Steven Tu / @Tuism Indie Game Maker, Designer, Illustrator

Results for category "Games"

19 Articles

Cartel News - Korea, A maze, Piston

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tuism

Cartel is a card game that I’m working on that’s in prototyping stage. You can get the Print and Play files here.

So many things going on! I’ve kinda left Cartel alone for a while, and all of a sudden, it’s sprung back to life with not one but THREE bits of exciting news!

 

Finalist: 2014 Korea Board Games Contest

Cartel has been selected as a finalist in the 2014 Korean Board Game Contest! Annually, Korea Board Games runs a game design contest on Board Game Geek. This year, the theme was “fast play” - or games that end in 60 minutes, and Cartel just so happens to fit that very well, so I entered it.

Out of 214 worldwide submissions, they selected 25 finalists, and I’m super proud to say that Cartel is among them.

What’s also very cool is that on top of the usual finalists they also selected five elementary school kids’ designs! How cool is that! Very cool to see that Koreans actively encourage game design as a proper career path even from a young age!

 

Set phaser to A MAZE 2014

Cartel is being shown at A MAZE 2014 - Third International Games and Playful Art festival, right here in Joburg! I’ll be there, there’ll be dedicated people there to teach the game to anyone who wants to play, and it’s gonna be awesome 😀

What both of the above means is that I have to make some prototypes to A) Send to Korea and B) get it made to be played at A MAZE, so that got me thinking - what can/should I update in Cartel?

 

Piston City Cartel

So there’s this idea that’s I’ve been kicking around in my head. That idea is Piston City. A Steampunk Noir setting where crime isn’t only bad, it’s dirty. Where government regulate the “air” you breath, where steam vents can be, and how tall your umbrella can go. But all rules are more often broken than enforced, and steam-powered automatons run half the city’s businesses and amenities. Or do they?

Cartel: Piston City Racketeers

In this vision of Cartel, criminal rackets build legitimate businesses so they can acquire steam automatas legally (regulations require a registered business, along with site-inspections, for an automata to be issued), then put them to more nefarious uses, like territorial battle among rival Cartel gangs.

The idea is that I can take Piston city and stick multiple titles under its umbrella, and make a bit of a cool running story type thing around it. Build a world that I’d love to populate and grow and nurture into the scumbag dystopia of mecha and dirty cops I love to hate!

 

What do you think?

1. Should I not bother with it cos I can’t dictate what publishers - if I ever get that far - do with a game?

2. How do I name the buggers? I *would* like to start names with the game title itself, so like Cartel of Piston City… Or Cartel in Piston City… Cartel: Piston City… That sounds retarded. Right now Piston City Cartel sounds the least wonky… But again yea,h I wanna start with the game title 😛

3. How’s the art look? Does the art and the story line up? :)

 

If you’re interested in giving Cartel a play, you can download the Cartel Print and Play files here right here!

 

Awesome, thanks for catching up with me on Cartel, please comment if you have any questions! 😀

(video) Chatting about Game Dev, Comics, Passion Creative Industries in South Africa

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tuism

I was invited by Openroom.tv to a livestream show Baxoxe with Ray Whitcher!

If you’re a TL;DR kinda person, you can watch the full show here:
http://www.openroom.tv/#!baxoxe/c2ky

Baxoxe is a creative chit chat show that showcases and highlights creatives throughout South Africa - to show South African creatives the diversity that exists in the South African creativescape. (you know, other than advertising)

Baxoxe_01

For the show, I prepared a Pecha Kucha (a presentation format focussed on conciseness - 20 slides, 20 seconds each) speaking about game design theory and what game design and development and communities are all about in SA. It was perhaps a bit over-ambitious as I went into rattle mode, sang a little song, and attempted some Xhoza clicking, but you can be the judge of that :)

We also had a blast answering live twitter questions, had a creative quiz-out (chickens DID cross the road), and generally had a lot of fun in the freezing Greenside cold. Ray was wearing shorts. That puzzled me.

Baxoxe_07

Ray spoke about the comic industry in SA in general, and we discuss how we all should be pushing our passion industries forward.

A big thanks to Odd Cafe for the fantastic venue, the boys and gals of Baxoxe for the invite and organisation, and Openroom.TV for the excellent production. It ran like mice who were not blind in the least :) Baxoxe is a great initiative and I certainly look forward to their future shows!

How are you doing with your passion industry?

Watch the full show:
http://www.openroom.tv/#!baxoxe/c2ky

Baxoxe_08     Baxoxe_05

Baxoxe_03     Baxoxe_04

Baxoxe_06

Landshark Missile Attack’s post-LD48 MASSIVE update

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tuism

Landshark Missile Attack started its life at Ludum Dare 29 as my first solo jam 

Play the post-compo updated version here:
http://www.twoplusgames.com/landsharkv2

Changes include:

  1. A thumpin’ track by Tim Harbour! Unfortunately hadn’t gotten to sound effects yet.
  2. Focussed on one level, removed others for now.
  3. Screenshake! Of course!
  4. Removed time limit.
  5. Fixed stuttering bullet time.
  6. Health + death mechanic added.
  7. Eat people to heal.
  8. Removed swimming up walls for now.
  9. Added enemy dropship.
  10. Aerial dodge – double tap forward, left or right while airborne!
  11. Missiles and dodge energy reload when you land.
  12. So wow, so much. Can’t remember.

So, some questions for you if you had time to give it a go:

  1. Did you find it laggy? Was the performance much different between the Windows and the online version for you?
  2. The direction I’m heading in is “Crimsonland in 3D with Bullet-time and possibly multiplayer”. How does that sound to you?
  3. How does the handling of the shark feel to you? Are you comfortable with jumping, aiming, and aerial boosting?
  4. How “fair” does it feel to you? How’s the challenge at the moment?
  5. Did you see any blatant bugs?

Play (web) or download SUPER ANDSHARK MISSILE ATTACK POST-COMPO EDITION V2!

And tell me if I went in the right direction since the original LD48 entry! XD

Postmortem: My Ludum Dare game SUPER LANDSHARK MISSILE ATTACK

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tuism

This was my first Ludum Dare ever, and my 3rd real game jam in total ever (did one Indie Speed Run and one Global Game Jam, and by far my best jam ever - each jam builds on the previous one, and the LEVEL UP that one gets at game jams are just TOO MASSIVE TO PASS UP. I hugely encourage everyone to do game jams as often as they’re able to!

My LD48 game SUPER LANDSHARK MISSILE ATTACK turned out way beyond all my own expectations. I was never good with Unity! Please give it a look :)

One thing my experience has told me is that I always write postmortem part 1 of my jams and then never get to part 2. So screw that, I’m going to do this one quick and in reverse chronological order like Memento :)

Score attack!

Another thing I was sad to not have had time to put in was score tracking, so I’m making a competition! Send me screenshots of your high score and the highest scorer this week (ending Monday 5th May) will get to design a level for SUPER LANDSHARK MISSILE ATTACK with me 😀

landsharkscore_BANNER

Adding sound

I didn’t have time to add in sound and music, which disappointed me greatly, so I played the game over some rocking track and made a video of it :)

Finishing

Eventually I detailed things a bit more, added more levels (there are three in total right now) and colour and juice and stuff and rushed it out the door in the final 6 hours:

landsharkpost07

Fleshing it out

I dropped in a bunch of objects, found some homing missile code, and went to town in a gameplay test. AND IT WAS AWESOME. So I pretty much didn’t change the gameplay from this kind of stuff:

landsharkpost_05_gameplayTest_web

And then amped it up in magnitude, and added score tracking and a timer, which made EVEN MORE AWESOME

landsharkpost06

Physics

Then I spent more than half of day one trying to get the physics for landshark working. One of the things I really wanted was for him to swim up walls… And generally defy gravity. Eventually after a lot of maths and help from other people’s maths:

landsharkpost_03_physics_web

landsharkpost_04_physicstest_web

Planning

I actually don’t remember where the idea came from. All I remember was that initially I wanted LAZERS. But that was hard so I went missiles :) This was my “project manager” over the weekend:

landsharkpost_01_book

What went wrong:

  • Very little actually, I was REALLY surprised.
  • Lack understanding of Unity physics (or indeed any maths physics), of Quaternions, of Vectors, etc, made it really really tricky.
  • Didn’t budget time for sound and interface.
  • I wasn’t sure what the scope was from the beginning and built as I went
  • Spent a ton of time on swimming up the wall mechanic… But didn’t end up using it a lot. It was one of those REALLY out of the way mechanics that had all sorts of mad implications that I couldn’t have considered when I was making it. Like falling into the infinite sky 😛 But it’s not really so much “wrong” as “something I can explore more” :)

What went right:

  • Being surrounded by other jammers, we could all ask each other about things. It REALLY helped everyone 😀 Jam in a herd! If it works for zebras it works for jammers!
  • I let myself go - picked a theme, basic idea, and just explored how it played. The lack of a solid, defined, “dead” goal from the get-goal for me allowed for a refreshing exploratory approach to this jam.
  • Not having to justify every decision, thing to try, etc in a team made it really easy to rapidly try and discard ideas. Not that I don’t appreciate being in a team. I really missed being able to specialise and do what I do best and let everyone do what they did best. Good for time, less good for focus and attention to detail.
  • Google Sketchup. Seriously, it’s the only 3D program I know and without it I wouldn’t be able to make ANY 3D. Well, besides the cubes and spheres. Thanks for the fish shark!
  • Unity. I give it lots of hell, and it gives me lots of hell, but without it I would never ever have made something that looks so big in such a short of time. And this applies to EVERYONE. It’s a great big sandbox, all you have to do is to find how other people did what you want it to do… And remember syntax XD

It was truly fantastic! I’ll never ever miss another Ludum Dare EVER! 😀

Give SUPER LANDSHARK MISSILE ATTACK a go!