So it’s been quite a while since my last blog post. Almost a month and a half. Apologies for not keeping you all up to date as I only intended to have a short break over Christmas. No real excuses just a few usual life things and a heap of forgetfulness!
Christmas was a nice break and I got to spend a lot of quality time with my family. I also picked up a pretty heavy retro game collecting passion. More on that later. I also had really bad chest infection that didn’t budge for over 5 weeks! It got to the point where I’d forgotten what it felt like to be back to normal! In the end I had to give in to the need for antibiotics to get rid of it. I guess over Christmas I pushed my self too much which meant I was pretty run down.
With being off ill I was really hoping to make the most of it and get a huge chunk of game dev done. Unfortunately I didn’t get anywhere near as much done as I’d hoped apart from a few UI updates and getting some website frameworks up for Project ZATO and Gym Empire. In all honesty I’ve struggled to get the engine revved up again in terms of getting into a good daily routine of game dev which really disappoints me! The issue is I’m finding Unity game dev a lot trickier than GameMaker Studio, so the motivation is a little harder to come by when progress slows down. That being said I know I’m on the edge of breaking through a barrier with Gym Empire and really starting to move forward with it. Also Project ZATO is GameMaker Studio project so there’s really no excuses!
So enough looking back, what’s in store in 2018 for Chronik Spartan?
Game Collecting
As I mentioned before I’ve really gotten into retro game collecting over Christmas! Being a gamer from a young age and always feeling it’s important to look after your possessions, I already start off with a decent set of consoles and games from the mid 90s onwards so it’s more a case of consciously seeking out retro games and consoles.
I got the urge after looking up info on original Gameboy games as part of a gift for my son. Watching some SeeJayAre and Metal Jesus videos really got me excited about game collecting, so I decided to start myself. I’m currently really enjoying it and love the nostalgia of seeking out some of my personal faves, especially PS1 and PS2 titles. My focus is purely on games I enjoy and my plan is to spend as little as possible. Where I do end up needing to spend cash I plan to have an absolute upper limit of what the item would have originally cost if it is in mint condition.
I’m excited to share this with you all and for you to let me know what you think, so I’ve started a YouTube series documenting my adventure. You can find the first video here.
Chronik Spartan Game Collection
Game Dev
After a long break the game dev engine is revving back up! The plan is to get back into daily development of Gym Empire and Project ZATO. The immediate milestone is to get both games to a point where I can create some nice screenshots and a decent announcement trailer for each. The reason behind that is because I want to be able to show you guys and everyone else a taster of what’s to come. Currently I’ve got very detailed concepts of how both games will look in my mind and I’m really excited to share that. I think you’ll really like what’s to come and I want to give everyone that continues to support me something to see the progress and what to expect.
From a functionality point of view the focus on Gym Empire is going to be on further implementing the systems and the UI. The focus on Project ZATO is going to be on developing the visuals and the world map alongside drip feeding teasers to build up the layers to the story.
New Project
Finally I am excited to say that I am joining teams with my good friends @stanpcgaming to start a little project that will appeal to anyone interested in game dev. That’s all I can say for now but there’ll be more to disclose soon. Watch this space…