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JoSilver
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Joshua E Silver @JoSilver

Age 32, Male

Game Dev

Brooklyn College

Joined on 9/21/07

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JoSilver's News

Posted by JoSilver - June 27th, 2022


So I wanted to start this post off be apologizing for both the late post and the lack of a post last time. It's been a crazy month for me. A lot of stuff is going on for me. Some good, some infuriating but things are beginning to mellow out for me.


So when I comes to project honey things are going very well. So I just wanted to talk about a recent development with the game and how I managed to salvage and old cut Idea.


Early Days


So, when I first started project honey, as I've said multiple times, I really didn't know exactly how the game would be structured. It all boils down to progression, The game that I wanted to most closely model project honey after in the beginning was Yoshi's Story.


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Yoshi's Story (N64, 1997)


Yoshi's Story had a very unique way of progressing through levels. There were no flag poles or level exits in the game. How you completed a level was by simply eating 30 Fruits, To %100 the game you need to eat all 30 melons in each stage. Project Honey has a similar idea for progression in that it's not about completing goals but "Defeating" Enemies. But Yoshi's Story does have a few problems.


For one, nothing stops the player from barreling through each level just eating any fruit they encounter meaning it's very possible for a player to not fully engage with the levels and it's likely what new players will do. It doesn't help that a single play through of the game is 6 Levels. All that can leave the game feeling too easy, short and lacking in content for a person who doesn't look for any secrets in the game.


I didn't want this. So I decided what if each level has multiple completion goals. Like "Defeat" 12 Enemies or "Defeat" These specific enemies. That meant that I needed to come up with a way to easily program these Missions. So I came up with a Mission/Objective System. A mission is made up of a number of objectives. Objectives could be completed or Failed and even be optional.


With this system It got me thinking about how I could structure progression and I knew I didn't want the game to be a level by level affair. So thought about something like X-COM.


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XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC, 2012)


I decided I wanted it so the player had a choice to go to certain number levels at a time but they could only go to one of them on a given Day and after the level avalible would change. But this idea eventually gave way to something simpler.


I decided making a whole bunch large levels was too much work, So I decided to make just one BIG LEVEL! That however meant doing away with the mission system as it was built entirely around the idea of the level ending after completing a mission.


The design for Project Honey became more Metroid and eventually a bit more Souls-like. Untill I reach where the game is now and I feel it is the right direction for the project and I am pressing full steam ahead with it.


Current Day


So currently as I work on flushing out the game world I realized I want there to be events in the game, mini games, small puzzles to solve. The game at first wasn't going to have anything like that as It was originally something played in short bursts being far more arcadey in design.So I didn't have a system to flush these things out easily. Say I wanted it such that if the player presses a button a "Golden Banana" to appears but the player can't collect it until all the enemies are "Defeated" in time. When pondering how I could solve this issue I remembered I have already in the Objectives in the game.


So I came up with a system of Goals and Objectives. Goals have objectives, When a Goals is actives it can be met. When a Goal is met It sends a message to game entities including other goals. Allowing me to play cut scenes, spawn items or Activate, Reset or Deactivate other Goals


Using this system I was quickly able to prototype the beginning tutorial section of the game as well as couple fun little puzzles I had in mind.


Honestly things are going really smooth for project honey. I just had more time to work on it, than I currently do... OH well.


That's all I have for today.

See ya soon.


1

Posted by JoSilver - June 14th, 2022


No news this week. Works been hectic lately. New Training, Inspections... New people. A lot.


Next week I'll be sure to have a detailed news post.


Sorry.


Posted by JoSilver - May 29th, 2022


So, I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who through out it all have support me in my endeavors. I only work as hard as I do for you. From the bottom of my Heart, THANK YOU ALL!


Project Honey is starting to really, REALLY take shape. It's far from what I would consider a playable game just yet, Playable being able to be played from start to end, but it's getting there. One thing that is truly a difficult task especially without working on some sort of established blueprint is figuring out the connective tissue of a game. One might call this the CORE GAME LOOP, The thing you actually do in a game. And this has easily been on of the biggest challenges with Project Honey.


When I started the project I honestly had a very vague Idea of what the game would actually play like. I set out to nail the moment to moment game play. Not really keeping the core loop on the back burner but not really sure of how it should work. It was a major stumbling block for me through out development. When the game is out I will really go in to detail about how it's changed and how I struggled to figure it out. But the main point is the core loop of the game is really coming together.


Currently I'm in the process of building maps and filling the world with things for the player to do. Project Honey is by no means going to be a huge game but I want it to be a game worth your time. Worth the wait.


I'll leave you all today with just some screen shots of levels currently in the works. Nothing here is final but it's a start.


See ya soon!


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Posted by JoSilver - May 14th, 2022


Early post this Week, ain'tcha lucky.


This is just a continuation of the last post I made, I wanted to share how things went on my art pass for a simple level. I'm gonna say it turned out better than I hoped. There were a number of problems I just plain old didn't know how to solve going in to the art pass or more specially how I would solve them, Some problems I thought I had a good solution to but in practice fell flat or was overly cumbersome. This was a good real world test of all the techniques and Ideas I had only every really mulled over in my head. I thought, going into this process, it would be an absolute nightmare.


But the whole processed end up being a breath of fresh air for me. This was the process I dreaded having to do most. I don't have a lot of experience creating fully flushed out 3D environments. "The dying thoughts of Jeza" (Warning NSFW) was the first time I every really tried to make bigger more flushed out 3D scenes. But even that was helped by being static camera angles, Not to ruin the magic of a lot of my 3D art but if you can't see it in the final work that's cause it literally never existed. Things like ceiling or even all the walls in the room probably aren't there or only exist in a form that best bounces light (A perfectly flat diffuse surface work every time).


But when building the environment for a 3D game obviously the whole thing must exist and it must be at the same fidelity and detail as the rest of the world because if the player can go there they probably will. So while being a truly mighty challenge it was one that I had fun with. The results I feel speak for themselves, while not being perfect I think it is a great first attempt.


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My main focus going forward is to finalize the layout of each and every level in the game. Before moving on to an art pass of the entire game world which is definitely going to take me some time


That's all the news I that I have this week.

See ya soon.


2

Posted by JoSilver - May 2nd, 2022


Sorry for the late post this week, I'm not feeling that well this week. But I'm feeling better lately.


So lately what I've been trying to do is to an art pass on a small section of the game. I'm trying to get a feel for what my full level creation pipeline will be like. I've only done rough block outs of every level so far but not a full art pass or any level yet. So I decided I needed to do that because it's coming to that point in development where I really need to think more deeply about all that. I've only really concerned myself mostly with mechanics and character interactions.


The first thing I did was create a basic kit of mesh for building out final level geometry. I decided I want to build the world out of more geometric shapes rather than more natural ones. I chose that for aesthetics and simplicity of design. I took a while to come up with the shapes and pieces that I use most in levels and came up with this kit, I'm still adding new pieces as needed But so far it's working very well.


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So after I did that I'm to try and do a full art pass on a small level in the game. It's still in the works so there is not much to mention about it now but It's going good so far, I rebuild the old BSP geometry with my new Kit and It went very well, now I just need to create and add props and materials and I think it's gonna look great.


Here's the old block out level.


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Here is what I have so far.


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That's all I got for now

See ya soon!


3

Posted by JoSilver - April 18th, 2022


So to put it bluntly I have decided to Get back to PROJECT HONEY! I know right crazy. I'm gonna flat out say I've abandoned the smaller project for one main reason. It was taking up a lot of time from Project Honey. Lately, my time is at a preimum, My schedual lately has opened up a bit and I actually feel not so tired on the weekends and capable of devoting some time to a project.


I don't know for how long this will last. At least, I don't know until I find a new job ( Things are getting messy at my job. ) But while I have some time to work on stuff might as well take advantage. I've been wasting a lot of time I don't really have on a project I don't really care about. I'm glad I worked on it, did a lot of work I was keeping till the end of development for Project Honey.


In the end I decided I need to work as much as I can on Project Honey when I can If I ever hope to have the game done.


So lately I've been working on restructuring the game world. The world of project Honey was getting to big and empty feeling. I was hard to stuff such large areas with meaningful stuff and also a bit of a nightmare to create and maintain.


I decided to break up the world in to more discrete chunks. The world is no longer seamless, Rather SEAMFUL now. But I feel it was an important compromise. I often found it difficult to add new locations because where would it fit in the map, how would it connect to everything else. When does it need to be loaded or unloaded. It was a real pain getting everything to work. But now I have no such problem,


I can add any two part of the world together and things just work fine. I was actually concerned alot of things would flat out break because of it. Fortunately I've been pretty forward thinking about a lot things, Things that I thought would be problems ended up no even being an issue. That said plenty need to be polished. Solution for stitching the maps together is a bit cobbled together simply reusing things that were never meant to work that way. That said it works so... EH.


So I'm gonna leave you guys with just a few screenshots of the work so far.


See ya soon!


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Posted by JoSilver - April 3rd, 2022


Not really news this week so I wanted to let you all know what's been going on with me.


As I've stated before work has been very busy, that hasn't changed. But I've been extra busy lately because I've been looking for a new job. Job hunting is a job in itself.


I'm looking for something remote, I'm looking to get my Masters Degree and need a lot of money to do so I need to get a better paying job. Ironically after I get a new job I should have a lot more free time to work on personal projects (Or not we will see) but one thing is for sure, I won't be physically exhausted at the end of the day. I need a number of days to recover from a week of work at my current job. Working on personal project has to take a back seat to my Physical and Mental Health sadly.


None of that is to say I'm working on nothing. Something is in the works at the moment. But lately I really have to force myself to work on it. Next week, my schedual is much lighter so I expect to get plenty done then.


Just wanna keep you guys in the loop. With any luck, updates on projects will start being more frequent again soon.


Thanks for being patient guys. It means a lot to me.


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Posted by JoSilver - March 20th, 2022


Sorry no news this Week, Still working on the New Project but I NEEDED to take a small break from everything. Life's been pretty crazy lately. I'll tell you guys all about whats been going on when the time is appropriate but rest assured it's nothing but good news, It's just very tiring as well...


Right now I'm just writing some code that's the core system of the game. Been mostly prototyping until now but things get are serious.


See ya next time.


4

Posted by JoSilver - March 6th, 2022


Be sure to come back to this spot every two week to get all the latest on me and my plans for complete and total global annihilation, the like of which not seen since the great Permian EXTINCTION! I'm making news posts all about my misdeeds right here on Newgrounds.


So far things are going very well on my newest project, this also means a lot of good things for Project Honey as well. I can't go in to too much details as the game is not yet in a state where I am willing to show it off just yet. (Don't wanna spoil surprises) That said, It's gonna be thigh slapping, ball draining, pussy pounding fun!


This new game relies heavily on dynamic animations, on top of the other little problems that I really did invest the time in to solving just yet for project honey. Jiggle physics and other dangly body parts are a bit of a challenge to simulate convincingly or at least in an aesthetically pleasing manner. This is one place where I managed to lock things down but good. Different parts of the body require different techniques to simulate, for example... The PENIS!


An erect penis, while my definition is not floppy, it still moves and bounces as a guy moves, it doesn't just stick out like a metal rod. Even a metal rod will flex and wiggle in motion a bit. This is different from Breasts that bounce and are pulled down by they're weight. For those unaware large breast are very heavy, like 20 pounds each, it's no wonder women with larger breasts are prone to back problems. I don't have a one size fits all solution to both of them atleast I haven't come up with one yet, but I have come up with solutions that work really well.


Also one thing that this new project will involve is character customization, this is something I long since have figured out. But whats not so obvious of an issue is hair. Pony tails, Long and loose hair, Short bobs, Textured hair... you name it, each one needs to be animated and simulated in a unique way, Now the game is going to feature a more stylized looks so don't excpect state of the art realtime hair sims but I have come up with a solution that works for any hair I might come up with.


All I really need to next is expressions and incorporating sounds and I'll have a solid foundation to build the game on top of.


Development has slowed down a bit last week, I was sick, still feeling a bit down. IT'S NOT THAT! In case you're worried about that. I've been tested multiple times since I've been feeling sick. Hopeful I'll be back in tip top shape soon.


Sadly that's all the news I have for you today.

See ya soon!

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PS: TEARS FOR FEARS HAS A NEW ALBUM OUT!! WTF!!!!



5

Posted by JoSilver - February 20th, 2022


If you even have the slightest curiosity in what I'm currently working on, be sure to come back here, every two weeks, to get the scoop on what my filthy, filthy hands are up to. Right here on Newgrounds!


The Bad News


Let's start off with some bad new this week. For the foreseeable future, Project Honey is on hold. The Panorama has made it such that I work 9 hour shifts, 5 days a weeks far more often than is comfortable. Project Honey requires far more time and attention then I am currently able to give it. Hell, just a few minutes ago my boss informed me that I was definitely In close contact with Covid and need to get tested... Again! Since I always wear a mask and am super vaccinated I've yet to actually get sick... But because of that I'm always filling in for people who are sick.


Project Honey being on hold isn't permanent and I will continue to work on some aspects of it but it's not my main priority at the moment. It was very painful for me to come to this decision because I really wanted this game to be finished by now and I just don't have to time to deliver the game as I hoped. When I started Project Honey I had nothing but free time. Now I have at best a few moments of spare time.


But do not fear, the game is not dead, merely on hold until I can dedicate the time required to complete it. It's a game I desperately want to make happen, but at my current pace that easily wont be for a year or so.


The Good News


But on to the good news, I'm starting a new project, partly based on Project Honey. It's something much, much smaller in scope but will be something that I can release soon-ish, Like hopefully within a month or two. The plan for this one is very simple. Complete my minimum viable product, Basically something that could function as an extended demo of the final game. Which shouldn't take more than a few weeks. From there flush the game out with some extra's and goodies on a deadline and then what ever isn't finished by then just doesn't make the cut. Then a week or two of spit shining and boom.


So far it's going very well. While I don't want to spoil anything I will say given my current time scale, I can confidently say you guys will see something of it soon.


That's all for now but there will be plenty more to come.


See ya soon!


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