A year of game jamming

It's about a year ago we started making video games and so we felt it was time to celebrate it with a video that would show you guys what Headless hobo had managed to make. Now, that's just the birth of headless hobo and we will Participate in many more Game Jams to come. 

So yes, it has obviously been a while since we updated the blog and we are truly sorry, especially because so much has happened since the last update.

We've participated in two Ludum dare games. You can find a link to both games here.

Blub

Try it here
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=27420

Total Viking Power

Here's a little video that follows the making of the graphics through out the development.


Try the game here.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/comment-page-1/?action=preview&uid=20524


We will be talking more about the development of the games through this month.

We've also participated in two other Game jams here in Denmark and both of them won a price.

USU Minijam copenhagen.

Here we had an experienced Sound  designer join the team and to be honest which was quite a releaf since one of our Team members got sick and would have left the team to only consist of the Graphic Artist and the Programmer.

Luckily, that wasn't the case and the game turned out to win the price for the Best Game.

Common Sense

Try it here.https://www.dropbox.com/s/gyxj3d9c3vqi6mh/Backup_--_Full.zip

The next one were at Indie9000 in Aalborg.

Here we won a price too: jury's favorite... and an Xbox Sponsored by Microsoft

Try it here.
http://www.unicorn7.org/games/game/167/

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Last but not least, here's our latest game from Bacon Game Jam 6#

The Robo Rainbow Initiative

While this was supposed to be a 48 hour project, it was changed to 24 hours instead. This was because we had to go to Netherland that day after the start of the Game Jam. More the development of the game in a later post.

If you want to play it you can go to this link:
http://bacongamejam.org/jams/bacongamejam-06/170/

Lair of the squirrel hell - DEMO

This is NOT the game, that we are making for ludum dare.

Now you can play the awesome game "Lair of the squirrel hell" as a demo.
We hope you'll play it and have fun.

If you feel in a good mode, you could give us some feedback via the document, that you can get on our blog or on facebook. We'll appreciate any feedback we can get, good or bad. We deeply want to make this game, truly awesome and that can only be done with YOUR help.

You can download the game to your browser here :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v9frj7dtd7db6c1/TheLairOfTheSqurrielHellWebplayer.zip
And the pc version here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ulqxlfqt1tvzt2y/TheLairOfTheSqurrielHellPc.zip

The document link, if you want to give us some feedback.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ae2wfdclq6muei5/Feedback.docx

If you have any problems download or installing, send us a mail at headlesshoboentertainment@gmail.com or write a comment.

- Headless Hobo

Pathfinding - Performance, a tough one!

When I first got pathfinding to work, like you saw in the prototype and had made somemore work on it, I though well now there can't be much more work, but there were and is still much more work, cause I underestimated how hard pathfinding is!

The performance issue

Pathfinding is very cpu needing, becuase of that you need to write your algorith, very good. There can't be anywere it will take too much time on something or else it will lag and it will lag more the more you get into the game!

That was something i found out, when I tried my pathfinding more. It lagged, so I had to fix it, because if it could lag, with a little testlevel as that, then it was going to be a nightmare, when we started making real levels.

Performance is hard!

A taste of what's coming. (Music)

Just a short, but very awesome update.

Today, our music composer Mikkel Laynes gave us a few demo versions of the music he is currently working on.

Enjoy. :)

A* Pathfinding - How does it work.

What is pathfinding?

If you don't know, what pathfinding is, it is when you want to calculate the best road from one place to another. 

It is used in lol(Leauge of legends), when you want to move to another place and pressed at a point with your mouse, then lol uses pathfinding to move you to that point. 

So pathfinding is finding the best route, from one point to another point.

Example from our game! 

Here is an example from our game on how pathfinding can be used in a game.

Bringing characters to life Part 1-3

Today we will try to explain a little bit about how our NPCs work. However, there's just way too much content to just put it all in one post, so we will make this a three part article.

But just before we begin, we are happy to announce that we have gotten Dani's brother, Mikkel Laynes on the team. He will be the one responsible for the music and we are really excited about this. :)

Actually, we are so excited about it that we have already finished the cover art for the soundtrack, so we can share his awesome work with all of you. :)

So remember to check here for updates, because once in a while, we will post a track.

Anyway, let us begin talking about the NPCs

The Work Cycle.

In our game "The Creature" We want the player to experience being the monster in the horror movie/game instead of the Hero. But where's the Horror without the drama and people. To get the best feeling and to make the gameplay more interesting, we need our NPCs to Interact with each other. All their actions should be based on what they've seen, experienced and what influence and relationship they have with one another.

So what's going on? A new game you say?

Yes, It is true. We are working on a new game.

- "But you guys haven't finished "De Forbudte Bjerge"!

Yup, That's true. And here's the reasons why we've already started up a new project.

1st) We can't really work on "De Forbudte Bjerge" at the moment, mainly because we are not in charge of its future.

Currently, the guys at Pallesgavebod are considering weither we are allowed to make the game for them or they will hire another team to do so. It might even happen that they decide not to keep the concept which means we will have to change the characters in the game in order to ship it.
And shiping the game is probably our biggest wish.

Our game for kids

We are at GameIT College, where we are making a game to children between the age of 8-12 years old.

Our menu

We have made the game for something called "Palles Gavebod" in Denmark.
It is a website for all the kid libraries in Denmark. When the kids visit their site, they do not come back to the site and that is was our game is suppose to do. To get kids on the website to come back to the website and not just visit it one time.

So how was our approach to it?
Well we know that kids love fun and they at that age want to be social. We also know that they are very competitive.
So we needed to get those thing into our game. We have tried to make it as fun as possible and we have highscores in our game. Everything in our menu, has some sort of feedback, so that the kids are never bored.  The game is as fun and challenging as we could do it.