Introduction

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Knockback’s first dev blog post. I would say I want to make these weekly and other outlandish goals, but let's just say that I’ll call spitting out a writing assignment one more time a huge success. While this blog could catalog the entirety of Knockback’s development process, let’s be honest, explaining how I debugged a squirrely menu item just ain’t that interesting. I’m going to shoot for explaining the major decisions and any development problems/techniques that I think maybe interesting to others. For now, just a bit o’ background information.

Who are We?

I, Jason, am the primary developer on the game. Knockback’s implementation is the result of my deeds and misdeeds -- as it were. My lovely wife is helping me out with my many deficiencies. Fortunately, she convinces me to go to dev meetups in Denver, post to this blog, get some “real people” feedback, legal structuring and the other “adulting” associated with the game. 

I’m also getting help from some buddies I’ve picked up throughout my life. Some are helping with game design and ideas, one with hitting me with the 2x4 of reality, and yet another with graphics and videos (hopefully!?!). Dunno if they want their names out there so we’ll keep them anonymous mystery men for now.

I come from a much more traditional software development background. I’ve worked for internet companies, lots of DoD work and a smattering of consulting work throughout the years. Almost exclusively in the GIS sector in the last decade. I’ve been fortunate in my corporate travels in that I’ve been able to work on some great R&D projects over the years and some original algorithms, but nothing to do with gaming.

How We Got Here?

Ready for the cliche talk about being ready to toss the shackles of the corporate culture and get to working for myself? You guessed it. I’ve wanted to write games since I was in high school and that is what got me into computer science in the first place. If you were motivated enough to click on my LinkedIn profile you now know that I didn’t do any of that after school. Maybe we can call it a mid-life crisis. Dunno, but I’m here and making a game and loving it!

So looking at my timesheet, I started cranking out code on May 20th. Wow, that was a long time ago. To say I’ve learned a lot would be a severe understatement. It really is all in the details -- maybe I’ll detail a few of those lessons in a follow on post, maybe not. Regardless, I’m using Unity to develop my game and heavily leaning on the Unity Asset store for my graphics, animations, sound effects, etc. Where I can, I’m shamelessly utilizing the brilliant work of others. Where I can’t, I roll up my sleeves and get to work! I’m now 616 hours into the process and I’ve learned a ton. I can certainly build the same thing way faster next time, but ‘eh, that is how these things work.

What are we Building?

I’m now over a page into this dev blog and I haven’t even touched on the game. The heart and soul of this whole effort. Fortunately for you, I’ll keep it brief and expand on it a bit when I post again. To put it simply, Knockback is a multiplayer FPS wave defense game. You’re defending against hordes of zombies and trying to keep from being overwhelmed. Last out all the rounds and you win. The emphasis in the game is on having fun interactions with your buddies. OK, what is so special about that you may ask? It is all about how you kill the zombies. We’ve created a physics sandbox and we’re giving the players a big ol' pile of weapons to combine and eliminate zombies in your own personal way. Wanna suck them into a tight ball and zap ‘em with lightning. You can do that. Rain down guided sticky marbles of fire onto their heads -- gotcha covered. Hit ‘em with a giant rolling stone that bowls down the baddies. Go for it. We give you a bunch of weapon building blocks and you can build the perfect forms of destruction.

For now, I’ll leave you with a little animated gif of a doom ball combined with the sticky modifier. This weapon sticks to the baddies and keep 'em off balance. Now, back to plotting the zombie’s demise.

-jason