Birthday and a Creeper cake!

Happy Birthday to Darkness who turned 8675309 years old on October 6th. I won't mention exactly how old he is, but I found this very flattering, youthful photo of him.  He definitely doesn't look his age at all!

he wasn't even scared of the dinosaurs in the background

We love birthday cakes here at MMG.  This year I had a limited amount of time to come up with an idea and get it done before Darkness got home.  While it's not the prettiest cake in the world, it was recognizable.  It tasted delicious at least.  

Delicious food was had at Flaming Grill Cafe where we always have a great time, the food is awesome and lots of beers to choose from.  Some of us had 'normal' burgers, while others were brave and tried the kangaroo  and camel,  as well as deep fried gator bites. 

Speaking of beers, we were sad to discover that they no longer had Cocoa Mole Ale by New Belgium, which is described as being a spiced-up ale  with cocoa and chipotle peppers. So yummy!

We decided to try the pumpkin imperial stout, which must have been good, because we now can no longer remember what the name of it was or who it was by. Doh! It was great though, dark, tasted like fall with slight nutmeg and cinnamon flavors.

We were brave and tried American River Brewing Co.'s Incinerator which is a Habanero Pepper beer, tasty and spicy! Definitely one you want to drink on a cool night, because that one will warm you up.

So Happy Birthday to Darkness. Now get back to coding!

This blog has been brought to you by, 

Spooky  :)

Weird Al has nothing on me

I haven't posted in a while, and really have no news to report (Still getting prepped for the Oswald trailer...Soon, I promise).  After much deliberation, I decided that it would be a bad idea for me to sing for my blog (I like my readers, and don't want to hurt their ears.)  So, I'm just posting the lyrics instead.

My Avatar's A Girl

To the tune of Jessie's Girl

Yeah, Warcraft is a game

It's a game that I play most of the time

But lately people are askin' who I am in real life

Because my avatar's a girl and in real life I'm a guy

But she's easy on the eyes

And she's got a sexy body don't you know it

And maybe getting free stuff from male geeks isn't right

But you know my Avatar's a Girl

My Nightelf Avatar's a Girl

I play a woman in World of Warcraft

I play long hours in this game

And I have to look at SweetCheeks69 a lot

You know it is kind of dirty when she's dancing in the nude

I'd rather be playing Horde but Nightelves are just too cute

And she's easy on the eyes

And she's got a sexy body don't you know it

And maybe I fantasize while I'm playing late at night

But you know my Avatar's a Girl

My Hunter Avatar's a Girl

I play a woman in World of Warcaft

My Avatar's a Girl

My Ally Avatar's a Girl

That's right I play a woman

I play a woman in World of Warcraft

Then I'm runnin' with my guildies all the time

Wondering why they don't hit on me

I've been slutty and show my boobs all the time

Isn't that how we wish all girls would be

I tell ya

I play a woman in World of Warcraft

That's right my Avatar's a Girl

My Nightelf Avatar's a Girl

My Hunter Avatar's a Girl

I play a woman in World of Warcraft

My Avatar's a Girl

My Ally Avatar's a Girl

In game I always play a Girl

Transitioning into a great game

I finished the transition screen for Oswald's Chocolate Factory, and I think it actually looks pretty good!  

The actual in game transition is smooth and beautiful.  It was a steep learning curve, but I'm ready to start incorporating similar techniques in future games.

Speaking of future games.  I'm starting to give serious consideration to designing games for Steam.  It looks like a really good community (I've already started purchasing indie games that caught my eye there), and as I'm learning C# I think I'm ready to start working on a title.  I'm going to finish Oswald first, and I intend to work on one or more flash games while I work on my Steam title.  I'm really excited to start working with a new language and environment, though.

Labor Day is coming up.  Does anyone have any interesting plans?  I plan to be at work...on Labor Day...the irony is not lost on me.  Oh well...The downside of my day job.  Maybe when I get home from work, I will have a BBQ or one of the other many activities that people do on national holidays.  Maybe I will just do some work on my games instead.  :D

Anyway.  Just felt like giving an update on Oswald, and ranting a little bit.  *BIG HUGS* for everyone. 

Knowledge Level Up!

I attended another class on AS3 today, and I can't even begin to show my excitement about all the wonderful things that I have learned.

Let me start by giving a little background about me.  I haven't done any kind of real programming (I don't count Access and Excel as real programming) for almost 20 years.  At that time, I was doing most of my work in C.  Let me be clear, that is C, not C++ or C# (They didn't really exist back then).  Before that my programming experience was in Basic and LOGO.  None of these programming languages were OOP (LOGO was close, but not really the same thing).  With this in mind, my approach to AS3 has been a little backwards.  I've been creating classes, and communicating between them, but I never really utilized the mechanics that make an OOP worth learning.

Today's class focused elusively on what an OOP is, and how to make programs written in AS3 use the power that this style of language makes available.  It was a really fun and really educational experience.  I would highly recommend any similar classes available to any of my readers.  If you happen to be in the Sacramento area, check out the Meetup and the upcoming events.  It is a great community, and even my short time with them has offered me resources that I could not put a price on.

http://www.meetup.com/gamedeveloper/ 

Of course, I know that a lot of my readers are eager to hear about the progress of my next game, Oswald's Chocolate Factory.  It's been slow moving these past couple of weeks.  My work away from my games has been...well...work, and my time at home has kind of been taken up with keep up the home.  I should have some new screenshots sometime next week, and I'm hoping to have a preview video sometime the week after that.

Learning is FunDamental

Went to a class Sunday that was hosted by the Sacramento Game Development Meetup.  It was lots of fun, and I learned all sorts of new things that I will be using to make my games even better :)

I've also started going through some online tutorials on C# and XNA.  I'm still working on Oswald's Chocolate Factory, and should have it ready for Beta sometime next month.  I've been having so much fun learning, that I decided to make a day of it today.

Sometime in the next week or so, I should have some more screenshots from Oswald's Chocolate factory.  I've run into some interesting challenges, but I'm having lots of fun working through them! :)  

What happens when I have a sugar high

I-write-a-new-game-that-has-gnomes-and-gremlins-and-chocolate-and-trucks-and-tubes-and-kids-and *pant* *pant* *pant* no-butterflies-or-faeries-but-they-are-mentioned-on-the-pause-screen! 

Okay, breathing again.

Anyways,this is my touching tale of programming and chocolate.  

I love Easter chocolate.  Not Cadbury, or Lindt, or Ghirardelli, but the really cheap crispy hollow bunnies.  Right after Easter, I buy them in bulk (They are usually 50% off...GLEE).  I store them in the freezer, and snack on them lightly when I need a little sugar in my system.

The night I started working on Oswald's chocolate factory, I ate three boxes of mini bunny crisps.  They say they are mini, but  a box is like eating two chocolate bunnies.  I think I must have been majorly buzzing, because the game I was looking at the next morning (I really don't remember most of the work that night) looked like something that Hunter S. Thompson dreamed up.

I've been polishing it since, and am happy with where it is going.



I was hoping to have it done by the end of this month (I was also hoping to do a bit more blogging than normal this month...Sorry everyone), but I've been up to my eyeballs with Alyshia.  I would like to thank everyone who has posted comments on Kongregate.  Some people would play the game, get upset with something that didn't work, and walk away.  You guys gave me the opportunity to fix my mistakes, and improve on the initial concept of the game.  *hugs* for all of you :)

Faerie Princess Alyshia update planned

This week, I'm going to start working on the update for Faerie Princess Alyshia.  I've gotten a lot of good feedback from the community, and plan to take those suggestions to heart in this first official update.  Some of the updates planned include:

• Making butterfly and flower styles purchasable with nectar.
• Allowing players to change the style of individual flowers and butterflies.
• Allowing players to move flowers around.
• Address the bug where butterflies sometimes spawn off the screen and take several minutes to join the family.
• Tweaking the flower blooming time so that more flowers are available for butterflies.

I think these updates are going to be the bulk of what I do in this next patch, but I'm interested in hearing from everyone what they would like to see in the future.  If anyone would like to make a comment on this post about what they would like to see in future updates, all ideas will be considered.

In other news, we have broken 1,000 plays for Faerie Princess Alyshia.  To be honest, I was expecting to see about that much for the life of the game.  I never really thought we would be there in just over one week!  Thanks to everyone who has enjoyed the game, and I'm going to do my best to make the game even more enjoyable.

Where the magic happens

Faerie Princesses and candy making Gnomes don't grow on trees...Well...Maybe they do, but we make them to star in our video games.  On this end, we kind of thought (and I'm not using the royal We this time) that all of you might like a little look behind the scenes of Megan Morgan Games.  

So.  Without further adieu.  The office:

Magical Shelf of Inspirations

When we dream, we dream of electric sheep.  Or maybe we dream about Homer Simpson and the Scooby Gang.  Any way it goes, this shelf embodies the little things that bring us here at Megan Morgan Games little moments of joy and happiness.  

Spooky's Desk

This is where Spooky lives.  Well, she lives in the whole house, but this is where she works.  If I can draw your attention to the right, you will notice a couple of really, really, really, really (1,2,3,4) really, creepy books.  And yes, that is a weird book about mushrooms next to the ventriloquism book.

Darkness' Current Game Board

We like marker boards.  There are several of them around the office.  This one is where Darkness keeps track of what needs to be done in his current project.  The notes in this picture reference the work he is doing on Oswald's Chocolate Factory.  You may notice the coffee stain on his flow chart.  At any given time, Darkness drinks enough coffee to personally finance the country of Columbia.

Modular Dungeon Pieces

Everyone needs a hobby.  We at Megan Morgan Games say "Why have just one?"  Darkness likes to make fantasy architectural models.  This picture shows a few pieces that he made for a simplified version of D&D that he plays with the kids.  The two minis were hand painted by Darkness and are the characters that are played in the game (The kids picked them out themselves).

The Stargate

Both Spooky and Darkness enjoy various forms of needlework.  The Stargate is a piece that Spooky made for Darkness for his birthday.  There really is no place like home.  As a side note, she also made an awesome Salad Fingers doll [Pictured on Darkness' Current Game Board].

The Geek Shelf

If your geeky and you know it clap your Bigby's Floating Hands.  Darkness plays D&D, he loves Star Wars, and reads Dean Koontz and Brian Lumley.  There are two more shelves above these that contain our Stephen King books, our minis shelf, and (for some strange reason) a cactus shot glass.

Oswald's Chocolate Factory

I've begun work on my next title, Oswald's Chocolate Factory.  It is already proving to be a fun and challenging project.  I've spent the better part of the day working out the movement mechanics for the game.  A great deal more trial and error than it should be, but the final result is extremely promising:

Still needs a little bit of tweaking when the chocolate falls off the ends of the belt, but it is coming along quite nicely.

In other news, I am blown away by how much action Faerie Princess Alyshia has gotten since it's launch.  As of the time that I am typing this, I have gotten 248 plays on Kongregate, with one player already holding a score of over 33,000!  Once I get to a good stable point with Oswald, I'm going to revisit Alyshia and see what I can't do about making the game even better.

If you haven't checked out Faerie Princess Alyshia, be sure to head over to Kongregate and play.  While you are there, be certain to rate the game, and feel free to post any comments/questions/criticisms/love notes you might want to leave for me. You are all awesome.  I just can't say that enough.

First game, Faerie Princess Alyshia is live!

Faerie Princess Alyshia is live!  It's nothing spectacular to be sure, but I am really proud of it.  It has been a nearly two months of work, most of that being the hand drawn graphics.  I've also learned a great deal that I will be using to make future titles even better!

Almost there

I'm working on some final bug fixes, and then I'm going to pass Faerie Princess Alyshia (new name for Faerie Princess Idler) on to my testers.  I figure a week should be adequate to test the game, and will give me time to plug the appropriate APIs in.

The open story sequence has been fun to work on.  I finally decided to go with my parchment background and use some edge faded images to accentuate the text.  The images aren't extremely impressive, but I think they get the idea across.

You may notice that there is a huge transparent border around the image.  It was the only way I could insure a clean fade into the parchment background.  If the border was smaller it seemed to leave a flash-line that was very unattractive...

The current bug is driving me nuts, but I think I'll have it fixed before I go to bed tonight.  It seems that when I tell the program to splice the array, it is leaving a null value in the spot that is being spliced.  It only seems to do this with my clouds, and not with my bubbles (Both use the same routine).  Anyway.  I'm sure I'll get it figured out.

With any luck.  You should be able to look forward to seeing Faerie Princess Alyshia next weekend!

Happy early 4th of July

I'll be working tomorrow (my corporate job), so I won't have time to post.  I didn't want to miss the opportunity to wish you all a very happy and safe 4th of July (for those of you that celebrate).
Games are coming along slowly, but surely.  I'm on schedule to release the Faerie Princess Idler by the end of this month.  It means learning how to incorporate gaming site API into my programs, but it shouldn't be that hard (knock on wood).
For those of you who didn't know, Megan Morgan Games is named after the two most important women in my life, my daughters.  The youngest of my daughters lives close by, however my oldest daughter lives clear across the country, so we stay in touch primarily through text messaging.  She gave me a bit of an accidental shocker yesterday when we were texting back and forth. "Mind if we come over for a bit?" Needless to say I wasn't expecting my daughter from across the country to show up at my doorstep in the middle of the day. I might have had a minor heart attack.   But,  I guess her fiance saw "Dad" on the cell phone and thought he was texting his father, and got me instead.   My family is full of practical jokers, myself included, but I really have to give props to my kid's fiance for getting one over on me without even trying...lol
Anyway.  Enough of my [sadly sober] rantings for one evening.  This weekend I hope to have some more screen shots of the Faerie Princess Idler for you :)

Lots of stuff happens when I forget to post for a while

Daniel has me stumped.  I'm working on the dungeon code for the game, and for some reason the hero sprite is not where he looks like he is on the dungeon map.  I can't really figure out where he is.  Something funky going on with the camera, I believe.  I'll get it figured out.  I'm stubborn like that :D

Faerie Princess Idler is coming along swimmingly.  I should be ready for Beta this weekend, and hopefully have all the graphics ironed out and polished in 3-4 weeks.  It's been a lot of heavy graphical work, especially for an idler, but I think you will agree that the final result is worth the effort:

"Well that's all fine and good," I hear you say, "but didn't you get a new developer.  What's he doing?"

Glad you asked.  After I get done posting this, I'm going to post a synopsis for Heavy Metal Butterfly.  It promises to be a unique combination of Galaga style shooter, side scrolling shooter, and platform game...With plot!  

Long and short, there is lots of excitement going on right now at Megan Morgan Games.  I can't promise that my posts will come more frequently, but I will do my best to keep everyone posted with the development developments as they develop.

Time for something cute!

I decided to take a short break from my work on Daniel the Hero, to create something light and fluffy.  The final decision that I made was that I was going to make some kind of idler.  Problem is, I've played lots of idlers and I didn't want to make a game just like those.  So prepare yourselves for Faerie Princess Idler!

All the code is pretty much done.  I have a cutscene to program, but that's about it.  Where the majority of the work in this game is going to go is in the graphics.  I have rough placemarker graphics in there right now, but I'm carefully working on replacing those with far more vivid graphics.  It's a lot of fun, and hopefully will allow me to approach Daniel with a fresh new outlook.

A somewhat pixelated example of one of the graphics we will be seeing in the new title.  Excitement!

P.S. - I had almost forgotten about animated GIFs.  They don't look any better after 20 years...lol

Forward in reverse

Daniel The Hero RPG. 

I'm just about done with the inventory system.  Enough to call it complete.  I have to add a few more player variables to make the potions work, but everything shows up and everything equips.  I'll call it 90% done, and leave the last 10% for later.

To that end, I decided to start working on the code for the dungeon itself.  Needless to say, there has been much screaming and gnashing of teeth.  The random dungeon generator was completed before I started seriously working on this project.  I figure, if I couldn't get that to work, I didn't want to waste my time on the rest of the code.

Maybe I was tired, maybe I was too sober.  Either way, I was making some really simple math mistakes, that somehow I kept missing when I looked through and traced the code.  Long story short, it works now.  You can't move around, and there is no loot or monsters yet, but there is a dungeon.  I'll post some more screenshots when it gets more interactive :)

On a side note, I've decided not to forgo coding the crafting system and limited dungeon visibility for the time being.  I'm going to see how the game looks with stores and full visibility.  If it looks like it needs the crafting or limited visibility, I'll code them at that time.  For the time being, though, I'm taking them off the To Do list.

New member!

We have brought on a second developer!  Okay, he's family, and isn't getting paid, but I'm still excited to have a second person on board designing and developing software.  He's supposed to be sending me a bio soon so that we can add it to the "About" page, and he's already begun work on what promises to be a very exciting game.  As soon as he has a working title, I will add it to the "Games" page, and try to get some screenshots for the blog.

Good times.  Good times.

Also, I am almost finished with the inventory system in Daniel the Hero.  I have some cleaning up to do, and the "Use" and "Equip" buttons don't do anything yet, but it is looking very promising.

Hopefully this weekend I will have some more screenshots to show off, and possibly will be able to begin work on the actual dungeon :D

Inventory woes and whoas

It's slow work, but the inventory interface is coming along in Daniel the Hero.  It would probably go faster, but I want to have little graphics and descriptions of each item (Which is quite a few) in the game.  So far all the food is done, but there are only ten possible food items.  I'm about a fifth of the way through potions.  Tomorrow is my day off, so I hope to get a nice chunk of the rest of the items out of the way.

This of course means that there is no in game screenshots ready to show, but did anyone know that I know how to crochet?

I made these a couple of years ago.  I'm certain everyone recognizes who they are, but just in case, Cait Sith is on the left and Moogle is on the right.  They both stand at about 2-1/2' tall and each took about 5 skeens of yarn.  I guess I'm kind of obsessive in everything I do, right? ;)

Character creation and Statistics

                                 

So I finished character creation in Daniel the Hero:

                                 

As you may notice, there are a few skills there to choose from.  The game is going to be skill based.  Meaning that the more you swing a sword, the better you get at it.  The more you cast a spell, the better you get at it.  And so on.  Attributes (On the right) also play a part in how well you use your skills, but they are increased as you gain experience levels.

Having this process finished meant that I could finish the Statistics window:

You may notice that all those skills from character creation aren't there.  You can only see skills that have at least one level.  You still gain skill experience using skills that have no levels, but they won't show up on the Statistics screen.  Mainly just to keep the screen clean and easy to read.

Phew!  That was a lot of work.  Next up is making it so that you can actually equip your weapons and armor, which means laying out some rudimentary combat equations.  Hopefully tomorrow, but definitely no later than Friday. 

Games have a lot of graphics

So....In the past couple of days I have worked (Before and after my full time job) on more graphics for the game Daniel the Hero.  Right now I'm still working on the inventory graphics, but I think I'm just about done with them.  Then I get to work on the interface windows for crafting, and finally get the I/O system in place.  I've never done anything in Flash before, let alone something that creates save files, so this should be interesting.  Be prepared for drunken rants ;)

For those interested, I have a clip of some of the armor that I've finished.  I realized that my weapons post didn't really show much, so this one is Supersized!

Weapons and Armor

Hand...hurts...

Come to find out that 540 weapon sprites, all painstakingly drawn pixel by pixel, is actually kinda like work.

Now, you may notice that they all look almost exactly the same.  I did copy and paste the forms and then painted over them with the "Material" color.  The idea is that each weapon has stats that will be effected by the material that they are made from.  The same with armor.  Potions will work a little differently, where there will be "levels" of potions all having the same effect but with increased efficiency.  Magic, I'm still up in the air on.  I know that there will be crystals that are used to cast spells, but I still don't really know how you make the spells more powerful.  A dilemma for another evening, I do believe.

Village Creation

After much drinking and coding and drawing I finally have a working village for Daniel the Hero.  I still need to draw and code the crafting interfaces, but I'm really excited that I can move around the village and experience the tutorial (I can't save yet, so I HAVE to experience the tutorial).  Here's a screenshot of what is done so far.

Yeah.  The graphics are a little rough, but hey.  It's my first game, and it works!  I think I'm going to drink to celebrate.  Yay me!