Just tried it out. Great for a first game.

Glad to see some optimism and ambition; Especially from someone who has made a game. Keep it up!

Really great stuff!

Appreciate that you showed some of your workflow. I find that stuff very interesting and it's always cool to see how other people work through things.

Quick video of enemy particle explosion.

Tried my hand at enemy particle explosions. It's about 70% there? I think I still need a animation underneath to kind of 'anchor' the whole event. For demo purposes, this is good enough!

Keycard + door system, jump-thru platforms, insta-kill gear, and life battery w/ particles.

Just a few bugs to tweak and then I start level layout. Most of it is sketches out but I imagine it will go quickly. Plus I'm a graphic designer by trade, so laying out art on grid sounds like a dream to me Once that is set, I need to do enemy art and then sounds. Still a chunk of work, but the work that is left is stuff I've done before (music and art) so it should go quickly!

Keycard and door system, jump-thru platforms, insta-kill gear, and battery life w/ particles.

Just have to sort a few bugs and then laying out levels! Demo in the next month or so.

Agreed.

I also use a prefix but the random color assignment really throws me off. Would like to assign my own color if possible.

burningcake Thanks for the enthusiasm!

I'm working on the demo right now. The demo will consist of the entire first level and will be free/PWYW. I'll update the first post of this thread when it's set. I'm hoping for the beginning of October.

— The main character design is just placeholder for now. It definitely needs to be thicker and have more weight to it. Thanks for the crit!

It depends! Depending on the situation, look up music licensing.

Are they getting full exclusive ownership of the track and the ability to use it however they please? For example, could they use it for a game and then use it for something totally unrelated a year later. If so, charge more. I've charged well over $100 for a lengthy track in this case (~2 minute track).

Or are you retaining ownership of the track and licensing it to them? Basically you write up a contract and say, "You can use this song for these projects/uses over the next X years". You can charge less (but don't have to) in this case since you still own the song and could potentially license it again once the contract is up.

Bear in mind, I've written stuff for friends and just charged them a flat rate. A buddy just asked for a death and game over jingle and I'm doing $50 flat since it'll take me an hour or two tops.

Recently implemented a hugging mechanic in our game, because why not.

Click image for better quality

purplemonkey This is looking really wonderful!

I peeped your dev log over at TIG and had a question: You mention not reusing art assets. Have you done any test exports with nw.js to see how it runs? Not doubting, just curious!

// Brief update //

Switched all of my enemies over to families. Definitely cut a bunch of my code down by a ton and organized everything nicely.

Then I discovered this thread and Tokinsom 's way of using functions with families. I knew that I needed to learn functions and UID's. I struggled with it for a few days and then over the weekend while on vacation with some friends, I sat down with my friend who does a lot of coding professionally. He immediately picked up on C2's syntax and helped me sort out calling a function, passing a long a variable, and having it affect a specific enemy. This cut down my code by at least 10 events! My friend explained how it would be a lot less "expensive" than how I had everything before.

Things are moving smoothly now. All enemies are functional, player is 90% functional (just needs a death animation). Art for the demo is mostly done (just need enemy art). I've sketched out the entire first level design and plan to start laying out the basics in the new few weeks.

// Name change //

I'm going to change the name of the game at some point. "Tomorrow" is just too vague and a poor marketing choice IMO. It is what we originally called it back in 2004, but it just doesn't make sense to anyone who doesn't have a connection to that time period. I was thinking something like "A Small Robot Story" but that's probably too cutesy

I love a good post-mortem but am definitely bummed to see depressing news.

Regardless, this is a must-read.