Posts from year 2014:
Stream recorded Tags: Games, ESA, Streaming, Excavatorrr ESA’s current situation Tags: Games, ESA, Plans, Art, Article Streaming! No More Sweden 2014! Tags: Games, Small games, Happenings, No More Sweden Painting! Tags: Art Another stream! Tags: Games, ESA, Happenings, Streaming [Added 2024/07/28]ESA 1 final boss design ESA stream?!? Tags: Games, ESA, Happenings, Streaming Painting! Tags: Art ESA submitted to IndieCade Tags: Games, ESA, Happenings, Other
Posted on 2014-08-09 02:38
Thanks for everyone who participated! Here’s a link to the recording: https://www.twitch.tv/hempuli/b/555974189
Posted on 2014-08-06 20:06
Earlier today I finished the last “obligatory” things in ESA. There are some tweaks I want to make and polish to be done, as well as a load of bugs I haven’t noticed yet; I’ll be sending the first “final” version to testers tomorrow and hopefully the final missing things will be tweaked to some kind of a final state in the coming weeks.
So, what’s missing? Why’s there no release date?
There are two reasons for me not having decided on a release date yet and in general being somewhat confused and/or worried about the game’s release:
- Audio: When I say that the last obligatory thing is done, I mean the last obligatory thing I can personally affect; there’s some sound missing and we’re working on getting the rest of the soundtrack done. Due to several good reasons the composer has been very busy for some time now and has thus been unable to work much on the soundtrack, which I completely understand but which means that the release will have to wait. In the meantime I’ll be trying to build up a placeholder sound system, so that adding the audio will be as quick and painless as possible.
- Publishing: For about half a year now people’ve asking me about whether the game will be freeware or not. To be absolutely honest, I’d love to release the game for free, and even promised this some time ago at a moment when I felt completely overwhelmed by life and didn’t feel like thinking at all about founding a company or any of the other things that go into successfully publishing a game.
- However, I’d definitely need the money, and know some amazing people who could help me a lot with the more confusing aspects of publishing a game. It also seems to me that these days people are much less willing to download some random freeware games off a website, and instead prefer Steam and other such platforms due to the ease and a hint of quality control. So in the end, I’m really undecided on this issue, which kind of awful because going through the publishing ordeal would affect the release date pretty drastically.
So there; hopefully these two things will be figured out eventually, but right now they’ll continue to be obstacles for releasing the game. I guess I’ll try to spend whatever time is left to polish everything as much as possible.
In other news, I’m working on a comic! I’ll post it here once it’s done; it’s pretty terrible but it feels great to be working on a larger art project after such a long time.
Posted on 2014-08-06 13:58
I just finished pretty much the final thing left in ESA yesterday :) unfortunately the soundwork is still in development so it’ll take some more time to get the game out.
However! There’ll be a new stream this Friday at 11 PM UTC/GMT! If you have any specific things you’d like to see, tell me :)
Posted on 2014-07-20 09:22
Last year NMS was quite a disaster for me due to some personal problems, but this year has been a ton of fun! I even managed to finish something. Other indie developers are mostly really cool people and it’s cool to be able to follow the creative processes of other people over the weekend. Also instead of the usual pizza’n’burger -type diet, the local shop sells relatively cheap salads, so the overall atmosphere has been surprisingly healthy!
My game is called PILARI, and it’s a two-player arcade thing where the players fight against each other using bombs. I got a sudden inspiration to make a pillar-based topdown platformer engine, but couldn’t decide on where to take it, which made me end up making a simple deathmatch thing. It might still be fun? At least it looks somewhat cool.
~CONTROLS~
ESC – enable gamepad
Control/Q – drop a bomb. Hold for a moment to drop a more powerful one. You can only have two bombs at a time, and when you’re charging a new bomb the other one wont count down. You can use the explosions to propel yourself and your other bomb to the air, since you can’t damage yourself. Landing on the enemy’s head damages them.
Shift/Tab – Jump. Kind of useless mostly.
Arrows/WASD – move.
I think I’ll use the same engine for something in the future. :)
Download the game at Unicorn 7!
Posted on 2014-07-03 18:50
A friend of mine introduced the artist Moondog to me and I read up about him a bit. Moondog was a blind composer/artist who willingly spent 20-30 years of his life on the streets of New York dressed up as his idea of Odin. Also he had a fantastic beard, which inspired me to paint. :) I recommend listening to his song Bird’s Lament, it’s great!
Posted on 2014-06-30 15:34
I’ll be streaming ESA again tomorrow 1.7. at 11 PM (GMT/UTC)! The channel is the same, www.twitch.tv/hempuli :) I’m going to show off the water area and just in general play through the game. Spoilers! Excitement! Embarrassing bugs I’ve forgotten to fix! Be there!
In other news (still ESA-related, though), I finished the final phase of the final boss! There’s still stuff to be done on that bossfight (mainly cutscene-related), but at least the biggest hurdle is behind now.
EDIT: And we’re done! Watch the stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/hempuli/b/543617522
Posted on 2014-06-26 14:59
More Wordpress archives, this time from ESA 1. Spoilers!
19th June, 2014 - Lookin' nice
26th June, 2014 - Even nicer!
Posted on 2014-06-26 12:46
I’ll be trying to stream ESA today 26.6. at 11 PM (GMT). The stream wont be recorded so be there in time! The channel will be www.twitch.tv/hempuli .
The final boss is slowly getting there but the pace of my game development has been horribly slow. Sorry about that! :(
EDIT: Turns out one can just turn recording on at will. Watch the stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/hempuli/b/542106169
Posted on 2014-06-19 21:07
Yay! I haven’t painted in half a year, and it felt really good to do so again. Too bad the break can be seen in the quality of the piece, but I like it anyway.
Posted on 2014-06-16 03:12
So I was asked to consider submitting ESA to the IndieCade event (http://www.indiecade.com/), and after some confusion about the entry fee and the nature of the thing I did send the game to the judges. Hopefully they’ll find it enjoyable, although I have hard time imagining a retro metroidvania doing very well at larger-scale competitions these days.
In other news, I have been having some ~~real-life obstacles~~ lately which have reduced my will to work on games for the time being a lot. I’m pretty sure this is temporary (and I have plenty of ideas), but for now working on existing projects will be somewhat slowish until I get things sorted out. I think I have a pretty nice plan for ESA’s final boss’ final form, and to be honest I kind of look forward to spriting it!