A Small Robot Story (DEMO AVAILABLE) | Dev Log

YoHoho You could use something like Illustrator/Inkspace and turn on the grid. Then just place points using the pen tool. Maybe there are some other programs aimed at sketching but I'm not aware of them. A quick google search revealed this: http://tommaitland.net/graphpaper/

I'm a 50% digital / 50% analog person. I was taught as a graphic designer to always start with thumbnail sketches and I find paper and pencil to be very relaxing and much, much quicker. I've learned that I need a way to immediately write down ideas and visit them later so I have a planner that I carry everywhere (that's where the grid paper comes from!). You can find composition books of grid paper pretty cheap. Throw it in your back pack, write down everything in it, and go from there.

As for me, the game is really climate.

Level 2-1 tilemap! Such a satisfying and rewarding point to be at.

The backgrounds on the bottom have parallax scrolling and following the player through the level (that's why they don't cover the whole background). I'll be doing 4 screens total for level 2. I'll post them as they're completed.

Level 2-3 (backgrounds and decorations hidden)

This uses the cave tileset as seen in the gifs above. One more map and I'm set for Level 2. Then I just need to set up dialogue triggers and the boss room.

It's been a few weeks but I've been hard at work!

Last weekend I showed off my demo at the Buffalo Game Space Showcase. Got great feedback and hung out with a bunch of other great WNY game devs. Here was my setup:

Looks like another week or two and I should wrap up Level 2. Currently I'm scripting all dialogue events and working on cutscenes. I made the decision to try and do still-frame cutscenes especially since the game is quickly getting story heavy.

Made some huge progress this weekend. As I have mentioned, I've been using Magistross 's dialogue asset. Over the weekend I realized and learned how to use the text commands which lets me script events from within the dialogue. So basically I can type the dialogue and then type something like {BossActivate} which calls a function or any other event. This is incredibly handy. I cannot recommend this asset enough. It's a steal for the price.

Here is the Level 2 Boss reveal. Don't worry; it'll be more difficult than pictured in the gif

Up next is drawing up the cutscenes, finishing the dialogue script, and setting up all keycard / door functions in the layouts for Level 2. Then on to Greenlight!

Awesome as always! Keep those dev logs coming!

Starting work on cutscenes. Here is one of the more basic ones. Text will scroll along the bottom. These are definitely going to push my art skills. Time to get good!

Early Saturday morning game dev hustle at the coffee shop

All cutscene art for Level 2 is done. All dialogue is written. Now working on how to best initiate the cutscenes and hop back to the actual game layout. Should be able to wrap this up this weekend.

Got that sweet cut scene fade working!

LEVEL 2 IS DONE!

Check out the video.

Turn up for the music because this song is very important to me. As I've posted about before, some 12-13 years I was in a band called Tomorrow is Forever. We had a full length album that had music videos for every song telling the story of 2 game developers. We'd play the music live with the videos in sync with us. We wrote this song the first summer we all stayed in our college town together. When we had a rough demo, we brought it to our friend's house and we listened to it for the first time together. It was an incredible moment and it is immortalized for me in the form of this song.

Thanks for reading this far! I'll be launching my Steam Greenlight campaign the first week of August.

That coffee shop dev life

I decided that, since a bunch of people will most likely download my demo when I launch on Steam Greenlight, that I should probably update it. Here is what I managed to do this weekend to the Level 1 demo:

• Updated controls
• WASD or Arrow key controls
• Keycard "have" indicator
• No more doorways. All screen transitions are "edge of screen collision" types
• Moved all dialogue over to the new dialogue engine
• Began swapping out the "pure black" for a "softer black" in my tilesets

I've got a bit more to do but I should manage to finish the update by this weekend. Then on to Greenlight!

Looks good mate I like it. Art style is good too.

Grymligast Thanks!

A Small Robot Story is live on Steam Greenlight! Click the image above to check it out and give it a vote!

Up next: Level 3 tilesets. Gotta keep moving ahead.

I really need to get a steam account.

Congrats on having it on Greenlight, some good positive comments already!