BRS - Pandemic Flashback #1: Audio Engine

The first big task of v0.3 was to rebuild the audio system. Well, to build an audio system, more accurately. As I was wrapping up v0.2, I decided to throw some sound effects in as an afterthought. I only intended to add a few ambient sounds so that the game wouldn't be completely silent, but they improved the experience of the game so much that I just kept adding more and more sounds with no plan for how to manage them. I mean, there was a plan, which was for future me to deal with it, which he did. So sounds were all scattered around in the code with no rhyme or reason, which would have ended up causing a ton of problems. Like, if I wanted to add some super advanced feature like the ability to adjust the game's volume, it would mean changing dozens of lines of code, and it would only get worse as I added more sound effects. So it needed to be done. And it is. BEHOLD:

There are now TWO OPTIONS!

The new system makes it much easier to add, remove, and alter sounds from here on out. I also added support for placing sounds in 3-D space. Unity does this out of the box, but the built-in system lacks a few features that I needed (such as smoothly adjusting the pitch of a sound on the fly) so I ended up rolling my own. It's not very noticeable in the game as it exists but I think it will add a lot to the sense of immersion once I start implementing ship systems.

I did all of this over a year ago, back in February, when I only used the word 'pandemic' while playing the board game and Corona was just a skunky spring break beer. In the next exciting episode, I'll build an input system while the world crumbles. Stay tuned!

Black Road Sky Pandemic Report

 As PCG Stans are well aware, we were tapped by the Shadow Obama Administration to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in the early days of the pandemic. Through extensive research, the Totino's Party Pizzas and Natty Daddy tallboys that we've tested over the past year have proven ineffective in terms of vaccination potential, but fabulously effective in other ways that we are still actively studying. This allocation of resources to R&D forced us to put Black Road Sky on the back burner ... until now.

Work resumes on BRS v0.3, picking up where we left off nearly a year ago. The focus of this update is on behind-the-scenes infrastructure to get ready for implementing ship systems in v0.4, but there will also be a few notable gameplay additions. You will be thrilled to know that I'm currently working on a sci-fi savings and loan, bringing a much needed breath of fresh fiscal responsibility simulation to the game.

Fiscal Responsibility Simulator 2021

In the next few posts we'll be looking at the work on a new audio system, input manager AND MORE that was done back in early 2020. My hope is that by the time these posts catch up with my current work, v0.3 will be about ready for release. But hopes are made to be dashed yeah?

WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP unless this gets boring then I'll probably play Tetris.

NEW RELEASE: Clicker Game for Kids (K-12)

 I want to make a positive impact on the world, so I made an educational game for kids. It is called Clicker Game for Kids (K-12) and it is available on potatoclockgames.com for kids, educators, and the young at heart disease I mean heart.

 

Maybe you're thinking hey man it seems like you're just making dumb JavaScript games lately because you're afraid to get back to work on Black Road Sky because there's no risk in making something intentionally dumb and what if you actually give something your all just to see it fail like what would that say about your worth as a person that's pretty scary stuff but actually maybe you should just mind your own god damn business, buckaroo.

NEW RELESE: JUMP 666

 I just made one of the dumbest things I've ever made.

Ladies & gents, it's JUMP 666, the title says it all, check it out today on potatoclockgames.com!

I made this game in a few hours, following this tutorial for the bulk of it, after learning that you can do keyframe animations in CSS. WHAT!? Why in the name of fuck would you want to do that? Who is sitting around wishing that CSS was more fiddly and complicated? JUMP 666 aims to answer these questions and more.

For the haxorz, the scholars, the rascals:

• JUMP 666 HTML
• JUMP 666 CSS
• JUMP 666 JavaScript
  

PCG 2020 Shareholders Profits Report

 Welcome, welcome. Your time is valuable so we'll cut to the chase. As you can see, we are on track to complete BRS version 0.3 last summer? Wait ....

BRS Progress Report

Huh. Well, shit.

Black Road Sky Version 0.2 Released

I know I said March, but fuck it, here you go:

potatoclockgames.com/BRS

I had planned on waiting to release this until I had put together some sort of tutorial, but who knows when/if I'll find the motivation to do that. I've already started working on the next version update. Making a tutorial system for a game that's constantly changing and nowhere near finished feels pointless. I'll probably make some drunken YouTube video tutorials at some point.

Let me be clear: this is a buggy, shitty looking tech demo with basically no gameplay. That said, I've been working on it since October 2018 and I'm pretty proud of the state it's in. The physics simulation is working, with realistic orbital mechanics and Newtonian flight. There's a full scale solar system spread across billions of kilometers with no loading screens. You can walk around your ship while in flight, you can dock with space stations, and you can get out of your ship to walk around the stations you dock with, all seamlessly. These are all difficult technical problems to solve, NOT TO TOOT MY OWN HORN HERE OR ANYTHING, which I've never seen combined into a single game (with the exception of the now cancelled Rogue System).

The next version, which I expect to take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to complete, is going to be a pretty boring one. There's a ton of behind-the-scenes kind of stuff I need to take care of before moving on. I'll be adding some very basic space trucking gameplay with contracts to accept and money to manage, but most of v0.3 will focus on cleaning shit up and getting the codebase ready to start implementing ship systems.

Man, I need a fucking hype man or something.

Black Road Sky is dead. Long live Black Road Sky.

How to make a video game:

1. Try.
2. Fail.
3. Despair.
4. Return to Step 1.
5. Inexplicably end up at step 5 with a jankity tech demo.

ACTUAL GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE UNPARALLELED REALISM

The rebooted Black Road Sky will be available in the form of a shitty looking tech demo with basically no gameplay in about a month.

CONTAIN YRSELFZ.