The Rollercoaster of GameDev - It Takes a Stout Heart
The past couple of month has been like riding an old wooden rollercoaster. The demands of an Indie Game Designer looking for any work at all and stay-at-home father of two awesome kids have met with the highs of winning awards to the lows of the added pressure on health and finances.
What follows is a short recap of some of the work behind the scenes and the Journey Pick-A-Pocket has recently led me on.
Streams
Part of my work for Pick-A-Pocket came about after finding out a couple of streamers had picked up and played our game organically. I reached out to say thank you to them and I was met with such an awesome response that I joined a few of their streams. I was able to truly see Pick-A-Pocket’s goal realised of being a super fun game for playing with a community and the reward of seeing game designs playing out as I hoped. From people being stunned into a police capture, clusters of thefts happening at a meeting of Marks and the rage of close friends picking on each other brought a tear to my eye.
We were able to release a few steam keys to the communities to line up with the release of our major patch and seeing 8 players now filling the maps unleashed a new madness in the game. It really does bring a special joy seeing others play and enjoy what you have created.
LouLouBangBang playing with community members
Credits
Revisiting parts of the game to update I wanted to give recognition to all the people behind the scenes who don’t always get thanked. The old credits screen was squished in to fit all on the screen at once, with the added changes I had to do some more learning (Pick-A-Pocket being my first Unreal game) to create an auto-scrolling box. After setting it all up and having it auto-scroll, I asked our programmer Felix Lambert to look over the code and tighten it up. The new credits screen can now accept more lines modularly and hope to add more people who get involved.
Old Squished Credits vs New Auto-scrolling Credits
Awards
As part of continuing to network and look for opportunities, I often visit new discord communities around Game Dev and during this time I revisited the Melbourne Game Creatives. There was an advertisement for the GameXellence Awards in conjunction with the Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW for short).
Hoping to get some eyes on Pick-A-Pocket by entering the game I never expected the game would pick up 1 let alone 2 awards.
After being informed of winning I had to try and get someone to the award ceremony, which ended up being me after borrowing money for flights and accommodation.
The Awards night was a fantastic chance to network and meet others in the industry or previous colleagues and here’s hoping it can lead to some work in the industry.
Two Awards for Pick-A-Pocket
Awards Night at MIGW Opening Loading Screen - Held at Fortress.Melbourne
Patch time?
Pick-A-Pocket was working on a major patch where we had moved from our initial release to updates on UI, Bug fixes, and increasing the map selection to 6 and the maximum player count to 8. With my major work completed in this area, I had signed myself into a Game Jam with some friends. Never assume you are done!
The Major Patch ended up being released during the Game Jam and there was a frenzy of activity to get things polished more and out the door. This came as a part blessing to another on the Game Jam team who had more work to complete on his own game for GCAP and with a heavy heart we discontinued the Jam in the middle of it. The VR escape room we had started planning though may make a comeback in the future. Keep your eyes peeled.
Where to Now?
Both Stout Heart Games and Amythica have larger projects they are both working on. A larger update for Pick-A-Pocket will be a while off, but I am continuing to chip away at the roadmap in the meantime. Next up is working on a system to show some of the stats from games you have played and the total stats for your Pick-A-Pocket career.
Until Next time
Have Awesome Adventures!