So, I’ve been away the whole week, so I haven’t been able to do THAT much work on Roach Toaster 2.

The previous (testing) version was released (a few weeks ago) to test the new campaign following Guert’s Grind.

It was riddled with stupid bugs that basically didn’t allow you to save and load properly unless you knew what was going on (and that’s about 2 people). So I fixed that. For some odd reason some people who test it, gets this one particular nasty bug that I can’t seem to reproduce on my side. It is really crappy.

I also managed to optimise the fake 3D that I am drawing by quite a lot. Instead of drawing 2 triangles per “face” of the fake 3D, I drew 3 (2 triangles + rectangle). I eliminated the rectangle, lowering drawing functions per wall by 4. So on average (per level), I managed to eliminate about 100 draw functions. Yay for optimisation!

I also added 2 more levels to the campaign (its standing at 10 levels) now. This 10 level + the previous 45 from Big City total 55 levels of Roach Toaster mayhem so far.

I also started talk with the character artist on new portraits (9) for the UI. Each “unit” group will be represented by a leader.

Anyway, that’s about it. Till next time, Keep Toasting! (please).

//Meh, I was bored, so I did these.

I don’t know what I’ve been told,
But I’ve gotta farm me some gold!
I don’t know what I’ve been said,
but I’ve gotta get me Onyxia’s head!

—

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
I love you,
and my murloc too.

—

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Uncommon is green,
the plains of Nagrand too.

—

I did more, but I can’t remember them. I hope I fulfilled someone’s dose of randomness today. Feel free to add some of your own.

I am in a hurry (which kinda beats the purpose of writing this). I am leaving for the next week, so I am doing the devblog today instead of Sunday.

So, this week, I managed to get a new prototype of the campaign of RT2 done. It has 8 levels (including a boss). It is kinda crude, but it works much better than the clinical unobvious “Big City” method of progress. It also has the awesome new menu art (revised).
I also encountered the 2 vicious (software) bugs that keep bugging me, version after version. I can’t fix it, but some tester (thanks Thaumaturge!) keep getting it. I was planning on giving the link to test the new campaign version, but unfortunately it is still plagued with stupid bugs. Arggghh.

I also went to visit the character artist and saw the drafts of “Reticer” (the guy in the menu), and it was spectacular. She can draw really really well.

Until next week,

Keep Toasting!

To me it is very exciting to be apart of the indie game development community at the moment, and it is largely a result of the awesome bunch of people at TIGERsauce, uhh, I meant TIGSource. For the uninformed it stands for The Independent Gaming Source.

They bring about the vibe that games is all about the fun and entertainment of it and that’s the way it should be. Their competitions like “Sexiest Indie Devver” and “B-Game competitions” is just pure awesome.

Another great example is the guys behind Bit-Blot with their upcoming game Aquaria that is about to be released on December 7 (gogogo).

Indie games should be what TIGS is all about.

This is me before and after TIGS.

Considering that I am reinstigating a devblog of some sort, I’ll start it off with a brief history of how it started and where it’s gone and where it is (hopefully) going.

Roach Toaster 2 is the sequel to Roach Toaster 1 (what??). My intention with this game was to take the awesome stuff from Roach Toaster 1 and pile it into a new more polished and professional package. RT1 had its merits but was buggy, had crappy graphics and the gameplay wasn’t “that” concise.

A screenie of RT1… Yes, this level really tested your skill:

Luckily there were a few people that saw past its veneer for what it really was! RT1 won 2 competitions, and was acclaimed for its no nonsense “fun” gameplay.

So, wanting to do it more justice, Roach Toaster 2 was born in June 2006. My initial intention was to increase the scale of the game. Instead of defending just a neighbourhood you are now defending a whole city, dubbed “Big City” (what??).

There were teams/enhancements and an intricate team movement system. During the whole process of developing RT2, my mettle as a newbie designer was being tested all the way. After countless iterations, I decided to drop the whole elaborate and stick to what Roach Toaster was intended for: “Simple rules that lead to complex gameplay”. This was the motto for the competition I devved RT1 for.

Like I mentioned in my previous post. Although Roach Toaster (1+2)’s gameplay has its merits, it can’t keep the whole game afloat without adding other over-arcing elements. So… Instead of adding more gameplay elements (which is hard to balance and test), I decided to revert back to just what RT1 so great. A compelling storyline/campaign.

So, as of now a year and a half into development (OMG), I am busy with the campaign. Its up to level 6 moment.

P.S. I am going on holiday soon, so if I don’t post any blogs or devblogs, it means I am away.

A prolific master of feedback, aka Guert from the TIGSOURCE forums, grinded my upcoming turn-based shoot-em-up called Roach Toaster 2.

What is a grind? A Grind is an in-depth (often brutal) feedback to a game, hence the name “grind”. To me there is not a thing like “brutal” feedback. Any feedback with a decent backing is great feedback.

Read the Roach Toaster 2 Grind.

He confirmed what I was worried about Roach Toaster 2 all along. It didn’t quite have enough motivation to keep going. I could add more gameplay elements, but this will just add more balancing and testing (something which I despise, considering I am a lone developer with a small (3) fanbase). Something that was missing from RT2 was the personal involvement (which Guert also mentioned).

Roach Toaster 1 followed a story, albeit not very deep, but gameplay elements were a part of the story. Units were introduced to things happening in the story. In Roach Toaster 2 (before the grind), it was all concise and analytical. New units were blandly introduced after you beat a few levels. The game revolved more on the short-term gameplay. While Roach Toaster (1+2) has great short-term gameplay, it isn’t enough to carry the game without more elements.

Thus, I have decided to scrap “Big City” and start over with a new proper story-like campaign. The old levels will still be used as bonus levels (lol 45 bonus levels, yippee!).

The teams/enhancements have been scrapped earlier. Now that “Big City” is also being scrapped, I am losing about 2 months of dev time.

Although this might be a bad thing to some, I like to see Roach Toaster 2 grow with each iteration and prototype.

P.S. In the vain of Frayed Knights “dev” diary, I am starting a weekly devblog of Roach Toaster 2, starting tomorrow.

I like finding where people come from to my site. The obvious places are links on websites, my signature on forums, etc. The other neat thing is to see what people typed in Google to stumble upon my website!

This month, someone typed in “Star Wars medichlorines” and apparently saw a link to my site and clicked on it. I can’t remember that I ever posted about it, but apparently I did. The page straight from Google is this:

CLICKY!. As I realised it was my Starcraft 2 hype post.

The link was on page 5 (of the Google search).

Its weird how people stumble upon my site. During the Harry Potter 7 craze, I created a mockup of how the book will end and that month I got the most hits from Google (ever)!

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So, everyone uses Google (search that is), but if you don’t find something after about the 5-7 page, you try to “optimise” your search. So, no one really knows what the nether regions of a Google search looks like.

I typed in “Roach Toaster” and I was astonished not to find orcs and dwarves dwelling in there!

This is interesting links I found:

Page 3 (just out of town):

A reggae band

Page 9 (the deep woodlands):

A christmas carol (look at 311 downwards)

Some blog . Uses an awesome pun: “appROACHable”.

Page 59 (the swamps of death level 5):

Some guy talks to his toaster.

Page 78 (the end of the world):

The Taming of the Screw . WTF?