those spritings are going to be so time consuming.

This has priority now and I need to spend more time on it, so my time for working at games will be reduced a lot and I will work on a very small project.

I expect this will end around three months and hopefully this will end so I can get back to programming. But at the same time I don’t care, because I really want to help those guys. I don’t know… I just didn’t see myself in this position.

[edit]

We’re making The Gamers Cave: The Game ._.