Games I played in 2014

So as stated in a previous post, I’ve achieved a hell of a lot this year – shipped two top 10 AAA games with Ubisoft (Watch_Dogs and Far Cry 4) as well my own first indie game, Jack B. Nimble (yes, this is me giving myself a pat on the back).

Somehow I even managed to play through and finish a bunch of games too – less than I was planning from last year (and mostly different), but still a healthy chunk of gaming. One observation is the large increase in indie titles that I’ve gobbled up over the year – significantly more than last year anyway. Another thing that is clear is how I’ve shifted my focus from almost exclusively Xbox 360 to PC and PS4. I’ve barely touched the Xbox One this year, something I think is down to Killzone: Shadowfall being my multiplayer game of choice rather than Titanfall – it just meant my PS4 was switched ‘on’ more often.

Xbox One

• Super Time Force

Xbox 360

• Gears of War 3
• The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct
• Metal Gear Solid 2
• The Walking Dead: Season 2
• The Wolf Among Us (Episode 1)

Playstation 4

• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
• Call of Duty: Ghosts
• Wolfenstein: The New Order
• Watch_Dogs
• Watch_Dogs: Bad Blood
• P.T.
• Flower
• Games of Thrones (Episode 1)

Playstation 3

• Uncharted 3
• Journey

Playstation Vita

• Thomas Was Alone

PC

• Quake
• Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon
• Half-Life 2
• Half-Life 2: Episode One
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
• Home
• Gunpoint
• Gone Home
• Savant – Ascent
• Jazzpunk
• Dear Esther
• Organ Trail

While I didn’t finish FTL, Don’t Starve or Heavy Bullets, their rogue-like nature had me pouring hundreds of hours into them between them (especially FTL).

So yeah, I basically didn’t even touch my pile of shame or do even a tenth as many game jams as I wanted – as a result my plans for 2015 are a little more restrained than last year (but still probably too much).

• Start working on a new indie game (!!!)
• Finish the final content updates for Jack B. Nimble
• Port Jack B. Nimble to other platforms
  • Android
  • Windows 8 and Mobile
  • PC, Mac and Linux
• Submit something to Pixel Dailies at least once a week
• Participate in the following game jams
  • EVERY One Game A Month jam
  • Global Game Jam 2015
  • Ubisoft Game Jam (if there is another)
• Play through the following games
  • Quake Mission Pack 2
  • Portal 2
  • STALKER
  • FEAR
  • Battlefield 4
  • Far Cry 4
  • Metal Gear Solid 3
  • Assassin’s Creed Revelations

There are a few things that I totally dropped from last year; I decided to stop taking part in Ludum Dare/One Game A Month in favour of shifting my focus to Jack B. Nimble. Even taking part in a weekend jam had consequences on development, so around April I just stopped jamming. I also put One Day From Retirement on ice; I wasn’t very happy with the progress I was making and again, couldn’t give up time that I needed for other projects. It may come back in some form…

It’s rather unlikely that I will experience the same level as achievement in 2015 as I did in 2014, but I will be hitting the age of 30 – which is pretty good going, aye?

Game Boy Game Jam 2: Jack B. Nimble

So just over 2 weeks ago there was an interesting little idea known as the “0h Game Jam”. This game jam had participants create a game within the hour where the clocks go back (as part of the DST time shift) – effectively allowing someone to complete the production of a game in negative time. I thought I’d try my hand at this, but not before trying some tests in Construct 2 first.

I failed miserably.

The quickest I could get anything playable and at a state I was happy with was around 5 hours, and that was with some preparation both mentally and in regard to resources. This just wasn’t my jam. It didn’t seem to be many people’s jam to be honest; naturally, most of the games sucked. However, there was one stand out to me, “Hotline Trail”, a top down, mouse driven, driving game with a Hotline Miami aesthetic. Very polished considering the time available.

Give it a try here: http://rezoner.net/labs/hotlinetrail/

After my 5 hours or so of work trying to make something playable, I realised that the second Game Boy Jam was gearing up to begin. I was a little disappointed I missed this the first time around, so I put my work from the 0h Game Jam towards that to avoid future disappointment. I began work on an infinite runner, or auto runner, or run and jump game… I didn’t know what the genre was, but I wanted to make one. Outside of Canabalt and Jetpack Joyride, I think they’re all pretty shit – generally appearing on touch devices and host to on screen dpads or buttons. Disgusting. So I wanted to try my hand at a control method I felt allowed for a little more than just ‘auto run + jump’. I wanted to add an attack, and I wanted that attack to steer the focus away from ‘distance traveled’ as the sole score provider.

The first 5 hours

0.1.0

This first version was simply an auto runner and represented those first 5 hours from my 0h Game Jam tests; complete with fixed jump height, fixed speed, and randomly generated platforms with varying widths and heights. The player’s distance was displayed on screen and the Game Boy aesthetic already in place.

The game was called “Noonanrun”.

Castlemania

0.1.1

With the base in place I needed to add the attack. I had already decided that the input method had to be a single tap or key press, so I thought the best implementation was to add an attack that happened whilst the player was mid jump. This is where I started to think about Castlevania with it’s strict jump heights and whip mechanics. So I gave my character a whip and something to hit, in the form of candles.

Whilst testing the whip I thought I’d give myself moving targets, further continuing my homage to Castlevania. I added a bat, though quickly decided against the inclusion of enemies both due to the purity of scoring within the game and the scope of the project – I only had a week, after all. So the bat became my Duck Hunt dog, taunting players upon failure.

In this version I increased the speed and made a ridiculously hardcore hitbox for the whip, whereby I was only detecting collision on the tip of the whip rather than the full length. I was already too close to the game and making it increasingly more difficult in an effort to challenge myself.

The game was still called “Noonanrun”, had a “Sean Noonan” title screen much in the style of the original Game Boy boot sequence and a huge picture of my face as a loading screen. Seriously.

Fork handles

0.1.2

After sending the build around some friends and coworkers I realised my mistake in making the game to suit my personal difficulty level – it was barely playable for other people and nobody really understood how the whip worked or what the candles were for. So I added a tutorial in the title screen. I was determined to avoid throwing up controls or instructions for the player. I wanted players to work out how to play for themselves. The tutorial forced players to jump due to it being their only possible action. Then at the height of their jump they were required to hit a candle to start the game. It was pretty successful for the most part.

I updated the art a little and added an on screen counter for candles whipped, which resulted in an obscure reference to British comedy of old.

The game was now called “VIDEOGAME !!! by Sean Noonan” and I removed my face. Getting slightly better.

Numbers

0.1.3

At this point my confidence was growing and I knew where I was going to go with it next. I added jump heights based upon the amount of time the player held their jump input for and made the game increase in speed over time. This resulted in the game feeling pretty tight - the player had an increased level of control but was also being challenged over time. It started to feel like a game.

I also added the score system to the game in an effort to include replayability and challenge. Basically the score was calculated as follows…

Distance + (Distance * Candles) * Accuracy / 10

The idea was to keep the player wanting to get as far as possible, but for their run to mean anything they had to hit candles. Now when I was testing, some people would whip during every jump… turning the game into an auto runner and whipper(?). I wasn’t overly happy with this so added accuracy as a means of discipline for the player to focus and be more precise – the accuracy would basically determine how much of their final score they would receive. The 10 at the end was just to keep the score at a manageable number of digits.

Still no name for the game.

The art pass

0.1.4

I updated the football headed main character with something a little easier to animate (the hat in particular), the placeholder “FIRE” effect was replaced with a small explosion and an animated melted candle, and I added four new layers of parallax and an animated background to look as though there was lightning flashing at different points.

The title screen adopted grave stones with “RIP” for this version only. Stupid idea.

The “Sean Noonan” Game Boy boot screen was changed to better match it’s Nintendo counterpart with “Noonan”. The game still lacked a name.

Ridin’ on cars

0.1.5

At this point minor changes started to take a lot longer than expected. All vector fonts were removed and replaced with pixel fonts. That process took a lot longer than I had hoped it would, but it was uncharted territory.

I added rain, though this became a huge performance hog due to me not removing any drops that had been created.

The game was now known as “Jump ‘n’ Whip Man”, an homage of sorts to that video.

Jack B. Nimble is born

0.1.6

I finally came up with a name, theme and anchor for my game in “Jack B. Nimble”. I added a variant of the children’s nursery rhyme to the title screen and a small animation of the character walking in. All very cute.

I also added the dog laughing sound from Duck Hunt for when the bat passes the screen sound as a placeholder for…

Barry’s sound

0.1.7

I had been talking with Barry Topping (of Gamewank and Epoch fame) to do some audio work for Retirement, but with that somewhat on hold I asked if he was interested in working on my jam. He agreed. He fucking nailed it.

I also polished up some of the art and added some foreground parallax.

The polish pass

0.1.8

The game was pretty much ready at this point, just polish remaining and the possibility of a score board.

Release

Version 1.0

With the final addition of some title screen art, some parallaxes and minor animation tweaks, the game was ready. I added a personal best score to local web storage and created a Game Boy overlay to surround the game in the web player.

Postmortem

Working on Jack B. Nimble was an excellent learning process and a great way to meet people in the indie/enthusiast community. I’m incredibly proud to have made a game on my own (with a little musical aid from 'Barry of course) and I plan to make another soon. I realise this hit TLDR territory long ago, so I’ll finish with some bullet points.

What went right

• Visuals – both the cute and ‘dark’ features
• Polish – responsive control, easy to understand mechanics
• Audio – Barry's music was phenomenal and the sound was on par
• Time management – I rarely felt rushed or the pressure of the deadline
• Stuck to the theme – I never needed to compromise the design to meet the jam rules or restrictions

What went wrong

• Visuals – there wasn’t a defined style; whilst fine themselves, my flat shaded characters and level art didn’t marry that well with the dithered more realistic backgrounds
• No online leaderboards
• I wasted some time early on to include an easter egg featuring Chet Speedrider from the Ubisoft Montreal Game Jam
• Too great a focus on minor technical problems that ultimately didn’t matter (I’m looking at you, Construct 2 scaling issues)

All in all a great jam. Cannot wait until the next one…

You may have noticed that I’ve intentionally skipped over anything new or interesting about Watch_Dogs, Ryse, Streets of Rage, One Day From Retirement or anything my grubby hands have touched in the past – that’s for another day. I plan to address at least some of these soon!

Now I have a PS4 to go back to… ahem.

Watch Dogs Trailer and Press Tour

There’s been a metric fuck tonne of Watch_Dogs news in the last few days, all thanks to our recent press tour and media blast – the most important of which, is our first cinematic trailer! You can catch that below.

There’s also a bunch of previews showcasing our systemic demo that was recently demoed to the press. I’ve listed a couple below.

• The Verge
• Polygon
• Eurogamer
• IGN
• IGN (Game Scoop)
• Revision3
• CVG
• Kotaku
• Digital Spy
• Venture Beat

On top of all that media, a development diary highlighting Watch_Dogs and the PS4 was also made available. That video can be found over at the Playstation blog, here.
We also had Alex Ross’ take on the Watch_Dogs box art. His artwork is available in poster form for those who pre order Watch_Dogs at GameStop. A video featuring the Alex Ross promotion can be found here. For more on the art front, a number of exclusive wallpapers can be grabbed over at the Watch_Dogs website for those that sign in via Uplay.
The response so far has been amazing. It’s really quite awesome to work on a game this anticipated and that generates such a huge amount of hype. It’s a shame I can’t really talk too much about development or share any of what I’m working on in particular, but there will be more revealed in the run up to release on November 19th.
I’ve been playing a bunch of Xbox Live Arcade games lately, namely FarCry 3 Blood Dragon. After that’s done, I’m probably going to go back to my thousandth play through of Metal Gear Solid.

Watch Dogs shown at PS4 reveal

We finally got to show some open world content for Watch Dogs at the PS4 reveal.

So now there’s more footage out there for people to piece together what kinda game Watch Dogs will be when it releases later this year.

There’s also another video featuring commentary by our Creative Director, Jonathan Morin available here.

Can’t say much more that that. I’m honoured to be a part of something so anticipated, and can’t wait for people to see more.

You can keep up to date on Watch Dogs news at it’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

I’ve been working on something of my own in my spare time (not Hjarta), but I will show that when it’s a little more ready for public consumption. Now back to the sofa to watch Breaking Bad and nurse my jaw, post wisdom teeth removal…