Blogs - fakecakestudios

The campaign is LIVE! Head on over, with the link below, and check it out. It will run until 01/16/2015.

Us at Fake Cake Studios, would greatly appreciate any donations, but if you cannot, simply share it with your friends, family, and the Internet. We will forever be grateful!

Check out our campaign here: IndieGoGo - Black Friday

It's FINALS WEEK at The Art Institute of CA - Sacramento!

All of the last week and over the weekend, everyone has been pushing to get work out. Currently, we're constantly polishing, polishing, and polishing. We appreciate all of the feedbacks that we got so far! It will definitely help us make this game a better game in the long run, so don't stop giving us feedbacks and critiques!

Now... are your ready for updates?!
We have a bunch of updates from animations to in-game screenshots to implementing a Webstore to the release of the IndieGoGo Campaign going live today!

Animations & Characters
The team has been working on fixes and updates with each character's animations. We had a few of our character modelers, go back and add hair for those models that's missing hair. WE HAVE HAIR!!!

Webstore
This is an in-game feature that allows players to use the money they saved in their Money Jar after each checkout to purchase more PowerUps, Characters, Cart Attachments, and other cool stuff! Our programmers are getting the Webstore implemented into our most up-to-date build.

There will be a ton of videos, screenshots, and Webstore screenshots going up from here on out. So..... stay tuned, and check back for updates once a week!

The IndieGoGo Campaign will go live today! There will be an update blog later today with a link to our campaign.

FINALLY!

Are you an industry professional? Are you in the Sacramento/Natomas area or willing to travel? Send us an e-mail (fakecakestudios@gmail.com) or a PM on IndieDB for more information and if you're interested in coming to our final presentation, and we can check if there are tickets available. We apologize, but it is restricted to industry professionals due to limited tickets/space available. So contact us as soon as possible! We're having our final presentation 12/19/2014.

Have a great Monday!

If you downloaded our game, played it, and submitted a completed Beta Test Questionnaire, you will get your name in the game's credits.

If you lost the e-mail or can't find where the questionnaire is... here it is: Goo.gl

When a response is received, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from Fake Cake Studios.

It was a super successful release last night!

We are currently rank 51 out of 20,692 on IndieDB!
Whereas on SlideDB we're rank 7 out of 5,945!

First, we want to thank everyone for their support. Without your support, we would not be where we are right now. Our team is working on the game as we speak, and we are more than welcome to receive feedback from you all!

There will be more updates from the team in our next DevBlog. So stay tuned!

You can leave us a comment anywhere on IndieDB, send us a PM, or sending us an e-mail at fakecakestudios@gmail.com.

Have a great night/morning/afternoon! :)

After our Monday morning meeting, we have news/updates!
Working with the day of the week of our class (the day that we as a team meet every week to work on Black Friday), we are releasing our beta today!

Cyber Monday!

* Head over to our Downloads section and download Black Friday! If you need instructions on how to install the game onto your Android Device, a document is also available for downloads in the Downloads section.

Beta Form
How To Install on Android Device
Enjoy the game and please leave us some comments/reviews!

It's been a crazy Thanksgiving weekend for everyone on the team. We will not go into detail due to personal matters involved.

Due to multiple unforeseen circumstances/issues, we were unable to deliver the game to you all. We at Fake Cake Studios, apologize for the sudden delay and lack of updates last week for the beta release. Until we have further information, we are unable to release the beta, but please stay tuned to IndieDB for news updates and our social media channels (Twitter and Facebook) for updates.

Thank you all for your support and understanding.

From Fake Cake Studios, we hope you all have a wonderful Monday.

Happy Turkey-week everyone!

As we all know, the infamous Black Friday is happening in a few days. So if you’re out camping for those sweet deals, make sure you pick up our beta. Yep! It’s releasing on Black Friday, so get ready for some crazies to happen!

We’ve had a lack of updates for the past two weeks, we all personally apologize. It’s been extremely hectic at Fake Cake Studios. Each team is on a time crunch to get this beta ready for you all to try. There will be more information on the beta as the actual Black Friday draws closers, so stay tuned.
A huge update from our last development blog: we had to merge our 2nd and 3rd levels together. With the end of the quarter literally 3 weeks away, we do not have the time to have a fully functional and complete level 3. We’re close, but why not just have a super big awesome crazy level 2! For each level, we have Matt Thomas, Quinton Hanifen, and Asa Payan working on each level by going back and checking colliders, updating textures to floors, walls, and other objects throughout the levels.

It’s been an extremely tough week for our Lead Programmer, Joshua Murrill. He is currently working on the Artificial intelligence, our Webstore implementation, and also animation triggering. An update from Joshua, of what is already implemented and functioning in-game, Nerd (playable character), dynamic steering and detection method for the AI, menu functionality, scoring, and the PowerUps. “Currently we have a functioning and playable level,” is what we got from Joshua, so we’re close to have a demo/beta to release by this week.

On the social media sides of things, we currently have our own Fan Page on Facebook, so rush on over and hit that Like button here: Facebook.com. For the latest updates, check back often to see what we’re up to! Over the course of last week, we also have a Twitter set up, @fakecakestudios, please follow us! Currently our official website is work in progress, as our Web Designer, Jessica Roots, is working with her partner to finish the website.

Thank you for reading! Have a Happy Thanksgiving week! :)

We have both good news and bad news for this week.

Bad news, our level design team is currently going back and re-optimizing each level. It may set us back, just until Wednesday this week to finally have Level 1 totally finished.

Now for the good news! We have a working Alpha level and UI for in-game is finished. Other parts of the game like a few minor menus and the Web Store, will be finished for the beta.

Level 1 - "FestBuy" now WorstBuyis DONE (for the most part)! There are some minor optimization that the level design team is currently cleaning up, so it runs smoother on the Android devices. Essentially, they're doing a sweep of checking through all fbx files, if all assets are prefabs, and slightly changing the poly count. It was decided by the class to change it to WorstBuy, from FestBuy.
Status: Finished; minor optimization.

Level 2 - DerpMartSince the level is so big, we're adding more sections, to minimize overly wide aisles, and empty room. Also, going through our pool of 350+ assets modeled, we're adding more items in this level. Same as WorstBuy's level, we are combing through the level, deleting too many similar items all in one area.
Status: Work in progress. (85%)

Level 3 - Shack DepotNot much updates from our last post. The team is working to get everything optimized and ready for the programmers.
Status: Work in progress.

One major update we have this week is the User Interface.
Currently complete:

• Main Menu
• Level Selection
• Character Selection
• Confirmation Game
• Pause Screen
• Victory Screen
• Failed Screen

With these completed, we will have an updated build by the end of today, with the UI implemented into the game/game play.

Today our Producer will be presenting to a group of faculty and industry professionals, discussing our progress and where we will get to by the end of the quarter (5 more weeks).

That is it for today, if more major updates come up, we will be sure to keep you all updated!

Happy Halloween!
Ready for some updates??

After Monday morning's meeting, we have an alpha! There are a few kinks in animations and gameplay, so before the end of class, jobs were distributed to the team. By next Monday, we will have a polished alpha.

Levels
Our alpha currently consists of only FestBuy, which is a tutorial level that will teach the player the controls of the game.

An update from our Level Designers and Programmers:
DerpMart is 80% finished, we're polishing the level by updating textures as our Texture Artists makes fixes. After the design aspect is done, it will be handed over to our Programmers to implement the gameplay.

Shack Depot is our third level and it's when things get difficult! More shoppers, more clutter, and A LOT of chaos! It is also work in progress at the moment.Once the level design team gets everything set up in Unity, the programmers can start implementing gameplay.

Models (Assets and Characters)
We're including some new objects in the latter levels (Shack Depot), more shelvings and other clutter objects, for the level.

Animations
The animation team is working with our outsourced Riggers, to get the animations finalized and updated. There are minor tweaks that needs to be worked on before we can say we're done with our characters.

UI
The main UI is almost ready, the files were just sent over to our programmers, so they can begin the implementation process in-engine. Check our images tab for an inside look of our Main Menu.
What do you think?

Want to see more up-to-date screenshots? Check out our images section. Currently in are videos of our playable characters, doing their wacky stuff, that you will see in game!

On the side note, Beta Testing is around the corner! More information will be posted as we prepare for our Beta. So stay posted and get a chance to beta test for us :).

To conclude this post, we're on schedule with our work thus far, our producer, Jason Green, will have a presentation next week, to show our progress and what we hope to accomplish in the following/remaining 6 weeks!

More updates to come on Monday as we meet again as a team! Thank you all for tuning in and being with us through our development for Black Friday.

We apologize for our late updates for Black Friday! It's been a long past 3 weeks, but we have tons of updates! Are you ready?
Now, where to start...
Levels! Currently our Level Design team, led by Matt Thomas, is putting together our levels to give our players the most chaotic Black Friday they have ever experienced! Our first level, DerpMart, is completed, so it is in the hands of our programmers, Cody Blower and Joshua Murrill, to work their magic! The level will serve as a tutorial, to teach the player basic controls and mechanics of the game. Levels 2 and 3 are on their way!

Character models and rigs are completed! We currently have two playable characters our Nerd and Psycho.

We have nearly half our team working and tweaking animations for all the characters and even our PowerUps. A few characters are still working in progress, but we have our main character and security guards finished.

We are extremely lucky to have a such a wonderful and helpful student body at The Art Institute! Last Monday, we met with Web Designer, Jessica Root, whom will be working on our official website for Black Friday! We hope you're just as excited as we are to what it's going to look like!
Check back for more updates (with images and videos) later this week!