News

JikGuard
What I learned from trying to make an Isometric game in Unity
Making an isometric game is far from being an easy task, at least if you're trying to keep your code organized in case you need to support new features. After over a year I've picked up a couple of helpful tricks to improve your workflow.
March 9, 2017
JikGuard
RPG Maker VX Ace Ruby scripting crash course
Ludum Dare 37 was the first time I’d really, truly built a finished product in RPG Maker rather than tinkering, and I learned a lot. If you're a casual RPG Maker user, here's what you need to know to dive into Ruby scripting.
March 7, 2017
JikGuard
China is kind of a big deal for Indie Games
I've always known there was an undiscovered batch of players eager for indie games. Well, I found them: they're in China
March 7, 2017
JikGuard
The Balancing Act of Randomness in Competitive Games
Competitive Games have had a touchy history with randomization, but why do certain genres work in terms of not providing an even playing field?
March 7, 2017
JikGuard
Grids in Games: Scale and Shape
Grids of tiles in games can represent vastly different scales, and be arranged in many different ways. An overview, and some untried ideas.
March 7, 2017
JikGuard
Developer Diaries: the story behind Dead Shell
Dead Shell is the mobile indie roguelike and this is the development story of it.
March 7, 2017
JikGuard
10th anniversary as an indie and how I got here
10 years ago I left the games industry as a full time coder to start my own game development studio. It was a brave move and I never imagined that 10 years on I'd be writing this but here I am and this is how I got here.
March 7, 2017
JikGuard
Rogue Agents: Bootstrapping Crazy Ideas Within A Larger Project
The intro for "I Expect You To Die" went from an unsupported free-time passion project to a key part of the shipped experience. This article details the choices that allowed this to happen, and provides takeaways for anyone attempting something similar.
March 7, 2017
JikGuard
Building a Scalable Online Game with Azure - Part 3
In the previous part of this series, we added the web service that acts as interface between the frontend and the actual backend services. In this post, we learn how to persist state to a scalable database.
March 6, 2017
JikGuard
Extending Behavior Trees
A summary of my GDC 2017 talk on design patterns for authoring and extending behavior trees.
March 6, 2017
JikGuard
Composing video game music to build suspense, part 1: ominous ambience
The 1st of a 5-part series. Video game composer Winifred Phillips shares strategies from her GDC 2017 talk, Homefront to God of War: Using Music to Build Suspense. Part 1: Ominous Ambience, with discussion of adrenaline, eerie sound design, & David Lynch.
March 6, 2017
JikGuard
Video Game Deep Cuts: That GDC Biohazard Mystery
This week's 'long reads/standout game videos' highlights include a mess of GDC talk goodness, plus Resident Evil 7/Biohazard's making-of, the role of mystery in games, & lots more.
March 6, 2017