EgoProblems… Limited?

Hello,

I am writing to inform you that due to recent changes in the status of this company, the tone of these posts shall henceforth be more formal. This was not a decision taken lightly, but due to…

Nah. Nuts to that.

We’re legitimate! that’s right, I’m no longer just a guy in a tiny bedroom kitted out like an office, pretending like he has a real business. I’m now a guy in a tiny bedroom kitted out like an office, pretending like he has a real business… But now I actually have one! EgoProblems Ltd is official. It’s on companies house and everything. That means… err, I need to do taxes, draw myself a salary, and make sure everything is recorded for legal reasons… Damn.

Still, it’s very cool. I’m not sure how I feel about my #EgoProblems being limited – I wasn’t even sure that was possible – but it’s a very nice feeling knowing that we exist legally. Adds a layer of legitimacy to everything I’m doing, and gives me more incentive to keep pushing away!

It’s also a bank holiday today. But legitimate or not, as an indie I have no use for banks – that requires an income – and I certainly don’t get holiday! So it’s still blog day.

I decided recently that it was about time to start combining my efforts at making a game, and learning to art. So far they have been separate but, to be frank, I was getting bored of looking at circles and boxes. So I whacked in some of the stuff I made (see the last blog), but was dismayed to realise I had no “human” token, so drew myself a new guy quickly and chucked him in too. He looks like this:

He was rushed, and I’m still struggling with perspective, but it does the job. At least my feet are getting better anyway! The finished result looks like this:

I recorded that in the editor with “gizmos” turned on which is why you can see the debug lines when the human attacks, but also why you can see shurikens on the zombies. Why are there shurikens? Because there’s a particle system for blood splatter underneath that triggers when you get hit, and that’s Unity’s symbol for a particle system. Why is it a shuriken? Beats me. It obscures the hell outta the particles though which look like this:

Did you see it? I’ll forgive you if you didn’t. Don’t worry, it’s just placeholder, like the rest of the game. It’ll get better. Probably.

There’s so much to do it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll be looking at the core game loop when I get more of a chance. I was going to do that this week but I err, got distracted.

Hey speaking of distraction, I took part in the #bards4bards livestream event this week! If you didn’t hear about it, then it was an event organised by a couple of Youtubers (Wystle While You Work and JoCat) to raise money for Artist Relief Tree which helps support artists who have lost work due to Covid-19. You should check all of those things out. They had a draw along challenge so I thought I’d take a crack at it. I spent about two hours on this I think. Maybe a bit more. I had a lot of pose trouble. But here he is:

Being honest, I don’t much like anything above the pointing hand, except maybe the feather. But it was good fun and good practice! And I got to draw a big hat! Also, shout out to my housemate Richard who not only drew along, but also helped me make sense of the crazy pose I put together!

There was one more thing. That distraction I talked about that stopped me working on the gameplay loop? Well, I’m thrilled to tell you that we now have our first contract job! We are going to be helping out the wonderful SockMonkey Studios on a job for the next four months! I’m very excited to be working with them; they’re great guys who I worked with way back when, before I went to work in triple A. And the job is very cool too. Can’t tell you much about it at the moment, it isn’t announced yet. But as soon as I can you’ll know.

What this does mean is that the company gets a pay check! I just need to get a company account set up… Oh wait. It’s a bank holiday. Guess I have to eat my words…

Matt out.