Roflgames

2011-01-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

Pre-GDC Owlboy Update #1

Bringing in the goods!
Simon's pixels has been jumping off his screen all week, as he's been drawing every item, powerups and pickups into the game. He's also working on bringing the first Dungeon's boss to life for the GDC playable demo.

I'll upload some screens from the menu system tomorrow

Meanwhile, I've been adding powerup effects, menu screens and layed many a bugs to waste with my keyboard.

We've added a Owlboy Development thread on TIGSource.com, be sure to check it out, as the TIGSource forum is one of the biggest communities of indie developers. If they think your stuff looks great, everyone does!

2011-01-21T13:54:00.000-08:00

GDC here we come!!!

Why GDC?
Because it's the single most greatest convention in the world! That's why!

Not only are we going to print up some Owlboyish T-Shirts, some amazing Owl buttons and try to bring the whole team, we're also working on getting a playable Owlboy Demo on CD finished for hand-outs!

Short on GDC San Francisco: It's Hollywood for gamers! Fans gather here, developers gather here, but most importantly, my own bloodline, the Indies gather here! We're hoping to meet as many as possible, and share our gaming visions and ideas.

I'm also hoping to catch a glimps of my all-time favorite big kahuna devs, like Peter Moleneux(Black & White, Fable) and Will Wright(Spore, Sims).

More on the development of the Owlboy demo next time.
Also, check out this incredible pixel-art music video I saw this week:

2011-01-13T14:25:00.000-08:00

Norwegian Mastership 2011 Result

Possession!
The Championship is over, and the winner announced! We did not win the competition, but it was a hell-o-alot of fun! This is the trailer for our entry:

The winning game was Kesper's Keep, by a small norwegian indieteam called Moondrop.

Moondrop

Kesper's Keep is a platforming game, where you control a monk-like figure, who needs to manuipulate lights sources inorder to traverse through the game. Blocks dissapear/appear according to what color of lightsource hits it, which opens up to some interesting puzzles.

The Moondrop team consists of Kenneth, Andreas and Stig-Owe who I hope has entered the Norwegian gaming biz to stay, we need all the men/women we can get!

I don't know what the Moondrop team is going to use their reward for, but whether they build further on Kesper's Keep, or start an entierly new project, atleast my country can add one more indieteam to it's roster.

2010-12-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

Super Meat Boy Finally Defeated

Difficultest, yet coolest game ever?

I've spent long frustrating hours trying to complete Super Meat Boy on my Xbox, sparks flying as I tried to defeat the last boss. My salvation was promising Simon some pizza and handing him the controller, thinking he couldn't possibly do it. After 3 hours of ruthless controller mashing, a big Mincemeat Pizza was his for the eating.

Super Meat Boy was one of the Indie titles that was nominated and present at IGF 2010, right next to Owlboy's stand, and it's fantastic to see how awesome the game turned out! Here is a video trailer of Meat Boy:

What inspires me most about Meatboy is it's super fast gameplay, and the feel you get when doing an awesome dodge. It's also good for when you need to frustrate those around you. For a game with finger-lickingly good controls, it's still not an easy course to get through. It's the hardest meal I've ever had, one I didn't manage to finish myself at that-.

New Official Minecraft Trailer
The Minecraft mainsite got updated this week, and is featuring a video trailer created by a fellow Norwegian, Vareide, who's previously created alot of brilliant trailers for Minecraft, my favorite being Life of Schrauben. This is the new trailer, lookit:

Minecraft inspires me because of it's openess and it's effective use of graphics. I'm a huge fan of open game-worlds, and Minecraft is the prime example of such games. Others include Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout, etc. and even these huge game-worlds, can't compare to the hugeness of Minecraft.

If I'm ever going to do an entierly open game-world in one of my projects, I'd follow Minecraft's example.

2010-12-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

Lava Monkey!!!

New Owlboy Enemy
Simon has started animating a new enemy, and it's in need of a name, but for now, let's call him Lava Monkey!

Over at D-PadStudio.com you can participate in giving the small furrie a name of it's own. Here are a few of the enemies we've aleady introduced:

The flying 'Gawk', the grumpy 'Torque' and the firebreathing 'Molt'

2010-12-02T14:22:00.000-08:00

Announcing Vinter In Hollywood(ViH) Game Project

Musical Inspiration

Aleksander Vinter has been acting like a source of inspiration for me, for the past few years, and listening to his music usually fuels my mind with visual images, like gameplay videos playing out inside my eyelids.

Most of my games contain his music, but some time ago, we started to draw up concepts for a Vinter's own game, Vinter In Hollywood. Here's some early art from the project:

Character Design
Vinter is quite particular of which style the project is going to have, and we've spent quite some time figuring out the appearence of the character.

Short pixly, 'Disgaea' type, and 'Bananas in Pyjamas'
are among the styles we've experimented with

What type of game is it?
It's going to be a fast paced action game, that is all I can say. I'll have more details on gameplay later, including a video trailer. It's gonna have classic ViH beats in it. Here is the recently released official music video for Ride Like The Wind, inspiered from the ViH universe.

This video is animated by Oscar Johansson, known for the Castle series running at Newgrounds.com

Promo trip to the cold country

2010-11-25T12:31:00.000-08:00

Norwegian Game Awards Kick-off appearence
Me and Simon made an appearance as this-years winners at NGA last week, hoping to inspire upcoming game-designers to start creating games at their heart's content, be it small or huge! Our task was to talk about Owlboy and the team's future, and our payment was free beer in the bar!

Hard work simply pays off!

So, what is the team's future?
A miserable pile of secrets! We've got so many secret projects on our minds, that we've decided to start giving away some of their premises. We'll soon announce a few projects we've been working on, so stay tuned for more meat on the massive bone of gaming!

Visit Roflgames.com for more news

2010-10-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

1 week left for Fable 3's release, and anticipation levels are in the red-zone at my house! Combat is one of the aspects of Fable I really was looking foreward to! Growing up with RPG's like Baulder's Gate and Might & Magic, I could barely wait to see what kind of tricks and powers were at my disposal when Fable got it's release.
I wasn't too dissapointed, yet I never quite felt that Fable had a Level-Up system that complemented the use of magic in the game.

One of the features I've tried to improve this week is the 'Magic-System' from Fable 2. In Fable 2, action stopped, and your hero started taking blows from opponents when charging a magic spell. When action is fast and a player is in combat, usually, the last thing the player wants is to get slowed down or hit.

I've focused on the actual casting of magic, and not so much it's versatility. On casting a spell, the hero leaves behind a charge. This charge is air-borne and gathers energy for a few seconds, until the charge explodes and the intended spell is brought forth. This leaves the hero time to either flee, get defensive with a shield, or charge at the enemy, keeping them at some distance while the spell charges:

The video is recorded in 50% speed for better viewing

Further improvements to the spell system will be made, by incorporating different spells, and stats for each spell. In classic RPG's, there is no limit to how powerful a hero can become. I'll bring Disgaea: Hour of Darkness in as an example.
In Disgaea, the hero's level was limited to lvl 9999. An almost impossible number to reach if one is not a completionist. All spells and moves could be powered up individually, by simply using them. This is how I want to implement the spell system, and also let Hero Spell Power affect the outcome of a spell.

Thursday next week will be special. In my country Fable 3 releases on Oct.29th, and my plan is to have a playable demo ready the day before this. If I do not reach this deadline, development will still continue, but at a slower pace, as my team is getting ready to release the new D-Pad Studio website. Come back next week, and you might get a chance at trying the fan project right before Fable 3's release.

Fabelicous Update #2!

2010-10-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

Fable 3's release is 2 weeks from now, which is also the demonstration-deadline for this project. Until deadline there are a few improvements to the franchise I want to bring into the spotlight, by implementing them into the project.

One of those features is the 'Fishing-System' from Fable 1. Fishing in Fable was never quite intuitive enough in my opinion, as vigourous button mashing is not my preffered cup of tea.

With a great number of games out there that incorporate the sport of fishing, I focused on going about this improvement by looking at Zelda: Ocarina Of Time and Sega Bass Fishing(Dreamcast). In these games, fishing was challanging and had a nice flow to it. This is how the result came out ingame, after spending a few days on the basics of reeling and throwing:

Further improvements to the fishing system will be made, by incorporating different lures, and letting the Hero Strength stat affect throw distance, and reel speed. The line will also snap on pressure, and will be indicated by the fishing-line's color, going from white to red.

Improving the economy from Fable 2 will also be a focusing point of mine on this project. Where in Fable 2, there was huge issue with the balancing of economics in-game, in the fan-project, I intend to break this by keeping the players ability to buy stalls, but requiring them to stock-pile the stalls themselves, giving meaning to the fishing system. I've figured out systems for stockpiling the rest of the Fable 2 stalls aswell, but I'll keep these under wraps for another update.

Follow the progress of the fan-game Thursday next week, as I'm adding more features continously.

Fabelicous Update #1!

2010-10-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

The first part of my Fable Tribute project is taking form. I'll explain a litte about the project:

The concept behind Fable has inspiered alot of ideas for my part, and the Role Playing aspect of it is solid: "Be who the heck you want to be, but take the damn consequences."

What I've seen the games do, compared to what has been promised(in the past), has always left a wealthy amount of players dissapointed.

In my world though, the concept behind it is what matters, and is what sparks ideas and creativity

Lychfield Graveyard(Early Screenshot)

I've taken the oppertunity to start a small tribute project, which is aimed to be released before the launch of Fable (Lucky-Number) 3.

The plan is to bring some missed features(Real-time Vegetation Growth, Weapon Pickups), aswell as features from the previous games(Body morphing, Moral choices, Crumbtrail), into a simplistic 2D retro-styled game. This is a tribute game, and may not capture Fable's magic, but it'll try to capture some of it's basic concepts.

Skinny & Tall

Strong & Heavy

Sumo Wrestler

Later this week or the next, I'm going to show more of the project, and perhaps provide a small playable demo.

Fable!

2010-09-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

YES! One month from now, Fable 3 will be hitting the stores! I've experience Fable to be a so-so game, but the ideas behind it's concept are so fantastic, that I hope for some of these ideas to be realised with the new installment. I've personally tried to re-create some of the basic ideas of Fable in my own games, which is still hidden on my computer.

Up until the release of Fable, I'll post screens and concepts from these projects, and on the final day, I might release a small tribute demo.

Minecraft Mania!!!

2010-09-23T12:12:00.001-07:00

My whole team has suffered the Minecraft Mania that has swept the internet! Many an hour of could-be-development on Owlboy, has been lost to this creationist-gem of a game,

A trailer made by one of my own countrymen has also spread across the net, and I'll help along by spreading it's message: Those who haven't yet tried Minecraft, try it!
You'll understand once your in.

New Website Design!!!

2010-09-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

The Roflgames.com website got upgraded with a new look today! Rejoice, because this site is more organized then ever! I will update the rest of the new site with the content found on the old one, and add the rest of my games, as well as some artwork.

From this day on, this site will be updated every Thursday, that is, if my brain still functions, and I'm able to get to a computer.

Dungeon Chaos 2-Year Anniversary

2010-09-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

I've done a small piece of art to mark the 2-Year anniversary of Dungeon Chaos, and also, I've worked on bringing some new features to the game. The game will recieve an update in the near future, allthough I've not set a release date for it yet. Maybe next month... Maybe,

Norway's Got Indies Too!

2010-09-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

The trip to Trondheim was a success, and my team got the chance to be social with the rest of the community of Indie Game Developers that my country has to offer. There are some good titles being produced in Norway, and here's some links to their websites:

+ Garbalicious by Team Flop
+ Break A Leg(A playable Demo is available) by Derail Games
+ Evil Jr. by Illuminatics Gameware
+ Apocalypse by Wailing Ninja Studios
+ Zanshin by Ascension

There we're more Indies at the convention, and I'll link
to more of them as I find them.

Also, This week, Dungeon Chaos had it's 2-Year Anniversary.
For the occasion, I've started doing a small piece of art,
which I'll be posting here next week, in the Art-section.