Arlo isn’t completely finished yet; I have no doubts that it will be by the end of the month. It’s certainly one of my weirder creations, and it wasn’t what I was expecting to make when I went into third year. It will be interesting to see the reactions to it at the Winchester and London …

Doubt has been a very big part of this process. When I started, I figured I shouldn’t make a rebellious game because I didn’t really have anything to rebel against, I wasn’t angry about anything important so what was the point of making an angry game about setting stuff on fire?   And then I realized everything is actually pretty screwed at the moment.  I …

How hard could sound be? Surely the code is just when you do this thing, do this thing, and to some extent it is. The mistake that I made was thinking that I (with little to no knowledge on music creation, and the worst mark in the class when it came to music theory back in …

You know back when I was talking about my programming process, find a thing, try to apply it, have a mental breakdown, get someone who knew what they were doing to fix it? The glorious theme will continue today with my early cutscene systems. I had a simple goal, I just wanted to make a …

I knew from the beginning of development that I would need to learn how to create particle effects. What I didn’t know was how effective they would be, and how much they add to the game. Turns out, a lot, it adds a lot to the game.  The particle effect I found was in the backend of …

The main mechanic in Arlo utilizes clipping masks, a component I learnt about in 1st year game design when I was making a game called Scope about an elderly sniper who had trouble focusing. The component is simple, you have two images, and the clipping mask lets you see through the first image and into the second image. …

It’s time to get into programming. Most of the code in Arlo is ripped from Brackeys, various fringe programming videos on YouTube, and various fringe programming videos on YouTube that were fixed by my housemate, Benedict. That’s not to say that I haven’t learnt some stuff. I’ve found that I can sort of read code, I just can’t write it, because …

Pixel art does come with its issues, especially when it comes to text creation. Arlo is a game of many posters, a lot of hidden messages, and a whole bunch of writing. Pixel art has its pros and cons when it comes to that. On the positive side of things, Pixel art made it easy to pick …

I enjoy animating… sometimes. Making things move is a lot cooler than having static stuff, but animating full time is soul rending. Fortunately, a lot like our last post, pixel art came to the rescue. The drawing software I use is called Clip Studio Paint. It’s a Japanese drawing software and I would vouch for it as the …

If I had of tried to make Arlo by myself with a realistic art style and animation, I would’ve probably destroyed my will to live by now. Queue Pixel Art, not really an art movement, more just a limitation of technology that sprouted up around the first arcade games in the 1980s that stuck around into the present day because of its …