Knife That Guy: The Unleashening

The moment has finally arrived. For 5-ish weeks I have toiled over Knife That Guy and now the world must see the abomination that I have wrought. To spare you from having to read anymore words, the PC version is here and the Mac version is here. I know, Dropbox isn't exactly ideal and I'm trying to find a better sharing solution, but I lack personal server space and the game is small enough to download in less than a minute anyway. Also, as I am without access to a Mac, the Mac version is entirely untested and offered as a meager sign of good will to people on the other side of the personal computing war.

So...yeah. First Game a Month down. I'm going to save an in-depth post mortem for later, but I'm pretty happy with the results and overall process of revisiting Knife That Guy. Give the game a play and let me know what you think of it. If you like it, mention it to your friends, family, coworkers, or attractive strangers you run into. Or, if you're shy, just play the game and keep your opinion of it to yourself. That's fine too.

I'm going to be taking a brief (week long?) hiatus from the Game a Month before I start up the next round so that I can review the first one and post Knife That Guy on every indie game site I can find. I'm also planning on submitting it to Steam Greenlight, the awesome service that Steam uses to allow its users to determine which games should make it into their store. Knife That Guy is far from being a sellable product, but during its development my brain was flooded with ideas on ways I can expand upon it. I know the original idea was to make a game in a month, kick it out to the world, and move on to the next one but if I find that there are people out there who can share some of my enthusiasm for This Guy and his Knife, I would love to spend some more time on making Knife That Guy match the version I've been playing in my head. 

Update: Already had someone find a bug for Mac that kept them from recording their high scores. Possibly fixed that and updated the version.

Update #2: Someone found a bug causing the game to lock up if you exit the game from the pause menu and start a new round. This should now be fixed in both versions.

Good News and Sweet Tunes

Just wanted to make a quick update so I am right now! The delay was definitely a good idea. I am currently polishing up the game as much as I can and it is on track to be released unto the world on Wednesday. For anyone who is still bummed out that they aren't playing Knife That Guy at this exact moment, here's the (way too awesome) theme song courtesy of Chris Zukowski:

Knife That Guy: The Delay!

So, it's looking like the planned release date for Knife That Guy (about this time tomorrow) isn't going to happen. I had pretty much been on track until this week, but right now I'm trying to wrap up some important freelance work and I haven't had time for programming anything that I am not contractually obligated (and paid) to do. I figured I could release the incomplete version of the game tomorrow, but I think it'll be worth it to break the rules of my challenge in exchange for a more refined game. The new release date for Knife That Guy will be next Wednesday, December 5th. I promise this will not slip. Unless it does.

Knife That Guy: End of Week 3

So it's the end of the third week of Game A Month #1. I have to say, way more got done this week than the last. I finished watching the rest of Avatar and, for some reason, I made the unfortunate decision to watch the movie. Oh, and I got sprites for the game done and the functionality to pause and a how to play screen and some other stuff. But no amount of progress will cool my rage over the abomination that is The Last Airbender film.

The game looks more or less like it did last week, but without pictures this post would just be a bunch of words (and who honestly reads those?) so here's a look at the enemy sprites that I've made this week:

Here's Normal Guy. He'd rather not be knifed.

Here's Sad Guy. He wouldn't mind it.

So yeah, those will be the two enemy types for Knife That Guy. Normal Guy tries to avoid This Guy, and Sad Guy attempts to run into him. I had wanted to have a few more enemy types in the game, but last week's distractions ended up reducing the amount of time I had for making the sprites.

The goal for this last full week of development is to implement the visual effects and sounds that will really work to sell the game's mechanics as well as adding the other necessary game infrastructure stuff like an options menu, high score saving, and credits. I've also coerced a friend into contributing a couple of music tracks for the game, so I can fill the uncomfortable silence in the game without risking a copyright infringement lawsuit.

I've also put together an early build of the game to get some gameplay feedback. If you'd like to be a tester, just let me know and I'll hook you up.

Knife That Guy: End of Week 2

Hey everybody. So today marks the end of week 2. Well, technically yesterday was the end but due to spending the past three days binging on the first two seasons of Avatar and trying to figure out what's up with DOTA 2, my schedule has gotten kind of shifty. So I haven't accomplished all of the goals that I had wanted to for this week. Although I have made most of the visual assets that I am going to need for the game, there is still a lot that needs to be implemented. This means that I will be saving releasing the early test build for the beginning of next week. I know getting early feedback would be helpful but I feel like all of the missing elements would be too distracting to really get anything valuable out of it right now.

That's enough negative stuff, so now it's time for some positive. I'm really happy with the sprites that I've made so far as I put a quantum of effort into them instead of scribbling them all out in a few hours. I also managed to get the camera to show an angled view of the game instead of the head-on flat view I had before. This was something that I wanted in the original student project version, but I could barely get my mind around working a 2D renderer so anything 3D would be double impossible. 

Here's a look at the changes to This Guy:

...and after!

   

Before...

And here's a shot of the current state of the game:

Look at that rectangular goodness.

So for this next week, I will have all of the sprites for the game made and have the additional animations that are needed (i.e. everything that isn't just walking). I will also try to get as many of the necessary sound effects as possible so that next week's test build will actually have some player feedback to go along with all of the knifing. This week's looking pretty good as I don't know how it could be less productive than the previous one.

Knife That Guy: End of Week 1

So it is now the end of the first week of development of Knife That Guy HD 3D Deluxe. I'm pretty happy with how it's going so far. I managed to meet my goals of having the design and rough gameplay prototype done and I've had time to dream up plenty of further complications and refinements that I will hopefully have the time to implement. Here's a little peek at the state of the game so far:

Right now, it's a bit more like "Knife That Primitive."

That's right, the game can both start and end.

So yeah, it's not the prettiest game on the block, but it's a start. I have the core gameplay of zooming around as This Guy, knifing That Guy, and avoiding everyone else as well as some placeholder UI elements and it's already feeling pretty fun. The goal for this next week is asset creation and integration. By the end of the week, it should look roughly like what the final product is going to be. There may even be a sound effect or two. 

The goal is to have the game far enough along by the end of this week that I can give a demo build to anyone interested in being a playtester. If you'd like the opportunity to provide me with feedback and stomp on my fragile ego in return for a place in the credits of a freeware game, let me know!

Game a Month #1 Begins

Alright, the time has finally come. I am all out of excuses--I've moved into my new place, I have internet access, I've figured out how to turn on the heat to protect myself from the frigid Michigan elements. I am ready. By this time on September 29th, Knife That Guy HD 3D Deluxe will be unleashed upon the world. I'm going to try to update at least once a week about the development process. The goal for this first week is to have all the planning done as well as having the base game managers and a rough prototype of all of the mechanics in the game. 

The clock starts...now.

Introducing Game a Month #1: Knife That Guy

Hey, everybody. So the process of finding and then relocating to a new living place is taking me longer than I had anticipated, so the Game a Month is being delayed till sometime next week. I felt like updating anyway to let you know what the first Game a Month is going to be. 

The first game project that I designed as part of my college education was called Knife That Guy. It tasked you as “This Guy,” wielder of a large triangular knife, who was destined to knife “That Guy,” who happened to be any randomly selected person in a crowd of wandering people. I made it in the course of a week with my (at the time) minimal coding skill and my (still) less than minimal art skills. The final release build had a bug that caused the game to have a 25% chance to crash whenever you knifed that guy, which meant that only the debug build was actually playable. 

Say hello to This Guy. And his knife.

I was stupidly proud of my stupid first effort, but I felt there was more that I could do with it. So for my first Game a Month, I am going to make an improved version of Knife That Guy. I know, I’m setting the bar pretty high. But I figure by shooting low for the first effort I’ll have the time to write all of the managers and boring framework stuff that I can use for later GaM’s. It will also be good practice expanding and refining a simple idea with whatever time I can scrape together, which is something I’m going to try to do for all of the GaM’s.

The clock will officially start running for Knife That Guy HD 3D Deluxe by this time next week at the latest. And if you're worried that I may get some kind of advantage in this self imposed challenge by having come up with the concept weeks in advance, I promise to inflict just enough cranial trauma on myself to cancel out whatever head start it's given me.

If you're interested, here is the original working debug version of Knife That Guy.

Hello World.

Hey Internet audience, I'm Steven Zavala and I'm a game developer. Well, I'm lots of other things too but in keeping with the old school tradition of being defined by what you do for a living, that is how I would introduce myself: Steven Zavala, Video Game Developer. The thing is I haven't really done that much game development. I've worked on a few games you've never played and I'm currently working on some more games you will never play but I haven't really created much of anything. After doing some thinking on it, I've decided that that is really lame. It feels like the equivalent of someone churning out a few commercial jingles and then claiming the title of songwriter—while it's technically accurate, it just doesn't feel right. So I've decided to do something about that. Taking some inspiration from Jonathan Coulton and his Thing a Week songwriting project I am going to challenge myself to make a Game a Month for as long as I am willing/able

.

The concept is pretty much self explanatory based on the name, but to satisfy my habit of over-elaborating I'm going to break it down a little. Every month I will design and develop a new original game that I will then release to the cruel unfeeling Internet. I may use some code and art assets that I can legally acquire, but I will do all of the gameplay programming (and likely much of the art) myself. Games can be a lot of work and a month is not a lot of time, so this means the games will not be the most sophisticated works of design and technology the world has ever known. They will be simple, potentially bordering on crude, and buggy, potentially bordering on broken, but that's not the point. The point is that they will be complete in their own special participation-prize way and that they will be something that I can actually claim responsibility for and maybe even be proud of. Along the way, I will update this blog with information about the design and development process of the current Game a Month as well as my disorganized rants about games and anything else that drifts through my head.

I'm not starting the clock for the first Game a Month just yet, as I am in the process of moving and such, but I'll update as soon as it begins.

Preemptive FAQ! or Me Talking to Myself!

Q: If you really wanted to make a game, why limit yourself to a month? Wouldn't more time be helpful?

A: Time is nice, yeah. But I have a habit of wasting it. Whenever I try to tackle something big, I always lose interest or come up with a new idea or decide that the idea just isn't as good as it should be. By only taking a month per game, I can work within my limited attention span and cover more creative ground. There is now no idea that is too stupid!

Q: What tools are you going to use for development?

A: Most (more likely all) of the games are going to be developed in the Unity engine as it is great for quick development and it is the engine I have the most experience with. For art, I will likely be using GIMP for 2D stuff since it is free and Maya or 3ds Max for 3D since I should have a student copy floating around here somewhere.

Q: You said you would use some assets that you can find. So does that mean I can contribute?

A: Of course you can, hypothetical helpful question asker! If you feel like you have some audio or visual assets that would fit the theme/setting of the current Game a Month, let me know. Help with music would be most appreciated as that is the one thing that I really cannot fake.

                                                                       

Q: What happens at the end of the month if the game isn't done?

A: I suppose I’ll have to choose to strip the game down to whatever can be considered “done”, release it as is, or flee from the Internet in shame. Or give myself more time. The cool thing about creating a challenge for yourself is you can change the rules whenever you like. And I likely will. Often.