Steve Forde

Finally got around to finish editing the trailer for my game, Pombie Zong!

Gameplay footage captured with Fraps, animations and effects done in Adobe After Effects, and used Premiere Pro to add in the sound effects and do the final editing.

Wrote up a news post on IndieDB for Pombie Zong; outlining some of the new features and what still needs to be done before it gets published to Google Play.

Been helping the guys across-town over at PlayNimbus with some character/concept art.

Or watch on YouTube: http://youtu.be/D1pxV_eiWLU

This past weekend I launched a new website dedicated to my game projects: www.cairn4.com – Not too much on it in terms of content at the moment, but eventually I’ll be transitioning my zombie game dev posts over there.

And speaking of my zombie game… Besides all the obvious benefits of using source control, one thing that’s really nice about using git is that I can use my commit log to see how much progress I make each week.  Over the last month, I’ve been averaging around 4 commits per day – sometimes they’re just simple bug fixes, but sometimes they are…

Not that I have ample free time on my hands… I’ve taken up the crazy task of rewriting most of my zombie paddle/pong game with a few specific reasons and goals in mind, including:

• To use libGDX’s Scene2D for almost all of the drawing on-scree with Stages and Actors.  This also makes for easy menus, buttons etc instead of attempting to porting over my 1/2 written UI setup I had back when the game was still all in XNA.
• Using libGDX’s particle emitter setup, which allows me to use the particle editor tool rather than tweaking them via code. Probably way better performance too.
• Implementing Box2D for physics/collisions.  More accurate, and the possibility of cooler effects like explosion knock-back etc.

So far I’ve gotten some of the menu flow setup, and you can essentially just play a basic game of Pong… still need to add the actual zombies back in though

It saddens me to report that as of October 15th I’ll no longer be employed at ImaginEngine due to the studio closing later this month. So I guess it’s really time to get this site dusted off, upload some more artwork, and get my resume updated

On the plus side, I’m gonna have plenty more time to get working on Zombie Pong again in the near future.  So who knows, maybe I’ll actually be able to finish it and get it up on the Google Play store someday!

Also… here’s a recent concept drawing that I did of a sorcerer for a game prototype that a few of my coworkers had been working on over the past couple months. Original design idea for the character by @Godzigla. Drawn in MyPaint; don’t think I can say enough good things about that app.

Also posted to DeviantArt: http://fav.me/d5gyswb

We had our first hike of the year up Mount Monadnock yesterday. We took the the Spellman trail up to the top, which was nice and quiet compared to the more popular White Cross and White Dot trails which were a little busy.

Behold, some new art for the Main Menu:

Also posted to DeviantArt: http://fav.me/d4qbehv

New screenshot! Just up’d the game’s default resolution to 1280 x 720, and with that, fixed-up and updated a bunch of the game’s assets.