Plans And Possible Projects Of The Future

Now that I'm a college student, I need to carefully plan what other projects I'll be working on. I don't have all of this figured out yet, but I thought you all might like to know what I do so that you can at least guess how much longer this relative dry spell is going to last.

First, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get back to work on my Chiptune EP. Second, I've got a new album idea I'm thinking about. I'm not sure if I'll be able to work it into my schedule or how long it would be before it became officiated, but know that it's on the table. Third, I'm hoping that my webcomic creative juices keep flowing so that Cognitive Observation can become regular again. Fourth, Infiltrator will probably be going on hiatus. Infiltrator was a project that was mainly there for me to have fun trying to code and experiment with game development for the majority of its incarnations, so I kind of saw this as a likely ending for it from quite near the beginning. Fifth, I'm pondering the possibility of choosing 15 topics and doing a third Music Hacker season. This depends in part on my getting a better grip on my schedule, and in part on finding 15 topics I know I can do a good episode about. And last but not least, I'm not really not sure I'll be able to continue being a game analyst. Sure, I still love the medium, but since I don't have time to play games or spend enough time thinking about them to keep interesting content going, I just don't see a wealth of game design articles as a likely part of the content for the next while.

So yea, things are a bit up in the air right now. Thank you for bearing with me while I try to get this stuff sorted out.

    --LazerBlade

Infiltrator E47 - Assault Master Design

"So... how 'bout them assault masters," you may be asking. The answer is that the most powerful non-boss enemy in Infiltrator, the Assault Master, has been redesigned more than three times. If you factor in the AI programming, pixel art, design, testing, etc, then each iteration is bound to take awhile. That said, this latest one is much more elegantly put together. I kept the tactical and strategic ideas of the enemy in mind along with rest of the game this time.

All of that in mind, the new design is going to be much more time consuming and meticulous to implement, for reasons I will outline below. Since it's going to be a bit before I finish, I thought it might be interesting to explain the design, the logic behind it, and the challenges it presents.

Infiltrator E46 - Video Playback

Those of you who checked out my Infiltrator pre-alpha demo video awhile back probably know that I had a spiffy animated background with circuit patterns on the main menu. Those of you who didn't: I had a spiffy animated background with-you get the point. I bet you guys didn't know that I don't have that anymore, did you? I'm hoping to get it back at some point, but the problems that led to its removal are deep and annoying.

Let's talk about them!

Old Infiltrator OST

Wow, it's been awhile since I had time to do a game design article or other article proper. Life can basically call upon me to use all of my time for weeks on end without notice, and that is what happened. I'm unrealistically optimistic that I'll get back on track soon, but please take this music upload as a token of my still trying to provide content.

It's from the old Infiltrator OST, which was abandoned to be entirely redone using my modern skillset.

    --LazerBlade

Infiltrator E45 - Enough With the GUI Already!

This session went almost entirely into GUI work. I've finally got the menu art and editor interface up to a point where I feel comfortable moving on though, and that is a good thing. I've been getting pretty sick of working on these same GUI's for so long. The fruit of all of this work is pretty sweet though.

Infiltrator Part 44 - Picking Back Up

Well it's been months since the last Infiltrator update, due only in small part to my own laziness. At the moment, due to the usual internal scrambling and re-installing of my system, Infiltrator isn't even running for me. I do have some small updates completed, but most of them are just new art assets for the level editor.

What it comes down to is that I need to get my momentum back on this project. I've been cherry picking easy features because I haven't had time to put in many consecutive hours of work. As of recently I have come into a bit more free time though, so I've been trying to get the workflow going again.

I've decided to put more concentration into perfecting the level editor before I move on to creating the next enemy, so that will be the topic of the next Infiltrator update. Until then, enjoy the videos and comics I put out.

    --LazerBlade

Come Pray Shin

This video was a total bundle of fun to make. Starting Tuesday, I'll be trying to get the content going again on this site. I've been tremendously busy with school and other things, but my schedule is becoming a bit more flexible and open. As a result, I'll probably have time for more regular posting. Infiltrator progress has slowed down a lot as well, but again I'm hoping I'll be able to re-balance my schedule and get back in the groove. More updates as they come...


    --LazerBlade

Music And School

You may have noticed a lack of regular deep game design content this month, especially where Infiltrator is concerned. This is due to the fact that this is hopefully my last month of school(I don't have all of the details figured out yet) and I've had very little breathing room or free time. The truth of the matter is that music takes less time and commitment to regularly update. I can give you guys a few minutes of cool music I threw in a week with ~ 4-6 hours of work, but at this stage a notable Infiltrator progress showcase would take a lot longer than that to put together. Hopefully this is a temporary setback, and I can get back to both regular music and game design content within a month or so.

    --LazerBlade

Infiltrator Part 43 - Sights On Editor

Do you think this blog is becoming an Infiltrator dev journal with random game design articles and music updates popping up every once in awhile? Then congratulations, you passed the being observative test! Now shut up and read this Infiltrator dev update because I'm already spreading myself thinner than the peanut butter on your sandwich when your little sister Julibop who prefers Jam makes it for you just to get the giant stack of ridonkulous things I do done.

Infiltrator Part 42 - Swarms Of Warriors

Swing your partner left and right, wrap your code up nice and tight. Throw your partner on the ground,  spend a little time on sound. When you hit them in the face, make your swarmers fly with grace. No ID you wear a hood, warriors also going good.

Also, I'm in one of those moods where all the little personalities in my head want me to do different things at the same-BREAK IT DOWN NOW!

Infiltrator Part 41 - Video Time

This time you get your Infiltrator discussion in video form!

    --LazerBlade

Infiltrator Part 40 - Swarmer Skeleton

So... swarmers. It turned out to be a ridiculous pain to get the swarmers to even home in on a target, but I got through it. The resulting swarmers will now launch and home in on enemies. But which enemies?

Unfortunately, not the most intelligently chosen ones yet. Currently they just target the onscreen enemy spawned longest ago, which is pretty arbitrary and exists only because it was the quickest and easiest to add. I have a few different target choosing algorithms in mind. I'll have to try and weigh each of them in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, and that will be fun.

That's actually it. The swarmer art, as you can see, is basically placeholder. The final swarmers will also be tiny, but they will have a glowing contrail so it will be easy to see them and where they are going. I put so much into working out the simple things that I didn't have time for details.


    --LazerBlade

Infiltrator Part 39 - Tedious Baselines and Reworkings

Aside from the hustle and bustle of the other parts of my life this session has also gone slowly because it was mostly design work. There are some changes that can be expressed via screenshot though, and there is plenty to talk about.

Infiltrator Part 38 - HUD, EMP, and stability

It seems like I have this internal clock that every few months says "Hey! That HUD could totally be better designed!" I then proceed to completely rewrite the code for it and move everything around. That happened again, but this time I found that I had anticipated this earlier and redesigned the HUD code to be more accommodative to change in the future.

Also, accommodative should totally be a word.

Infiltrator Part 37 - Lightning!

This session was fun but didn't really see a lot of notable outside improvements. It saw one, super cool one.

Infiltrator Part 36 - Editor Improvements

This short session was dedicated mainly to improving the level editor. After all, once I finish most of the core mechanics, I will be spending a lot of time using it to create the content. Additionally, I'm hoping to release the game with level editor enabled the way it is now. (as a command line option) That way users will get to play around with creating their own levels and all that good stuff. The upshot is that a lot of other people could also potentially be spending a lot of time using this level editor, and I want to make that as painless as reasonably possible.

Rotation!

Infiltrator Part 35 - Here is the Menu

I absolutely hate creating GUI's and menu's. I also love it. I'm awesome like that, so this is the session in which I've tackled the task of creating Infiltrator's menu system.

Infiltrator Part 34 - Style Cam

There isn't a whole ton to say about this session. I guess it's mostly because a lot of the work that got done was under the hood where the end user will likely never see. Still, there are some pretty major changes happening on the outside as well.

Infiltrator Part 33 - Design Explanation #2

There are some pretty sweet updates and features brewing to talk about for the next session summary, but I want to throttle back and discuss the design a bit more before it gets stale. Or maybe it already is stale. Doesn't matter.

Infiltrator Part 31 - With a two in it!

The long and painful move from SFML 1.6 to SFML 2 is finally complete. There actually isn't a whole ton of difference, except that now my framerate has taken a giant tan- GUN BLAM IT! Just a minute...

Okay, so now the long and painful-aw skip it.