I released the Star Relic beta for a few testers today. The game mechanics are fully operational (besides a few minor bugs), and now the focus goes to the campaigns and character customization. So far, it seems I’ll manage to finish the game completely by the end of the deadline (end of January).

Besides Star Relic, I’ll also participate in the upcoming Global Game Jam (January 29-30) with a few colleagues. It is going to be fun.

It was too soft. Damnit!

I have a problem (unrelated to my bad cooking skills). Well, actually, three problems: I am a bad programmer, I am impulsive, and I have no time.

Why am I a bad programmer? Obviously! I study at TAU (I blame scipio).

Actually, I don’t think I am, but I am a bad designer. Did you know Star Relic was originally an arcade shooter back in March?  I even wrote a full design document. Three months into development, I discarded it all.

Why am I impulsive? Well, I discarded three months work because I had a better idea in mind, and also because I didn’t really understand why am I making another arcade game. Nautilus was an experiment rather than something I really wanted to do. Doing another one of these would not be enjoying on the long run. So I gave up. Thus, High Orbit was born, which later acquired the name of the dead “arcade” Star Relic. Development since then has been progressing very nicely, until…

Why don’t I have time? Six courses at TAU + maintaining a relationship across Europe + being silly and not thinking of all design problems I’d have with Star Relic.

So yes. Star Relic is moving slowly since I don’t have time to fix all the design bugs. In addition, each time I fix something, I yell to the heavens and spam my girlfriend’s mailbox: “AMORE! I FINALLY FIXED THAT STUPID BUG!”. Ten minutes later, I find out that the Klosian Phaser unit warps in outside of the visible game board. The code looks like a complete mess now, and I think I broke every Object Oriented programming principle in the rulebook…

Not only that – Instead of focusing on a single project, my mind drifts, and I keep planning future projects (thanks to many boring lectures). Remember Sol and Lore from last month? I removed their pages from the site, since it was terribly silly to even think about them before Star Relic is done.

Yet… NOT ALL IS LOST (the pasta is though).

So what now? Well, the upcoming weeks are actually going to be more relaxed. I will finish Star Relic by the end of January. Yes. Totally finished. Including the campaign. No more empty promises! BASTA!

Doubt it ^_-

My second project using the Packed engine was released today:

MagickA

Play MagickA at Packed

It’s another tower defense game made in a week of work, under the contract with Packed. All the graphics and level design were made independently by myself. Though the Packed engine has many limitations (well, it is still in beta), I’m actually enjoying making these little games. The next games, though, will be released on a longer interval.

Well you see, five courses, one seminar and two jobs (Star Relic is a JOB!) are very demanding. Once everything gets settled again, I’ll start working on a new Tower Defense game (hopefully with a newer version of the engine with supports campaigns) and push towards a Star Relic beta (oh my).

Talking about Star Relic…

I got the habit of finishing one Star Relic task a day. “I got three projects to hand in by tomorrow? I don’t care, I have to finish this!”. Without putting some pressure I’d end up finishing the beta by 2012 instead of in a month. The game looks great so far, and I wish I could show what the game looks like and how it sounds, but it is early to do so. The work consists mostly of a few, yet major, programming tasks, since all the graphics, sounds and voices are already done (weeks ago).

I assure you that by the next update, Star Relic will be very close to its beta.  I aim to December the 15, but you can never be sure with all these university assignments following you in each move.

.

Curse you scipio!

Hello,

My name is Shay Davidson. I’m 24, a third year student of BSc Computer Science at Tel-Aviv University and, well, I am Indigon. Time to get personal, I assume. I decided to move away from the “formal information” format, and transform the website into something closer to a blog. I have many things to say and share regarding my work, my games, and development. Along with the “getting personal” format, I also have updated the website with the Other Projects‘ section, which shows several games I developed which are not Indigon-related.

Lots of work flowing in the last weeks: A contract with Packed.com (already one game out and the second on its way), Star Relic, and two other projects I have been brewing up: Lore and Sol.

Star Relic is nicely coming along, although I am beyond my deadline by months. That’s what happens when you keep iterating over and over again without working with a decent specification document. Well, I HAD one, but 3 months into development I decided to abandon all the progress in order to transform the game completely. Add the fact that computer science studies take a lot of your time, and you get a finished game approximately one year after Nautilus…

Star Relic - Soon...

Nevertheless, I expect to release a beta version of the game by the end of December, which will contain everything besides the campaigns. Overall, February seems like a realistic date for release. Hopefully.

Expect to see more updates about all my games (a lot more actually, rememeber, “getting personal”…) in the upcoming weeks. Meanwhile, you can enjoy my games published on the site.

Shay Davidson.

I have signed a contract with Packed.com to develop tower defense games for their brand new engine. Give a go to my first game developed using the engine: Star Command, and expect to see a few more games using the Packed Engine in the near future.

In addition, I am very excited as Star Relic is approaching beta stage. Currently, if everything works according to plan, the game will be out in the beginning of January.