I bet a majority of gamers who know the word SITREP know it from the Call of Duty franchise, in which the word made its debut in Modern Warfare 2 as a tier 3 perk that allowed you to see explosives more easily. I know that is where I first heard the word. Allow me to enlighten those of you who are wholly unfamiliar with the word or only familiar with it in a context similar to the one above. SITREP literally means "situation report," and is often used in a military context (the link I provided gives a pretty thorough description of a situation report, although I cannot be sure how accurate the sources are for that).

     Why the educational broadcast? Well, I wanted to give you guys my current SITREP (taking the definition more liberally, of course), and to do that, I needed to be sure you guys were fully informed about the word SITREP. That, and a broader vocabulary is never a bad thing.

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Ghost Update

     A couple of weeks ago, Ghost moved to version 0.4. That may not seem like

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Today, I'd like to discuss something that is not specific to game development--project scope. However, I will be using my experience making games to talk about project scope.

Now, I know what you are thinking: "I thought The Sharpest Blade was their first game?!" Well, I have a confession to make. While this is the first game we have released, it is not the first game we have worked on.

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A Hidden Past

We had decided that we wanted to get into game development very early last year, around February or March. We were all in school however, so we made plans for the game, but we didn't start working until the summer.

What was the game about? Well, we tried to keep it simple. It was a sidescroller of a man with a hanglider, desperately trying to return to his home kingdom. In the game, the whole world is filled with hostile territories, and if he lands in any of them, he would certainly be killed. So, he has to glide his way past birds, kites, archers, catapaults, and more to reach home safely.

The premise does not make the game sound too large, and yet, this game

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Note: This post is by your favorite programmer, Joraaver!

     Hey guys. Sorry for the long wait. My first project in my Operating Systems class took an insane amount of time. But enough about me. Time to dissect the game (WARNING: LONG and MEATY)!

     I'll break this post up into 4 parts (NOT 4 posts, 4 parts): setup, analysis, solution, and remarks. Please keep in mind that I strive to explain everything to my best understanding, but I'm a beginner game developer, a student, and above all, nowhere near perfect. If I did something wrong or could have done something better, PLEASE tell me!

The Setup

     It was around 11:50 pm Saturday night, January 4th, when a play-tester called me to report an error. After the 16th level and the 20th level, he would get a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Direct buffer memory error. So, as any developer would, I collected the details of his machine--graphics card, RAM, operating system, the works. However, the machine wasn't anything special, so I will leave those details out. The main part occurs now: I have a bug, it's 12:

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Note: For anyone new to this blog, this is a postmortem of our first indie title, The Sharpest Blade. It is a puzzle-platformer game; you can read about the release here.

     We've given our game, The Sharpest Blade, some time to frolic in the fields, but we believe that now is a good time for a postmortem. Well, I realize a little more might be appended to the game, so it isn't technically “finished,” but I think a postmortem is called for anyway. Especially for all of you looking to really see what happened during development.

Statistics

     First, I'd like to provide a few statistics. There have been 102 downloads of the game, with 39 coming from GameJolt, 50 coming from IndieDB, and 13 coming from Itch. Here are the distributions of each platform, by day:

GameJolt

IndieDB

Itch

     Each platform had the most downloads on the day of our release; hopefully some of those had to do with the blog post we made on release day. Over time, of course, the downloads declined. There is nothing too special about that. Now, however, we must

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     Big news everyone. Our first indie title - The Sharpest Blade - is officially released as of today! It has definitely been a rough and sleep-deprived 48 or so hours from the last post, but it has been a learning experience nonetheless. However, all the reflective jazz will come in a later post; this post is one of celebration.

     We've currently got the game on 3 distribution platforms, so have your pick:

GameJolt       OR

OR       IndieDB

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     For those of you just tuning in, The Sharpest Blade is a puzzle-platformer game that has been in development for the past couple of weeks. It is the first game we have made as a team, and part of the reason this blog exists is to track our development habits as well as make the process transparent for other indie developers looking to get started.

     I'll keep this post short, so you can spend more time playing and less time listening to lil' old me. Next time, expect an analysis of the

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What time is it? It's progress update time! Today, I'll be showing you more art to look at and soundtracks to listen to.

Demo

To start, I've got a nice little demo for you all to try out, if you feel so inclined. Mind you, even though I call this a demo, we still are developing it, so it is more like a beta. Can you even have a beta without an alpha? I'm not sure. Anyway, enjoy!

Versions:    Linux    Windows    Mac

Feel free to email us or comment about the game here, or give feedback over at Feedback Friday on Reddit.

Art

The previous post's works were quite light, so this time you will see a darker tone.

I don't know what the rest of you think, but I was thinking The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle, with the one below. You know, the moor.

Music

I've got another soundtrack for you guys, and this one comes with an interesting "medieval" flute section. Let me know what you think!

Final Thoughts

Joraaver goes back to his day job (being a student) on Monday, so expect the release

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