Something about June brings me back here

Only two years since my last post, that's progress over my last hiatus right?

So, things got even crazier of course :) I'm now a father of two with the birth of my daughter last summer, and real life definitely takes the drivers seat over from the digital / creative right now.

I can't say I don't have the odd moment where I miss the balancing between total chaos and hyper-focus when crunching on indie game development full-time, but I can say for me personally the work-life balance is a lot better now, and my health is too.

Switching to work at the local tech / ISP company I went to work for all those years ago was the right choice for me personally, and I made some great friends working there while staying sane(ish?) throughout a pandemic.

Just a few weeks ago, I took another exciting leap into a software developer role, and I'm really enjoying it so far! It's an opportunity I applied for without any expectations I'd be selected for the job, so I'm still in awe every time I sign in to my account for work.

Looking at my last post I'll also say: the Oculus Quest 2 is even better than my Quest 1 was, and it's not really surprising to see it absolutely dominate the VR market. I love mine very much!

I Had Hope still sits on the back-burner, waiting for me to add some heat. I'm certainly interested in remaking at least what I had done in Construct Classic with a new engine, but I can't say there's a specific game engine I'd feel most attracted to before I take on a bigger project like that.

For now, thanks for stopping by, and here's hoping the world is a bit more "normal" by the next time I post. Stay safe!

Bringing this site up to speed

Wow. Nearly 3 years have passed since my last blog post.

It's been crazy: between the birth of my son, finishing my Hon B.A. degree, and seeing Battle Princess Madelyn through to its release on Steam, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One (including a mega-huge update earlier this year), life has been pretty much a constant crunch.

Seeing so many people playing and enjoying our games has always been an amazing feeling, but especially so with BPM because it was created for a really important purpose: Chris' daughter Maddi (the real Madelyn). Seeing her holding copies of her game, and hearing how proud of it she was, is what made all the hard work worth it, and it wouldn't have been possible without all the support (both on Kickstarter, and from social media) that Chris and I and our team received.

I'm really proud of what we've done with the game, and can't wait to see the amazing art and game ideas Chris has in the future.

For myself, I do have some exciting news: I've accepted a position at a local tech company that is showing some massive growth, so that also means I'll be leaving behind commercial games development for the foreseeable future.

What does it mean for I Had Hope? Well, it never really made it to a commercial status, so part of me is tempted to see what I can do with it in combination with my Oculus Quest, the best VR headset I've had yet (comparing to Rift CV1 and Dell Visor WMR and 3DOF ones like Oculus GO), and continue it in a freeware or maybe even open source sense.

Otherwise, I do plan to continue to tinker with some small hobby projects, especially VR and AR art works, but I'll be doing so from my new professional page instead: https://www.davenbigelow.com/

I'll leave this site to go back to its original purpose: Keeping up to date on I Had Hope news...and parking a ToS / privacy policy for app submissions haha!

Thanks again for stopping by to read this, looking forward to the adventures ahead :)

New Engine, New Game: Battle Princess Madelyn!

Wow, another year of University just flew by! A few more video projects completed, lots of essays, and already completed a full year of working as a Research Assistant on a few cool projects under my professor from the Design and Code class in second year.


Aside from the new features and bug fixes to Insanity's Blade (on Steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/334190) with Chris, we have also been working on our next title: Battle Princess Madelyn! (http://www.causalbitgames.com/)


It's a 2D platformer with a GnG feel, but with a difficulty that scales to the player ability (or can be locked-in at a super challenging skill level), and Chris had finished the prototype in Construct 2/HTML5 a while back which has this video out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pzz-PpcX6c&feature=youtu.be

Over the past few months, we've both been working on porting that to Unity! Native performance, console export, all the things we really need to get this project way beyond where IB could go! :D

We're keeping a dev blog on our website, but have a few screenshots of the early work in porting the game so far (even some added fancy lighting effects!):

University Project: The Baby Is Coming

Last term I had a really fun project where I could choose a public domain story and write an interactive program about it in the Processing 2.0 IDE (Essentially Java with some really helpful graphical and OpenGL functions built-in).

After some searching around I stumbled across the story 2BR02B, which was written by Kurt Vonnegut and first published in 1962, and loved its image of a future where the utopian dream of eternal life was still imperfect and almost dehumanizing. I then set about creating a small adventure within that universe and took about a month and a half to make the game, with most of it being written from scratch or based on the awesome examples in the Processing Reference.

Short video of the gameplay: https://vimeo.com/126984544

The game and its source can be grabbed from GameJolt at: http://gamejolt.com/games/other/the-baby-is-coming/43031/
 

Back to work/university/homework!

Insanity's Blade on Steam!

It's been a while since I've posted here, but between being really busy at university (I'll share some code soon), working, and developing Insanity's Blade I have some cool news, Insanity's Blade is officially released on Steam for Windows PC's today!!

The game has really changed since the first Kickstarter, Chris upgraded all the graphics to 16bit, and it now has both an 8bit and 16bit soundtrack (changeable in the options!), and we added 2 player local co-op!

Go check it out on it's store page at: http://store.steampowered.com/app/334190/

You can also check out these cool screenshots below :) 

 

There was also the really cool arcade machine that Richard Black from Old School Games made for the game at Hal-Con 2014! Here's an image of him (right) and Chris (left) standing by it:

Launched a Kickstarter! - Insanity's Blade The Ultimate 8Bit Experience

I've teamed up with my good friend Christopher Obritsch to form Causal Bit Games! ( www.causalbitgames.com ) and we're running a Kickstarter for our first game together: Insanity's Blade!

What's it about?

Insanity's Blade is based on a comic series of the same name that Chris wrote a long time ago, the game itself though also pays tribute to the classic NES/8-bit style, right down to using nsf format music (actually playable on a real *Japanese* NES console!).

However, we're also bringing some newer graphical features and effects, and putting way more action than the old NES could handle (without icky slow-down and flickering!). We're also adding a dash more violence to make you really feel like a man who's hell-bent on revenge against the demons that killed his family (oh, did I not mention the story is of a man who's hell-bent on revenge against demons from hell that killed his family?)

What's it look like?

I'm glad you asked, here is some media from the game:

Can I try it?

Yes! We've uploaded a demo to the Kickstarter page!

So.. where's the Kickstarter?

It's right here at www.kickstarter.com/projects/353834117/insanitys-blade-the-ultimate-8-bit-experience , we hope you like how the game looks and would love your support in making it even better!

Packt Publishing - 50% eBooks this weekend!

The publisher of my book Construct Game Development: Beginner's Guide is having a pretty cool 50% off sale this weekend on all of their eBooks!

Details of the promotion are in the image above, just enter the promo code BIG50 at the checkout page to use it!