26 January 2015

Changes in the Pricing System

So as some people may have found out, the pricing on Project Plasma changed from £1.00 to $1.00 USD. This is due to the new system itch.io has put in place to counter the impact the new bullshit VAT MOSS system. However, because itch.io is based in the United States, this system limits me to only charging in US Dollars.

This is good news for you guys as it means you can get my games cheaper as the value of one US Dollar is less than that of one pound. (No offence intended here, this is just due to the currencies and shit) Before, someone in the states had to pay around $1.50 to buy Project Plasma, however you can now buy it for just $1.00 whereas someone in the UK just needs to pay around 66p (£0.66) to buy it.

Please note however that I don't know how long this will go on for, as if itch.io puts in a system that allows me to set the currency in their new payment method to a developer's home currency (in my case GBP) I will be setting it back to that simply because it's easier for me to handle for obvious reasons but it does mean you can get Project Plasma at an even lower price now, even if it may be just for the short run.

So thank you VAT MOSS, but fuck you VAT MOSS as well.

18 January 2015

Project Plasma v0.9.7 Changelog (Final Open Beta)

Well here we are. The very last open beta update for Project Plasma. While this isn't as big as the two giants that came before it (referring to v0.9.5 and v0.9.6) it does contain a few tweaks and bug fixes that I'm sure you'll appreciate.
  • Fixed bug in the shop where you needed to have 10 cash to buy Directional Cannon ammo despite the price being reduced to 5 in the previous update.
  • Tempest will no longer fire switch bullets in its second attack phase.
  • Repair capsule cost decreased to 5000. (Down from 7000)
  • Fixed Dynast's left wing being higher up than it should be. It is now in the correct place.
  • Dynast's immobiliser bullets during its sixth phase now fire every six seconds. (Up from every two seconds.)
  • Dynast's collision box was bugged on its sixth phase and onwards. This has been fixed.
  • Cursor now shows up on the intermission screen after the boss fight with Dynast.
    • Same applies for the intermission screen after the credits following the Heroic ending.
  • Thin lasers shot by the bosses Dynast and Crystalline now do 20 damage. (Up from 15)
    • This only applies to the mini-lasers shot by those two bosses, the larger, full size lasers fired by Equinox (as well as Dynast during its sixth attack phase) will still result in instant death.
As this is the very last open beta update for this game this is pretty much last chance saloon for those wanting to get this game at a reduced price! As you can imagine, v1.0.0 will likely be a very big update, possibly the biggest one yet.

Also another thing which I really should've mentioned earlier, I have now added links to the past changelogs for versions of Project Plasma (and any games I make in the future) as well as a link to a Google Spreadsheet listing any sales that you may or may not have missed. Go check those out at well if you're curious.

13 January 2015

Voiceless Postponed Indefinitely

1st January 2016 Update: This game has now been completely cancelled and is not going to be developed. This blog post remains up for archiving purposes.

The game project Voiceless I mentioned in the previous post has been indefinitely postponed. This is NOT a cancellation, the project will resume at some point however I have no idea when I will be resuming it. The reason why I'm postponing is because I have two titles coming up in March and I really need to get these done. These games being Project Plasma and its mobile cousin.

I promised you guys these games will come in March. PP v0.9.7 will be coming before March obviously, but PP Mobile will be released mid-March along with hopefully PP v1.0.0. As admittedly, not much work has been done on PP Mobile, and it needs to be done.

Voiceless is on the list though, like I said, it's been postponed indefinitely - not cancelled completely.

9 January 2015

Charlie Hebdo Tragedy-based Game Project

1st January 2016 Update: This game has now been completely cancelled and is not going to be developed. This blog post remains up for archiving purposes.

So anyway, I've been having trouble with PP Mobile as well now due to the fact that I need to re-download Android SDK which I haven't done yet. However, to sort of bridge the gap I've came up with another game idea which I will admit, isn't all that big, in fact it's likely to be about half the size of Project Plasma, but I feel it makes a very solid point.

The game is about the Charlie Hebdo tragedy a couple of days ago. The game's purpose is to spread awareness of the impact the shootings have had on the families and those close to the shooting victims. The game's title has not been completely decided as of yet but it will most likely be "Je Suis Charlie" or something along the lines of that.

This game will be completely free however you may make a donation if you wish since itch.io allows for people pay extra for a game if they think it looks good. I will not be pocketing all of this money for myself though and I will make sure it goes toward a good and charitable cause, preferably one that helps relatives of tragedy victims like this recover.

I will post an update upon the game's release, it should hopefully be out on the 13th, but hopefully it will be out sooner if possible.


UPDATE: The game is going to be called "Voiceless."Unlike Project Plasma and its mobile equivalent, it will be made in RPG Maker VX Ace rather than GameMaker.

5 January 2015

Project Plasma Development On Hold

So happy new year to you all. Hope you've all had a good 2014 and that 2015 has kicked off nicely.

That being said, 2015 hasn't kicked off all that great for me at all. My computer was recently upgraded which sounds good right? Well yes it is good, great even. However it came with a pretty nasty side effect that has hindered game development of Project Plasma v0.9.7 greatly.

Project Plasma was made in GameMaker 8.1, a now outdated and you could say obsolete version of GameMaker, however I still opted to use it due to the fact that GameMaker Studio (at the time at least) lacked some of the functionality that I needed that was in GameMaker 8.1, the best example I can give there would be the Execute Code function in the software's debugger which I felt was one of the most useful tools in GameMaker 8.1 when it came to debugging. (I mean seriously why would you get rid of that, go home YYG you're drunk.)

However, I soon began to witness GM 8.1's age and many of its downfalls which might not have been a problem a few years ago come into play. The very first issue being the fact that there were a large number of wav files stored in the executable itself which bloated its size considerably, resulting in massive RAM usage which was too much for the setup I had at the time to cope (I had 2GB RAM back then, I then upgraded to 8GB with Win7 and now I'm on 16GB with the latest upgrade.) As a result I had to figure out how to use external files for the audio.

Then there was the Windows 8 issue where Win8's half-arsed sound system couldn't cope when more than 3 or 4 sounds were played simultaneously in-game and when such a situation did arise, the game crashed. As a result I had to find another audio DLL. At first I tried one called Saudio which fixed the issue and worked well for a while, but then Windows 7 decided it didn't like it and decided to not play any sound (including music) that was dependent on the Saudio DLL. I then began making a switch to FMOD until I read up that you needed a license to use it (what the fuck seriously.) The last one I tried was SGAudio which works brilliantly and that's the DLL that ended the whole sound issue crisis.

There was also the pixel interpolation issue with Windows Vista onwards where the pixels didn't interpolate on any operating system besides Windows XP, however I didn't mention up there as it really isn't a big deal. It just makes the graphics look all pixelated when playing in fullscreen. Apart from that it really didn't bring any serious issues along with it so I left it out.

Anyway, I think the point here is, I need GM 8.1 to proceed with the game's development and I am currently having issues reinstalling it. GM:Studio has installed fine though so work on Project Plasma Mobile can go ahead, but the main version of the game has hit a standstill in terms of development so far.