I just finished preparing a video to show off my entry for the #7DRL Challenge this year. It is a Rogue-lite Third-Person Shooter set deep beneath the surface underground.

If you are interested in seeing my log I kept for how I developed it, you can take a look at that here: https://jheard901.wordpress.com/7drl-2016/

I recently participated in the 7DRL (7-Day Roguelike) challenge this year and made a third-person shooter based Rogue-lite. I might finish it up later with the rest of it core features, but it is mostly done to represent the basic idea I had in mind for it.

For more information, check it out here: https://jheard901.wordpress.com/7drl-2016/

February has mostly been a quite month for me, so I figured I’d post a quick update about what is coming soon. SGMQ #4 is in the works and will basically feature a number of gameplay mechanics from Resident Evil; I have expanded the scope of what to is to be covered in the project and it will be featured as a downloadable .uproject for the community to use, so here is a quick recap of what it will have:

-Player Character (RE style movement)
-Shooting/Aiming
-Camera (RE style)
-Inventory
-Level Triggers
-Zombie Enemies
-Doors (locked & triggered)
-Pop-up Text (RE style)

I also thought about adding in level streaming to the design of it, but opted out of doing that for now. Oh, and here’s a screenshot of our character that will be used:

Further down the road, I will be looking into XCOM 2 modding. It is an awesome game and I definitely want to contribute to adding new functionality into. Here’s just a short manifesto from a long list of mod ideas I have for it:

*Mod for new mission types:
Brainstorm new mission types that could be added in to the standard ones that currently exist. The first notable idea that comes to mind is creating a wave defence mission type where players start off in a location and have to survive waves of enemies moving toward their position for ‘x’ turns until extraction is available.

*Mod for New Game+:
After beating the game, you would be able to start a new game+ using the exact same roster pool of troops from your last playthrough. Somehow, this would need to be balanced out for it to be more challenging, yet reasonable for allowing colonels and other high stat soldiers be used by players starting off.

*Mod for Simulating Missions:
Just as it sounds, this mod will add a new option to a mission – alongside the launch command – called Simulate. It will put players through the same screen of choosing soldiers/equipment/gear setup like normal when prepping for a mission; the difference is that this feature will allow players to skip actually executing a mission. Success of the mission will be calculated off various factors such as the rank of the soldier, classes used and their relativity to the mission (i.e. were grenadiers used in a mission versus sectopods or other heavy armor units?), abilities of each individual unit (i.e. do troops have good useful abilities such as the sniper’s rupture?), and many other factors that will need to be thought over carefully in order to successfully create such a feature to be implemented into the game in a balanced way. Note, certain story related missions will not be allowed to be simulated such as the end game mission or other story critical missions.

That’s all for now; make it a great day!

Week 3 is in! For this week, we have a game that emulates the style of classic Resident Evil games like 1 and 2. Moving forward, I am considering turning the SGMQ series into a tutorial resource of sorts that shows how to emulate mechanics that are seen in other games within UE4. I think it would be fun to do, so let me know what you think of it and if you have suggestions for where to start. Thanks!

This game is taking a bit longer than anticipated because I am trying out some new things with it, but this video is the feel of what the main menu will be like.

I’m excited to share with you that I am starting a series called Simple Games Made Quick (SGMQ) which is goal-oriented around building a new simple game every week with as much of a professional level of detail as possible.

This week’s game is 2D-based with physics and is pretty much just golf without the 3rd dimension being factored in.

Hi and Happy New Years to you! I’m excited to share with you that I am starting a series called Simple Games Made Quick (SGMQ) which is goal-oriented around building a new simple game every week with as much of a professional level of detail as possible for it considering most of the assets to be used are obtained for free – there will be some paid content as well, just much less. So, kicking off this first week of development with the first game idea I thought of is a First-Person Adventure game that can be tried out here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B90pAXmkfgSZZTNSdHpuZEV1RHM . Only compatible with Windows 64-bit.

Gave my website some long needed updates to the overall design, look, and feel of it based off some feedback I got. The new design is more mobile friendly, so there should be less clutter on your screen when viewing from a phone or tablet. Also, I recently made a trailer showcasing what Dream of Lies is about at its core. It’s an Action/RPG game similar to Dark Souls.

Control the world around you, phasing objects into being and blowing away enemies with your mind.  Figure out the mystery of where you are!

I’ve been working on this project since March and I wouldn’t exactly call it done, but at least it is out there now.

Currently working in a small team of 4 to develop Project Lucidity – a game I designed last year – which is an action-stealth oriented side scrolling game. Since then, we’ve decided on naming the game Dream of Lies. Below you can take an early look at a prototype of the player controller: