Thank you! (Patreon)

So, hey, here it is, October 2017. As many of you know, I lost my home in August, and I've been living with family for the time being. Things aren't great right now, to put it mildly.

Just sent off another build of Game One to a publisher, hoping to find funding for that. My main worry is that our art isn't at a high enough quality to get publisher or crowdfunding attention. We lost our animator to other gigs. It's been stressful, but we're making progress. I've got the engine open right now; I'm working on a level called Conquistador.

A flurry of things happened. The short version is that I'm gonna need dental implants, and it's like $25k, all told. Had a birthday too--I'm 29 now, and I can't believe I made it this far. Putting up with family has been difficult; they're going through my stuff, lecturing me whenever they see me, trying to get me to spend money I don't have (I ended the month with $15) on doctors out of state. Even took my car apart because of a crack on my bumper, which means I can't go anywhere. Crazy stuff, and I'm stressed to the point where I really need some kind of relief, but other than you all, I don't have any. One foot forward at a time. I'm doing my best. 

I'm ramping up the writing efforts; posted a piece on Mass Effect Andromeda on Stomp for ya'll, working on pieces on my complicated feelings about Prey and the curious and fascinating Receiver right now. Still down for requests, still occasionally streaming RE4, for those of you that requested it. A Dishonored 2 piece should hit Kotaku soon, and I'm looking for other outlets to freelance with.

Where's Game One at right now? Well, it's fully playable; we can connect as many players as we'd like--I think we've had 8 people online at most at a given time--on our map, we can run through a few waves of enemies, shooting them with the three guns we have in the game. We've got three or four enemy types, but they're not where I want them to be yet, in part because our guys haven't implemented the visual redesigns from my amazing friend Pat Fox.

There's a lot to learn; as I was tweaking the gun power, I found out that the animations don't feel strong enough, but we lost our animator, so I'm not quite sure what to do. Been thinking about trying to learn animation myself, maybe.

Honestly, we're pretty close to where I want to be for a Kickstarter. Cameron, our genius programmer, just implemented the drop pods I asked him for, so enemy squads come crashing down from the sky, rather than popping out of closets.

I've been looking a lot at Halo's combat design; as you probably know, Halo's a favorite of mine, and Bungie developed this idea of using primal games in their shooter. Hunters play Tag with you, Grunts like to play Hide and Seek, and so on. It's a subject I'd like to write about soon, but it's also informing the way I design G1's AI.

Speaking of AI, I rebalanced one of our enemies. Initially, I created this guy who was supposed to function more like a SHMUP enemy than a traditional FPS enemy. Game One, after all, is meant to exemplify my belief that shooters are best when players are always moving.

This guy, the Watcher, is meant to teleport to you, spin around really fast, and shoot a bunch of energy balls. The idea being that when he shows up, you immediately jump into the air and get out of there.

Previous implementations haven't worked; the engine was being weird about projectiles, so someone slowed them down dramatically, which created a dude who just kind of... showed up and fired leisurely-moving projectiles you can walk around. Someone suggesting increasing the particle size, but it still never felt right.

Thankfully, Cameron, our mad genius programmer, figured out why Unreal was having issues and fixed it. I hopped in this month, dramatically reduced the projectile size, and altered the Watcher's rotation, particle speed, and particle life values. He now feels like the kind of environment hazard he needs to be, hopping around, pushing you to move constantly. He's still a little easy to kill in co-op, but we're getting there.

There's more tuning I need to do; Fridge Logic, our ice shotgun, isn't supposed to be a damage dealer, it's supposed to be a status effect weapon. We're probably gonna tune it after I finish Conquistador.

My buddy Rath has done an amazing job with the hub; I'm still iffy on the hub concept, even though it was my idea initially. Original plan: 'you know how it sucks when you're ready to go on the mission, but some guy is taking forever with his loadout? Wouldn't it be fun to play cards or something while you wait?' I did the initial layout, but I was unhappy with my efforts, so I turned it over to Rath when he said he'd like to take a crack at it. His take is much better. I'm still not sure a hub is the right call; I don't like diagetic interfaces in games most of the time. Remember Fable 3's weird hub world?

Lots going on. If it looked great, I'd have it on Kickstarter right now. Everyone's doing amazing work, but we all have lives, difficulties, and/or lack of experience. I don't know how to get to the sexy, low-poly art design we'd like to have, but I know we'll get there, if we can survive.

I cannot express how grateful I am to you for keeping me alive. I couldn't function at all without you. Thank you so much. Getting through the day is impossible without you. I do not know how to express my gratitude enough. I hope that Game One, when it finally comes out, will suffice. If not, then Game Two. ;)

As always, if you want me to write about anything, or any feedback on how to improve this Patreon please, let me know.