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Latest Game: Two Buttons Hooker Delivery
6 years ago
General
If you want to try out my first game, here's the link:
https://astrograph.itch.io/two-butt.....ooker-delivery
If you want to ready my notes on the game, in the form of a post-project journal, here's the link:
EDIT: Pastebin seems to think that my language was offensive, and privated the text, so I'm adding it just below
Questions? Shoot them in my DM or on twitter.
Next Project? Not sure yet, I have ideas that I want to try further, but which one will come first idk.
SAVESTATE OF THE OLD PASTEBIN:
TL;DR: I made a gay furry game in 30 days, play it here for free: https://astrograph.itch.io/two-butt.....ooker-delivery
There are two passwords you can enter by just typing them when you're in the Title Menu:
"dick" to skip the intro and tutorial.
"go easy on me daddy" (spaces are not required) to prevent enemies from spawning.
#Wall of text:
Why write a wall of text?
Two reasons; one, I do intend to eventually live off my art, I'm in no rush for that but I do believe in transparency on these subjects. I personally like when artists I like talk about their process, how far they are, and what lessons they took from what they did. Two, this was quite an experience, and a very positive one at that, despite the hurdles, and I need to share it for my sake, and if it can help or motivate even one person, it'd be all worth it.
Why a one month project?
Inspired by Yahtzee's gamedev series, in which he vowed to make 12 games in 12 months basically. I identified hard with what he said, which I'm going to paraphrase: "I tend to overthink big projects, and thus my projects never go complete". I really tend to do that, I started Gamemaker casually 5 months ago and I jumped from one unrealistically big project to the next, each time thinking "this one will be my first".
Nah. I needed something really simple, with a clear deadline, so I could experience "the whole package" in a limited amount of time. A gamejam 48-72h project would have been too hard since I'm new at this, 1 month seemed feasible. I started on the 11th of November, and I finished yesterday.
What's the idea behind the game?
Short answer, I tried an autorunner (autoskater?), as it seemed simple enough, yet had potential, trying to bring something new to the table. That clearly didn't happen, all my original ideas were scrapped midway as they were bad ideas. But that's good actually! More on that in "What I learned"
Known Bugs:
- When taking hits when at low speed, gaps can appear in the buildings // the length of the buildings isn't always what it was supposed to be.
Annoying, but doesn't break the game. Stems from my core code that would have needed an overhaul if I were to restart the project from scratch. I tried to correct it "cleanly", but there were always bugs some places, and since I didn't have time for an overhaul, I applied a bandage on the bug. It still shows but it's bearable.
- When you jump and go past a balcony, you'll sometimes stick to it, basically losing all momentum as if you fell on it.
More annoying but happens "very rarely"; it's also from the core code that would need a complete rewrite. I implemented an idea for the direction I had in mind very early, and when I realized it was a bad idea I removed it, but this is a remnant of that function that I can't remove without breaking the code or redoing it.
If it was a longer project, I would have worked on those, but considering the time limit, I think I was right to focus on other parts of the project.
If you notice other bugs, do send me a message on twitter, mail, or FA. As I'll say later, I don't really want to add more to the project, but if there are problematic bugs, I am willing to patch them.
What I learned:
- Spend more time working on and thinking about the core game design directions; I got the idea, went for it the next day. I was pretty much in a gamejam mindset, but it's okay for gamejams because people usually are more experienced, and they only have two days. I should have spent another couple days testing basic stuff and thinking about it. Will do that in the future.
- There isn't one optimal workflow, but that doesn't mean mine was good. Overall I made better workflow decisions as time went by, but the early stages were a mess. Hence the bad ideas I implemented too early in the code, making it unviable long term. Quicktip: early dev, make simple sprites, not full on sprites that will appear in the final game, but do decide on the exact size and hitboxes of the sprites early on, implementing the sprites was a lot of trouble I could have avoided if I had decided on a sprite size when I started coding and stuck to it.
- Don't underestimate "simple tasks". Making a menu? Easy. Text? Easy. Tutorial? Easy. No, no and no. Well, it wasn't hard per say, but it did take up some time, as there was always a bug somewhere, a variable that didn’t respond like I wanted. A friend told me "always double the time you think a task will take", and it's pretty much a good advice. Thankfully I didn't postpone those tasks too long, so I was able to do everything I really wanted to, but time was shorter than I expected.
- Fun>Original. Depends on what you're doing ofc, but generally my initial ideas were fun in theory, but very clunky in practice. Stay simple, a simple good game is better than a complex game that feels horrible to play. Not that I'm comparing, but think of Mario 64: during the first month of development, Nintendo just had Mario in an empty room. They spent a month making sure the controls were crisp and super responsive. Again, not comparing what I did to M64, but eventually as the project grew, I focused more on making the base skating more fun.
- And finally, code. This is where the big deal is. Learning through tutorials is fun and all, but the best way to learn is to try do make the game do what YOU want. Learn smarter coding, learn to face problems you might encounter. Near the end, my code was much cleaner and smarter than at first. I'm really glad I made the game, mostly for that. In tutorials you see stuff like Switch, for loops, etc, and you think "yeah I see how it can be used", but if you're starting, you have no idea how far it can. I still have no idea how smart a code could be; an experienced gamemaker dev would look at my code and faint, and I already feel bad about some of the earlier parts. Learn by doing. You will have to find smarter and better ways to work as you go.
What I couldn't do:
- Balancing; The game is not really hard, as most enemies can be avoided by staying on the ground. The score can appear random, and it kind of is, as I didn't have time to make a tight formula, so I went for something that felt good, but if you focus on it, it's a mess. Balancing in general is really lackluster. It's fine for what the game is, a one month small project, but it'd need a lot more focus on a more complete project.
- Sound! I made a couple loops for the game with garageband, but they were... not as upbeat as I would have liked. See, I can do art (not saying I'm great but I can handle a couple things), but I can't into music. I also wanted to put sound effects to give it some more punch, but we come to the second problem I had with sound: I had a lot of bugs. Bugs that would have required me to delve into the way sound work in gamemaker in a lot more details than the couple posts and tutorials I looked for. Sadly, that came pretty late in development, so it was ultimately scrapped completely. I'll work on it for future projects; my personal experience with sound in porn games is "mute that shit right now", so it wasn't the most urgent thing imo, but I definitely would have liked to have it as an option. Next game.
- More art. Couple scenes in the sex scene I would have liked to have more art, but as you can guess, it was another issue of time, and lack of planning.
- Same way, I would have liked several levels and all, but I chose to focus on one level and one sex scene. Better to do have one thing that works than several things that don't. I guess.
Notes:
- Originally, the game was supposed to be 1 button controls. It was supposed to be much harder to climb the buildings, and you would lose if you were below a certain height after a while. After playing, not only was the 1 button control unplayable, but the climbing felt like a chore, and quite unfair. But the speed multiplier felt like fun, so I went more towards that direction, and scrapped the original idea. That was the best decision, and I took it because I had my alpha playtested by friends. DO NOT leave your game untouched by other players for too long, you might think you're going in a good direction, but you can tunnel vision into an idea that is detrimental to your game.
What now?
- I won't work on this project anymore; it was an exercise, it was fun, I'm glad I did it, and even if my friends told me "there's potential for more", I'll keep that energy for another project. While I'm really into the idea of a game with replayability, several routes, etc., I don't feel this game is the one for it; core gameplay is too limited, adding new stuff would be harder than redo it from scratch, and, well, the base promise was to finish one game in one month.
- That doesn't mean I won't make another autorunner, nor that Vif won't reappear in a future project, far from it. It's even very possible that my next game is TBHD2, this time more complete and all, but this very specific game is done.
- I think I'll redo another project like that in the near future; rn I need to focus on stuff I put aside this past month, and I have work and stuff, so I can't give you any date for when or what. I'll probably do more than one month next time tho, now that I have an idea of what to plan out, I can tackle a bigger project, I'm thinking a 2-6 months project would be manageable, more would probably be a bit more than I can chew.
- I have a lot of basic ideas that could be cool, but what I'll do is try them out individually in a very very small scale pre-alpha, to test them out, in order to have a clear idea that I know is good before I start the next project.
Final note:
- I don't know what I should have said, I tried to be comprehensive, but you never know what you missed, or what was useless info. I'm not an authority of any kind of the subject, but my experience as a newcomer could be useful for some people. All I hope is that there's one person among you readers who was maybe thinking about making a game, or any other creative media for that matter, and who was a bit inspired to do it themselves. Do it. Check Yahtzee's Game Diary series for motivation, check Shaun Spalding for tutorials on gamemaker, check game design channels for theory. Do it. Create. Finish a project. I have twenty if not more projects that I kept as work in progress for years, basking in the glorious "it will eventually exist and it'll be perfect", but your project will never exist if you don't start. Is your idea too big? Start smaller. But start. Go slow if it's too new or too hard. There's no rush. And so what if it's bad? Heck, I love this game as an experience, but it's very very basic and it's my first time doing sequential sex, I have no idea if it's sexy or not, I have no idea if I'd even bother playing this game if I wasn't personally attached to it. But I finished something, and I learned from my mistakes (some of them, I probably didn't even see a lot of them).
Music, art, coding, it all works in a similar fashion: you learn by doing, and the best way not to succeed is to never fail. Make. Fail. Learn. Redo.
BTW if you played the game and have notes, positive or negative, on the art, narrative, gameplay, gameflow, anything, please do tell me, it'll help me make something better next time!
https://astrograph.itch.io/two-butt.....ooker-delivery
If you want to ready my notes on the game, in the form of a post-project journal, here's the link:
EDIT: Pastebin seems to think that my language was offensive, and privated the text, so I'm adding it just below
Questions? Shoot them in my DM or on twitter.
Next Project? Not sure yet, I have ideas that I want to try further, but which one will come first idk.
SAVESTATE OF THE OLD PASTEBIN:
TL;DR: I made a gay furry game in 30 days, play it here for free: https://astrograph.itch.io/two-butt.....ooker-delivery
There are two passwords you can enter by just typing them when you're in the Title Menu:
"dick" to skip the intro and tutorial.
"go easy on me daddy" (spaces are not required) to prevent enemies from spawning.
#Wall of text:
Why write a wall of text?
Two reasons; one, I do intend to eventually live off my art, I'm in no rush for that but I do believe in transparency on these subjects. I personally like when artists I like talk about their process, how far they are, and what lessons they took from what they did. Two, this was quite an experience, and a very positive one at that, despite the hurdles, and I need to share it for my sake, and if it can help or motivate even one person, it'd be all worth it.
Why a one month project?
Inspired by Yahtzee's gamedev series, in which he vowed to make 12 games in 12 months basically. I identified hard with what he said, which I'm going to paraphrase: "I tend to overthink big projects, and thus my projects never go complete". I really tend to do that, I started Gamemaker casually 5 months ago and I jumped from one unrealistically big project to the next, each time thinking "this one will be my first".
Nah. I needed something really simple, with a clear deadline, so I could experience "the whole package" in a limited amount of time. A gamejam 48-72h project would have been too hard since I'm new at this, 1 month seemed feasible. I started on the 11th of November, and I finished yesterday.
What's the idea behind the game?
Short answer, I tried an autorunner (autoskater?), as it seemed simple enough, yet had potential, trying to bring something new to the table. That clearly didn't happen, all my original ideas were scrapped midway as they were bad ideas. But that's good actually! More on that in "What I learned"
Known Bugs:
- When taking hits when at low speed, gaps can appear in the buildings // the length of the buildings isn't always what it was supposed to be.
Annoying, but doesn't break the game. Stems from my core code that would have needed an overhaul if I were to restart the project from scratch. I tried to correct it "cleanly", but there were always bugs some places, and since I didn't have time for an overhaul, I applied a bandage on the bug. It still shows but it's bearable.
- When you jump and go past a balcony, you'll sometimes stick to it, basically losing all momentum as if you fell on it.
More annoying but happens "very rarely"; it's also from the core code that would need a complete rewrite. I implemented an idea for the direction I had in mind very early, and when I realized it was a bad idea I removed it, but this is a remnant of that function that I can't remove without breaking the code or redoing it.
If it was a longer project, I would have worked on those, but considering the time limit, I think I was right to focus on other parts of the project.
If you notice other bugs, do send me a message on twitter, mail, or FA. As I'll say later, I don't really want to add more to the project, but if there are problematic bugs, I am willing to patch them.
What I learned:
- Spend more time working on and thinking about the core game design directions; I got the idea, went for it the next day. I was pretty much in a gamejam mindset, but it's okay for gamejams because people usually are more experienced, and they only have two days. I should have spent another couple days testing basic stuff and thinking about it. Will do that in the future.
- There isn't one optimal workflow, but that doesn't mean mine was good. Overall I made better workflow decisions as time went by, but the early stages were a mess. Hence the bad ideas I implemented too early in the code, making it unviable long term. Quicktip: early dev, make simple sprites, not full on sprites that will appear in the final game, but do decide on the exact size and hitboxes of the sprites early on, implementing the sprites was a lot of trouble I could have avoided if I had decided on a sprite size when I started coding and stuck to it.
- Don't underestimate "simple tasks". Making a menu? Easy. Text? Easy. Tutorial? Easy. No, no and no. Well, it wasn't hard per say, but it did take up some time, as there was always a bug somewhere, a variable that didn’t respond like I wanted. A friend told me "always double the time you think a task will take", and it's pretty much a good advice. Thankfully I didn't postpone those tasks too long, so I was able to do everything I really wanted to, but time was shorter than I expected.
- Fun>Original. Depends on what you're doing ofc, but generally my initial ideas were fun in theory, but very clunky in practice. Stay simple, a simple good game is better than a complex game that feels horrible to play. Not that I'm comparing, but think of Mario 64: during the first month of development, Nintendo just had Mario in an empty room. They spent a month making sure the controls were crisp and super responsive. Again, not comparing what I did to M64, but eventually as the project grew, I focused more on making the base skating more fun.
- And finally, code. This is where the big deal is. Learning through tutorials is fun and all, but the best way to learn is to try do make the game do what YOU want. Learn smarter coding, learn to face problems you might encounter. Near the end, my code was much cleaner and smarter than at first. I'm really glad I made the game, mostly for that. In tutorials you see stuff like Switch, for loops, etc, and you think "yeah I see how it can be used", but if you're starting, you have no idea how far it can. I still have no idea how smart a code could be; an experienced gamemaker dev would look at my code and faint, and I already feel bad about some of the earlier parts. Learn by doing. You will have to find smarter and better ways to work as you go.
What I couldn't do:
- Balancing; The game is not really hard, as most enemies can be avoided by staying on the ground. The score can appear random, and it kind of is, as I didn't have time to make a tight formula, so I went for something that felt good, but if you focus on it, it's a mess. Balancing in general is really lackluster. It's fine for what the game is, a one month small project, but it'd need a lot more focus on a more complete project.
- Sound! I made a couple loops for the game with garageband, but they were... not as upbeat as I would have liked. See, I can do art (not saying I'm great but I can handle a couple things), but I can't into music. I also wanted to put sound effects to give it some more punch, but we come to the second problem I had with sound: I had a lot of bugs. Bugs that would have required me to delve into the way sound work in gamemaker in a lot more details than the couple posts and tutorials I looked for. Sadly, that came pretty late in development, so it was ultimately scrapped completely. I'll work on it for future projects; my personal experience with sound in porn games is "mute that shit right now", so it wasn't the most urgent thing imo, but I definitely would have liked to have it as an option. Next game.
- More art. Couple scenes in the sex scene I would have liked to have more art, but as you can guess, it was another issue of time, and lack of planning.
- Same way, I would have liked several levels and all, but I chose to focus on one level and one sex scene. Better to do have one thing that works than several things that don't. I guess.
Notes:
- Originally, the game was supposed to be 1 button controls. It was supposed to be much harder to climb the buildings, and you would lose if you were below a certain height after a while. After playing, not only was the 1 button control unplayable, but the climbing felt like a chore, and quite unfair. But the speed multiplier felt like fun, so I went more towards that direction, and scrapped the original idea. That was the best decision, and I took it because I had my alpha playtested by friends. DO NOT leave your game untouched by other players for too long, you might think you're going in a good direction, but you can tunnel vision into an idea that is detrimental to your game.
What now?
- I won't work on this project anymore; it was an exercise, it was fun, I'm glad I did it, and even if my friends told me "there's potential for more", I'll keep that energy for another project. While I'm really into the idea of a game with replayability, several routes, etc., I don't feel this game is the one for it; core gameplay is too limited, adding new stuff would be harder than redo it from scratch, and, well, the base promise was to finish one game in one month.
- That doesn't mean I won't make another autorunner, nor that Vif won't reappear in a future project, far from it. It's even very possible that my next game is TBHD2, this time more complete and all, but this very specific game is done.
- I think I'll redo another project like that in the near future; rn I need to focus on stuff I put aside this past month, and I have work and stuff, so I can't give you any date for when or what. I'll probably do more than one month next time tho, now that I have an idea of what to plan out, I can tackle a bigger project, I'm thinking a 2-6 months project would be manageable, more would probably be a bit more than I can chew.
- I have a lot of basic ideas that could be cool, but what I'll do is try them out individually in a very very small scale pre-alpha, to test them out, in order to have a clear idea that I know is good before I start the next project.
Final note:
- I don't know what I should have said, I tried to be comprehensive, but you never know what you missed, or what was useless info. I'm not an authority of any kind of the subject, but my experience as a newcomer could be useful for some people. All I hope is that there's one person among you readers who was maybe thinking about making a game, or any other creative media for that matter, and who was a bit inspired to do it themselves. Do it. Check Yahtzee's Game Diary series for motivation, check Shaun Spalding for tutorials on gamemaker, check game design channels for theory. Do it. Create. Finish a project. I have twenty if not more projects that I kept as work in progress for years, basking in the glorious "it will eventually exist and it'll be perfect", but your project will never exist if you don't start. Is your idea too big? Start smaller. But start. Go slow if it's too new or too hard. There's no rush. And so what if it's bad? Heck, I love this game as an experience, but it's very very basic and it's my first time doing sequential sex, I have no idea if it's sexy or not, I have no idea if I'd even bother playing this game if I wasn't personally attached to it. But I finished something, and I learned from my mistakes (some of them, I probably didn't even see a lot of them).
Music, art, coding, it all works in a similar fashion: you learn by doing, and the best way not to succeed is to never fail. Make. Fail. Learn. Redo.
BTW if you played the game and have notes, positive or negative, on the art, narrative, gameplay, gameflow, anything, please do tell me, it'll help me make something better next time!
