April Progress Update 1
Abduction Action!
Abduction Action! went into the Peer Review process last week and promptly failed. Seems I had a try/catch block around some save logic, but I think when I refactored some code, the save got moved outside the scope of the try/catch and thus causes an infamous "Code 4" error to occur which is pretty much an instant failure (I did pull the game before it technically failed). XBLIG Peer Review rules require a seven day wait before resubmitting my game, so it will be sometime late Wednesday / early Thursday that I can start the review process again. I'm going to fix that error tonight and touch-up a couple more issues. Hopefully you're be playing Abduction Action! really really soon.
Nasty
Nasty is going to get a new update too, which I will likely be starting this month. There are three things that for-sure I want to do in this update.
- New Levels: Somewhere around 10 - 20 new levels. I'll probably mix them in with the other 100 levels in order to keep the general level / boss progression the same.
- Randomized items: Instead of every level always having item/weapon X, I'm going to add a random feature that will give you a random item / weapon.
- Abduction Action! screen: I'll be adding an "Other Games" screen with some images of Abduction Action! in hopes of improving sales / exposure for my new game. I've also added a "Nasty" screen in Abduction Action! to hopefully drive up sales / downloads of Nasty too.
I might squeeze in some other features too depending on how long these first two changes take to complete.
I've had some recent interest in online play for Nasty, which I think would be really cool but also a lot of work. So for now, I'm dismissing that idea. I may do a future game with online play to get my feet wet with a simpler game and if that pans out, then look into adding online play for a game like Nasty.
There has also been interest in 4 player coop for Nasty. That too probably won't happen. Without a major overhaul, I don't think the game could run at a consistent 60 FPS with four players blasting away nor is the user interface or levels themselves designed to work well with four players. It is very likely that I will do a Nasty sequel sometime down the road and when I do, 4 player coop will definitely be included.
Hypership
A while back, I started on my short game tentatively titled "Hypership Out of Control". This is part of my new plan to mix short releases with longer games. My intent is to finish this game in a month or two (as opposed to the 8 month development cycles of Nasty and Abduction Action!) while at the same time doing work on a longer release game (6 months to a year).
Progress on this game has been swift and many of the major gameplay features are already implemented (backgrounds, ship, blocks you must dodge). The graphics are going to very retro, low resolution stuff which should have a nostalgic factor but also be much easier to create than the more detailed fair some of my other games. I've kinda back-burned this while finishing up on Abduction Action! but intend to work on this again soon.
Secret Project
I've begun work on my long release game too. Ideally I'd like to have it ready (or at least far along) for the presumed summer Dream Build Play. I've got some of the game basics implemented and a fairly basic level editor setup too. I'm not ready to fully release details on this game (I don't even have a title for it yet) but I'll just mention that it's a more traditional platformer and it's going to be great.
It's amazing how much I have gotten done on this game in such a short amount of time. With only a week of work into it, I'm already further along than I was in a month of work on Nasty. This comes from not only having a lot of r
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