Firefighter!

It's finally here! It's finally done!

I finished my first large game. It took forever. I learned a million things. I hope everyone enjoys it!





Welcome to Firefighter! A game where you run, jump and shoot your way around deadly fires!

Features:
- 20 normal levels
- 16 unlockable challenge levels
- 100+ badges to collect
- 4 different equipment load-outs that make the game more difficult and replayable

As mentioned in the features there will be different load-outs that unlock as you progress through the game. Not only do these load-outs make the game more difficult, they change the way you approach each level. If you are capable enough each level can be played in 4 separate ways.

This game has been many years in the making and got a little out of control due to my ambitions of making exactly the game I wanted to play. It is also the game where I learned to program and make games in general.  I hope you enjoy playing it and remember that if a certain badge seems to hard to get you can always move on to the next level and come back to it later.

Twitter.com/VinceTheB

Joining Raptor Circus

Hello everyone out there in cyberspace!

I have been silent on my blog since Christmas, but with good reason. I have embedded myself in the Utah Indie game development community. Over the past five months I have met indie developers, people currently working at professional studios, and people who are making their dreams come true using KickStarter.

The first thing that occupied my free time was helping develop and create the website for Raptor Circus. This endeavor has been growing little by little each week. I will keep you up to date on all new projects we have going as they are announced. For now, we offer feedback critique and in person meet ups for people in the Salt Lake City area.

Holiday Presents by Me to Everyone

Heck yeah! New stuff from the holiday season  is now all on the internet and ready for you to peruse and enjoy. First up are two new games I have made. Both of these games were made as presents for that special someone in my life all of the quirks and fun we share may be embedded as sub-context for you to muse about.

Filthy Fox

Be the dirtiest lupine this side of the Mississippi or Nile or whichever river you prefer!

http://vincebetteridge.com/games/filthyfox.html

Pristine Penguin

Where there is a mess there is somebody feeling the need to clean it up. Show that dirt whose the boss!

http://vincebetteridge.com/games/pristinepenguin.html

Christmas Dragon

Finally we have my latest pixel art escapade that I worked on for the Secret Santa Competition over at Pixelation.net I highly encourage you to go and check out the other entries some are down right gorgeous while others are down right not safe for work. Peruse at your own risk.

Happy (late) Holidays!

Meet Frogmin

Wecome back to another from scratch pixel art. This post was done for a challenge on Pixel Joint. 

The prompt for the challenge was as follows: "Create two sprites of a new and original character - a large version and a small version. The small version of the character should be roughly half the size of the large version of the character."

I struggled with doing a Chun-Li style character at first. I even spent about four hours on a sketch and initial mock up before I lost the passion for the character design. When I moved on to this more playful and cartoon-like character it became much more of a joy to work on. For those interested here is that original design sketch.

Harbinger of Fall

Here are some pixels to celebrate my birthday. Everyone have fun and enjoy on me. :3

Chubby Jumping

This defensive animation is for dodging lower moves. I debated whether the character should jump straight up or do the current back bending move. Since these animations are meant to be played in reaction to another characters action I decided to keep the back bend.

This is a minor update to the last animation adding some particle effects.

Fire Squats

 I have been working diligently on this animation for the last week. Trying to make sure it makes sense has bloated the frame count to eleven. I think I still need to add some squish when the butt hits the ground, but for now it is acceptable.

Skull Mountain

This design was created for Alpine Assassin's new shirt.

I wanted to go with a clash of curves and angles to draw more attention to the fact that this is a two word, word-picture message. I am not sure about the crack leading down to the eye socket, but their needed to be some link between the two elements.

Upwards Offensive

This is the tentative final version of this animation. It might look pretty much the same from yesterday but I tweaked just about every pixel.

 Today: 

 Today: 

Here is yesterday's post so you can do a little bit of comparison. I have a ton of fun making the belly so jiggly. :3

Previous: 

Previous: 

High Heat

The fire elemental animating is not dead! I have been plugging away at this little animation for a week and it is surprisingly difficult to animate fire in a fun and sexy way. I don't think this is finished by a long shot. Think of this as a progress shot.

Fat Fire Elemental Version Two

I added two extra frames of animation and cleaned up all of the coloration. It was looking a little muddy on the first pass.

I may go over this animation again to get it looking correct, but this is much closer to the final version.

Fat Fire Elemental

Me and Greyson came up with a game design this weekend about dancing. I have been working on some ideas we had for character designs and came up with a rough sketch of what I think is a unique and fun character.

Final Levels of Sensory Deprivation

The last levels of the game were set in a research facility.

Does the poncho make the man?

I was going for an Englishman and a gorilla, then I was inspired to do something more American.

Canvas size is 64 px wide by 32 px tall.

Skeleton completed!

Here is the skeleton animation all mocked up and running together.

It has taken about a month of my spare time to make this animation and while it was good practice and fun to make I think I will be scaling down my pixel art to much smaller proportions for a long time to come. Expect more small pieces of a much wider variety and I hope those of you who have enjoyed watching this process had a great time and if this is your first time looking at my blog, be welcome and feel free to browse my older entries.

Field trip to the Gutenberg press in Provo

Yesterday, me and Shirley went to Provo to visit what they claim is the world's only functional Gutenberg press. When we arrived we found a non-descriptive house except for a over sized photograph displayed in the window.

First we were shown an example of what the book looked like with a actual page printed on calf skin (or Vellum.) "Vellum is derived from the Latin word “vitulinum” meaning "made from calf", leading to Old French “Vélin” ("calfskin")." - Source Wikipedia 

The pages were decorated after being printed on the press with paint and gold filigree. I took two shots of the same decoration so you could see the light hit the gold in two separate ways.

 We then moved on to a demonstration of the printing process. First all of the letters have to be set one by one into the bed of the press. Each one hand placed and spelled out letter by letter.

The text is inked with two pads mounted on handles.

What the plate looks like after ink application.

The paper is then moved onto a bed. This keeps the paper registered in the same location for printing multiple copies of the same image or text.

The crank is then pulled to apply the ink to the paper.

The paper is then removed.

Using the paddle you see in the lower left of the next photo the paper is then placed on a clothes line to dry. Two pages are printed at a time, that is why it looks like the whole page is visible. There is another page hanging on the side you cannot see.

 A detail shot of the press with its crank and compression system.

 The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with movable type in the West (as in eastern cultures had done it before and thought it was no big deal.) 

 Individual letters in their holding case. Shown here are D, P and Z.

R, a, e

D

Q

They then demonstrated how this moved forward in history and bragged about the Declaration of Independence. It was kind of cool. Benjamin Franklin was a smart guy and his profession for most of his life was as a printer.

 A tray full of individual metal letters. Look close and you might be able to see random letters on the tips.

The whole experience was awesome (I mean I felt awe during this experience.) These old guys were really passionate about the printing press and I loved hearing them tell stories. One little tidbit I remember is about kids putting back the metal letters and confusing P's and Q's thus creating the phrase: "Mind your P's and Q's." It is a great time to have a guided experience by someone who is so passionate about what they do. Yeah you can read about anything on the internet and learn what the whole printing process was about, but you will miss out on something I can only call awe or magic. Actually being there to witness something, no matter what it is for, has a power. A power over your mind and heart if you are open to it.