The big "what are you working on?" thread

[OmarShehata]

This is a thread where you can share updates about what you're currently working on, to get feedback, some extra motivation, or just share what you're up to with the community!

No strict rules - whether you're working on the next big thing, a small game jam game, or just getting started and learning a new tool, all are welcome here!

This is kind of like the long running "Flash reg lounge", but focused more on posting updates on stuff you're working and talking about it. I know the "regulars lounge" can be a bit a intimidating if you're new to the community.

[OmarShehata]

To kick things off, here's an update from me:

O Mighty Snakedragon

I recently finished polishing up this game I originally made for the GMTK game jam:

It was on the front page for a bit, people seemed to like it overall! A lot of players seemed to find the controls impossibly difficult, despite this version being a lot easier. I feel like I made it too easy for people who knew how to play, and still too hard for others.

I can't for the life of me figure out why they find it so difficult now. I messaged some people about it, I think it has something to do with how some people expect to move with arrow keys (like press right to go right) whereas here you have to use right/left to turn, and up to go forward. But I would have thought this was a fairly not uncommon scheme (like asteroids kind of games?)

The part that was most interesting/fun to me about this game was the movement, symmetry, and dancing. And I feel like if I were to go back I'd try to make that the focus, like getting the dragons to perform specific shapes/dances to progress.

Experimental music game?

I just finished playing Celeste and I keep thinking about the similarities to how learning and practicing these levels feels very much like learning and practicing a musical instrument. In terms of how you're trying to perform actions with your fingers spaced apart by specific intervals. You learn how to do each segment well, then try to chain them up together.

Once you get it and do it a bunch of times it also kind of becomes like muscle memory and playing it over feels kind of relaxing/meditative.

Anyway, I wanted to try experimenting with something where, it could be a platform just like Celeste, but a level is designed such that doing it actually plays/performs a song. What would that look and feel like? If each action was tied to a note, or a different set of notes (so jumping at the beginning plays an A4 note, but jumping later in the level plays a C# or whatever).

I'm sure there's similar games out there but I kind of want to try my own take before researching what's out there.

[MSGhero]

At 7/10/21 02:20 PM, OmarShehata wrote: I can't for the life of me figure out why they find it so difficult now. I messaged some people about it, I think it has something to do with how some people expect to move with arrow keys (like press right to go right) whereas here you have to use right/left to turn, and up to go forward. But I would have thought this was a fairly not uncommon scheme (like asteroids kind of games?)

I was expecting more like Snake, where you're always moving forward. I think it may also be the turn radius being kinda big?

I've been familiarizing myself with the Heaps haxe lib. It's forcing me to understand and even care about the rendering pipeline. My previous snowboarding game was my first foray into shaders, and I think I'd be (even more) lost without that experience with drawTriangles kind of function calls. That game also passed 100k NG views, which is my first one to do so!

I'm working on a bullet hell engine, as the one I was using isn't being updated and is no longer compatible with the latest Haxe. I'm gonna call it MonoBullet once the API is pretty, and then one day consider optimizing it. The one I was using is Firedancer, and my code is certainly inspired by their VM approach. I had a typing game prototype, and I was talking with someone about a traditional bullet hell game, so we'll see where that goes.

And finally, my muse for the past month has been the trihexagonal grid. The Final Fantasy Tactics game that's been in my head forever will be on this grid, I've decided. I'm putting the logic and data structures together, and it's also a good chance to play with drawing triangles while I figure out what's happening in bullet hell land.

[3p0ch]

I'm working on a 3D FPS in Godot for Robot Day. Right now I've got the gameplay mechanics working but I still have a lot to do and figure out, the most intimidating of which is how to model and animate the 3D robots.

It's in a playable state right now with all the levels designed and all of the real gameplay mechanics in place but clearly just placeholder models, and one of the things I struggle with is making games that are fun and challenging but not frustrating for the player, so if you'd like to check it out I'd welcome feedback at this point. Registered NG users can preview it at https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/project/1681411

I'm thinking that I designed it with the heart of a puzzle game, but a 3D FPS screams action, so that's what players might be expecting but not get from it. Maybe using puzzly sounding music and avoiding action music will help when I reach that point :p

[OmarShehata]

At 7/10/21 02:43 PM, MSGhero wrote: I was expecting more like Snake, where you're always moving forward. I think it may also be the turn radius being kinda big?

It did work like that originally in the game jam version, and this was my attempt to make it easier. But that's partially why I feel like maybe I made it worse. I do think it's the sort of thing where once you figure out how to steer it's really fun (but then the game doesn't really push that. Like it'd be cool if it encouraged you and rewarded you for like slithering gracefully through a series of obstacles or performing different shapes etc)

That game also passed 100k NG views, which is my first one to do so!

Oh wow, congratulations!! Did you do much like marketing outside of NG on that?

I've been familiarizing myself with the Heaps haxe lib. It's forcing me to understand and even care about the rendering pipeline. My previous snowboarding game was my first foray into shaders, and I think I'd be (even more) lost without that experience with drawTriangles kind of function calls.

I'm still very interested to hear how this goes! I've been writing kind of mini blog posts about stuff I'm learning that I don't really share widely, but it's kind of a good way to test my knowledge/write it down for future me (like here's me learning about image processing/turning an image black and white: https://omarshehata.me/notebook/how_to_turn_an_image_black_and_white) so if you ever write something like that about Heaps and what you're learning there I'd love to check it out.

At 7/10/21 03:57 PM, 3p0ch wrote: I'm working on a 3D FPS in Godot for Robot Day. Right now I've got the gameplay mechanics working but I still have a lot to do and figure out, the most intimidating of which is how to model and animate the 3D robots.

I was just going to say, I've learned a lot about 3D programming the last few years working in industry, but I'm still shying away from making a 3D game just because the content side feels really overwhelming!

I tried this out a bit - I love this idea of like controlling your mechs while simultaneously fighting alongside them. It can be a bit challenging switching between the strategy and action hats. I'd probably enjoy it a lot if it wasn't too hard.

It does currently feel a bit overwhelming (I was still trying to figure out which weapons to use and when, and figure out different enemies behaviors, and having to now figure out how to command my mechs felt a bit much). I think it would be cool if it was a "wave" system? So you could kind of have some time to position your people and not worry about them to start (and then more experienced players can command them as they play in realtime).

I'm curious where the puzzle elements you're thinking of for this game are!

[3p0ch]

At 7/11/21 10:20 PM, OmarShehata wrote:

At 7/10/21 03:57 PM, 3p0ch wrote: I'm working on a 3D FPS in Godot for Robot Day. Right now I've got the gameplay mechanics working but I still have a lot to do and figure out, the most intimidating of which is how to model and animate the 3D robots.

I was just going to say, I've learned a lot about 3D programming the last few years working in industry, but I'm still shying away from making a 3D game just because the content side feels really overwhelming!

I tried this out a bit - I love this idea of like controlling your mechs while simultaneously fighting alongside them. It can be a bit challenging switching between the strategy and action hats. I'd probably enjoy it a lot if it wasn't too hard.

It does currently feel a bit overwhelming (I was still trying to figure out which weapons to use and when, and figure out different enemies behaviors, and having to now figure out how to command my mechs felt a bit much). I think it would be cool if it was a "wave" system? So you could kind of have some time to position your people and not worry about them to start (and then more experienced players can command them as they play in realtime).

I'm curious where the puzzle elements you're thinking of for this game are!

Thanks, my issue has always been making games that are way too hard. I probably should add a few more softball levels -- like another level with a single mech before introducing the team, and maybe another one after getting the team where like on the tutorial level 2 you have unlimited time to get them into position before pressing enter to start the waves.

And I guess my terminology was lax -- I'm not thinking puzzle as in classical puzzle games like sokoban, but more the fact that it's designed so you're forced to use different tactics with different levels. Winning is all about figuring out how to approach each level; just having good reflexes and using the same tactic all the time won't be enough.

[MSGhero]

At 7/11/21 10:20 PM, OmarShehata wrote: Oh wow, congratulations!! Did you do much like marketing outside of NG on that?

We didn’t do any marketing except for this:

I'm still very interested to hear how this goes! I've been writing kind of mini blog posts about stuff I'm learning that I don't really share widely, but it's kind of a good way to test my knowledge/write it down for future me (like here's me learning about image processing/turning an image black and white: https://omarshehata.me/notebook/how_to_turn_an_image_black_and_white) so if you ever write something like that about Heaps and what you're learning there I'd love to check it out.

A lot of my bullet hell coding is logic and not heaps-specific, so I’m still at the beginning of actual heaps-ing. I did just start getting into shaders there, so I’ll have something to write up soon enough.

[HENOOB]

At 7/12/21 01:58 PM, MSGhero wrote:

At 7/11/21 10:20 PM, OmarShehata wrote: Oh wow, congratulations!! Did you do much like marketing outside of NG on that?

We didn’t do any marketing except for this:

That is the reason most of the recent newgrounds users are here in the first place, feels good but in the same time feels bad

[AlexBlack]

At 7/10/21 02:43 PM, MSGhero wrote:

At 7/10/21 02:20 PM, OmarShehata wrote: I can't for the life of me figure out why they find it so difficult now. I messaged some people about it, I think it has something to do with how some people expect to move with arrow keys (like press right to go right) whereas here you have to use right/left to turn, and up to go forward. But I would have thought this was a fairly not uncommon scheme (like asteroids kind of games?)

I was expecting more like Snake, where you're always moving forward. I think it may also be the turn radius being kinda big?

I've been familiarizing myself with the Heaps haxe lib. It's forcing me to understand and even care about the rendering pipeline. My previous snowboarding game was my first foray into shaders, and I think I'd be (even more) lost without that experience with drawTriangles kind of function calls. That game also passed 100k NG views, which is my first one to do so!

I'm working on a bullet hell engine, as the one I was using isn't being updated and is no longer compatible with the latest Haxe. I'm gonna call it MonoBullet once the API is pretty, and then one day consider optimizing it. The one I was using is Firedancer, and my code is certainly inspired by their VM approach. I had a typing game prototype, and I was talking with someone about a traditional bullet hell game, so we'll see where that goes.

And finally, my muse for the past month has been the trihexagonal grid. The Final Fantasy Tactics game that's been in my head forever will be on this grid, I've decided. I'm putting the logic and data structures together, and it's also a good chance to play with drawing triangles while I figure out what's happening in bullet hell land.

looks stunning=) putting the logic is my favorite sh*t ))

[FizzyLemon]

At 7/10/21 02:10 PM, OmarShehata wrote: This is a thread where you can share updates about what you're currently working on, to get feedback, some extra motivation, or just share what you're up to with the community!

No strict rules - whether you're working on the next big thing, a small game jam game, or just getting started and learning a new tool, all are welcome here!

This is kind of like the long running "Flash reg lounge", but focused more on posting updates on stuff you're working and talking about it. I know the "regulars lounge" can be a bit a intimidating if you're new to the community.

At the moment, for my 3 weekly games challenge that I set myself, I am working on a small game: working title: Glowball. This is a little game that will put your reaction time to the test. You play as a ball that can change colour, you need to match your colour to the colour of the balls that fly at you. if you match the colour, you score some points, if not, you lose some health. the spawnrate of the balls increase overtime creating some insanely challenging gameplay during longer sessions. I am mainly creating the game to test my ability to manage my time, however I thought I ought to make a somewhat fun game out of it, so that's what I came up with.

Here's a screenshot of what the game looks like in it's current state:

My next steps are to add UI features for the health and score, and then add music, then I'll dedicate some time to at least TRYING to make the game look a bit better, but that wasn't the main focus of the challenge. it's mainly to improve my coding skills, time management as well as my general knowledge of the Godot Game Engine.

[MSGhero]

I got shaders working in my code and trigonometry working in my head to make the trihexagonal grid below. I'm not sure how much perspective there should be... the top one is isometric technically, but it's a little dense. It's kinda fun thinking of how to deal with this grid, in terms of movement and attacking in a traditional tactics game. Now that I can visualize the grid clearly, I'm going to start writing some of those ideas down.

I'm getting closer to understanding enough Heaps to be able to write something about that too.

[OmarShehata]

At 7/31/21 01:36 AM, MSGhero wrote: I got shaders working in my code and trigonometry working in my head to make the trihexagonal grid below. I'm not sure how much perspective there should be... the top one is isometric technically, but it's a little dense. It's kinda fun thinking of how to deal with this grid, in terms of movement and attacking in a traditional tactics game. Now that I can visualize the grid clearly, I'm going to start writing some of those ideas down.

This is looking great! I've never worked on an isometric engine before. I know how I would project a 3D scene to a fixed isometric perspective, but this sounds harder.

I guess what are you passing in that gets transformed by the shader? Line primitives that make up the grid that get transformed by the vertex shader? Does this also support like, rotating the view?

[MSGhero]

At 8/1/21 10:52 AM, OmarShehata wrote: This is looking great! I've never worked on an isometric engine before. I know how I would project a 3D scene to a fixed isometric perspective, but this sounds harder.

I guess what are you passing in that gets transformed by the shader? Line primitives that make up the grid that get transformed by the vertex shader? Does this also support like, rotating the view?

Right now I'm actually using the shader to draw the grid and doing explicit drawTriangles calls for the red highlighted regions. Rotating the view is an interesting idea... in the top down view that's not so bad, but it's harder with any amount of perspective, assuming you mean rotating about the Z axis. Rotating between the images here is easy enough now.

[Mabelma]

I’m currently working on a couple of things.

Working on the engine for the Isometric Quarantine Collab, having a ton of fun with that. Definitely a delight adding all the awesome rooms everyone’s been making so far.

I’m also putting together a beat ‘em up engine with combo system that will hopefully set the groundwork for a passion project I’ve been wanting to build for a long time.

All of this has me pumped to get back on development for Moai:An Interactive Experience. I think I have the skills necessary to finish the art, make the music and code the heck out of that alpha demo.

[OmarShehata]

At 8/3/21 10:26 PM, Mabelma wrote: I’m currently working on a couple of things.
Working on the engine for the Isometric Quarantine Collab, having a ton of fun with that. Definitely a delight adding all the awesome rooms everyone’s been making so far.

Ooh, can you share more about that? I'm really curious how you're going about it. It sounds a bit challenging since all the rooms are 2D drawings.

I participated in the "shelter in place" art jam a while back and made my first ever piece of 3D art:

And now I'm thinking about how cool it would be to have a space where you could walk around and experience everyone's rooms like that (assuming everyone had 3D models).

All of this has me pumped to get back on development for Moai:An Interactive Experience. I think I have the skills necessary to finish the art, make the music and code the heck out of that alpha demo.

Awesome! I can relate to this feeling. For the last few months I was working on this interactive article about how GPS works, but getting really stuck, but now after finishing the Egg jam, and writing an article about it (https://omarshehata.newgrounds.com/news/post/1197618) I'm feeling really motivated to get back to the big thing and make more progress on it.

[jMks]

At 7/10/21 03:57 PM, 3p0ch wrote: I'm working on a 3D FPS in Godot for Robot Day. Right now I've got the gameplay mechanics working but I still have a lot to do and figure out, the most intimidating of which is how to model and animate the 3D robots.

It's in a playable state right now with all the levels designed and all of the real gameplay mechanics in place but clearly just placeholder models, and one of the things I struggle with is making games that are fun and challenging but not frustrating for the player, so if you'd like to check it out I'd welcome feedback at this point. Registered NG users can preview it at https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/project/1681411

I'm thinking that I designed it with the heart of a puzzle game, but a 3D FPS screams action, so that's what players might be expecting but not get from it. Maybe using puzzly sounding music and avoiding action music will help when I reach that point :p

It's a cool concept! I had a bit hard time with the controls and would have preferred if you could move with wasd, select the units with 1,2,3 and 4 and then use the actions around wasd (say q,e,f,g,x,c,v). The levels are a bit claustrophobic and hard to navigate without the minimap. I wonder if raising the ceiling would help or just make the levels with open sky with hills instead. Either way it's a nice start!

[jMks]

After releasing The Mine Chamber at the end of June I was thinking of taking a little break and then starting a new project with a completely different idea. Yet people seemed to like the concept behind TMC so I decided to start working on a sequel for it. With TMC I wanted to keep things simple (just one arena and a very basic moveset).

On the hindsight the game became perhaps a bit too simple so with the sequel I'm just expanding ideas - I have planned expanding the moveset with dash and the double jump, adding platforms and also making more diverse chambers. I'm also updating the visual look and the feel of the game - TMC was blue and Megamanish, the sequel is probably going to be either yellow or red.

I was thinking about starting to post about the development of the game or writing a devlog of some sort reguraly but haven't figured out yet how to do that so it wouldn't take too much time from the development itself. Maybe when I get an alpha out or so.

[Mabelma]

At 8/4/21 09:40 AM, OmarShehata wrote:

At 8/3/21 10:26 PM, Mabelma wrote: I’m currently working on a couple of things.
Working on the engine for the Isometric Quarantine Collab, having a ton of fun with that. Definitely a delight adding all the awesome rooms everyone’s been making so far.

Ooh, can you share more about that? I'm really curious how you're going about it. It sounds a bit challenging since all the rooms are 2D drawings.

For sure. I’m building it in flash, just needed to rip out the backgrounds( I should have supplied a transparent template right from the get go) and add the interactivity through object-oriented programming using Actionscript 2.0 so it runs on NG through ruffle or the NG player.

I was initially gonna do a big building with every artist’s room being right above each other with some transparency effects, but thanks to some glorious feedback I’m going for a more streamlined approached with the arrow keys moving you up or down a room instead of incrementally through space.

Gonna be adding the little shine fxs which will be hand drawn so its easier to find the secrets, and then polish it up the rest of the month till it’s just perfect for release. We have 40+ artists so far, it’s been a wild ride.

I participated in the "shelter in place" art jam a while back and made my first ever piece of 3D art:

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/omarshehata/my-world-under-quarantine

And now I'm thinking about how cool it would be to have a space where you could walk around and experience everyone's rooms like that (assuming everyone had 3D models).

3D would be awesome. But in any case I think your room could be made fit the template and make a great addition to the collab. Or you could make a new entry. We got some good 3D entries on ours. Kinda cool since we have mixed media entries. Some are straight 2d illustrations, others are 3D and we even have a real tiny room that was photographed and distorted for the collab.

All of this has me pumped to get back on development for Moai:An Interactive Experience. I think I have the skills necessary to finish the art, make the music and code the heck out of that alpha demo.

Awesome! I can relate to this feeling. For the last few months I was working on this interactive article about how GPS works, but getting really stuck, but now after finishing the Egg jam, and writing an article about it (https://omarshehata.newgrounds.com/news/post/1197618) I'm feeling really motivated to get back to the big thing and make more progress on it.

This article looks awesome! Loved how you presented it all with the video playing and the scroll to read. Great work! The game looks great too. Hope you can finish that GPS article soon. Writing can be a daunting task indeed, good you’re finding the motivation to work on it.

[Aistis]

I don't want to pay for Spine so I thought I'd do my own editor but gosh it's not that fun. I should probably use Blender and adapt it to a custom runtime instead lol

[progamer09]

I'm working on a game no further updates RN

[mastzor]

I've been working on building my game using phaser 3 and it's been a challenge since I'm new to the code.

I'm trying to build a simple RPG together.

[NeonShambles]

I'm working on a 3D tank game, I used my newgrounds 3d tank model as a place holder. I'm going to add cannon bullets soon. So far it's a bit buggy but I'll fix it those problems soon.

https://twitter.com/NeonShambles/status/1424805897080037381

[SkittleWaffle]

I actually wanna make a games I just don't know how. I'm only kinda good for one thing

[3p0ch]

At 8/15/21 05:36 PM, Sebsworld wrote: I personally feel like making a Pixelated Remake of FNF

It would be fine to do if you're doing it as a learning experience, like how a lot of people make their own versions of classic games like Snake or Pong to learn an engine. Just be aware that this was made and frontpaged for a while on Pico Day.

[JtR666]

Just released a while ago a 1-level demo for my game Sass VS Fash, a Wolfenstein 3D inspired retro FPS, it's on itch.io currently: https://jmaagames.itch.io/sass-vs-fash-early-taste

It's still kinda janky, but I can hope I can fix the bugs and get the development funded somehow.

[Drakensson]

I am working on a 2D action-puzzle game of an unconventional design we have called 'reflex puzzler'.

We intend to release it on Itchio, Gamejolt and Newgrounds for free. Maybe Steam later.

The art is done by my friend Nguyen based in Vietnam (he's not a NG member).

Here is a picture from the game. It's the Game Over/death pose of the player-character.

I apologize if the image is very biiiiiiiiiiiig

[Aistis]

Ayy what took me 3 weeks a couple of years ago with no real success now took me only a couple of hours.

Trying to do something similar to BulletML but with a way simpler non-xml sequence.

Currently the shooting programs have fire(), direction(), and wait() functions for the pretty bullet patterns. Next in the list is to make bullets shoot other bullets and a very simple vanish() function to destroy the bullet after certain actions if needed.

[ChromaCee]

I am planning a little something for Pico Day 2022. And I am thinking that learning the Godot engine would be very beneficial. It's one of the reasons why I am planning this project 8-9 months in advance.

The working title is "Shades of Philly," and I am planning for it to be a little RPG-type game with about twelve main quests (It's a little more story-driven too). I won't say too too much about the plot as of right now, but let's just say that the premise is kind of the opposite of that of Pico Sim Date by Moosh in regards to character roles.

Tho I did make a few braindump sketches with certain mechanics that I might implement into the game (by the way, the character in the sketches is the character you play as in the game).

https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/310385dfc6a82c932b17bdf96a70f041

[OmarShehata]

At 9/1/21 11:24 AM, ChromaCee wrote: The working title is "Shades of Philly," and I am planning for it to be a little RPG-type game with about twelve main quests (It's a little more story-driven too).

The sketches look pretty cool! And I agree putting something together for an event like Pico Day is a great way to learn a new engine/new tools. It might even help to make a smaller version that you can submit sooner since it usually helps having smaller milestones than one big deadline (and gives you a chance to iterate and get feedback).

At 8/27/21 05:18 PM, Drakensson wrote: I am working on a 2D action-puzzle game of an unconventional design we have called 'reflex puzzler'.

@Drakensson the art looks super cool!! I'm also really fascinated by this "reflex puzzler", if you have a prototype or something you'd like to get feedback I'd love to give it a try.

When are you hoping to finish/release this by?

At 8/31/21 01:56 PM, DiskCrash wrote: Ayy what took me 3 weeks a couple of years ago with no real success now took me only a couple of hours.

@DiskCrash nice!! That's really inspiring hearing this kind of progression. What language/engine are you using for this?

[Aistis]

At 9/16/21 09:12 PM, OmarShehata wrote: @DiskCrash nice!! That's really inspiring hearing this kind of progression. What language/engine are you using for this?

Haxe and Heaps.io

I already have a sort of scripting engine running that defines bullet logic from plain text files. Has simple mathematics support like (0.5*pi)-2 and I'm trying to use an Entity-Component-System architecture