Sugar Pill Studios

I doubt that my recent lack of posting has caused anyone any concern, but in case anyone reading this is considerate enough to pretend that it has: I am not (as you’ve probably deduced by now) dead. I am just struggling to squeeze time for game development between law school, a full time job, and a recent summer kayaking trip.

Ink Wars has been returned to the someday-shelf, and any time I can scrounge toward game development will now be focused on polishing up Just Dice for the DBP contest. I’m also looking forward to attempting to sell Just Dice through Microsoft’s LIVE Community Games system this holiday season. I usually have relatively little patience for adding polish to a game, but am motivated by the prospect that this work will contribute to the development of the game idea that lead to Just Dice. Just Dice was originally a prototype designed to explore the mechanics of a more complex strategy game that I am still excited to develop and play. With any luck I’ll have playable betas for windows and xbox posted either this coming weekend or next. As always, I’ll be very interested in any feedback anyone has to offer.

Just Dice development is now winding down (I think). It runs on the XBOX 360 and over the internet via LIVE (if you have a creators club subscription). There’s a nice set of training puzzles, and my first pass at AI is close to complete. The reason I haven’t posted an update in the past couple of weeks is that I haven’t been able to fix/label the menu options (for logistical reasons). Once those are in, and the AI is complete, I’ll post the update which should look and play like a fully functional demo. Development will probably slow down after this release, but some additions I plan to make further down the road include: different visual styles/themes, more and different types of puzzle levels, better camera transitions between levels (possibly across larger boards), and dice capture animations. I have a friend putting together some background music, so that will also be added as soon as it’s done.

So what’s the next project in the pipe from sugar pill studios? The Rapunzel game needs a bunch of level design work right now, and that’s something I generally have a hard time getting into. So until that muse visits, I’ll be reviving a project from about three years ago called Ink Wars. I worked on this game for about a month before giving up on an interface issue that my technology just wasn’t up to handling well enough. I have a new idea about how the interface could work, and am excited to test it out. I’m planning on sticking with XNA primarily to get more familiar with the tools and their capabilities. Another advantage of XNA for Ink Wars is that a wii-like pointing device is rumored for release this fall/winter. That kind of controller should work beautifully for Ink Wars, and won’t require my spending $1700 on a Wii development kit.

Following some encouraging feedback from friends and various online communities, I’m proud to present an updated Just Dice beta. Among the many suggestions and ideas that are included in this release: a new title screen and short tutorial level precede the game, a hints display to help people learn the game (toggled using keyboard-Z or gamepad-Y), improved mouse controls: camera move on mouse-drag and mouse-click die selection, some improved graphics, a wider match board for better symmetry, and several even smaller changes.

Please keep your feedback comming. The short list version of features that will be added shortly include: comming up with a better font for the tutorial text, adding some proper menus and more training puzzle levels, and new networking support for multiplayer games.

 I’m really interested in your feedback regarding Just Dice. You can download a playable demo here (check the included readme file for controls and requirements).

A few weeks ago I read a comment about how nobody would publish chess, if it were designed today for the first time. I don’t think I completely agree with the comment, but it does raise some interesting concerns. Primarily, should chess have been designed differently, or could it be updated to better suit modern tastes? Similarities (for better or worse) between chess and Just Dice are making these questions very relevant for me today.

As a final note, I’d like to mention that Rapunzel is progressing nicely. Each level is planned to play off of the flying super-Rapunzel character’s abilities in unique ways. I wasn’t setting out to make a non-violent game centered around a female character, but am excited that the gameplay and story are naturally developing in that direction. I should have a level to post here in the next couple of weeks.

Another new project was born over the weekend. This screen should wet your appetite until I have a working level to post. The game is a retelling of the Rapunzel story in which your hair (as a flying super-Rapunzel) is used to interact with the environment. For instance, you can currently catch small birds in your hair, and then shoot them back into the environment.

Just Dice is now a functional game. My next step is to add some menus and network support to increase the volume of playtesting that can happen, before planning or implementing any ai.

XNA: I revised the rules of the block rolling prototype, and am now implementing the game as a 3D XNA project (working name: Just Dice). So far I have a camera, and a single rolling die that are controllable using either a gamepad or keyboard-mouse. The default lighting looks strange right now because of the coordinate system I’m using, but that will change when I write my own shaders.

Grass Relief: I was thinking about implementing a grass effect for the board in Just Dice, and was surprised to not find many new ideas about how to do this in a real-time interactive environment (usually shells and fins). This lead me to learn more about Relief Mapping, which is awesome. I have some ideas about modifying the technique for interactive grass, but the graphics card on my current work box can’t handle it. So this goes on the back-burner for now.

 Multi-touch: I finally came across Jonny Lee’s Wii Controller Project videos that have been making the internet rounds. It’s a very fun idea that may become the basis of a student game design competition that I’m supposed to be co-organizing.

I’ve been playing an interesting puzzle game called Cubic Conundrum lately. It has a similar feel to the popular flash game Bloxorz, and the related family of block rolling mazes. Here are some extra levels for Cubic Conundrum that I’ve built. I’ve also put together this prototype to get a feel for a related structure of gameplay. Post your comments on the levels, and prototype below.

Alluvial Sets is a puzzle game that is played on a sudoku board. The goal is to clear fire tiles by flooding their rows, columns, or 3×3 areas. Sections are flooded when the number on any tile in a section is the same as the number of tiles in that section. Level layouts are simply stored in flat text files, so let me know what you think of the game, and send me any levels you end up creating yourself.

Portal Babies is a 2D puzzle game in which you navigate rodents over blinking lights to win. You can create portals that teleport rodents across levels, and possibly duplicate them in the process (when portals have more than one exit). This game is a proof of concept that I will appreciate your feedback on. I know that there are no sound or music, the graphics are ugly, and that the menu is a mess. Let me know, if you think this game is worth polishing up, and which levels you most enjoy. Also let me know, if you’re interested in trying your hand at designing some of your own levels, or addressing any of the previously mentioned downfalls of this game.

Sugarpillstudios.com used to look and feel like almost every other small game studio’s sell-sheet of a website. It was aesthetically pleasing and professional. However technologically, it was a mess*. The site was cumbersome to work with, so updates were rare. Its design was appropriate for a storefront, but I don’t want sugarpillstudios.com to be about selling games. I want it to be about playing games, and ultimately better understanding their design. These are some of the reasons for the new more-blogish format. Let me know what you think.

* - To give you an idea of the mess: I have a custom build program to format translated xml data as Javascript strings that can be loaded into dHTML layers on demand. This was to get server-side effects without actually running anything on a server, and is not recommended.