Still making games? Yes. Blog update.

    Just wanted to post an update here on the blog to let everyone know that I am still alive and that yes I am still making games (*background* "Nobody cares, your games suck!")

Yes yes thank you everyone. It feels great to be back. Well I was never really gone. I just wasn't working on any new games...

Anyway! My last post was back in June, then I kinda just left and enjoyed summer break. So I think an update over here is long overdue. I have been working on a new game over the past few days. I don't really want to say to much about it at the moment cause i'm not really sure where I am going with this project. It is kind of like a random making it up as I go kinda game. But so far I like what I have! As you can see by the screenshot above, my next project is a little bit inspired off of something that might seem familiar to many gamers.

I don't really want to go on and on like a usual blog post. So I will keep this update short and just leave it here. Also, I am thinking about starting to post vlog updates about my games in the future. Maybe show some behind the scenes stuff, show some in game footage on camera, etc. I don't know yet. Stay tuned.  I will post more updates soon.

MORE DEV SCREEN SHOTS!

2015 gamedev plans. The Next generation of Snowconesolid Games

     Here I am again. I know I haven't been updating the blog as much as I said would. I have not been as active on the unity community forums either. But i'm still here. It's 2015 and "Snowconesolid Productions" is still around. I am still here. Still developing games. Still creating whatever I imagine. Sharing ideas, artwork and interactive experiences through my creations. Still a huge fan of Blender3d and the Unity game engine.

"Snowconesolid Productions" is definitely no triple-A game development studio. Non of my games so far have received millions of downloads/plays and I am sure that not a lot of people have even heard of  this development blog.

What is "Snowconesolid Productions" ? Snowconesolid Productions is a indie game studio run by a solo optimistic game developer who is passionate about creating not just games but experiences, artwork and memories. A indie developer who is not afraid of putting up his creations no matter what the feedback is. "Loved it", "hated it", "worst thing I ever played", etc. Comments/ critiques, etc. Any feedback is always welcome and accepted. A indie developer who loves to continue learning and improving his development and artwork skills.  I am Snowconesolid. This is what I love doing. This is my true passion.

I still find it hard to believe how fast time fly's by. I started learning game development and the other areas of the pipeline such as 3d modeling, animation, etc back in 2010. It's 2015 now and I have learned so much throughout these years. I have come so far in my indie development journey. Looking back at my first couple games and my first 3d models and comparing them to what I can do now really shows that I love learning and improving my skills. My dedication to creating. There is a huge difference in the quality I can deliver now in both game design and art compared to what I could do when  I first started.

For example, comparing two of my games:

"MoonLight Mountains : First Discovery" (A game I created and released in 2012. Something I made that was more experimental. A project I created when I was still learning game dev.)

with something like

"Hide-n-Seek Winter" (Created and released in 2014. One of my newer more polished games ever created.)

These two titles are night and day different from each other in every area. The game design, the gameplay mechanics, 3d models, animations, etc. There is a huge difference in quality that is clearly visible between the two games. And for both of these titles, I created everything from scratch on my own. Every art asset, all the logic behind the game and so on. If anyone compares the two they probably would not think the same developer created both of these.

That's what being a good developer is all about right? Learning from previous projects and experience, improving your skills, listening to what others have to say about your work, constantly training and improving your knowledge daily.

I love creating games. I love 3d modeling. I love animating, I love programming. I love creating storylines and characters,  I love being a indie developer.  It is 2015 and Snowconesolid productions is still going strong. My journey as a indie game developer will never cease as long as I can continue to create.

2015 Plans:

     Now that I have the long "New Year" blog intro out of the way I can share my plans and goals for this year.

New Games!
This year I just have so many new original ideas planned out. Currently I am actively developing my next game. Actually, I have been developing my newest game for about two weeks now. It is still very early in development. Down below I have some screenshots to share and more info about my next game.

Old Games brought back to life!
Yup!. So also, I plan on rebooting some of my older games. Revisiting some of my first original game releases and re-creating them from scratch. Taking my original ideas for those games I made when I was still a beginner game maker learning how to make games and using my current skill set I have today to re-create them to be how I originally wanted to make them in the first place. This is something I am really looking forward to. I have been wanting to re-visit some of my older games for a while now and see how I would approach them differently now because I am a completely different developer today compared to when I first created these games years ago. It will be a really interesting challenge for me that will really test my skills.

The new games?
While I look forward to re-visiting my older game projects and giving them a reboot... this is something I plan on doing later on. I am not focused on rebooting my older titles at the moment. When the time comes I will talk more about re-creating my older games later on. For now I rather focus on creating my new game ideas. I want to deliver new experiences. And as I mentioned above, I have been working on my next game already for a while. I rather create something new first and then consider rebooting older titles.

So anyway, here is little early preview of my next game project. (Screen Shots not final):

Early preview of "James" in Blender3D. My newest original character who will star in my next game:

In unity. Setup. Early testing, etc:

Early preview screen of what the final game will look something like. Rendered in Unity. Actual in-game screen shot:

Once again these are still early development screenshots from my new game and nothing is final yet. I am sure I will be changing a lot down the road as I continue to develop this game. Also if you follow me on twitter you may have seen me post these screenshots earlier.

Game Info?
At the moment I don't have very much to explain about the game because I am still planning it out myself (especially the storyline) as I work through it but here is a general description for it:

"Jelly Space" project (Working title) will be a 3D immersive third person stylized level based puzzle/survival/adventure game. The game storyline follows "James" (our main character) as he journeys through a surreal space world, trying to find his way back home after an unexpected accident.

Lost in space and low on fuel, players will be placed in Jame's boots and must overcome unusual obsticals and strange encounters as they try to survive this harsh journey back home.

Platforms:
This game will be both for pc and mobile platforms.
I plan on releasing this game for Windows, Mac and Android platforms.

This will be my first game release of 2015 and I am very excited to continue sharing progress on the project down the road. I will have more info later on in upcoming blog posts.

Who is working on this project?
As always, I am going to be 100% responsible for this game project. Just like all my other games up until now, I will be developing this solo. I will be responsible for creating all of the 3d models/ art assets, game design, mechanics, storyline, etc from scratch. Whenever I work on my own game projects I like to take full responsibility for them. I like being able to say "I created everything in this game on my own" no matter how it turns out. It is a really rewarding feeling and achievement and a personal development style for myself.

What happened to Jelly Stack?

You might remember that in my last blog post (the last blog post I made in 2014) I mentioned that I was working on a quick short one week project called "Jelly Stack". I even said I would have it finished and released before the end of the 2014 year. Unfortunately this never happened. Plans have changed and as I thought about it I realized this is not the kind of game I want to create. Stacking a pile of randomly falling jelly blobs seemed like a boring idea to me later on. It seemed like something that has been done too many times before. I don't want to create clones of games like this. I want to create new and original games with more meaning and storytelling. Anyway one thing lead to another and then I ended up creating this character:

Jelly Guy:

Then this character ended up leading me to start creating my current game project I was just talking about above ("Jelly Space"). So actually, my upcoming game is all branched off my original simple idea for "Jelly Stack". It's amazing how one thing usually leads to something completely different. Who knows what else will change down the road as I continue creating "Jelly Space"? We will see...

2015 Conclusion?
My main focus this year and with all my upcoming game projects is about quality. This is something I will really stress as I develop my newest games. I want to prove that I can produce high quality games on my own with all the skills I have gained throughout my  past experience. Lots of focus will be put into every area of the pipeline (great quality graphics, fun gameplay mechanics and so on)

2015 is going to be an awesome year. I have so many new games planned that I want to create this year. It might be a little soon to say this but I'm going to go ahead and say it anyway because of how confident I am.

Personally, I think that this year, 2015 will be my best year ever as a indie game developer. I strongly believe that I will create some of my best and most memorable game experiences ever this year and I am just so excited to get the ball rolling. This year will be my year to really prove and show just how far I have come in this indie game development journey of mine. Using all the knowledge and experience I gained throughout the years, 2015 will show the kind of quality games I can truly produce.

This is definitely an exciting time for me. For "Snowconesolid Productions". It will be my biggest year yet for sure and I plan on delivering top quality professionally polished game releases. I hope to create interactive experiences that everyone will enjoy playing. Experiences that will really be memorable.

Thanks for reading and once again I am extremely excited to start creating my newest game titles for the 2015 year. I am looking forward to sharing progress as I develop my new games here on the blog. So stay tuned for a lot more updates down the road!

Non-game apps, smaller ideas, android dev and rapid development

Hello once again everybody.

Today I want to talk a little bit about what I have been planning, what I have been working on and what types of projects I have coming up in the future.

More Android Dev:
I have been focusing on the android platform for the past couple game releases and plan to continue developing more and more apps and games for this platform. As I mentioned in a older blog post, the android platform and the mobile market have been a huge area of interest for me and I really enjoy creating applications that users can run off their favorite devices. Whether its their phones or tablets. It just feels nice to create something that runs on a portable device and can be taken anywhere with that user.

Another reason why I have recently been focusing on the android platform is because of the ease of access. Its different than web, pc, mac and linux platforms. What I mean is, once I create an app and publish it to the Google Play store or other app store, its really easy for tons of users to access it, download it and try it right away on their device. It feels more available to users. Having something published through the app store for mobile devices just seems more convenient than it would be if it was on a desktop type platform. There is a lot of other reasons why I am focusing on android now but I think I am starting to ramble now and I don't want to make this a long blog post. Bottom line is, I really love developing for the mobile platform now and see myself releasing many apps/games just for android in the future.

Non-Game Apps:
Speaking of apps and the mobile platform, recently I have been having a lot of ideas for a bunch of small apps I want to create. These new ideas are actually not necessarily game ideas but instead just various small interactive non game ideas. I have been creating games and only games for nearly four years now and I truly love doing it but I kind of want to start branching off from games and create non-game apps now. Just various ideas that I have that I think are really cool or would make really cool apps. I want to put the skills that I have acquired throughout these years creating games to use and try my hand in a different area of development.

What kind of non-game apps?
So I have a ton of ideas for a variety of non-game apps that I want to develop. There is really no specific way of explaining what type of app these ideas will be because these ideas vary from one another and each one could be described in its own way. But I guess that I could say that some of these non-game apps will be more like "toy apps", "novelty apps", "simulation apps", "random apps", "3d interactive apps", "interactive art", etc. They are just going to be these small, fun little ideas that I will pull out of my head and create in app form and then share with everyone.

What tools for development will you use?
Off course, I am going to continue using the unity game engine and blender3d. The same tools I have been using all these years. I think that the unity engine is a perfect tool for creating pretty much anything. Its not limited to games creation and already actually a lot of people have been using unity to also create non-game apps. Unity will always be my tool of choice when it comes to game development, app development, interactive development, etc.

On Rapid Development:
I have a lot of ideas and I want to pump out as much as I can in the fastest time. Through the experience and skills I have gained throughout these years creating games, 3d modeling, animating and publishing I have kind of adjusted, created my own workflow and became a fast efficient developer. Once you truly understand how to use the software and tools and spend years practicing everyday you naturally adjust, you learn how to do things faster and more professionally. I have also learned to down size projects. Keep them simple. They don't have to be some big complicated project that should take months to complete. They can be small and enjoyable. I never liked spending too much time working on one single project. I have done it before many times in the past with previous game projects. For example, "Hide-n-Seek Winter" one of my older games, was the biggest project I ever created so far. It took me four months of development to complete the entire game. And of course I am really proud of completing the game and finishing it and publishing it, part of me was really happy that it was finally over with. Four months of development on a single project is really long and a lot of work for one person. So now, I plan on spending as little time as possible creating my new games and apps. A week (7 days) will probably be the most. I plan on rapidly developing the app within a week time frame and publishing it the same week then moving onto the next idea. There might come a time where I release a new small app every week now and that is something I actually really look forward to doing.

Will you still create games?
No need to ask such a question. I will always create games. I love creating games and am very passionate about it. Just because I want to work on non game stuff now doesn't mean I won't make games anymore. It just means that I will be creating even more content plus games. I have a lot of non-game app ideas but also I have just as much or maybe even more small game ideas that I also want to create. Sometimes, I might even have moments where I am working on both a non-game app and a game app together at the same time!

So that is all for now. I am very very excited. I love developing and creating my ideas. Bring them to life and sharing them with the world. I look forward to showing what I have coming up and can't wait to get these ideas out there.

Thanks very much for reading. Stay tuned! More updates coming soon.