Going gold

If you're an observer of the game development industry, follow game developers or have seen my recent tweet, you may have heard the term "gone gold". Now you may infer what that means, but why do we use this term? It's not akin to me still using a floppy disc icon to show when Piczle … Continue reading Going gold

Piczle Cross, Puzzle & Watch

As a fan of Easter eggs in games, and being in the privileged position of developing games myself , I once made the inadvisable decision to hide an entire mini-game in one of my games and not tell anyone about it (aside from my publisher, who of course has to sign off on all contents … Continue reading Piczle Cross, Puzzle & Watch

Ramping up

When it comes to designing the Piczle series of games I have in mind some very specific ways I want players to experience the ramping up of difficulty and challenge. For Piczle Lines it was a little more difficult with its many different puzzle packs the player could choose from right from the get go, … Continue reading Ramping up

UE4 support

Unless you enter into a private arrangement with Epic Games, as a EULA user you won't have access to "proper" tech support. As not every indie developer has the kind of money to sign custom deals like that, most of us rely on other sources for insight and help. Here are just a few of … Continue reading UE4 support

Post-processes

A post-process is, very basically, an effect that is applied to all or parts of the image of the screen at some part of the rendering process. Try to see it as a layer in Photoshop to which you apply a filter. You can have this filter apply to part of the image or all … Continue reading Post-processes

eNums

When working with variables, as the gamedev joke goes, thinking of a good name for them is one of the hardest tasks. We all have our own standards and ideas regarding this, but I generally rely a lot on UE4's categories to keep relevant variables grouped together. One thing I have been relying on a … Continue reading eNums

Status update

Happy 2020, everybody! I hope you all had a very good holiday break. I certainly have! Apparently my self-imposed schedule of releasing a game per (calendar) year has been taking it out of me. As such I switched off entirely (kind of) for a couple of weeks and caught up on a lot of sleep, … Continue reading Status update

Taking a break!

Well, gosh, it's been a busy year. This development blog has been a great way for me to take the occasional breather from developing Piczle Cross Adventure. I do certainly plan to continue with it up to and potentially after release, but for now it's time for a little hiatus. December is a good month … Continue reading Taking a break!

Try before you buy

If there is one bit of advice I could give budding game developers it's "don't give up your day job!" If there are 2 pieces of advice I could give I'd also say "Make a demo version of your game!" The Nintendo Switch market is, to put it lightly, difficult. For developers it is, anyway, … Continue reading Try before you buy

The cast (part 2)

Piczle Cross Adventure introduces two new characters to act as foils for our intrepid heroes. The story picks up at the end of Piczle Lines DX (don't worry - you won't have had to play Piczle Lines DX to play Piczle Cross Adventure! A handy recap/introduction to the game will explain everything you need to … Continue reading The cast (part 2)