Categories
Uncategorized

Halloweeeeen!

Categories
Uncategorized

Screenshot saturday screenie

Categories
Uncategorized

VG24/7 Eurogamer coverage

game news sitie VG24/7 has posted a Eurogamer Expo writeup including Pineapple Smash Crew, check out the article here

Excerpt: “This game provides the most out-and-out fun of those in the indie arcade. Pineapple Smash Crew plays as a fast-paced team-shooter in which you control your mech-suited, cuboid-headed squad members as one close-knit unit”

“It sounds good, because it is.”

w00t, thanks VG24/7! 🙂

Categories
Uncategorized

Get well Cazzie

My Gf’s been ill stuck in bed, trying to cheer her up 🙂 get well Caz!

Categories
Uncategorized

SarcasticGamer.com PSC preview!

Krelith of SarcasticGamer.com has posted a very positive preview of Pineapple Smash Crew. Click Here to check out the article

Excerpt: “One of my favourite things about modern indie game developers is how they often take a nostalgic design principle, and drag it kicking and screaming into the present day. A game filled to the brim with high-res textures and cover mechanics can be great, but no big budget game has evoked a sense of glorious nostalgia quite like the indie crowd has been doing over the last couple of years. And among the many great experiences to be had, one that brings me incredible joy is the forthcoming Pineapple Smash Crew”

Categories
Uncategorized

Pineapple Smash Crew IndieDB page

PSC now has an Indie Database page, so if you like to track your indie games on IndieDB please head on over!

Categories
Uncategorized

Quick post about random generating content

Something worth bearing in mind when you are designing randomly generated content (eg. level layouts). Often there are certain situations and scenarios you want to avoid with random generation, such as X item appearing next to Y item. Now, before you spend time coding a detailed set of rules to try and avoid scenarios you don’t like: be sure to ask yourself ‘ is it easier to just detect an unwanted result, and re-roll the dice’

Many times it does turn out you should code the fix if the problem crops up very regularly. But other times when the unwanted scenario is rare and your randomization is quick, the answer is usually: yeah, just re-randomize it. Remember that, and don’t immediately try to fix every problem by brute force.

edit: someone pointed out that re-rolling *is a brute force technique. What I was intending to get across is this- don’t always take the problem head on if you can easily sidestep it (by simply re-generating a satisfactory result) instead of spending ages getting the perfect solution every time.

Categories
Uncategorized

Some thoughts on Game Development

I’d like to start using the blog a bit more to archive ideas and thoughts on game development.. I hope they’ll be interesting to read, but at the very least I want them recorded somewhere so I don’t forget them 🙂

Point 1: Don’t get attached to things in your game just because you’re used to them.

This happens to me quite often. Something (some variable, setting, or game mechanic) which worked well from the very beginning of the game has stayed put almost untouched through development. I’m used to it being there and it’s kind of comfortable to have in. But maybe things changed gradually along the way and sometimes it turns out that the Thing isn’t really relevant any more. Often this comes from playtesting, since it’s hard to recognise for yourself.

Its a tough moment when you understand you need to remove or change something you like, but you need to stop and ask why you like it. Is it familiarity? When you stop back and look objectively at the big picture the answer is probably yes. The change makes your game better, and you’ll get used to the new version just the same as you did with the old. It’s hard not to get attached to things, but recognise the difference between a good feature and a comfortable one…

Point 2: Feel free to go off on a tangent to explore ideas without worry

Ok the title is really vague, but what I mean is with whatever setup you have, make sure it’s easy to save your current project state, make a copy or know that something like SVN can revert your changes, and noodle around without fear of breaking the game. Just do whatever it is you need to do to try out the idea, make a complete mess of the code if need be. If it turns out to be good, *then* you worry about integrating it nicely into the game. If not, just dump the whole lot / revert all the changes and carry on. It’s important not to worry about clean code and bugs when prototyping.

That’s all for now! I hope to make these design notes a more frequent part of the blog 🙂