We hit a milestone this weekend, and it feels really nice. The gameplay is finalized. That’s not to say that the entire game is finalized – oh no. Still lots of work to do. But in terms of actual gameplay elements – how the character moves, how elements work, how levels are designed – that’s [...]

It’s finally here! I’m sorry it took so long to get Build 30 out, but I really had no choice. Exactly two weeks ago I put out Build 29, and things started changing so much that the game was relatively unplayable until just recently. I put in a final few touches tonight and I am [...]

I’ve found that in programming Protonaut, I haven’t been particularly challenged. That’s not to say that it isn’t super interesting or fun, but it feels that I’ve been largely coasting instead of actually thinking. I’m not talking about Math problems – I’m absolutely pants when it comes Math in the first place, so anything calculated [...]

One of the big draws to a platformer-style-game is the feel. A good, responsive control scheme with some nice animations can make the difference between sluggish boredom and excitement. I’ve never really looked into the mechanics behind character movement before, and when confronted with the problem of making Protonaut feel nice, I had to do [...]

After showcasing build 25 I got a lot of good responses. People are getting excited about the game, and I got some important feedback on the tutorial. Changes in build 26/27: – The tutorial is now split into 8 distinct parts. This allows people to get the “rush of victory” pretty frequently early on, while [...]

I’ve often thought that the point, or the core concepts, of Protonaut have been lost because there is no good demonstration level – and all the levels submitted are by Fantastic-Contraptioners. It keeps the game looking like something it’s not, so I decided to rectify that today. But first, maybe I should talk about game [...]

Today I learned to walk away from a feature that was bugging me. Stupid features. First of all, updates have been slow in the last month because: There is a plethora of sunshine and nice weather SimCity4 got reinstalled on my computer The Secret Of Monkey Island: Special Edition came out on Steam ArmA2 came [...]

Not many updates in the last week – I heard the game CitiesXL entered a closed beta and it got me all excited for city building. I rooted out an old copy of SimCity 4 and have been playing it to bits. I’m also starting to work on my newer, faster laptop – so transferring [...]