Weekly Development Progress Report, 27/11/17

Just a quick note this week to say that I've got nothing to show for now as I'm still focusing on client work. So, as I said I was considering last week, I'm putting the weekly posts on hold until I've got more to write about.

The client work is going really well and I'm both enjoying it and learning plenty. I am hoping to take some time to make progress on my own projects but paid work comes first, especially in the run-up to Christmas.

I'll have a monthly round-up next week and the long-promised Zombie Cannon Attack! postmortem is almost ready.

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. If you want to keep up to date you can also follow me on Twitter.
My latest game, Zombie Cannon Attack!, is available on all these platforms:
Android
itch.io (desktop download)
Gamejolt (web & desktop)
Kongregate (web)
Give it a try and let me know what you think, feedback is always welcome.

Weekly Development Progress Report, 20/11/17

I spent most of the last week doing client work. Getting my first game for him to work on his site was a little stressful and distracted me a little from my next project for him and my own projects, it's all sorted now though so I'm looking forward to getting on with it this week.

Mathematical!

The work I've been doing is for a website called Mathsframe that specialises in making maths-based games for primary school children. They have a large catalogue of flash games that I'm helping to update and remake as HTML5 games now that flash is pretty much on borrowed time. My first game is here and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but more importantly the client is happy too which means more work for me. The games are all pretty small, well under a week's work each, but I've really enjoyed the change in pace and scope and learnt a great deal in a short space of time. It's also pretty great to get paid for gamedev work.

More (really pretty good) excuses

As I said last week, the client work has meant less time for my own projects. I've been too busy to do anything at all on my next game and although I've nearly finished a rough draft of the Zombie Cannon Attack! postmortem it's still not quite ready. This has led me to have a bit of a rethink about this blog, as exciting and interesting as the client work is for me it doesn't really make great content for posting here. Unless I make a lot of progress on my own projects over the next week I'm considering switching to a fortnightly or even monthly format for now. It's been really useful for me to collect my thoughts at the start of the week and look back on the progress I've made, but it's needed less when I already have a client to hold me to account.

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. If you want to keep up to date you can also follow me on Twitter.
My latest game, Zombie Cannon Attack!, is available on all these platforms:
Android
itch.io (desktop download)
Gamejolt (web & desktop)
Kongregate (web)
Give it a try and let me know what you think, feedback is always welcome.

Weekly Development Progress Report, 13/11/17

I've had a really busy and exciting week. I did some work for a client remaking a flash game
as an HTML5 game. It went really well and has led to at least one more project and probably more afterwards. I'm still putting finishing touches to it and making sure everything is compatible with the client's site so I'll post more next week but obviously this is great news and I'm pretty chuffed right now.

Backseat coder

Paying work for a client clearly takes priority over my own games and even over my web developer course so those will have to take a bit of a back seat for the duration. I'm still hoping to spend a day at least on both these but we'll have to see.

Having been so busy, I've not been able to make any progress on the Zombie Cannon Attack! postmortem. I really would like to get it done though so I'll try and find time over the next few days. Progress on my next game project (a sci-fi shooter/crafter) was also limited, but I have now finished coding all the artisans and equipment. It's pretty rough still but I generally find that once the basic code is in place the hardest part is mostly over and I can then use a more focused approach to make continual incremental improvements.

So as I said, an exciting week and things are a little up in the air right now. When they settle down a bit I may need to reconsider the format of this blog but for now I'll see you next week as usual.

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. If you want to keep up to date you can also follow me on Twitter.
My latest game, Zombie Cannon Attack!, is available on all these platforms:
Android
itch.io (desktop download)
Gamejolt (web & desktop)
Kongregate (web)
Give it a try and let me know what you think, feedback is always welcome.

Weekly Development Progress Report, 06/11/17

I spent a good chunk of last week trying to shake off a stomach bug, so only managed a pretty poor 20 hours work. After the solid 35 hours I put in the week before I'm a little disappointed, but these things can't be helped and I'm better now and raring to go.

Postmortem postponed

I've pretty much run out of things to say about this title screen, so I really do need to get that postmortem done!

Unfortunately that means I haven't had chance to get much work done on the Zombie Cannon Attack! postmortem I've been meaning to do for a few weeks now. It'll be a separate post to the weekly devblogs though so I can just post it as soon as it's finished.

That new game smell...

Work on my new project also suffered a little, but I did manage to tidy up the code a bit to cut down on some of the repetition and hopefully speed things up going forward. In terms of new features I managed to add another artisan (a heavy armourer) and the ability to sell weapons and armour. Although I'd planned to get the gear crafting part of the game coded first, I also spent some time working on the shoot 'em up section. It's still very basic so making a few improvements was a pretty easy win while I was still recovering. The crafting section is what's interesting to me at the moment, but it's obviously going to be the shooter section that will provide the gameplay screenshots and gifs to pull players in so I'll need to start fleshing it out more pretty soon. 

October Stats:

Twitter followers: 1730 (+81)
October blog views: 1178
Blog views/day: 38 (September was 35)
Hours worked: 130 (4.2 / day) (September was 3.4/day)

I'm pretty happy with how October went, with a bit of a push towards the end I just managed to hit my hours target. That's actually a new record for a calendar month, although I've beaten the hours per day in some of the shorter months. I'm hoping to at least match that this month despite not being off to a great start as you'll have read earlier.
Twitter followers continue to grow but at an ever decreasing rate, perhaps growth will pick up again when I have something to show from the new project but as things stand it's growing with very little effort on my part so I can't really complain.
This blog also grew again, it's a bit more modest this time than the 50% month on month growth in August and September but it's still really nice to see and to be honest that sort of level didn't really feel like it was sustainable forever.

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. If you want to keep up to date you can also follow me on Twitter.
My latest game, Zombie Cannon Attack!, is available on all these platforms:
Android
itch.io (desktop download)
Gamejolt (web & desktop)
Kongregate (web)
Give it a try and let me know what you think, feedback is always welcome.