This one is painful. What is it? A new logic-puzzle type for the Piczle pantheon, Piczle Cross but in 3D! Imagine the classic nonogram puzzle as played in Piczle Cross Adventure but with an added dimension. How far did it get? I spent quite a bit of time on this, probably because I was willing … Continue reading Dead prototypes: Piczle Blocks 3D
Dead prototypes: Brutris
What is it? A 3D variant of Tetris where, once placed, the blocks together created a procedurally generated Brutalist building. How far did it get? Not very. I created the main play field and was about to start looking into dynamically creating Brutalist textures on the Tetris blocks when... Why kill it? ...the design. For … Continue reading Dead prototypes: Brutris
Dead prototypes: Osmosis DX
It is a truism that game developers have a severe case of greener grass syndrome as soon as a project starts requiring serious work. We all have so many ideas and the temptation is always there to start a new project before you've finished - often even before you've properly started - your current one. … Continue reading Dead prototypes: Osmosis DX
A slow return
Hello readers! As some of you who follow Score Studios' social media pages (Twitter, Instagram or Facebook) may have noticed I have recently happily welcomed a daughter to the world, which has frankly taken a lot of my time and energy - hence the lack of devblog posts over the last few weeks. They always … Continue reading A slow return
Designing shareable moments
One small change Nintendo recently made to their eShop interface highlights one of the growing issues with the platform: a simple indicator of how many games are listed in the "Great Deals" section showed us that this week alone there were over 1000 titles on sale. When Piczle Lines DX was launched there were around … Continue reading Designing shareable moments
Score Studios’ 11th Anniversary
Score Studios was founded on June 11th 2009, 11 years ago this week! This month we'll see a series of Piczle sales, the release of the Piczle Cross Adventure demo (featuring a unique area and puzzles) and a few features to celebrate. Coincidentally it is also the 10th anniversary of Piczle, with Piczle Lines, the … Continue reading Score Studios’ 11th Anniversary
Materials: Preview texture
Piczle Colors was in need of a material that dynamically built a texture for the puzzle "solution reveal", considering there was an option that players could unlock to play randomly generated puzzles. What this post is not about is how I achieved this in Piczle Colors because, lordy...that was...special. I dread to even think about … Continue reading Materials: Preview texture
Materials: Clue numbers
For a change I thought I'd write about a hypothetical, and one of the things I usually do to avoid extra work. Or rather, not just to avoid extra work but to keep it easy to change things on a whim. Let's create a texture for Piczle Cross clue numbers with the minimum amount of … Continue reading Materials: Clue numbers
Supporting indie devs
Being an independent developer is as rewarding as it is challenging! Being able to be creative on your own terms is something to be envied, for sure, but with that comes a lot of responsibility and struggle that, as a contracted developer, you usually don't have to worry about. Or rather, somebody's job is to … Continue reading Supporting indie devs
Further tips for working in Unreal Engine 4
Following on from a previous post that gave some tips on working in UE4 I thought I'd expand a little with a few more tips and tricks. Especially with the recent announcement of UE5 and a new royalty scheme, Unreal Engine is looking more and more like the go-to engine for gamedevs! Everybody has their … Continue reading Further tips for working in Unreal Engine 4