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