Blogs - ELB

I'm ready to move on from Amo Nautica. It's been a lot of fun to work on, and I've learned a lot while doing so, but I've come to the point where I don't enjoy creating islands as much as I used to. I remember getting to that point where I could just create content, and thinking, "WOW, I'm finally here. How do so many games have so few places to go?" Well I know why now, and that's fine. I'm hoping I can have the game finished in a couple months, but no official date until then. All I have to do to finish is:

Finish the last island
Optimize everything
Go through bug fixes
Polish the menus and HUD
Make the rest of the sound effects
Get the rest of the music
And finally, implement the rest of the story

So when I got home for Christmas, I discovered my older sister wanted us to have pink Christmas lights on our tree. The lights are blue. I don't know how to feel about either choice. In any case, I am home for Christmas, and as it's been quite a while since I made a post, I might as well now. Alaska is pretty cool. My laptop's hard drive failed, (mostly because I was an idiot when it first showed problems, and I proceeded to dig it into a deeper and deeper hole,) but luckily I had everything backed up, so no harm done to Amo Nautica. I've spent most of my time working on a single island, and a little bit of time on polishing. Like I added a screen shake. I like it. I dunno how much work I'll get done over my Christmas break, as I'm forced to work on my mother's laptop. For the time being, I'm just pleased to be home.

So life is getting interesting for me. Amo Nautica development has slowed down a bit, as I moved to Alaska! I'm going to be living in the mountains up here for a whole year, but I have my laptop, (which doesn't always play Amo Nautica so well,) and I even got an entire mini game done within about two days. I'm going to be working a lot on other things, but I'll try to get in some dev time every day. Might only been between half an hour, or several. Depends on the days I have off, when I have to make a trip to town, and so on and so forth. I really like it up here, lots of inspiration for areas - too bad Amo Nautica is colorless, the trees here are absolutely gorgeous right now, all golden yellow.

Anyway, time for me to go do stuff.

It's been a while, hasn't it internet. Life is going smoothly for me, been working my butt off, just got done with being a piece of crap at PAX, all in all, good things. All good things. So what of my game?

CANCELED.

Nah just kidding. I've been working diligently on Amo Nautica. What have I added... Side stepping, speed reloading, better transitions between areas, and I'm also talking with a cool music guy who's trying to give me some help with my music, (as I'm not at all musically inclined.) You want a gif? Here's a gif.

Look at that beautiful stuff. There's even cut scenes which I forgot to mention! Isn't that great? Also, when you have your boat, you get a compass which points to it.

I'll try to post updates more often for ANYONE who might be interested, or even just to document my terrible game development journey.

Uhhh. Blog post number one. Numero uno. Il est un. Right now I'm sitting at my computer, sleep deprived, with a bunch of dirty dishes to my right, and a collection of games and gaming paraphernalia to my left. It's not hard to say that my life revolves around games. Further to my right, on the wall, is a Phantasy Star Online poster. It's the only poster I have in my room, and arguably, that game was before my time. Despite the fact that it was first released when I was 6, it later became my favorite game, with the PSOBB iteration. I even own multiple console copies at this stage in my life. Now, here I sit, some 19 year old without much to do, sitting here, writing a stupid blog post.

I am a dev mind you. A terrible one, but a dev all the same. I... I kinda don't know what I'm doing honestly. My entire development cycle is a learning process, and despite how beyond amateur I feel, it's very gratifying. This is Indiedb, you might be wondering at this point what sort of game I'm working on, (if you've bothered to read this far.) It's called, Amo Nautica. The best way I can describe it is Wind Waker, but set in more modern times, with a guy with a terrible gun, and Gameboy graphics. Give me a moment to figure out how to post a picture.

Okay, uploading stuff to imgur, bare with me here. Now, you might be saying at this point, "Oh, another game going for a retro style. How original." Would it be acceptable to say I have no excuse? I'm one guy, and I'm not really an artist. This is all I can do, so I work with what I know, and that's bare bones pixel art. I'd prefer having a unified style over bad HD aesthetics. That's fair, isn't it?

That acceptable? It's just the kind of game I want to make. A game about a dad trying to do what's right by his children, and late wife. I don't expect to be rich because of this game, (or make any money at all,) I just want to create a game that people will enjoy, as well as make the game I want to make. That is all.