Welcome to the weekly Zazmo Weekend update! 

Let’s get rolling with the news and then share some of the latest development videos. 

Boss 101 and Zazmo

Though this is not a Boss 101 update we do need to talk a little about what the development team has been working on for the last week. Our team is three people and we are working on both the Zazmo Arcade as well as the Boss 101 port to the Xbox One. Well, it looks like the Xbox One port is about done. We had a few minor bugs and issues to address this week and ideally we will have great news for all our friends and fans in the next big update. 

Zazmo Arcade Pack 2 

With the wrap-up of Boss 101 we will be doing two things. The first will be finishing up the Early Access for the Zazmo Arcade Pack 1 (ZAP1) and then moving onto the Zazmo Arcade Pack 2 – which is tentatively being internally billed as a Sports or Action pack. We don’t know exactly what games will be in it but we are looking at putting in games like car racing, golf and maybe some form of football (North American or world themed).

We’ll keep you posted as we go but you can bet we want to make this amazing and fun so expect some fun twists on the standard sports fare.

Game Development Blogs

Game Dev Night 07
 

Game Dev Night 08
 

Check out the two weekly blogs we put up. Both have lots of dev talk. We also look at older games and the designs they have to see how much can still be applied to today. Some really nice work went into the classics and we try to break it down. 

Talk with you soon and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Zazmo Arcade Pack Info Roundup
Twitch Channel - Monday Thursday Dev Streams at 6pm CST Donley Time Twitch
Steam Early Access Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack
We appreciate your continued support!

Welcome to the weekly Zazmo Arcade Update

We have a bit of a shorter update this week. All three of us are concentrated on getting our other game Boss 101 through submissions at Microsoft. On that end we are in the home stretch and that means a bit of bug fixing and adjustments to the build for the Xbox One. Thankfully nothing we can’t handle but it is taking our focus. 

Onwards and upwards!

On the Zazmo end, I did this week’s game night and development update. Looked at some of the older classics we have been inspired from. It’s interesting to see how these game which are closing in on 30 years old hold up. 

Game Development Dev Talk with Zazmo, looking at older game designs

Checked out the sequel to a game called Rush N Attack and man – that thing is a quarter muncher. You die so often and the game is so brutal!

Also did a run through Bionic Commando. It’s hard to overstate the great ideas in that game and how far they permeate into many other games. Really fun still but also a really hard game to just get through without dying a lot! I mean a lot.



On the strictly Zazmo front we are looking to wrap up development and leave Early Access once we are done with Boss 101 on the Xbox One. As we have said – there are not a lot of things on the main list left. We are mostly looking at polishing things and adjusting gameplay bits. All the core gameplay tenets are there and we are focused on making the whole things smooth and easy to play.



Personally I am pretty excited about the new powerups for the games Breakdown and Rob’s Adventure. They add a lot to already fun games and bring the whole experience up a notch or two.



OK, check out the video and we will talk with you soon!

Remember to always – LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Zazmo Arcade Pack Info Roundup
Twitch Channel - Monday Thursday Dev Streams at 6pm CST Donley Time Twitch
Steam Early Access Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack
We appreciate your continued support!

Hello and welcome to the latest Zazmo Arcade Pack update!

As you might remember we are working on making our updates a little jazzier and to that end we are now recording videos twice a week to track the game’s progress. Let’s talk about the highlights and then move into the videos themselves. 

Bug fixes and tunes

One of the more recent additions to the game was the addition of powerups to Rob’s Adventure and Breakdown. We added these in to help spice up the gameplay and give players more things to do in round. 

For Rob’s Adventure we added in some shooter favs like Multi-Shot, Power Shot and the Beam cannon. All of these are in the game now. Once nice touch is all of them scale the more you grab of the same type. You can grab up to three of the same type (at the moment) to get a maximum attach effect. It’s pretty cool and the visual will scale along with the power so you really get a sense of progression. Currently though if you grab a different type of powerup from the ones you are ‘collecting’ then you will reset with that one back to level one. We think that adds a nice element of dodging and collecting to the game.

In Breakdown we added a three new powers. The ‘other’ down arrow, the rocket and the explosion. Other down arrow causes your opponents side to drop in a head to head match. The rocket fires a cutter ball straight up into the sky that bursts into three balls on impact. Finally the explosion powerup will destroy the lowest row you have on screen. 

All in all the progress is coming along well and we are getting in some good work while we wrap up the Xbox One conversion of Boss 101.

Episode 10 - Game Dev Night 

Playing, testing and developing the powerups

Episode 11 - Guest starring Matt Fitzgerald of Savage: Shards of Gosen fame!

Twitch Streams

Come join us for our live game development streams during the week. We consistent stream on Mondays and Thursdays at 6pm CST and would love to see you there. It’s been a lot of fun meeting you and interacting with all of you who have shown up.

Thank you again and thank you for your support. We’ll talk with you soon and remember to always live your dreams!

-Tim

More info on Savage Shard of Gosen
http://store.steampowered.com/app/408060/SAVAGE_The_Shard_of_Gosen/

Zazmo Arcade Pack Info Roundup
Twitch Channel - Monday Thursday Dev Streams at 6pm CST Donley Time Twitch
Steam Early Access Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack
We appreciate your continued support!

Hello and welcome to the latest Boss 101 update!

Wanted to give you all a heads up on the latest happenings at the Donley Time Foundation as well as a look at Boss 101 progress. We always need to thank you first and foremost for your support. Without your help, we couldn’t be doing this so THANK YOU!

Boss 101 on Console



Though it may not relate to you directly if you already own Boss 101 we announced the game is coming to Xbox One. That’s been our primary job for the last few months. This consists mostly of porting work and changes to the code to make the game run smoothly.

It looks like there is a light at the end of the tunnel too! After a few challenges we are heading into the final stretch. You might think it would be as easy as setting the game format to “Xbox One” and hit “Export” but there is a lot to making a PC game work nice on a console. More so if you are a small team that focused primarily on the PC version! Haha

Overall though – Microsoft has been nothing but champs in the whole process and made everything as smooth as possible. On our end we had to do changes to the save/load process on console as well as tweaks to achievement scoring. All in all, nothing too hard but a lot of little things and bugs added up to a month or two of work.

Zazmo Arcade



We’ll keep you posted and if you are interested we have ANOTHER game in Early Access at the moment. It’s called the Zazmo Arcade and listed below. In it we take arcade games from Boss 101 and blow them out with two player co-op. head to head battling and much more. Check it out! You can get it for a 33% discount if you already own Boss 101!

Thank you again and talk with you soon!

Remember to always – LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Boss 101 - Out Now on Steam
Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920
Please check it out if you would be so kind!

 

Hello and welcome back to the latest Zazmo Arcade Pack update!

Game testing and tuning continue

We have a few new things to drop in your lap this week. We are working on the achievements for the game and have an art set for the high score awards to show. Check out the image below. It represents some of the medals we will be awarding for various games and high scores in those games. The idea is to keep a base look and have some sort of tier (or star) system to represent higher and harder achievements. 

I know the whole star thing gets used a lot but it is a really good way to show things progressing. Well, that and trophies. Haha



Game and Development Twitch Streams Continue

Episode 3 of the Clueless Programmer went off this week. Check out Joshua teaching time all about ways to code movement of your characters and objects with the gamepad.  

We cover a lot of interesting (well, to me at least) ways that Zazmo is setup. Joshua walks me through a lot of his thinking as a programmer and overall – I learned something! Haha

Game Development Dev Talks and Game Night

Joshua and I sat down and played some old arcade games, including the ones that inspired the Zazmo arcade (specifically Rip-Off). We explore co-op games to find what is working and why!

Check out Episode 2 and 3 below. Lots of fun laughs and good times.

Episode 2

Episode 3 – playing Cadillacs and Dinosaurs

We find out freaking a BLANKA look alike is in this game!

Ok – more to come and don’t forget we will be coming to the Xbox One too!! YEAH BUDDY!

Thank you again for all your support and talk with you soon. Remember to always – LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Zazmo Arcade Pack Info Roundup
Twitch Channel - Monday Thursday Dev Streams at 6pm CST Donley Time Twitch
Steam Early Access Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack
We appreciate your continued support!

Hello and welcome to the weekend Zazmo Arcade Pack (ZAP) update!

First off - YES! We are bringing the Zazmo Arcade Pack to the Xbox One! More details coming but the good news here is we were accepted by Microsoft to bring ZAP over to their system. Needless to say - we are stoked!

What has been happening this week?

OK onto the rest of the update. If you have been following along you know we are currently in Early Access. To that end we have some videos of our friends playing the game in this update! Check out the links below. 

Well, most of the time was spent tuning the games and getting the high scores hooked up. Up until now the local high scores were connected but we added in the Steam Friends and Global high scores. So yes, you can now see how the rest of the world is doing!

We also continued with specific game tunes. This time we were looking at the game Last Stand and giving it a couple of tweaks to make it more fun. One thing we adjusted was the amount of control the player has. The ships were a slight bit sluggish so we corrected them to be more responsive. We also fixed an issue where enemy ships would target players as they spawned on screen. This lead to a lot of instant kills and quick deaths for player. That’s all gone now. 

During the week we started up two new series on game development. We did a segment on the Clueless Artist and had a game night. The Clueless artist took a look at making art for Zazmo and walked our programmer Joshua through the process of a “Get hit” animation. He made the art, animated it and then implemented it himself. 

Game night saw us playing a few old classis arcade games in order to get ideas for a new Zazmo Pack. Of course there was a lot of scream and yelling as you might guess! 

Check out the video below for a recap of the week as well as a look at some of the Zazmo playthroughs.

Indie Plays Zazmo - short segment and we queued it up to the beginning!

Dan plays Zazmo!
 

Watch The INDIE is stronk in this one. These are the games you're looking for. from INDIE on www.twitch.tv

The Clueless Artist Series

Joshua learns how to make and animate game art!
 

Game Night at the Donley Time Foundation

We talk about game dev while scream and shouting at arcade games from nearly 30 years ago.

Look forward to net week having more programming talk as well! Remember to always - LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Zazmo Arcade Pack Info Roundup
Twitch Channel - Monday Thursday Dev Streams at 6pm CST Donley Time Twitch
Steam Early Access Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack
We appreciate your continued support!

Hello everyone and welcome to the Zazmo Development Update!

We have something pretty special this time around. As you might already know we have a twice weekly game development stream on Twitch. Well, this week we started a new segment for the Zazmo Arcade called “The Clueless Programmer”. In this series our lead programmer Joshua will teach ME how to program a game (well, how to program parts of a game)!

We have two episodes to share with you. In the first one Joshua walks me thourgh some special effects and tuning work. In episode two we go a little bigger and I get to make a new object in GameMaker and add in my own code! 

The idea here is we will be taking small programming projects from the Zazmo Arcade Pack and turning them into video tutorials. Check it out and see what you think! We’d love to know if you enjoy them.

Clueless Programmer Episode 1 – Using GameMaker Studio 1 to create the Zazmo Arcade Pack

Clueless Programmer Episode 2 – Using GameMaker Studio 1 to create the Zazmo Arcade Pack
 

Zazmo Arcade in Early Access right now!

We went into Steam Early Access with the Zazmo Arcade and we’d love you to check out the store and support us if you like. We have a discount bundle to get Boss 101 and Zazmo together as well as a discount on the Zazmo Arcade Pack for all Boss 101 users!

 

Thank you again for joining us and remember to always – live your dreams!!!

-Tim

Zazmo Arcade Pack Info Roundup
Twitch Channel - Monday Thursday Dev Streams at 6pm CST Donley Time Twitch
Steam Early Access Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack
We appreciate your continued support!

Welcome to the weekly Zazmo Arcade Update

Been a lot of action at the Time Foundation and we have the videos to prove it.

First off, Early Access

We did a bit of thinking about this one. The Zazmo Arcade has been getting some really good feedback from the community at large and we are working to take everything we can from you and integrate it. After a few weeks we felt the game had progressed to a near feature complete level and mostly was needing a lot of tuning.

In comes Early Access. We have set up this coming Thursday as the launch day for Early Access. We will be pricing the game at $6.99 and we are going to be giving current Boss 101 owners a discount when they purchase it. Details are still being ironed out and our hope is to bring over some of the friends from Boss 101.

Early Access ideally will give the game a lot more exposure and bring in more community feedback. On our end, we’re still sending out keys to as many people as we can. A lot of folks signed up for the BETA and we are using their feedback and our own direction to guide development. 

Zazmo ultimately will be a collaborative project with our friends, fans and you here are invited to join. If you’re reading this and are interested we think it’s always worth commenting here or even getting a copy of the game and checking it out. There are a few ways to do this and we are always open to handing out keys to fellow devs if we feel there’s a mutual interest. 

IndieDB Zazmo Key Giveaway

We are also running a contest with IndieDB for Zazmo keys to be given away. Enter here for a key if you want! 

Indie DB Contest: http://www.indiedb.com/giveaways/zazmo-arcade-pack-5-games-in-1-keys-for-you#giveawaysform

Work and videos 

We added a first pass of wind to Tank Wars – we still are working on the shape of the breeze and directions but it’s a start!

Tank Wars Wind in progress


Asteroids

Started putting in Asteroids for the various games. Did an art change for the looks of the rocks. Gameplay tunes always happening to make things feel right!

Last Stand Asteroids





Rob’s Adventure Asteroids





Dev Streams from the week

Thursday
 

Monday
 

OK – more to come next week as we’ll be talking more about our experiences with Early Access and how the start went.

Stay tuned and as always – remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Zazmo Arcade Pack Info Roundup
Twitch Channel - Monday Thursday Dev Streams at 6pm CST Donley Time Twitch
Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack
Please wishlist us on the Steam Store if you would be so kind!

Boss 101 is 50% off right now on Steam! It's the Lunar Year super special sale! Grab a copy before the sale ends and join the adventure!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack/

Hello all and welcome to the weekly Zazmo Update!

Let’s get rolling shall we? We have a bunch of things to show you and it starts with the newest trailer for the Zazmo Arcade Pack! Check it out!

New Zazmo Trailer!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DIvYHYsie9U" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Curious about how the game looks in action? Well, we also have gameplay snippets from our games included along with THE DEVS TALKING! You know you’re curious. Check out the Thursday Night Twitch Stream here!
 

This week

A lot of this week has been about improving the various gameplay experiences in Zazmo. We added tunes to the Last Stand controls and touched-up the overall gameplay. Did you know we added in asteroids to spice things up? Yep, check it out!



There is a more control work to be done with the ships in this one. Personally, I think they are coming along well but I’d love to see a little more responsiveness in the turns. That’s on the table at the moment and we’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Tank Wars!

As we spoke about before, we have shootable bullets in Tank Wars now. It’s a really fun option and we have been playing around with it. Creates a lot of fun experiences and player options during battle. It looks like we are maxxed out on Tank Wars options. Haha. We’d really love to add more but we have to keep all the games on a somewhat even keel as we go forward. Still – Tank Wars is one of my (Tim) personal favs of the batch.



Tank Wars Maps - some map samples



Mazard Map Samples

We have some maps to show you for Mazard as well! Been playing a lot of Mazard and it’s hard to pick which one is my fav. They all have some great stuff in them!



More to come and talk with you soon. Please join us for the live streams on Monday and Thursday! We play games and give away keys to viewers. We would love to see you there and answer question if you have any!

Thank you again and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Zazmo Arcade Pack Info Roundup
Twitch Channel - Monday Thursday Dev Streams at 6pm CST Donley Time Twitch
Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/770320/Zazmo_Arcade_Pack
Please wishlist us on the Steam Store if you would be so kind!