Stick Legions - Levels Finished

The basic art and code for the main campaign levels of Stick Legions are finished, but there is still much more work to be done polishing the game, adding and finishing features, fixing bugs and adding more and/or better art and sound.

Here's a picture of one of the new levels:

Ball Drop Uploaded

I have just posted a new game, Ball Drop, which is a simple game I made for a class I'm taking.  The goal of the game is simply to keep the ball on the screen.  Arrow keys to move and jump.  While I'm focusing on Stick Legions, and this game is basically finished I would appreciate any feedback to help make Ball Drop as good as it can be.

Ball Drop:
http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/ball-drop/13716/

First Two Levels Demo Video

We just posed a demo video for the first two levels of our game Stick Legions.  Check it out on Youtube:

Play the demo here:
http://gamejolt.com/games/strategy-sim/stick-legions-first-two-levels/12062/

Watch the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbNk7NpzVE0

There are also 8 other levels currently completed out of the planned 14.

Progress Update - Five Levels Completed

Since I finished the story for Stick Legions I have been working on creating the levels for the game.  So far I have finished five levels, including the tutorial, out of the 14 I am planning to make.  Here is a screenshot of one of the levels.

I expect to finish the rest of the levels within the next few weeks, and then I'll need to start working on the animations and audio.  This may take awhile since there are so many different characters, but I think I will be able to finish the game completely in a month or so.  I am not completely sure where I will publish it but definitely on Gamejolt and hopefully others as well.  On the topic of Gamejolt, which is a   free independent game development community, I would really appreciate any rating or comments on the Stick Legions page on that site.

Story Outline

Now that I have finished the first two levels of my game (which is now officially called Stick Legions) I can start working on the story.  I'm not the best creative writer so I was expecting this step to take a long time, but I started writing a basic outline of the game's story and it was a lot easier than I was expecting.  So once I fix a few bugs in the first two levels I can start working on the rest of the game.

First Two Levels

I've finally finished the first two levels of my game.  The first is a Defense level, with a tutorial, and the second is a Siege level.  I will be able to use these two levels as a template for every other level in my game. I also have decided to name my game Stick Legions, although this could change.  So here it is, I would really appreciate any suggestions or feedback anyone may have.

Stick Legions

Final Upgrade Menu

In my post explaining the game I'm working on I showed you a screenshot of the upgrade menu, and today I finished it.  I added the upgrade buttons and a label displaying the player's gold, which they can use to buy and upgrade units.  Here is the finished upgrade screen:

So now all I need to do to finish the first two levels is fix a few bugs, mostly in the player's units, which don't always stop when they hit barriers(like the castle in siege battles) and the replay button.

Progress Update - Army Won't Attack

   So I had been having a problem with the player's army not attacking the enemy army, and I finally figured out what was wrong.  It turned out to be a really simple problem, but since it was so small it took me awhile to find.  Now that that's done all I need to do is write the code for the rest of the enemy units, which should be tedious but very easy.  I will also need to make graphics for the enemies

Music and Sound Buttons

So today I have been working on fixing bugs in the pause and options menus.  Before, when you went into the options menu there was no way to go back.  I wasn't able to add a back button because of the way that the option menu was set up.  Since the options screen only controlled the music and sounds I decided that instead of rewriting the options screen I would just add music and sound toggle buttons to the main screen, like this:

My Flash Game

So I mentioned in my first post that I have been working on a flash game, and now I would like to explain it a bit more.  The game is a mix between a castle defense strategy game and an action game.  The player must command an army of stick figures against their enemies and lead them on the battlefield.

The player chooses which units to use depending on the type of battle and the specific skills of the enemy before every battle.  There are currently two types of battles, Siege and Defense, but I may add more later.  There will also be upgrades available in in this menu, but I haven't added them yet.

I have created two levels so far, the first one shown above is a Defense level with a tutorial, and the second is a Siege level.  I will be able to use these two levels as templates for the rest of the game.
   I expect to finish these levels over the next week and after that I will start working on the story, which is going to be an important part of the game.  If anyone is interested I would really appreciate some testers and any advice or suggestions you have.

Welcome

     In this blog I'm going to be posting updates on my game development progress.  I have been programming, and more recently learning to develop games  for about two years.  I am now working on my first serious game, which is a strategy flash game, but I'll be posting more updates on that later.  Since I'm planning on publishing this game I decided I would need to have a blog.
    Now I would like to tell you all a little about myself.  I am mainly a programmer, but I am doing the art and sounds for my games as well.  I first learned to program with Python, which I strongly recommend as a first language.  I then started learning to write games with Pygame, a game development library for Python.  I was able to make a few simple games this way but it was hard to use and didn't always work very well.  In this time I also learned HTML and CSS.  Then I moved on to learning 3d game engines like Unity and Unreal.  I was never able to make anything very impressive with either of these.  I learned Unity first, which was easy to use and pretty powerful but I soon realized I wouldn't be able to do anything with 3d without learning 3d modeling, which is something I have never been able to do.  Unity did teach me JavaScript which I have found very useful. Next I learned Unreal, which was easier easier to use from a graphics perspective but I could never figure out how to code with it.
   I still continued trying to find the right language/engine to use to develop games, and I have recently started working with flash, which so far has been great.  I am using adobe's Flex SDK with the FlashPunk game engine.  Unlike Pygame I found that everything works perfectly in flash, the coding is easy unlike Unreal, and I am actually able to create my own 2d art with free programs like Inkscape and Gimp.  I still want to move to 3d in the future but for now I think that flash is the perfect option for me.
  So that's my story, I hope some of you will continue following this blog and my experiences with game developement.