Words Of Shirei - Pete’s Dev Diary #1 31/07/17

First things first, Words of Shirei (WOS) is by far the most ambitious project we have taken on here at Captain Dinosaur Games. When first conceptualising what we wanted WOS to be, the one question we decided to answer was: what would we love to play? We are proud of all the games we have created in the past; however, none of them are of a genre we are truly passionate about. 

So, as Dave stated in his first dev diary, he mentioned that WOS is going to be a first person adventure game in the vein of games like Zelda Majora's Mask. The main game will be broken down into micro dungeons that are going to focus on player choice. The abilities you will gain throughout your journey will allow you to overcome these challenges in a multitude of different ways. This is something we will go into more depth about in the next couple of months.

Without spoiling too much, you arrive at the isolated city of Shirei where you are greeted by enthusiastic inhabitants who are surprised to see a new face. Each NPC you meet is perpetually linked to the world which seems to be caught in limbo. You will uncover why they are there and what brought you to this world in the first place.

The art style we are developing is heavily inspired by the art of origami. Something that has always fascinated me in regards to how malleable a single piece of paper can be. I love how much emotion can be expressed just by choosing a single colour and some well thought-out folds. This minimalist and clean look is something we are trying to capture in WOS, and I believe there is no better way to understand this then by learning the practical art of origami. I don’t intend to be a master, just understand the design and folds that go into creating a model so I can replicate this in a digital sense.

Two other massive influences on the look of the game are that of The Matrix’s take on digital space and manmade Bismuth crystals, as I feel their geometric shapes will complement the angular origami models.

I hope this concept tickles your pickle and we look forward to showing you how Words of Shirei develops in the coming months.

Thanks for reading! 

Peter Morrish

Lead Designer

Captain Dinosaur Games

Twitter:
Captain Dinosaur Games: @CaptDinoGames

Peter: @PeterJMorrish

Words Of Shirei - Dave's Dev Diary #1 - 22/07/17

Hey Guys!

I'm back again to start off my very first Development Diary! And what better way to start this diary than with the first showcasing of our new project Words of Shirei.

So the cliff notes for Words of Shirei is a First Person adventure game set in a mysterious world of questionable existence. In this world you will uncover an overarching mystery, solve puzzles and step into a dark plane to help the inhabitants to solve there problems! Pete is the lead designer of the project and will do a MUCH better job of explaining the game on his Dev Diary but for now you can enjoy my brief description!

As our first full 3D project this has got to be the most interesting start to a project for me in a long while. There is lots of planning and research that goes into such a drastically different project like this and that has been refreshing to be honest!

Thankfully Unity is primarily a 3D engine (despite its great 2D toolset of course :p) so the day one project things are fairly simple. For example the First Person Controller and a simple Cross hair took practically second to implement.

This will help massively with the fairly tight deadline that we are currently setting ourselves!

Next for me has been getting to grips with hub world interaction. So im currently adding interaction to the objects Pete has placed in our test world (His lovely Paper Cranes!) Next i want to add a simple inventory and then a simple text conversations.

So this is a really small and simple opening dev diary to showcase the very start of the project. In 2 weeks time i will be back with a far more in depth look into the programming and engine side of the project and i will be able to go into the major difference for me developing a PC game for the first time after 4 years of Mobile touch Controls!

Thanks for reading!

Dave Bellringer
Lead Programmer
Captain Dinosaur Games

Twitter:
Captain Dinosaur Games: @CaptDinoGames
Dave: @EOFGizmo

Our First Freelance Project - Broadside!

Hey Guys!

Dave here again to talk about the main project we've been working on since the middle of 2016. Broadside is a spaceship combat game where you take control of 1 of 3 varied and different races to get the highest score possible!

It's a simple premise but actually deceivingly complicated. Each faction has some unique strengths and weaknesses that can really change up your plan of attack.

This project was our very first paid freelance project for Lost Games UK and because of that provided some very valuable experience. The biggest challenge for us as a team was working to the specification of an outside designer. Although we knew this designer (Shout out to Ross) from University it was still a  big change for us to not have fully control of decisions, i feel that this is a great lesson for small teams that have perhaps become too reliant of the inner knowledge of each other. When looking for investment in the future, we now better understand how important constant group communication can be!

The other challenge for us was cold hard deadlines. Something every development studio needs to get used to! For myself, the hardest thing was managing my part time job, relationships and allocating development time but i think by the middle of the project i got this sorted out. Again, going forward the benefit of this experience is invaluable!

Lastly, Broadside is also the first time that we as a team have used the Unity game engine for our commercial releases. Getting into this engine has been a breath of fresh air, you can really do alot of stuff with the Unity and i HIGHLY recommend to all new or smaller development teams out there. The resources available to you can be a life saver when trying to hit deadlines!

Overall, we are relatively pleased with not only the product we have produced but also the general number of sales the game has managed so far across its two platforms. But, as with all developers, we knew we could do better, thats why im pleased to officially announce that we are working on a FREE patch for the game. Following reviews and general internal discussions we want to make the game feel a little bit more fun. A really obvious thing to say but fun has always been the focal point for us as developers and we want all of our games to be fun!

So thats a quick look at broadside! The game is available right now on the iOS App store and Google Play (Links below) so check it out if you like what you see!

The next blog will detail the patch so please look out for it!

Cheers
Dave Bellringer
Captain Dinosaur Games

Daves Twitter:@eofgizmo
Capt Dino Twitter: @CaptDinoGames
Lost Games Twitter: @lostgamesuk

Broadside Links:
iPhone:http://apple.co/2pm7xhV
Android: http://bit.ly/2p5Y3mM

Anti Flux VR - Uk Games Fund Pitch!

Hey Guys!

This is Dave here with a much needed update to the Captain Dinosaur blog! So first of all its good to be back writing this after well over a year of forgetting to add stuff (our bad) and to finally shed some light on what we've been up to for the past 18 months! This post and the next couple will be more catch up posts than new shiny announcements but i hope you can enjoy them all the same!

Today's post is all about our Anti Flux VR Uk Games Fund submission from 2016! Uk Games fund is a funding program introduced last year following a large sum of government investment, its goal is to fund small UK based game teams to get there products to a sell-able or demonstrative state in order to grow and ultimately provide jobs and experience to the British economy.

Right, enough about the program, what about the pitch?

Anti Flux VR was to be a fully 3D virtual reality Shoot Em Up, with the player piloting a ship around large Virtual landscape overrun with Viruses. Much like the mobile game the players objective was to destroy as many of these viruses as possible using a variety of weapon and the colour changing mechanic that worked so well in the previous title!

We were aiming to utilize the Occulus Rift touch controller to further enhance the experience and were aiming to showcase the project at the Develop VR showcase, with that being the ultimate goal of the initial funding!

We put together a snazzy little video (view able below!) and had built an alpha prototype for the submission.

Although we ultimately (Spoiler alert i guess?) we were not able to get the investment we needed this time around, we really enjoyed leaving our 2D comfort zone for this project and overall think that the Uk Games Fund is a really great program and we certainly hope to apply for it again whenever we can.

So that's just a quick behind the curtain glimpse at our Anti Flux VR pitch!

Thank you for reading and please check out our Twitter and Facebook pages for updates on whats next for us at Captain Dinosaur Games!

Dave
Lead Programmer
Captain Dinosaur Games

Daves Twitter:@eofgizmo
Capt Dino Twitter: @CaptDinoGames

Agents of S.O.A.P: Zero Mission

Hey folks!

Dave here with a little update about what we have been working on in the quiet of the West County!

Our newest game Agents of S.O.A.P: Zero Mission will be hitting mobile platforms in the next few weeks so its really about time we talked about it officially!

Agents of S.O.A.P is a dialogue based adventure game where you must diffuse a bomb and hack a computer to stop a terrorist attack on an Airship! Sounds easy doesn't it? Well its not that simple! in order to get the information and items you need to achieve this you will need to use all of your linguistic skills to persuade the airships crew to give up there secrets, all while a timer to your untimely demise counts down!

So you may ask "Why is it Zero Mission?" What Zero Mission indicates is that this is a stand alone mission that we are making FREE to get some much needed feedback! We are planning a much larger and feature filled Agents of S.O.A.P game with a completely new story and lots of additional game play but felt releasing a stand alone mission would help guide us through the development of that larger game!

As i mentioned earlier, our aim is to get Zero Mission to mobile platforms within the next few weeks so please stay tuned to our Twitter Feeds for More Info!

Twitter:

Captain Dinosaur Games: @captdinogames

Dave: @eofgizmo

Pete: @wildmelonpete

Anti Flux - 15/10/14

Hey Guys, Its Dave from Captain Dinosaur here and today i will FINALLY be blogging about our first release, Anti Flux.

Anti Flux is a Defensive-Shoot-em-up where the player aims to destroy as many aggressive viruses as possible to rack up a Hi Score. 

The Title Screen in all its glory!

To help you achieve this there are a number of power ups available that include: A Shield that returns your shield to full power, a Bullet that increases your damage for a short time, a Bolt that freezes the enemies in place and a Wave that creates a wave of destruction that stops all in its path!!

Shocking......

The enemies aren't generated in a set pattern so the player has to be ready for any eventuality and leads to the game being quite reaction based instead of simply remembering when and where enemies appear. Makes the game super hard too (Trust me, I'm the lead programmer and i have an embarrassingly low hi score compared to our testers!)

"Simple and easy to play"  Was definitely the phrase we thought of when initially designing Anti Flux. Myself and Pete (Lead Artist/Creative Dude) had worked on a couple projects for a previous company of ours that got very complicated as the development went on, leading to a mess of ideas and mechanics in the final product. It also left us drained and unwilling to even promote said project.

We didn't want this to happen with Captain Dinosaur Games so the idea for Anti Flux came about from that desire to focus on polish instead of complicated design. The art style was deliberately made using simple shapes and colours in order for us to concentrate on the games fun and playability instead of spending months fine tuning animations or backgrounds.

Wave Goodbye.... The weapon is much better than my Puns...

The game in its entirety took about 4 Months to make from Idea to Google Play Store release. Since then we have released on the iOS App Store and Amazon App Stores as well as adding a bit more content and streamlining the experience overall.

As of writing we have had over 2,700 Downloads so far which is a big step from our previous experience! The hardest part of this project so far has been trying to get it out there for sure. For people that have, before this project, not been big users of social media it has been a big eye opener.

So thats a tiny little insight to the development of Anti Flux! Which you can of course Download for Free from the Links listed below! As for whats next for Captain Dinosaur Games? We are working on a new project that is alot bigger in scope that will be hopefully taking the lid off of soon! As well as trying to improve Anti Flux where we can and get it onto a few more platforms!

Thanks for Reading, Happy gaming!

Dave Bellringer

Lead Programmer/Creative Director

Captain Dinosaur Games

Twitter: http://bit.ly/1pVewWh

Google Play Store: http://bit.ly/1s4Ek3w

Amazon App Store: http://amzn.to/1xRUjDQ

iOS App Store: http://bit.ly/1vYNcdm

An Introduction To Captain Dinosaur Games!

Welcome to the Captain Dinosaur Games official blog!

Who are we?
Captain Dinosaur Games are an independent video game developer based in the UK. The team is currently made up of two University of Wales, Newport graduates, Peter Morrish, Who studied Games Design and Dave Bellringer, who studied Computer Programming!

What do we do?
Our aim is make fun and challenging video games! That's it, no hidden agenda, just fun games! We have so far worked on Games for Mobile and Tablet devices but we also plan to move onto other platforms in the future!

What have we made?
Our first release as Captain Dinosaur Games was Anti Flux, a game in which you attempt to halt the never ending onslaught of computer viruses in order to achieve the Highest Score you can! Anti Flux is available right now for FREE on the Google Play Store (Store Link) and will be available on the Apple App Store very soon!

What's next?
Our immediate plans are to get the iOS version of Anti Flux available for download! Beyond that we are planning a content patch for Anti Flux that adds some requested features and fixes a few bugs! Please follow this blog, our Twitter and our Facebook page for more info!

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