8 Weeks Remaining (11/10/2024) - These last few months have been extremely busy. There has been a lot to polish as we prepare for our Kickstarter and Steam demo launch. This includes updating the design to our dungeon, watching testers in real time play alpha builds of the game, last minute additions and even redoing some of our concept art. … Continue Reading
Social Media, Composer and Concept Art (8/20/2024) - As mentioned in our previous post, with the amount of time that had past since our posting, and the amount of new content completed in the timeframe, we decided to break our posts into two parts. In this second part, we focus more on the behind-the-scenes elements of the game. Concept Art Corinne was tasked… Continue Reading
Jawab’s Ancient Temple and Sawmill (8/9/2024) - Given that it's been a bit longer since our last post, this post will be a part one of two, since the amount of content that has happened since our May post is more than usual. In this first part, we focus on our progress on the first dungeon of the game. If you couldn't tell… Continue Reading
Intro Cutscene (5/19/2024) - The last couple of months have had some highs and lows in the development of The Violets of Amicus™. The highs being that we've accomplished quite a bit; a lot of new art, three new sections to explore, and loads of new / updated functionality. The lows being some bad news about our composer, spinning… Continue Reading
The Violets of Amicus™ (3/14/2024) - If you have been following along, you'll recall that about a year ago we shared some bad news about the game name and our business name. Well, if you couldn't tell by today's title, we are now able to rectify that post by revealing the updated name of the game: The Violets of Amicus™! This… Continue Reading
47 Weeks Remaining (3/9/2024) - These first couple months of the year have been ridiculously busy. As we prepared for this year, we knew we'd have more expenses in preparing for our Kickstarter in February of 2025. Therefore, I (Dan) took on a second side project for a few weeks that would help offset these expenses. Concurrently, we also added… Continue Reading
Castle of Castle Town Updates (12/23/2023) - We wanted to give an update on the game front, since it has been a couple months since our last update post, excluding the previous post of revealing Asteric, Minhaga, King Archon, and the Kingdom of Velare. Before we dive in, we wanted to quickly share about our experience at Cedarville's Video Game Exhibition. We… Continue Reading
Velare (12/3/2023) - We have been given the opportunity to showcase Violet at Cedarville's Video Game Exhibition Friday, December 8th from 11am to 4pm in the lower lobby of the SSC (Stevens Student Center)! We are beyond excited for this opportunity to show Violet off in its first public venue. If you are in the area and have the… Continue Reading
The Violets, Concept Artist and NPCs (10/29/2023) - It seems like yesterday was the end of September, and now it is the end of October! We're sorry for the delay in posting. The good news is we have a lot to share! The Violets We are excited to finally share the titular enemy, the Violets. This was one item that was mostly completed… Continue Reading
The Game Continues (7/29/2023) - After the disappointing month of March, we took some time to recalibrate once again. After a long couple months of silence on our end, we are pleased to announce some long overdue updates. On the name front, we can't quite reveal this yet (per our lawyer), but we can at least share the good news… Continue Reading
The Future of Violet Part Two (3/26/2023) - Last Year we shared our plans about Violet from a logistical front. The TL;DR of our post was we'd be shooting for a Kickstarter in February 2024. And unfortunately we have some bad news: Our original, high level plan was to launch our Kickstarter in February 2024. I (Dan) would continue working full time until… Continue Reading
The Game Begins (3/25/2023) - This is another one of those hodgepodge of updates posts. However, we already named a post "A Hodgepodge of Updates". Therefore, we decided to name the post with one of the main new features we added in the last couple of months -- the beginning of the game (i.e. the tutorial)! I (Dan) hate tutorials in… Continue Reading
Minotaur Updates (1/22/2023) - These past couple months have seen many art updates, font cleanup, stability fixes and performance increases. We're excited to showcase the highlights below. Minotaur At the beginning of 2023, we began coming up with a few designs for the newest member of the Soldier enemies, the Minotaur. Tony, as always, comes up with several great designs… Continue Reading
Horsing Around (11/20/2022) - It's been a bit longer between posts than we were hoping for. I (Dan) usually write these posts on the weekends. But here in development land and in the real world, it has been pretty busy. A couple of quick stories before we proceed: Two weekends ago, my computer started micro stuttering the game weirdly. At… Continue Reading
Reptile Updates (8/21/2022) - Since our last post, there were a lot of concurrent systems that got resolved that came together to form what felt like some of the most productive months in a while! On top of that, we have quite a few animations to show off -- mostly centered around the Reptile. Without further ado, let’s get… Continue Reading
A Hodgepodge of Updates (6/21/2022) - We've been trying to get away from the "Art Updates Part n" titles to be a bit more descriptive with our recent posts. But this update could very well be a continuation of those parts with the hodgepodge of art and functionality that were updated the last couple of months. They say the best way… Continue Reading
The Future of Violet (4/10/2022) - It's been a while since we shared our plans about Violet from a logistical front. Obviously we've been making a lot of progress with art and functionality, but there's been a lingering question: "when are we going to do Kickstarter"? We haven't revealed the when for a while in case what we shared was premature and then… Continue Reading
Orc Updates (4/9/2022) - These past couple months we've been focusing on updating one of our soldier enemies, the Orc. The Orc is one of the more simpler soldier enemies in that it's weaker, generally slower and its reaction time lacks. It's been fun seeing this guy come to life and we can't wait to share some of the animations here:… Continue Reading
Castle Town Art Updates (2/13/2022) - As we have been updating friends and family about the progress of Violet, we've been depicting how great the new art is looking. But then, when we show the demo, the player is greeted with the old art of the Castle Town -- not a very good first impression. Therefore, this past month we've been… Continue Reading
Art Updates Part Five (12/24/2021) - Violet has made quite a bit of progress in the last year. As we reflect on where we were at starting the year vs. where we are at now, the game is starting to actually look like a retro 2D pixel art game of the past. Tony Wojnar has really been "killing it" these past… Continue Reading
Art Updates Part Four (10/7/2021) - I can't believe how fast summer has come and gone. It seems like yesterday we updated the blog with the last round of updates. A few months have passed and we are excited to show a whole lot more! The majority of the time spent on art has been adding agile thrusts for our hero… Continue Reading
Art Updates Part Three (7/28/2021) - A lot of progress has been made on the art front of Violet, and we can't wait to share with you the progress. Since the last post, we've primarily been focusing on heavy weapons and the hero's animations. Much like the balanced weapons, we first start out with a rough idea to make sure the… Continue Reading
Art Updates Part Two (5/12/2021) - These past few weeks we've been focusing on combat animations for the hero. When creating a new animation, we first start out with a rough idea to make sure the motion seems right and that it will work within the game engine. Once confirmed, Tony goes through and polishes the animations -- breathing even more… Continue Reading
Art Updates Part One (3/28/2021) - Tony has been creating some amazing art and animations and we can't wait to share some with you. When we began our work in January, we decided to update the previous mockup of the hero to be more cohesive with some of the design and game elements that have been created since the original concept.… Continue Reading
New Artist and Updates (1/24/2021) - Over the past year or so, we've been looking into what it would look like to hire a part time artist for Violet. Back in 2019, Hannah, our original graphic artist decided to pursue other full time opportunities. We took that time as a means to evaluate the progress of the game and to seek… Continue Reading
How to Throw Objects in 2D Games (12/11/2020) - In the last post, one of the major clean up items we briefly mentioned was that we updated and fixed throwing of objects. In this post, we're going into detail on how that was accomplished. Heads up -- this is more of a technical post, but we will try to simplify the technical parts. In… Continue Reading
Bartering Part Three (11/18/2020) - About a year ago, we started building out the concept of bartering in Violet. In the first post on the subject, we explained where the idea came from, how it could be an interesting mechanic, and the drawbacks associated with it. In the second post on the subject, we described in a little more detail… Continue Reading
Special Weapons Part Two (9/20/2020) - In our last post, we gave an overview of the special weapons in Violet. We were still working out the names of these as well as the functionality. Over the last couple months, we've experimented, polished, tested, and then refined each weapon where we feel we are in a good place. These weapons are unique,… Continue Reading
Special Weapons (7/9/2020) - It's been a few months since the last post. After we added bombs into the game, we started designing some dungeons on graph paper. However, we quickly realized that without having special weapons locked down, we really couldn't design dungeons because we might accidentally make them obsolete. This is because special weapons serve as "keys"… Continue Reading
Draw Container and GMS Tasks (5/3/2020) - Part of creating a game requires developing tools and other functions that don't necessarily effect the player, but help in the process of making the game. These tools can be range from art assets, such as this sprite generator from https://github.com/makrohn/Universal-LPC-spritesheet, or these utility functions from https://github.com/gmlscripts/scripts. Either way, in creating Violet, we have borrowed so… Continue Reading
Bombs Away! (4/18/2020) - I didn't realize how long it had been since the last post. It felt like we hadn't done too much that was worth sharing. However, after looking back at the commit history, there's a lot of cool things to talk about. So here we go! WIP Bombs We were planning on adding special weapons to… Continue Reading
A Working Map, and More! (2/17/2020) - There were two new big features developed in this past month. The first, we are tentatively calling Draw Container (which was an overhaul to the text box system described in the post Day 32), is more technical in nature. Thus, I am going to do a separate post very soon about the feature because we… Continue Reading
Bartering Part Two (1/10/2020) - This past month or so has seen quite a few additions to the game. The most notable feature was letting the player choose which items they want to barter. A lot of refactoring had to happen to make being able to choose what to barter work. Before, only five distinct pause states were allowed --… Continue Reading
Bartering (11/23/2019) - An idea I have had early on is bartering in a game. Most games, and even real life, have some kind of currency where one can buy goods and services. Money is really just a form of agreed upon currency that society has determined. But in reality, the value of money is just made up. When someone… Continue Reading
Violet the Game 2.0 (10/20/2019) - The game is not dead! The radio silence the past few months was not a sign of defeat, but rather, a sign of reevaluating the direction of the game, as well as determining next steps. Back in May, I decided to meet with an adviser to figure out marketing, as well as getting an overall impression… Continue Reading
The Road Ahead (5/1/2019) - This past month has been, well, rocky at best. We've had a few obstacles come our way that have made us "switch gears" on our approach for the next few months. First, in the previous post, I had mentioned we would be doing some research on using a crowdfunding platform, such as Kickstarter. Looking at… Continue Reading
90 Days Ago — A Reflection (3/31/2019) - If you have been following along, you'll know that we've made tremendous progress over the last 90 days of Violet. I am thankful for Root for giving me the opportunity to invest my time into this project. This project that initially started out as a way to recoup from my divorce has now become a… Continue Reading
Putting It All Togther (3/24/2019) - Much of this past week and a half has been devoted to world building and polishing. We've made a lot of progress in the last few months. However, this update really "puts it all together". Below are some screenshots of the current status of the game: Continue Reading
World Building Beginnings (3/18/2019) - I'm going to keep this post short and sweet. We've been world building the last few days. Here are some screenshots quickly stitched together: Legends say that when the world was created, Lake Eve, as it's known by humans, was the starting point of creation. Continue Reading
Making Mountains Out of Mole Hills (3/13/2019) - It's been quite a few days since the last post. We've done lots of tedious behind-the-scenes work, mostly involving graphic updates. Here's a little of what we've done: Updated Weapons If there was any new real "feature" from this update, it would be changing the weapon mechanic slightly. One thing I noticed as people were… Continue Reading
Shield Bash, Water Rod, Camera Updates and More! (2/27/2019) - When 10 days go by without a post, you know something is cooking! Hold on tight -- I'm about to drop a ton of new features: Polishing Okay, I guess this isn't really a feature. But the last 10 days have seen quite a bit of improvements and polishing. The main reason for this is… Continue Reading
Item Pickups and Pause Screen (2/17/2019) - This past week was a bit lighter on new additions. This was mostly from catching up on tasks related to adulting, as well as the power outage on Tuesday afternoon due to the ice storm. Nevertheless here's what's new: Forest and Swamp Updates Two Saturday's ago we had a team meeting, discussing updates to the story… Continue Reading
A Year Ago (2/12/2019) - With the ice storm we had last night, much of northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan are without power. I had already planned on writing a post today -- but not having electricity gives me more incentive to use my battery sparingly instead of consuming my battery compiling new builds every few minutes. A year ago… Continue Reading
Audio Controller and More (2/8/2019) - This past week has been an interesting one as far as what we've added. I feel like we were all over the spectrum with what new features were added. Let's get to it! R-Stick Targeting This past week or so we had some people play around with what had implemented. A friend of mine had… Continue Reading
Day 32 (2/1/2019) - Well, the first month has come and gone. I feel like we've made great progress so far. It's always hard to tell if one is on target when there isn't really a "deadline". However, of the ever growing TODO list, half of the items are crossed off. My goal was to spend the first two… Continue Reading
//TODO Refactor (1/26/2019) - I have a love-hate relationship with refactoring. On one hand, refactoring is great because we get to clean up code in such a way where (hopefully) the outcome is having a more stable, reusable code base. On the other hand, it is very tedious, time consuming, and mentally exhausting. For those who don't know what… Continue Reading
A Change of Scenery (1/18/2019) - Most of the screenshots so far have taken place in the outside "Grasslands". This past week I have focused more on buildings (houses), NPCs and text boxes! Houses Hannah had supplied version one of the houses last week, so I wanted to begin working on a building structure. One idea I wanted to try out… Continue Reading
Ice Ice Baby (1/14/2019) - This title poorly summarizes what I have been working on over the last week. However, the last day or so I have been working on the Ice Rod and ice physics. So naturally this title came to mind. 😀 This is one of those instances where it has been great to look back at the past… Continue Reading
There’s No “I” in Team (1/6/2019) - Over the past few weeks I've been trying to figure out how I can accomplish making a game on my own. There is a lot that goes into creating a game. When you consider art, programming, music, and all the other details, it can become overwhelming. I decided it was in the best interest of… Continue Reading
And So It Begins (1/5/2019) - In my first post, I mentioned that I would be taking a leave of absence from Root. Well, this past week was the official start of that journey. I've been getting into the routine and have made some good progress. This past week has been about adding a few more enemy types. The main current… Continue Reading
Fire, Water, and Chickens (12/24/2018) - I wanted to post a few screenshots of some smaller items I have been working on the last month. First, fire: Currently the only way to create fire is using a "fire rod". Fire cast from a fire rod has a uncontained property, meaning that it can burn things that are burnable, such as brush,… Continue Reading
The Port is Over — Game Maker 1.4 to 2.0 (11/23/2018) - I was leery to make my second post be a more technical one. However, it's been a little over a month since my first post, and I wanted to give an update on what I have been doing. In my about page, I mentioned that I started building the game in Game Maker Studio (GMS)… Continue Reading
Hello World! (10/15/2018) - As a developer, I thought this placeholder title injected by Wordpress was very fitting. I am deciding to keep it 🙂 So yes, I am a developer. I have been coding since the 8th grade. I started out with a little tool called Game Maker. I've always been fascinated with videogames and Game Maker was… Continue Reading