Adventures in Game Development

Halloween! Woohoo! Halloween is easily my favorite time of year, and while as I get older I don't get to do as many fun Halloween activities, I always try to at least go to a Halloween-themed Theme Park. This year, I added a new tradition to my Halloween festivities, creating a Halloween-themed game! While I couldn't submit it into the Halloween game jam, I still had a lot of fun attempting to create something in the timeline, completely myself with some support from my mentor Vives of course, with free assets or assets I create in Blender.  This was quite the challenge, but extremely fun! While I still have a bug that makes the demo currently unplayable after a Shipping build, I will figure that out and get it uploaded to Itch.io for download. I got some clips from playing in the editor where the game functions properly for the most part.  At first, I saw the wrong Game Jam poster, so I based my idea off of a combination of Gun Fight and a platformer. Once I realized this was

 Lots of Projects! In my last blog, I touched up some code in my StarPaws game, but this week, I've got a lot more going on! Overview Clip: Please enjoy this video of some clips of each of the projects I've been working on.  Star Paws Star Paws is a 2D resource management game I've been working on. Recently, I've made some further progress on the full resource requirement and selling loop. I still have much more to do in this game, but it is coming along! I have put together all of the clips of my games in the video I've included, but here's some points on the progress I've made with Star Paws: Resources only show on the map if you have an adequate Base level.  Resources spawn and can be collected once you've built a farm.  The player's inventory, including their gold amount, is saved to the save game.  Players can level up their base to see more resources become available.  Once resources are collected, players can add goods to their trade inventory

 Back in Action I was thankful to get to take a couple of trips this September for my birthday and for the Affirmation Deck project! The events went well but I've been pretty wiped out from all the traveling and excitement. That being said, I still made some progress in my Space Paws game which I'm excited to share! Last Star Paws Progress: Last we left off, I had just finished getting the "explore" functionality working for players to discover new resources on which they will be able to build farms. This includes a timer function that uses the resource's distance from the player's base to calculate how long the discovery will be.  Latest Development Checkpoints: Getting Organized:  To get myself better organized as I tackle this complex game, I started creating a "Jira" project to map out my tasks better. This really helps me stay focused on one step at a time without getting too ahead of myself and where I'm currently at in development.  I can

Star Paws Continues!  Furthering my C++ Knowledge Star Paws is a resource management game I've been developing using C++ and Unreal Engine. After a brief break to work on other projects, I'm back to creating the core systems that will make up this exciting space-themed game. Before diving back into Star Paws, I completed a few other projects, most notably the game jam project "Blood Cell Bash." I'm thrilled to announce that this project secured 2nd place in the game jam! This success definitely boosted my confidence as I returned to Star Paws development. Last Star Paws Progress: When we last left off, I had just implemented the trading system, which is now about 80% complete; to continue on, we need to develop other systems that will integrate with trading. For the past week, we've focused on creating the resource map, allowing players to discover resources and transform them into farms or mines. Last Two Weeks: Development Check-Points Here's a brief ove

Nearly Finished with the Game Jam! Blood Cell Bash - 2D Browser Game Development: The idea for this game came to me after a conversation about blood types and the immune system with my partner. I thought, "This could make for an interesting game!" and that's how Blood Cell Bash was born! I aimed to create something quick, fun, and with minimal artistic details to convey the concept effectively. Blood cells in a bloodstream seemed perfect—simple visuals and straightforward functionality. Here's a look at the progress so far, though I'm still making a few tweaks before releasing it on itch.io: Here's a short video of some of the gameplay: Here is some of the code work I did in Construct 3 for the different functionalities: Setup: This is the "begin play" section in Construct 3 that initializes some of the core game functionalities. Player Movement: Here's the code for how I implemented player movement. Bacteria Functionality: I used functions to

Finished Tarot Game and Continued 2D Mobile Game Progress: The last two weeks I have made progress on two different games I've been working on. I finished up a demo of a Tarot Card experience that my friends and I have been working on, and I think it came out really nice! Here's a video going through how I created the game:  Tarot Game Video Overview: This is a somewhat simple game, but I learned some cool new tricks, including using Media Players and playing videos using Blueprints. I also learned a lot about using Lerp and Timelines to move objects. I had a lot of fun creating this with some help!  The art is nearly complete, though I have some touch-ups I want to make on the card art itself.  2D Game Progress: I also continued to make progress on the 2D Mobile game "Starpaws" that I've been developing. We mainly worked on the trade and inventory system, including a save system that works with the inventory. So overall we created a save system, a trade inventory