Something New!

     Hello everyone, it is update time. I recently had an idea for a new game project and have already began to work on it. It is not related to Samer Hills, but is something entirely new. I mentioned last month that I was going to be taking a break from that (Samer Hills) project for a while. I also mentioned that I might even have a different new game out before I release Samer Hills. Judging by how things are going, I will most likely stick to what I said and have a new game out. Truth is, ever since I created a early demo build of Samer Hills and posted the campaign to Steam GreenLight, I have not worked on it at all. Not since that time at least. Not really sure when I will go back to that project, but it might not be for a while. I wanna work on my other ideas right now. 

Here is some early wip screens of something new I am working on. Nothing crazy going on. Just screens of house room type scene. 

     The game will feature Virtual Snowconesolid (My new persona gimmick I'm going with).

     As for Samer Hills, I might revisit it in the future, maybe even completely re-work it as a completely different project from what I had originally planned. Looking forward to sharing more on all my projects! 

Honestly, one of my big goals is to make many games. I don't just want to stick to one big project or become known for one thing. Like just the guy who made Potato Thriller for example. No. I want to make lots and lots and lots of games! I want to keep creating forever! 

New GAMES and content coming soon. I PROMISE! 

Hello! I'm back.

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the lack of updates. Last time I posted was after submitting my entry for the LD30 competition. Its been over a whole month since my last post! Anyway, that is going to change because I am back once again and have a lot of projects planned for the future. Mainly mobile game projects, but this is talk for a different blog post. For now, I just want to say hello to everyone and let you all know that I am still here and still creating games and 3d stuff and all that other good stuff! (I mean, if there is anyone out there who reads my blog and is interested in what I do of course).

Although I did not post in over a month, I did create something not too long ago actually. I didn't want to get rusty with my game dev skills. Around the beginning of September, I created  a really small project I call "Hello". This is not really much of a game. It was more of just a small weekend project I did for fun. It is a game I use to kind of show of my game dev skills and introduce my self as a developer. If you remember a long time ago I created a small "Welcome to the Blog" project that welcomes people to my blog. This "Hello" project is similar to that.

Anyway, In this extremely short game, you explore a small city with trees and chirping birds and must collect the letters to spell out the word "Hello". After that the game ends.  It is "Hello", nothing more and nothing less.

PLAY IT HERE (Webplayer)

You can also download an android version of the game here: Hello - Android

Controls: Click the screen to move the character around. (Same for touch screen controls)


ScreenShots:

That's all for now. Once again, it's not really much of a game or big project but it is evidence that I am still here :)

So Hello everyone again! I am glad to be back. Stay tuned for my upcoming blog post. As I mentioned earlier, I have a lot of projects planned that I want to get working on.

Thanks for reading. More soon.

Escape Ocean Zero Development

    

      Hey everyone. I apologize for the delay in updates. My intention was to post a new update sooner than this but then I got busy with other things. However, I am picking things up again and I have been working on my next game project, which I call "Escape Ocean Zero". I announced Escape Ocean Zero earlier this month (May 12th to be exact) but really have not given much info about it. So today I want to talk a little bit about it and where its going with its development.

First, I just want to say that I have actually been making really good progress on my new game. I already have created a whole bunch of different 3d game assets/props, I have already finished some playable levels, controls are working, ammo system is in, main character is ready, gameplay mechanics working, implemented sound effects, etc. So I have built up major parts of the game already in a pretty decent amount of time I would say.

One of my biggest goals with this specific project is to create a fun playable complete game in very little time. My initial intention was to have the entire game finished by the end of this month but then I got distracted by other non -game dev things and now I am a little behind. However, now I am back and am rapidly developing this game. My new goal is to have this game complete by the end of June or earlier. I strongly believe that I will have the project complete by the deadline I have set for myself.

In a future post I plan to get into more about the actual game, what its about, maybe have a playable demo, etc. For now though, I can't really explain it because just like all my game projects, I change a lot of things throughout the development cycle. I try an idea I originally thought of and then later when I actually put it in the game I decided that maybe I don't want to do this and so I end up making changes and so on. Its a common process to go through in game dev. So for now I am still kind of forming the game until I get it in the shape that I am satisfied with. For now I am just going show you a bunch of screenshots from the games development I took while creating it. If you follow me on twitter or seen me on the unity forums you might have already seen these screenshots but for those of you who haven't here you go!

Just keep in mind that these are not screenshots from the final game, they are only development screenshots. Anyway, that's all for now. I will go into further detail about the game later on in upcoming posts. Expect updates here on the blog soon because once again I am rapidly developing this one. I have a really good feeling about this project and am really enjoying creating it.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned. More is on the way.

What I have been working on (Announcing my next game project!)

   

 Sorry for the lack of updates. I know it has been a couple weeks since my last post. Of course while I was away from the blog I have been working on something new. My next game project actually. If you follow my twitter you may have seen me post various screenshot over the past couple days.

I'm just going to get into it right away. I would like to announce "Escape Ocean Zero" 

Or at least that is what I call my new game project. Who knows I might change the name later down the road. Anyway the title is not important right now.

It is still very early in development so I won't get into too much details about the project right now (I don't have very much to show anyway) so I will save that for a later post.

I did however already create and animate the main character and even built a small simple prototype that you could play right now in your web browser (Its nothing fancy though.)

Play it here (Link)

So, in this game you run around and shoot stuff with your beach ball cannon. (A gun that shoots out beach balls) Off topic: I do believe that my game will be the first game ever to feature such a type of weapon.

The Beach Ball Cannon: A toy looking gun that fires beach balls...

You play as "Beach ball shooter", the main character of my next game. I actually created this guy a little over a week ago.

Anyway, going to leave off with this and keep the post short. I will have a lot more updates and info on my next project down the road. I am looking forward to showing off some of the actual levels and other characters, etc later on so stay tuned!

I do plan on rapidly developing this game and finishing it fast (maybe like a one month time frame or so). Of course I am also going to really polish it up as well. I already think this might be my best looking game so far (graphically)

Summer is coming up and I think my new project is perfect for it.

Almond-Hill on hold, new Halloween project announcement

     It feels like it has been a long time since I posted any updates here on the blog. Days just fly by. Anyway, as the title says, I am going to put the game project I have been working on since summer break "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow" on hold during the month of October. Do not worry, I am not canceling it and I did not loose interest in finishing it. It is nothing like that at all. This is something I have been planning on doing for some time now actually. I have been hard at work on that project working on it a little bit each day. I know I did not post much updates on my blog here but if you have been following my work in progress thread over at the unity forums you will see how much progress as well as new changes I have made since I last posted here.  So I have been making great progress on that project and I will not let all that work go to waste. I will resume working on Almond-Hill after October. Almond-Hill Silent Meow is a much larger project, it will need a lot more time to complete.

Why stop working on it during October you ask? Well, I love October. Everything about it. The weather, the colorful leaves, etc. Most importantly Halloween, my personal favorite holiday. Anyway, last year was the first time I created and released a quick short horror game for Halloween (The original Almond-Hill game I made). I had a lot of fun working on a project like that and ever since, I have decided to make it a personal tradition of mine to create a short horror game every year and have it finished and released around Halloween. So today, I am announcing a new short horror game project that I will work on and challenge myself to have complete by the end of the month. Since it is October 1st I will start working on it real soon. In other words I really do not have anything to show at the moment. However, be sure to check back often as I will start making progress and posting updates on the project. 

Anyway, that is all the news I have for now. I hope you look forward to see what Halloween short I have planned out and once again I will continue working on Almond-Hill after this month. In the meantime check out my more recent updates for that project over here on unity's forums Almond-Hill Development thread

and enjoy this final in game screenshot I took from Almond-Hill before I stopped working on it.

Big changes being made to Almond-Hill Silent Meow, stealth gameplay

     Hey everyone. Just as the title suggests, I am making some major changes to my current horror game project. It's no surprise that I am making even more major changes to the game. I have been making "major changes" to the game ever since I started the project. But of course this is something completely normal to do during the development time of any game project. For me, I find it really interesting to look back at how the game was when it first started in its development phase to see how much has changed as more progress is made over time. At this point, I think I have made changes to almost everything in the game. I will admit, the game I am working on now is not even close to the original vision I had for it when I first started. But this is better, I like what I have planned for this project and I think all these changes I am making are for the better.

Anyway, enough rambling. Let me talk about the actual changes I have decided to make. If you are following my work in progress thread over at the unity forums right here  you might have already read my latest update on the game and know the changes I am making but if you did not, I am going to talk about them right here.

Remember that demo I released a couple weeks ago? (In the blog post below this one). Well, that part of the game never happened. I am completely removing that part of the game I released as a demo because it no longer fits in with the games new plot I have come up with. If you played the demo you know that the character Leon Coffeebean is killed by this mysterious masked villain who is after Almond the cat. This was suppose to be the opening that starts the game off and begins the main story. Now with the changes I have decided to make, none of that stuff ever happened. I am actually removing the main villain character completely from the game because there is no longer a main villain. (The masked man that kills Leon in the demo)

Leon Coffeebean is never murdered. As a matter of fact, Leon Coffeebean now has probably one of the most important roles in the game and its new plot.

The new plot:
Leon Coffeebean teams up with Detective Pekoe to search for his lost cat Almond. Leon Coffeebean guides Detective Pekoe (you the player) to various places around the town of Almond-Hill. The places Leon takes Detective Pekoe are places Leon believes his cat Almond may have went to. However, the reason Leon guides Detective Pekoe to check out these places instead of checking them out himself is because Leon is afraid to enter any of these places himself. This is the reason why he asks Detective Pekoe to help him out.

Ok, enough talk about game changes. Now I will discuss what you can expect from gameplay.

When making a game I realized almost nothing ever goes as planned. You come up with this idea and then you say I am going to put this in my game. That is not how it works. Well for me at least it does not work like that. I try putting in what I planned at first and then, while I am actually creating the level or putting it together I do other things. I come up with different ideas and change things. I will do this instead of what I originally thought of. Anyway, this is what happened to me when I was working on a level yesterday. I was doing something I was planning on doing then I don't know what happened and all of the the sudden I was trying to work out stealth game mechanics. And this is a good thing, I think because I like the new ideas I thought of.

Gameplay and Stealth
So with all that said, there is going to be this stealth element added into the game. It is a horror stealth game but at the same time unique where it doesn't feel like a full out stealth game because it has other things mixed in with it. Anyway, to add in this stealth type gameplay I am working on new characters/enemies. I will try and create different enemies with different abilities for each level to keep the game fresh throughout. Earlier today I revealed the first new character/enemy that you will encounter early on in the game.

This is Patrol Doll

She is this ghostly character that shoots out these yellow beams of light from her eyes. These yellow beams represent her line of sight and if you are in her line of sight during the game you will be sent to a room called "The Feeding Room". When in this room you have ten seconds to find an exit or else a mysterious beast will feast on you. There is usually more than one patrol doll scouting the area. There is no way to defeat this character so the best thing to do is avoid her by sneaking past.


That is all I have for today's post. I think Almond-Hill is turning out great despite all the changes I am making and I can't wait to show even more in the future.

New main character, First demo coming tomorrow

Hey there everyone!

For once here is an update that isn't weeks after the last one. As I said in my previous post and in my WIP thread on the unity forums, there is going to be a new main character for Almond-Hill Silent Meow. Today I was able to finish the new main character so its reveal time!

Here is the new main character for Almond-Hill : Silent Meow

This is Special detective Pekoe Tea Leaf. Detective Pekoe has been sent to the town of Almond-Hill to investigate a recent murder and the mysterious town itself. He might not be the best agent for this job but he has style and gets things done. The Agency did not give Detective pekoe a handgun because he has terrible aiming and failed the target shooting test. But all in all, he is a good at what he does. Also, he prefers tea over coffee.

And he has blue hair because I wanted to make a game where the main character has light blue cool blue hair.

I hope you are excited to play as detective Pekoe in the game.

Speaking of playing, I also want to say that I will be releasing the first demo of Almond-Hill : Silent Meow tomorrow. The demo I will be putting up is the beginning/opening of the game. In the beginning of the game you play as Leon Coffeebean so don't expect to play as detective Pekoe tomorrow. But don't worry, he comes into the game later on. He is the new main character after all.

Anyway, I am excited to have something playable out soon and hope to hear some feedback.
See ya tomorrow on the blog!

Expanding the blog, small welcome game and Unity Playmaker

Hello everyone.

Once again sorry for the lack of blog posts but I have some good news and hopefully starting soon I will  be more active here on the blog once again.

As many of you already know by now, the reason I have been barley posting on the blog is because ever since I released "Revolver Finger" for android I took a huge break from working on anymore of my game projects and started to focus on improving my skills. Mostly my 3d art skills because I want to deliver much better quality games from now on. I believe I have greatly improved in many areas since my last game release and think its almost time to get back to work. I have been planning on starting my next game project soon. I don't know when yet, but plan on getting back to developing games sometime in May. Anyway, wont say anything about my next game right now, that's kind of for a different post.

First, before I get back into developing more games, I think this blog needs a little change. So I have been planning on redesigning it a little bit and expanding it. I will be adding some new sections to it soon.One of the new sections that I am going to be adding to this blog is an all new "Welcome" page. This brings me to the next thing I was going to say.

I am going to create a welcome page in a very different way than most welcome pages. I am putting together a very small game project that will be on this welcome page. This will not be a game that is meant to be played for the purposes of playing a game or a game with replay-ability, it is going to be an extremely small game (a single short level, maybe about 1 - 2 mins long) that welcomes users to my blog and introduces me the developer. So its more of a game for promoting my blog. It is an interactive way for welcoming site visitors. So this small game will be on the welcome page and once the user reaches the end of that very short level it will open up my actual blog. Off course users will have the option to skip the whole welcome thing entirely and just go straight to my blog. I understand it would be annoying to have to play that welcome game over each time. But yeah, you may have seen similar ideas like this on sites where they have maybe a short video play or some interactive thing before it takes you to their website.

It will be just a very small, basic super mario inspired platform level. But don't expect too much from it because once again, this is not really a game project, it is just a short single level game for introducing the blog on the welcome page. Its just a small little feature I am adding that is part of the blogs "expansion". So at the moment that is what I am working on. It does not really count as a game project but more of a nice small practice project and also promotional project. Thats how I see it.

Here is some WIP screen shots: This is just a quick prototype version I put together, I created some real simple assets that are very super mario 3d land inspired as you can tell. :)
But yeah, these are not screens from the final build.

Also, here is my most recent original character I created. This will be the character you play as in the very small welcome project.

So what about actually making the next true "Samer Khatib" aka Snowconesolid game?
Ok, so after I change up the blog a bit, redesign/ tweek it a little to look better and create that welcome project I will probably then be ready to once again start working on my next true big game project. So as I said a little earlier, I plan on going back to developing games sometime in May, most likely near the end or half way through May. Well see. Maybe I might start earlier. Depends on how things go for me.

One final piece of news I want to put out there is from now on for all my future game projects I will most likely be using the popular Unity add-on/tool "PlayMaker" for developing all of my games. I just recently bought it from Unity's asset store and think its great. I am still new to it and learning how to use it but have already played around with it and so far I am impressed. For those of you who use unity you may have heard of or also use playmaker for your development. It is actually one of the most popular add-ons for unity and a lot of unity developers use it. For those of you who have never heard of it let me tell you about it. Pretty much it is a visual scripting tool. It allows you to build a game using these nodes. So pretty much you don't need you write a single line of code. I think this is a very good alternative way for developing games. If you have ever used blender's game engine, it is similar to playmaker. Blender's game engine uses logic blocks.

So why use playmaker for development?
There is a whole bunch of advantages of developing a game with playmaker instead of coding up the entire project.

First of all you save a lot more time on developing the actual game. I like coding and all but at times it is extremely time consuming and can be tedious to type lines and lines of code. I know first hand because I have three years of programming experience and coded all of my previous projects.  Playmaker allows you to rapidly develop your games saving a lot more time. This is actually the most important benefit of using playmaker over coding and is a major reasons as to why I decided to make it part of my workflow for developing games. Now, I can spend all that extra time focusing more on the art side of the game.
As a solo indie game developer, time is the most important thing because you do not have a team. You don't have some one to work on the art or the animations, the programming, etc. You need to create everything yourself and that takes up an extremely great amount of time. With Playmaker however, you can now save a ton of time you would of spent on typing lines of code and use it for something else.

Don't get the wrong idea now, I am making it sound like playmaker just magically makes the game for you. Its still programming in some way, but just visual node based programming. But yes, it does make things a lot easier and quicker.

You would think that people who buy playmaker are people who do not know how to code at all. This is not true. Actually a lot of programmers like using playmaker. If you have playmaker and know how to actually code than playmaker is a hundred times more of a powerful tool because you can code in your own custom actions for use with playmaker. I definitely plan on coding in my own custom playmaker actions for my future projects. So say for example I needed to create some kind of vehicle movement for a simulator of some sorts but playmaker's library does not have such an action. Since I know how to code, I can just write my own custom action and then add it to playmakers library so I can use it as a node whenever I want. I believe that visual programming is the future of coding. Have to keep up with the times. Although I know a lot of programmers will disagree with me.

If you are a solo dev or with a team and use unity I highly recommend using playmaker for your development. Whether you don't know how to code or are an programming pro, playmaker is an excellent tool for any skill level and is extremely effective for rapid development.

Anyway, thats all I have for now. Sorry for the huge blog post but I had a lot of things to share this time since I am not posting here as often. I look forward to getting back to developing games again real soon and hope to have some great releases this year.

Still Here

Hey everyone.

Sorry for the lack of updates/blog post. My last post was February 16th and I mentioned that I would be taking the time off from working on anymore game projects and spending it to focus on improving my skills in game development so when I do start my next project it will much more polished.

I have been mostly focusing on improving my 3d modeling/ art skills and if you have been checking out my deviantart page or my posts on the unity forums you might have already seen a lot of my newer 3d models.

I have been training and practicing almost everyday and I have learned a lot more and improved greatly in 3d modeling. I like to look back at my older models and say "wow, that looks like crap compared to my newer ones". Here is some of my recent work: (Check out my deviantart page for more)

A low poly human character with a mustache!

Zelda characters remade:

 

I thought it would be really good modeling practice to remake some of the n64 models they used in the n64 zelda games because you can focus a lot on deciding how that model can be improved or re imagine how it would look like if it was to be created today for more modern games. I had a lot of fun making these, especially the Wolfos character (which was the most challenging one to make).

Anyway, that's what I have been up to for the past couple weeks. I have made lots of improvements but there is also still a lot more I need to learn. So for the time, I will continue to focus on improving my skills further before I jump into my next game project.

However, I do want to say that I have been planning what my next game project will be for a while now but, thats for a future post. I don't want to jump into it and rush it like my previous projects. When the time is right I will start working on it. I am thinking maybe sometime by summer? Perhaps earlier, but not at the moment.

So just stay tuned until then.

Also, before I go, in my last post I mentioned during the time I spend training/improving I might release some small prototype/ demonstration projects. So I was thinking maybe I will create a little virtual museum with unity that you can walk around in that has my recent works. Ill try and put that together sometime and get it on the blog.