What's Next?

Ask anyone who knows me, what my priorities are in life. And you're likely to hear three things. Family, Video Games, and Computers.

My love for computers dates back to 1988 when I started with the Commodore 64. My interest was driven through video games on the C64 that I wanted to modify and learn to create my own games.

My entire life I have been moving forward on that path, learning about everything that I could get my hands on. To date, I have taught myself programming in over 20 languages for a variety of platforms.

I've been a professional senior software engineer consultant for the last 2 years and it has been a life-changing experience. I finally found a way to provide for my family and I've never been happier.

With my current contract expiring at the end of this month, I've been on the hunt for what's next?.

I am seeking remote development jobs to be able to provide for my family and be with my wife and kids on a daily basis. Cubicles are not the place for this guy. I was recommended to check out https://www.toptal.com and I think that it should be a great opportunity for me.

Get Binary Assist Today!

I just published my first paid app on the android marketplace!

Please check it out!



https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bangbangattackstudios.apps.binary_assist

This app was created from concept to release in under 36 hours with 30 of those going just to the publishing process itself.

I used create-react-app to scaffold the initial project, and then proceeded to delete the pre-made .js and .css files and added the files for my app. I built the functionality of the React components first, and then I styled them using flexbox CSS. Thanks to autoprefixer, the css styling works on android!

That brings me to how I got my app on android.

I used cordova and created a new project based on their helloworld app, and then I tediously went through and edited all the configs and files that I needed to update, as well as dump my webpack-optimized build files from react-create-app into the cordova project.

Using cordova-icon and cordova-splash I was able to take my rushed GIMP icon and splash imagery and generate all the necessary files.

I had to build the pesky google marketplace feature and promo images myself in GIMP though.

Once I had things in cordova, I tested on my android device and then proceeded to build release apk and going through the whole tedious and overly complicated signing process.

Now armed with a signed apk and all the promotional graphics I needed, I added a new app on the google developer dashboard and filled out all the infos and dragged in my images and uploaded my apk. The usual...

Then I decided to make this thing a paid app. Why you ask? Well, there are no advertisements, there are no in-app purchases, nothing to bug you, and no extra permissions. It's a premium app if there was ever one. Yeah it is simple, and doesn't have tons of features and awesome animations. But what it does, it does well and I felt that warrants a price.

Please show your support of this indie developer and buy a copy of Binary Assist today!

ImageMagick Sprite Resizing

convert -interpolate Nearest -filter point '*.png[64x64]' sprite_%03d.png

I needed to resize a folder full of images to create an animated sprite sheet, and ImageMagick saved my arse once again. :D

Oh, hi. Hello 2016! I've been rather busy in 2015, and I'm afraid I haven't had the time to post here. Long long story short, I'm working full-time as a senior software engineer in the game industry, and doing my own little side projects on my days off. My wife and I are building a casual game for mobile devices. I am using ECMAScript 6, and CreateJS, along with my own custom ES6 game engine to build the game. I will have a more thoroughly detailed explanation later when it comes closer to release time. For now I must get back to it.

Simply Magic

I've just put my first T-shirt design on teespring today. You can get it here http://teespring.com/simplymagic

Tell your friends! Tell your family! Tell the world! :D

Blender Barrel Complete

I am happy to announce that I achieved my goal for the day by completing my barrel project in blender. :)

Below you can see the high poly mesh which consists of a whopping 4 million plus polygons! Each part was modeled separately, sculpted, and manipulated into position before being used in the baking process.

The high poly was originally much higher polygon count, but my computer crashed when I tried to perform a Remove Duplicates vertices operation, so I went in and manually removed a ton of the vertices and faces from the inside of the barrel. Below you can see some of the barrel "gutted" on the inside.

The low poly mesh is pretty basic, which is why a lot of the shape from the high poly mesh does not translate too well to the lower poly mesh, but since this was my first attempt at such a process and as a learning experience, I think I didn't do too badly. Right?

The UV layout for the low poly is not too bad, but I know that it could be better. I just need more practice and hopefully I will get some useful advice from the cool people on the art forums I've shown this on.

Well that's all for now. I'll have more cool stuff to show later I'm sure. :)

Blender Barrel Beginnings

Well, my learning of Blender has definitely been going well I think. I wanted to model something and learn more about Blender along the way, so I asked my wife for a subject, and she said "a wooden barrel", and so I got to work. I have spent about 14 hours on this high poly model so far.

Most of that time was spent learning how to create my own sculpting brushes for Blender, learning what the sculpting tools do, and how they can be used, learning how to create my own custom UI components and tools using Python to speed up my workflow, and learning how to make use of the super-powerful modifier stack and multiple scenes.

I learned how to not cripple my system working with millions and millions of polygons in real-time with zero lag, I learned how to effectively make and use a "library" of objects for reuse, I learned that I can swap objects from layer to layer with ease in order to get them out of the way while working on another to reduce the polygon load on my system.

This is my progress so far.

Today I plan to unwrap my low-poly mesh and then bake the normal and ambient occlusion maps of my high-poly mesh to bring them in to GIMP for creating the albedo map and then finally taking all of the maps and my low-poly mesh into Unity for some production testing.

Level Up!

It's been awhile since I posted last, and I'm sorry about that. I've been a bit busy with far too much. From choosing what direction that I want to go in with the studio, to working out details on my project, to finding freelance work, and to the reason for this update...I have finally jumped in the deep end and committed myself to learning blender, and it's going quite well much to my surprise.

Anyone who has known me for a really long time knows that I have always been a hater against blender for numerous reasons, mostly the unconventional UI, and the crazy usage of keyboard shortcuts for just about everything, and because it was "limited" in it's capabilities.

I WAS WRONG. SO WRONG. SO DAMNED WRONG I WISH I COULD GO BACK IN TIME TO SLAP MYSELF AND LEARN HOW WRONG I WAS.

Blender is by far the easiest to use 3d package I have ever touched. It is also the most comprehensive and complete package, and the best part about it is that it is 100% fully and totally legally F. R. E. E., that's right, I said FREE! And it's available for all major operating systems, so that means whether you use Windows, Linux, or Mac, you have access to this incredible software.

Now, the UI is indeed unconventional, yes, but this is actually a good thing. I wish more software worked the way that blender does. The manner in which the panels and controls are interacted with is far superior to anything I have ever used before. Take the hour or so that it takes to learn how to use the UI in blender and you will no longer think it to be a hindrance to the use of the software.

The keyboard shortcuts are indeed there, and some are downright crazy. I'm looking at you, you W-Key Specials menu! But it's actually pretty easy to use them once you learn them. It's worth the hour it will take you to learn the shortcuts. Here are a few of them to get you started.

In the 3D view in Object Mode:

Press the A key to select or de-select all objects in the scene.

Press the X key to delete the selected objects.

Press the G key to grab the selected objects allowing you to freely translate (move) them. Use this in addition to the X, Y, and Z keys to restrict translation to a specific axis.

Press the R key to rotate the selected objects freely. You can use the same axis restriction keys to your advantage here as well.

Press the S key to scale the selected objects freely. Same as the grab and rotate tools, use the restriction keys to have sensible scaling on an axis.

Press Shift+A key to bring up the Add menu. From here you can add things to your scene.

Press the Tab key to switch to Edit Mode.

That's all that I have time to list. Learn more by checking out blender for yourself! Below are some things I made with blender (the tree I modeled with Wings3D before learning blender) and have put into Unity for a quick turntable.

Toxic Sewer on GameDev Market

So I was surprised with some great news today. My tiles just got accepted on GameDev Market, please show your support and pick up a copy if you like them, or tell others about it if you don't need them.

In addition to that, Degica finally got back to me and told me that they have accepted the tiles as well, so they will soon be available on gamedevfort.com as soon as their art team puts together the promotional materials for the marketplace.

In other news, all my side-projects and smaller projects which have been in the works have just been shelved in order to free up time to focus strictly on a single project. The large RPG which we started four years ago is finally taking the front seat and will be the sole focus of Bang Bang Attack Studios from here on, until the release day.

Lots to do, and lots to learn to get this project rolling in the right direction. I will be posting more about the development soon.

Redbubble

It's been quite some time now since I last posted anything. Mostly because I have been using a different computer and haven't had blogger open 24/7 like I had on my main computer.

Anyway, some updates are in order. For starters, I created an account on redbubble which you can check out here

You will find my digital art creations that I have selected for publishing on products. Theres some really neat shit there. If you have some spare cash and want to support my developments, please buy something!

In other news, I am working on a 2D top-down action RPG in Unity. No story in place at this time, but the game will heavily revolve around one of my favorite mechanics -- BLOWING SHIT UP! I love being able to destroy just about everything in a game, like in the Ratchet & Clank game series where you smash things to collect bolts. I want to also have non-perma-death for the things that get destroyed, so like you can walk into a town and burn everything in sight, leave, and when you return, it's back new to be burned again! >:D It's gonna be a hell of a lot of fun. I'm mostly in the early prototyping stages right now, with no final visuals and lots of ripped and shoddy art at the moment. Once I have something that isn't copyright infringing to work up some screenshots & gifs, I'll show off the project.

Where did the time go?

It seems like a lot of time has been passing between my posts lately. And I swear it FEELS like only hours have passed. Time is moving ridiculously fast right now for me. I cannot seem to keep up with everything. For those not in the know, my wife had a baby just under a couple weeks ago (so now we are a family of four) and that has definitely been something new. My son had spent a while in the NICU when he was born, so I missed out on all the fun newborn-y stuff, like the horrible black-tar shits, and the need to feed a zillion times throughout the day and night. So I've gotten little sleep recently, and it's got my head all over the place.

I'm trying to work on the minuscule freelance stuff I have left on my plate, and find new work to bring in the much-needed income we need. (Read: I have no work. Need Money. If you have something you need done, please contact me!)

I am also working on some new things to sell online. In particular, I am currently working on a post-modern top-down RPG tileset intended to be sold through gamedevfort.com I've been working on this thing for 3 days, and it's turning out pretty sweet. No, I won't show it off until it's up for sale on gamedevfort.com

My game projects have been stalled, but not forgotten. I learned some cool tricks from my daily "social media scan" process which I want to give a try for my S3D game project, and I have been planning some new projects in my head. Soon to be dropped into concept docs, and fleshed out more....Well, soon I hope. Father Time has been a real ass. Someone give him a sleeping pill so I can find the time to get things done!

...Back to work... er... no, wait. Off to sleep...dammit.

First Sale

I was just pleasantly surprised to learn that I actually got a sale on my HTML5 sliding puzzle starter kit on CodeCanyon!

This is the start of a whole new world for me. I'm very excited about the possibilities that are now available to me!

On the Market

I woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning. CodeCanyon accepted my item with the new documentation. You can go grab a license by clicking here.

I am quite excited about this, and hoping that I see enough sales from this to give me a reason to continue to put up more items for sale. I have several more starter kits planned, and after a little while of watching this first one's sales, I will figure out if this is the way that I'm going to go with releasing the other kits.

If there is anything you would like to see me create a starter kit for, please let me know!

In other news, Zombies Til Dawn got accepted into the Game Shop on fgl, so I'm excited about that too. Hopefully I get some sales from that. And also, you should really give the game a play on Kongregate, as that will help support me and my developments!

Lotta Documentation

Hello, May!

Okay, well CodeCanyon rejected my item saying the documentation was lacking. So I spent a couple days writing complete and thorough documentation, as well as a thorough "idiot's guide" style ebook for those non-technical people that want to buy the item, and I also went through all the code and overhauled everything to make it as clean and simple as I possibly could. And I've just resubmitted the item for review. Hoping that it gets accepted this time. If it doesn't, I'm just going to end up selling it through my new Gumroad account. More on that later.

In the process I found Remarkable, a rather useful tool which lets me write in Markdown and then export a shiny styled PDF document. I'll be using this software quite a bit.

I have also learned quite a bit about HTML5 game development, and with this new-found knowledge, I am planning on putting together an educational course which I will be selling in the near future.

Ghosts in the Wrapper

A GHOST POSSESSED MY GRANOLA BAR WRAPPER AND COMPLETED A PUZZLE ON MY ANDROID TABLET!

...Or, y'know some logical explanation...

I absentmindedly placed the wrapper for a granola bar on top of my android tablet, and it moved around a bit from the air flow in the room, and apparently the material is conductive or something, because my tablet started to respond as if I were using it. And to top it off, I had a game open on the tablet and the granola bar wrapper solved a puzzle in the android game.

Testing the Market

I submitted my first item for sale to the CodeCanyon Envato marketplace before heading to bed last night. Crossing my fingers in hopes that it gets accepted and gets some sales so I can start to see some kind of ROI for my time investment.

If things don't go well with CodeCanyon, then I will end up selling the item myself directly via a PayPal button. But I really hope that things do go well. I've got a lot on my mind lately, and some extra funds would help relieve the stress.

Zombies Til Dawn has seen under 20 plays so far, and hasn't made a penny in ad revenue, so I'm rather depressed about that. I am considering selling the source to the game. Interested? Let me know.

My dashboard says that people are watching this blog, but I'm suspicious that it's mostly just bots. Please prove me wrong by actually writing a comment.

Zombies Til Dawn

Well it's been a little while since I posted anything. Even though I completely missed out on LD32, I finished my game anyway and today I am here to announce the fully-playable and mobile-ready (to the best of my knowledge) HTML5 game Zombies Til Dawn.

You can play the game by clicking here.

I opted to avoid the use of any third party libraries. The game is made with pure JS, and should run equally well on all platforms. I've tested with my desktop in 3 browsers, and my android phone and tablet. I'd love to hear if the game works or does not work on your iOS devices or your browser.

I kept a log of all the time that went into the game, and it totals at 13 hours, 13 minutes, and 13 seconds... yeah, lol it surprised me too.

The game has an adsense banner so I can try to make a few pennies off of it. If you really like the game, I'd be happy to sell you an ad-free license. Contact me.

So... I know you are wondering What IS Zombies Til Dawn?

Zombies Til Dawn is a turn-based strategy game where the goal is simple. You must survive until dawn. Your means of survival is in surrounding yourself with explosives and hoping that the zombies get blown up and don't get to you.

I hope that you enjoy my little game. Well, not little, but minimalist. It clocks in at 1965 lines of code! Please, try out Zombies Til Dawn and let me know what you thought about the game!

Of all the luck...

Seriously. WTF!? My ENTIRE day has been pretty much a complete waste of time. I woke up and noticed that my phone was sitting on the "boot" animation screen. I shrugged and ignored it. I checked it again about 30 minutes later, and it STILL was on the boot animation screen. So I knew there was a problem. This tends to happen every once in a while when over-the-air updates come through, or a system app crashes. The fix is usually to pop out the battery and then pop it back in and power the phone back on...

Well, I did just that, and it resumed the boot animation for an hour, then the animation froze and the phone did nothing. SHIT! Alright, so time to dig in and try to resolve this quickly so I can get on with my day...HAH!

I've got an old smartphone. No, really, an OLD AT&T branded HTC Inspire 4G (Also known correctly as the HTC Desire HD aka The "ACE".) Several years ago I unlocked the phone and flashed a custom ROM to the device; And until today it had worked great. MUCH better than the stock HTC Sense that ships with the phone. So, the first thing I did was boot into recovery mode using the Volume-down button + Power-button power-on trick and choose RECOVERY from the hboot bootloader. And then I proceeded to attempt to create a backup of my device's data, settings, apps, and shit. Well, that failed miserably for whatever reason. Maybe it has to do with the screwed up boot? I don't have a clue. It doesn't matter at this point anyway...

So with all my data lost anyway, I formatted all my partitions and cleared my dalvik cache and proceeded to attempt to re-install my custom rom. Things appeared to be going smoothly just like it did years ago when I first installed it...

Then, after booting the freshly installed rom and going through all the motions of setting up my google account, and configuring all the settings how I like them....I have a nice ugly NO SERVICE notice on the screen. Well that's just great. I have a phone with no way to use it as a PHONE. I've had that message pop up a couple times over the last two years, and the solution was to simply reboot, then things were fine... NOT THIS TIME, NOoooo. So, NO SERVICE is pretty useless. I went back into the recovery mode and tried again, cause y'know, maybe something dropped a bit somewhere...

After the THIRD attempt, I decided to say FUCK IT and go back to the stock rom...7 failed attempts of finding a working HTC Sense rom, and I said screw it, and started looking at other options... I tried out 12, yes, TWELVE different custom roms and NOT ONE OF THEM worked for me. In the process, I ended up installing two new recovery images, flashing 6 new boot images, and factory-reset/formatting more times than I can remember...

I finally have gotten truly fed-up and I have yet another custom rom installed, and it still says NO SERVICE on my phone, and I've decided to contact customer support. So I head over to the AT&T site and after a chat with a rep, I learn that it's too damn early to talk to a technical support agent, and that I gotta try back later during business hours!

So here I am, more than 12 hours later, still with no usable phone, and that's not the only problem. I did not get to finish my LD32 entry because of all of this bullshit today. I was so close to finishing last night, but I needed to get sleep. In hind sight that was a mistake, because I got shit sleep, and then did not get to finish my entry because I was stuck dealing with a stupid piece of shit smartphone.

Right, so yeah. end-rant and all that.
Until next time, this is the Rambling Indie Richard Marks.

Behind the scenes

The past few days I have been carefully considering our studio's next move. Some things have come to light which have brought us to a position of needing to make some serious decisions with how to proceed. We have a few new projects that are starting the early stages of concept and design, and we are working on some new marketable resources which will become available for purchase in the near future.

I am working on a high resolution stylized castle tileset completely in vector format using Inkscape. I'm pretty satisfied with the results so far. I will have some visuals to show off soon.

Pushing Pixels

I have spent most of today working on some isometric tiles for a client. Tasked with creating damaged roman roads with a near photo-realistic aesthetic. I am needing to really stretch my pixel pushing powers to get this one done. I don't think I can show off the work publicly yet, so I won't be posting any screenshots of the set until I clear it with the client.

In other news, we've not been getting any positive feedback from publishers for our HTML5 game. So that sucks. Still waiting to hear back from a few more. I'm not going to get my hopes up though. I think the market is done for.

A Day of Rest

I didn't get anything done today. Just relaxed, did some reading, and light programming just for the hell of it (solved a few challenges on codeeval.com) and pushed a few pixels in GIMP toying with the many features that I never usually touch. Nothing to really show, as I didn't save any of the images.