August 26th, 2010
I haven’t posted here in a hot minute. I’ve been extremely busy. I’ve been getting ready to go to PAX, and getting a third demo together for all of my adoring fans. On top of this, I have to walk my dog every single day.
Part of the problem I’ve been so preoccupied with the demo is because I added a major new feature which I’ve had some trouble getting to be fun enough. I had some serious doubts about whether or not it would actually work, but I’ve managed to wrest a good deal of fun out of it, and I’m now confident enough that I’m ready to show it off.
This is the “Updates Grid” It’s a grid for downloading updates to your structures and units. The first technology you get is the CPU, which is there in the bottom center. From there you can download any update that’s adjacent to one you already have. Once you’re able to branch out enough, then you can download programs for structures, which allows you to build those structures, and updates for those programs as well.
You can also see the new user interface that we’ve been working on, vastly improved from the old for better readability and usability. Adam’s been doing some good work on this. There are actually graphics for all the buttons now! And that “Turn” button is exactly what you think it is.
Once I get back from PAX I’ll be working on putting that third demo together and releasing it to the general public. I’ll also get back to writing those essays on game development that I do from time to time. By the way, if anybody is going to PAX and wants to meet up and have a drink, just drop me a line, I love to meet people.
Now you may remember that a couple of months ago I submitted Digitanks to a number of game development contests, including PAX 10, IndieCade, and a couple others. Well the last of those submission results came back today and it turns out that I didn’t win a single one! I didn’t really expect to win any because the game at the state of submission was rather lacking on features, but it still saddens a very small place of my heart. Oh well, there’s always next year. There’s another competition coming up next month that I can enter and not win, so I do look forward to that.
August 10th, 2010
After the demo was released, some of the people who played it have sent me screenshots of their games, so I thought I would share them here.
From SchnappleMcG:
From Raidyr:
Thanks for sending the screenies over guys!
I was informed that the anti-spam mechanism on the forum was keeping registrations, but it looks like that’s been fixed now so if you had trouble accessing the forums before please give it another try.
August 4th, 2010
The base-building demo of Digitanks is now ready. You can download it on the download page. If you enjoy the demo, please take a stop by the Help Us page to see how you can assist in the development of Digitanks. Here’s a screenshot of the downloadable wares in question:
Many people have asked for a central place to voice their thoughts on the development of Digitanks. To this end I’ve erected a forum for the purpose of discussions of all things Digitanks. Discussion of other things is optional but encouraged. I decided against a blog comment system in favor of this since I think this will keep things more organized and in a central location, but if you think a blog comment system would be better then please make sure that opinion reaches my ears at some point. I hope that this forum won’t become a wretched hive of scum and villainy as so many locales on the internet tend towards, but I can’t guarantee anything.
Also an additional reminder: If you spend any time on Steam or Facebook, please note that we have groups on those systems specifically for the purpose of showing fandom and appreciation for this wonderful game, and I invite you to join them and share your feelings. If at any time in your recent past you have Dugg something, note that there is also a button that would facilitate your Digging on the top right corner of this page. And I suppose that if you’ve ever Tweeted something, now would also be an appropriate time for such things.
July 27th, 2010
A couple nights ago I was taking a break playing City of Heroes. After that article I wrote that mentioned the bubbler I had a hunkering for playing it again. After playing for a little while my GPU overheated and the computer shut off. Well that’s happened before so I took out my trusty can of air and cleaned out the laptop’s internals a little bit. Most of the time it’s just extra dust buildup that prevents the fan from cooling effectively. After I left it to cool off for a while I turned it back on.
Windows would not boot. It just refused to boot up. It does that on occasion but usually I run the system restore and then it works again. Windows Vista can be finnickey that way. But this time, no cigar. After endless tries rebooting and running the system restore I finally gave up and decided to reinstall the entire thing, taking the opportunity this time to upgrade to Windows 7 x64. (I like it a lot, by the way, except for that the OpenGL drivers for my NVidia card randomly spaz out and claim that they don’t support framebuffers.) I’ve backed up all my data so I didn’t lose anything but the time required to reinstall everything to get productive again.
It came at a very bad time because I’m trying to get another demo ready. I was originally shooting for Sunday night, but I wasn’t pleased with the state that the game was in. The fun is definitely there now, but it’s still in an infant state. I’m cultivating it and growing it to make it something worth writing home about. I don’t want to release another demo until I’m largely satisfied with the fun level. I also want to make a bigger splash this time and attract more attention to the project, which requires a little bit of ground work. That means not getting much sleep, but hey I knew what I was getting into when I started this.
Adam came over today to talk about the progress of the game. We have a first iteration of every structure except the resource node in the game. He’s done a fantastic job in making all of the buildings look unique and cool-looking. I had him sit down and play the most recent version and he built up a huge base. He was still expanding and conquering when he realized he had to go, but I quickly snapped a screenshot of his handywork.
The good news is that the playtesting is starting to show a lot of progress, but the bad news is that I now have a list two pages long of things that need to be fixed before we can release the demo.
By the way I’ve added a Digg button to each post. If you like Digg and you enjoy the post, please take the time to visit the website Digg it. I’m going to be trying out the Digg button to see if it does anything for me, we’ll see if it stays or not.
July 21st, 2010
Today’s update brings a new screenshot from Digitanks-land. Click on it to view full size.
Featured in this new shot is are the new CPU and buffer models. A long time friend of mine, Adam, is helping design and construct the models. These designs are still in progress, we’re trying to work out the details on how we want them to look, so the textures and geometry of them are far from finalized. But, they should give a rough idea of what the end result will look like. There’s a chain of buffers leading up to that small gray box, which is placeholder art for a resource node. The blue circular object right next to it is a resource collector that the player is trying to construct. The yellow tank on the right has decided to attack, and I’ve responded with some tanks of my own. The large blue tendrils coming out from all of the structures is the player’s “Network.” It defines the player’s territory and helps support friendly units. In the future, I’m going to write a blog post detailing how we came to the design decisions that we did concerning the structure models, but for today it’s just a screenshot.
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