New enemy, and...new look?! Nah.

Hey everybody, look at how far I got on my game! Doesn't it look absolutely awesome?

Oh wait no. That's Metroid Fusion. But while we're at it, let's talk about this game. Hopefully everybody knows that my game was inspired by Metroid. Well, I played Metroid Fusion about two months ago, and it really does have a great style and it helped me get back to work on my game. I like to use Metroid Fusion as my inspiration, driving me along the reckless course that is making a video game. Anyway, if you guys ever have a chance to play this game, it is definitely worth it and I'd love you to tell me how it is different from mine. Of course Scratch is not a clone of this game, and will not have every single ability that Samus has, but the gameplay should be fairly similar (aside from the most important difference, that there isn't any 8 directional aiming in Scratch).

Ok, so now that we got that whole inspiration thing out of the way, I'd like to show you my newest enemy, the lava slime! Here it is:

Basically, it pops up, shoots you, and pops back down. It is not so much different from the fire boxer, but it is much harder to shoot, because you have to shoot it at just the right moment. I'm also thinking about making it pop up in different places, so it doesn't just go up and down in the same place, making it even more annoying that it is now. But I may add that or not, depending on how lazy I am. Well, I guess that concludes it for today, and I'll post tomorrow.

Who is Martin?

Maybe some of you are wondering who this Martin is, even though I told you he is my assistant programmer. You may be asking yourselves what he does? Well, ever since the release of version 0.3 a week ago, he has been helping me make special effects and other cool things that I'm sure have made Scratch better, in addition to helping test for glitches. What things, you ask? Well, he has replaced the annoying pop-up messages with these:

He also helped with a little healthbar effect, and as well as this cool effect that happens every time you get hurt:

The Firebawxer!

Hey there, I'm Dan. Or Batboy, whichever you like better.
Anyway, I'm the concept artist for Scratch, and that's what I've been doing for the past twenty minutes. I managed to find a really old Genius tablet (like, my first one ever), so I decided to plug it in and do some concept art. And of course, the concept art would be the awesome new enemy, the Fire boxer! I know, I know, it's nothing that great, I even used the same colors fawful used in the original sprite, but, you know, whatever. I guess I'll do some more concept art next week when I get my new tablet, since both of my other ones are broken, and this one is just waaay to uncomfortable to use

Cheers guys, till next time!

~Dan

2 new authors!

We got 2 new authors that can now post here, Martin Larsson (assistant programmer who knows lots more GML than I do) and Batboy (concept artist and tester). If they have any news, I'm sure they'll post them. I'm also planning on adding Photocopier, but he's been gone lately. I'll post tomorrow with an update.

Update, update, update

Ok, so I haven't updated on this blog for around 6 days, so I decided that a new post was definetely in order. And since I don't really talk about anything except for Scratch anymore, let's go with that topic. I rested for the weekend, and have started back to work on this game. Well, I gotta say, it's going great so far. After you defeat the third boss, you head on out to a teleporter (which originally was meant to be an elevator, but teleporters are easier to make, however ironic that may be), and suddenly appear at the core of the planet. So with so cool new effects, you have now reached a new area with new enemies. So far I've made three, and here is one, my personal favorite, the fire boxer:

You might also notice that the window is smaller. I've recieved feedback saying that this would make the game more interesting, so I did what they told me. However, this will probably cause lots of glitches, but I'll be ready to kill them if they dare menace my game.

Scratch v0.3 released

Well, it seems I didn't give up on this blog yet! And I just released v0.3, which should allow you to play for some 30 minutes. Anyway, have fun, and I have to leave to do the duties that I neglected while I was sweating over the computer this morning and afternoon.

7/21/2009: Scratch Update

I made it a rule to post an update every other time, which would be every 4 days. So here I am, posting what I did yesterday and today. Yesterday I got sounds and music for Scratch, because they were very requested and I finally decided to pay heed to the people over at the GMC. I also changed the menu screen to this:

So now that I had a nice looking menu screen (designed by Photocopier), I decided to change the character to Batboy's concept art of him, which can be seen here: Link. So, with the help of Batboy himself (he actually did most of the work), we changed the character to this: Image. What else did I do? That pretty much sums it up for yesterday, and today I messed around more with music until I got it just the way I wanted it. After that, I rested a bit, closed up the huge list of bugs I got from my testers...and guess what. I managed to remove the huge masks I had and make a 32X32 one, and you know what? That doesn't cause glitches anymore! I solved it using a small code snippet that occurred to me a little bit ago. So now I'm great. I'm not done closing up shop today, I added two more levels and am planning on adding two more before calling it a day. And that will be all for this version, besides the boss. So I'm planning on releasing around Thursday. Well, I now bid you goodbye so I may return to my game making duties. 'Till next time!

Starting Out on Your Dream Project

Well, I guess I finally did it, I created a blog for Scratch. Great...Now what do I post here. Hm.. Well, to start off, if all game developers are like me at all, we all have dreams sometime of making a great game. How this game looks and feels really depends around what you're dreaming. But how do you start on this? Should you start on this? Well, the first question you have to ask is: "Do I really want to do this?" Making a game takes a lot of time and effort, and it isn't worth it if you aren't going to complete it. Trust me, I've been down that road several times. If you decide you want to make the game, then you have to ask yourself if you are capable of making it. You have to take baby steps in the game making world, you can just jump right into making an MMORPG the first time. If you decide you can make it (with or without the help of a team, forums, etc), you might want to get a team. You could do everything yourself, but that will probably take you a longer amount of time. Making games if often split into these categories:

Graphics

Programming

Music

Sound

Testing

You could do everything yourself, but that is pretty hard, and there are lots of willing people out there to do those jobs for just a place in the credits. So once you decide whether you are going to go solo on this dangerous mission or not. Either way, make sure your project stays original, because otherwise it will be a lot of effort for nothing. Well, that's my two cents. Have a great day or whatever I'm supposed to say now.