Tag: arena

Game Development

Blog 879: Instant Action

Rao Dao Zao

I have been saying that I want to demo Exon at a live event for… well, ever since I bought my big dev laptop. Which, according to my calculations, was seven years ago. I have not managed to demo Exon at a live event in that time. Oops.

But now something’s coming. Soon, Exon WILL go to the ball! Luckily I already have a demo that can be exhibited, but its structure is maybe not ideal for showing off to wandering crowds. There must be something small and quick that I can add that’ll be a little more appropriate…

Continue reading “Blog 879: Instant Action” →
Game Development

Blog 776: Sound and Stuff

Rao Dao Zao

I’ve been putting off adding audio to Exon for, at this point, years. I didn’t want to tackle it until all my other systems were pretty solid — I didn’t want to shove in a load of work to manage audio sources and play effects if there was a risk that I’d be re-engineering half of it after the fact.

Well, things have now been stable enough for long enough and… Well, I got put on furlough by my employer. What else was I going to do with the extra time locked in the flat but suck up a major project?

Continue reading “Blog 776: Sound and Stuff” →

Game Development

Blog 771: Around the Arena

Rao Dao Zao

It’s a new decade, and Exon is officially six years old. That’s three times as old as my previous record holder, the WC3 total conversion Project Y4, which clocked in at two years. And it’s not even done yet! Not even close to done!

The Arena, however, is done. You can jump in, smash up some bots, and either win or lose. Which means it’s time to FEATURE CREEP YEAAAAAAAAAH! (It’s not feature creep if they were planned all along.)

Continue reading “Blog 771: Around the Arena” →

Game Development

Blog 768: Vertical Slice

Rao Dao Zao

So, a few months ago, I paused work on Exon’s main campaign to focus on building the Arena. This approach came with some risks but I decided to swallow them because this felt like it would be the fastest route to something genuinely playable.

I was right, because that was about three months ago and for the last few weeks I’ve had it out at local game dev events and being played by real human beings. It is by no means a finished game, but it is a fully-functioning, self-contained scenario that stresses the breadth of the game’s core combat mechanics. A vertical slice. Objective complete!

It’s funny because my mechs’ primary attacks are vertical slices.

Continue reading “Blog 768: Vertical Slice” →

Game Development

Blog 764: Minimum Viable Game

Rao Dao Zao

I was at a game dev meet-up about a month ago now, where my pals sassed me silly for not having shipped a game yet. They’re right to do so — although I vigorously resist accusations of feature creep (it’s not creep if it’s all part of the original plan), it’s true that I’m making something rather large that isn’t going to be releasable until it’s “done” (this is the true curse of building narrative-driven things).

About a year ago, I set down my plan for the first release: a self-contained prologue to a bigger campaign, which would be short enough to manufacture in a sensible time-frame, but broad enough to stress out most of my features. “Sensible time-frame” is, of course, relative and it’s still got a long way to go.

So I asked myself: what’s the minimum viable game? What is the purest, simplest expression of top-down mech action that I can build and put in front of people?

Continue reading “Blog 764: Minimum Viable Game” →