Thanks Wells Fargo for featuring me on your #WhyIWork site! They also did an entire write up telling my story. I’ve been feeling down lately and this really let’s me see that the hard work isn’t for nothing and this lifted my spirits up to keep going. Check it out if you have the time.
https://whyiwork.wf.com/
Over the past month, I went through a ton of things and created new levels, items and more. I debated on whether or not to change the name of the game to Super Ubi Island. I’m still not 100 percent certain if I will do that or not but I’ll think about it over the next couple of days.
Tons of new music and sounds have been sent over from Calum Bowen. He is very talented! Makes me glad that he is working with me on these games.
I also worked on the new Ship Crash site for the intro of the game.
I finally started on world 2 of the game and played around with TNT concepts. I am trying to bring more action into the game and give players frantic and speed driven levels to space out the more slower, classic platform style levels. The TNT is also a good way for me to incorporate small puzzles in certain levels. More on that later…
I finally decided on what item would be used for the 1ups in the game and I drew up Sandy from Team Notion as trophies. This is a good way to cross promote my different Series’ and get people familiar with my characters overall.
A new character, Honey Bee, has been put into the game. You will have the option to help find her children throughout Climate Island and bring them back to her for Keys to unlock doors to levels and other secrets throughout the game.
I submitted Super Ubi Land to IGF 2013 just for the sake of doing so. You never know what could happen. check out the page and also check out the new trailer I put together (about a month ago at this point) showing more of the game.
http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2013.php?id=713
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hQbcmuM46E[/youtube]
I have a lot more news but I don’t want to give away everything. You’ll have to play the game when it’s complete to see it all!
Thanks for the support, I’m glad to be able to be creating games for your enjoyment!
-Drew
I received an email from the Austin Chronicle asking Notion to participate in a cool event called ‘Game on Austin.’
It’s an event where the “Austin Chronicle and the SXSW Gaming Expo (formerly SXSW Screenburn) combine forces to get local developers and digital art
types in one place to show off their creations in the hopes of bringing the idea of an “Austin gaming scene” to the general public.”
I will definitely round up the Notion Games team and get there! The event is on Oct 25th so that leaves Calum and I just over a month to really crack down and add some amazing progress to Super Ubi Land. I’m planning to have world 1 playable with a couple of mini games.
That also led me to having to create an official cover for the game… So I did:
Going for that classic Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong Country feel and want the kiddos to really want to play the game.
Ubi is back! But in an ADVENTURE! Super Ubi Land is a game that I’m working on all by myself (programming, art, etc) except for the music which’ll be done by Calum Bowen. It is influenced by the Super Mario games and will be similar to Super Mario World. It’ll have different levels to unlock and explore, bosses to defeat, coins to collect, powerups to use and Ubis to save!
I am aiming to have this game completed by Fall 2012 before really sinking into Team Notion. Everything that I learn from working on this game will be applied to Team Notion.
The game is being made using the Construct 2 engine and will see releases on PC, Android and iOS.
Here is a screen of the game early in production. I will update you guys with the progress as I continue developing the game.
Drew here… We are currently working on a new engine that’s being built from scratch (by our programmer ofcourse). In the mean time, I’m playing around with the Construct Classic engine to get more familiar with the logic and terms involved in coding for games.
I am playing around with a platformer style while I wait for the new engine to be built and it’s allowing me to get a better understanding of what Notion’s programmer does. It also allows me to test how sprites will look in the game and will allow me to fix choppy/wonky animations on the fly so I don’t have to wait for updates from our programmer.
We have pledged to Spriter; the new animation tool
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/539087245/spriter
This should allow me to create better and more fluid animations to incorporate in the game. Also will let me create big bosses easier as well.
But for now, check out the little video I made playing around with the Construct Classic engine. (Note that this is just me playing around and learning more about the technical side of game creation).
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdgN5yxYijY[/youtube]
UPDATE (the next day)
This is my 2nd day trying to learn the Construct engine. I switch from Construct Classic to Construct 2 (the newest version) to see what each has to offer. I’m not a programmer but this engine really makes it fun and easy to get things working the way you want them to.
This build was made in like 4-5 hours total (from drawing the animations to incorporating them into the game). I still have enemies and environment details that I have yet to incorporate in this test/learning build. I’ll update later with that.
It’s not the best looking/playing thing out there by far but I’m learning. Let’s see what day 3 will bring.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc6jtKfzKsg[/youtube]
Here are a couple of sprites for the character, Drew.
-Drew
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eT8KUy98w0[/youtube]
I’d like to share with you something that I feel a ton of indie game developers tend to leave as a second thought in the game development process; The SOUNDTRACK! People can immediately recognize the Mario theme, Zelda, etc. Seems like Nintendo has the soundtrack portion of their games down! And that’s what I want people to think of as well when they think about Notion. I want people to know that any game they pick up from us that the music will be of high quality and go hand to hand with the game style/art.
So I was researching and really trying to figure out what type of music to use for the ‘KnockOut Dodgeball’ game and I went from Rock Orchestra styles all the way to 8bit chiptuney music. Then I ran across my favorite ‘Streets of Rage 2’ music (Specifically the song ‘Dreamer’). I always go to that series whenever I think about video game music. It just has an amazing soundtrack.
So from then, I knew that I had to have something similar in that style… Just updated. Then I ran across a composer by the name of Madeon. His music is amazing. I’m referencing his song ‘For You’ as the base of the soundtrack for KnockOut Dodgeball. Take a listen. I’m sure you’ll dig it as well.
…And here’s a random picture that I’ll just stick… here…
I am so happy to announce that Up Up Ubi is available for download in the itunes app market!!!
For iPhone (3gs, 4 and 4s), iPod Touch (3rd and 4th gen) and ipad!!!
And here’s a quick trailer that I was working on… I wanted to work on it longer but Apple approved the game WAY sooner than we expected!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt9w1trvSf8[/youtube]
And go here to buy the app!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/up-up-ubi/id496389249?mt=8
or click the banner below! Thanks for the support!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS9IM28k4LU[/youtube]
Thanks to everyone who has donated all the way to those who just gave me a simple ‘LIKE’ on Facebook. Those have all lead to boosting the team’s moral and motivation to complete this game.
We have submitted the final build to Apple for approval. Now it’s just a waiting game of about 1-2 weeks. If they approve (which I have a strong feeling they will) you can buy it!!! We’re targeting a $1.99 price tag and will also be selling the official soundtrack in iTunes for $5.99 (which comes with ALL of the songs from the game AND 5 extra tracks exclusive to the album!) or 99 cents for single song downloads . Trust me when I say the album JAMS!
So… what’s next for Notion Games? Well… depends on how well we do with ‘Up Up Ubi.’ It costs a lot of time and money to buy engine licenses, equipement, etc. to make games and unless we can make money from the projects we do create then it’ll be a lot harder to actually make another one… especially a BETTER game.
But we won’t stress that! We’ll get on the next project regardless because this is what we love to do!
And we’re celebrating the completion of Up Up Ubi!!!!! WOOooOOOoo!!!!
-Drew
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMVezAGVZig&context=C382e28bADOEgsToPDskKo8WhcF9dx1csrB1OunGTh[/youtube]
We have the video to the Up Up Ubi tutorial posted on the brand new NotionGames youtube page! (Subscribe to it please haha).
The amazing voiceover work was done by a really good friend of mine and popular youtuber Treezy504. He really brought the comedy to what would have otherwise been a boring, dull tutorial.
We’re working hard touching up animations, menus and fixing bugs so that we may finally submit to Apple on Monday! We’re looking good! We’ve incorporated the leaderboard system and made more tweaks to the gameplay. The game is feeling pretty solid minus the little bugs here and there… That’s nothing a little spit shine can’t fix.
We really appreciate the support thus far. It’s been somewhat of a long road and we’re glad it’s coming to an end. Now we have to start promoting and hope the game will get the attention we think it deserves.
I may just go out Sunday night to celebrate our wrap-up!
but for now… I have to get back to work!
-Drew
Oh… and check out the credits page:
