Chaos Symbol - 2015 Year in Review

Well it's that time of year where I put up one last blog post for the year detailing what's been going on in Chaos Symbol for the past year. This one is going to be a special one though as it will also cover 2013 and 2014.

Each event will be colour coded. Any event not in these colours is a generic event.

Pink = Game enters development
Cyan = Game released
Green = Game update launched

2013

• 3 Dec - Project Plasma's development began.

2014

• 7 Sep - Chaos Symbol blog launched and first post made.
• 23 Sep - Project Plasma released as an open beta.
• 21 Oct - Project Plasma v0.9.1 goes live.
• 23 Oct - Project Plasma v0.9.2 rushed out for legal reasons.
• 29 Oct - Project Plasma Halloween Sale begins
• 9 Nov - Project Plasma v0.9.3 goes live.
• 24 Nov - Project Plasma v0.9.4 goes live.
• 21 Dec - Project Plasma v0.9.5 goes live. This update is known as the Solstice Update.
• 24 Dec - Project Plasma Christmas Sale begins
• 30 Dec - Project Plasma v0.9.6 goes live.

January 2015

• 18 -Project Plasma v0.9.7 goes live, the final open beta update for the game.
• 26 - Pricing system changed. This change results in a change of currency as well (GBP to USD.)

Februrary 2015

• N/A

March 2015

• 9 - Project Plasma v1.0 goes live, putting an end to its status as an open beta game.

April 2015

• 2 - Project Plasma v1.0.1 goes live to make up for the fact that Project Plasma Mobile was delayed.
• 5 - Project Plasma v1.0.2 goes live - biggest update yet.
• 8 - Playthrough Program announced - will be launched early 2016.
• 12 - Project Plasma Mobile released as a prototype game for Android devices.

May 2015

• 22 - Development on Iron begins.
• 30 - New naming convention for upcoming games.

June 2015

• 8 - To-do list launched, several deadlines missed or probably won't be achieved.

July 2015

• 28 - Project Plasma v1.0.3 goes live. Game enters a long hiatus as Iron and Thallium take priority.
• 30 - Project Plasma officially tested on Windows 10, works well with no issues.

August 2015

• 1 - Yorkshire Day! Project Plasma gets given away for free.

September 2015

• 21 - Pre-orders for Iron were supposed to go live... but didn't.
• 23 - Project Plasma Birthday Sale begins.

October 2015

• 21 - Iron goes up for pre-order, actual name revealed. Thallium subsequently released as a pre-order bonus game. Unfortunately pre-orders went up a month late.

November 2015

• 2 - Chaos Symbol Post-Halloween Sale begins.

December 2015

• 1 - Comments enabled for Project Plasma - later evolves into a full community forum.
• 20 - Chaos Symbol Christmas Sale begins.
• 23 - Itch.io Secret Santa. Project Plasma given away to one lucky guy the following day.
• 25 - Iron was supposed to be released, but wasn't. (Statement to be released regarding this.)
• 30 - CHAOS 6 announced as a pinball game and development begins due to GameMaker: Studio not constantly crashing and refusing to work.

And that's a wrap for this year I guess. Here's to 2016 and the upcoming release of Iron and not-too-distant release of Project Plasma 2 (seriously can't wait to get to work on this.) The development process of a couple of games has been pretty rough (PP was pretty rough, PPM was worse, Iron is currently giving me hell) but I'm hoping to smooth all that out next year and hopefully we can all look forward to a fresh start.

Proceeding onwards...

CHAOS 6 Details

GameMaker Studio is currently down. Yay.

That means I can't work on Iron. Yay.

That means I can't start work on Project Plasma 2 either. Yay.

So with CHAOS 3 and 5 incapacitated for the time being and CHAOS 4 already released I guess it's time to give some details on the next title - CHAOS 6.

First off, I'd like to draw attention to this tweet:

Seriously considering making a pinball game after Project Plasma 2

— Archangel Atom (@ArchangelDPX) December 28, 2015

And that's exactly what CHAOS 6 is going to be.

CHAOS 6 is a 2D pinball game heavily inspired by Psycho Pinball, a similar DOS-based game from 1995 which I started playing again via DOSBox. This is going to be the first Chaos Symbol game to not use GameMaker: Studio. Instead, this will be a free game that will be made using Scirra Construct 2, as this game is free, there will be no pre-orders and no bonus game being released alongside it.

I was originally planning on doing an engine switch with CHAOS 4 (Thallium) where I planned on using an engine called Duality, however the learning curve here was far too steep and I was running low on time so I decided to stick with GM: Studio.

CHAOS 6's development will start as soon as this blog post is out, however once I get GM: Studio back up and running then I'll be back to developing Iron. Expect CHAOS 6 to arrive late 2016.

Iron and its Catastrophic Development

Iron is being released on Christmas Day... but not as a full game... or even an open beta.

Progress on Iron has been well... shit...

There is absolutely no way I'll get even the main storyline done by the 25th December deadline which is just over a day away however I don't want to leave you guys hanging so I've decided to do several things.

• Release Iron as a WIP-game with the unusually low version number of 0.7. This will be open to all and will be a closed alpha at v0.8. It will then once again be available to everyone as an open beta at v0.9. I hope to get to v0.8 (completed storyline) by the new year.
• Slash the price of Iron down to $1.00 USD until the open beta. This price slash is effective immediately and will be applied on top of the current 60% sale that is happening right now as part of this year's Chaos Symbol sale. The price will return to $1.50 when it hits v0.9. Thallium will remain a bonus game for Iron until v1.0.

I have spoken out against releasing incomplete games in the past, however this will be a one-off as I did promise I'd upload whatever I had by Christmas and I do not intend to do a U-turn on that topic.

I'm sorry this has happened and it won't happen again. I will make sure the first mission at least is done by the time it gets released but Iron's development process has been a complete disaster. Project Plasma's was bad, PPM's wasn't much better, but Iron has definitely taken home the prize so far.

Itch.io Secret Santa 2015

Hello guys - I'm pleased to announce that I am officially taking part in the official itch.io Secret Santa 2015 set up by itch.io user RAWRsoft! Official thread can be seen here.

What's happening is that we all sign up for the Secret Santa and we each get a person to send a random game to for free. Right now no one knows who their Secret Santa is nor does anyone know what games we are getting. As far as what game I'm giving myself... that has been decided but not revealed for obvious reasons.

At midnight EST (5:00am GMT) we'll be paired up with someone so watch this space... Tomorrow I will hopefully be giving a free game away to some lucky lad or lass.

I will also be putting up another blog post at some point before Christmas about Iron, unfortunately I have some bad news! But that's for next time.

All shall be revealed tomorrow... both the good and the bad.

UPDATE: Congratulations to Tim Rodriguez who was the lucky one to be chosen to be my Secret Santa recipient! He's now enjoying a nice free copy of Project Plasma!

Chaos Symbol Christmas Sale

So it's 2:47am right now - better make this a quick one.

The official Chaos Symbol Christmas Sale 2015 has begun! With both Project Plasma and Iron (and by extension, Thallium) being available for a sexy 60% off!

This sale is on from 19th December to 6th January. Dates inclusive.

Comments Enabled on Project Plasma

First off, welcome to the last month of the year... I shall use this as an excuse to put this epic song up.

Ahem...

Anyway, I'm already digressing I've not even started yet.

A rather quick blog post coming up here, I'm announcing that I'm officially enabling comments on my first indie game - Project Plasma just as I have done with Iron and Thallium. Feel free to leave any PP-related comments on that page.

Comments on Project Plasma Mobile will remain disabled as I'm well aware that PPM sucks and I'm sure those are pretty much the only comments I'll be getting.

Project Plasma: http://archangelatom.itch.io/project-plasma
Project Plasma Mobile: http://archangelatom.itch.io/project-plasma-mobile
Iron: http://archangelatom.itch.io/iron
Thallium: http://archangelatom.itch.io/thallium