The road to Steam Next Fest and streaming
The demo for Grav My Balls has been up for a few months now but it will hopefully be getting a bit more attention during Steam Next Fest. This is a showcase of up and coming indie game projects. They seem to do this a couple of times a year. I was just shy of entering the last one but that was right as I was getting the demo ready and I could not sign up in time. I was in the process of getting the game on Steam and that takes a bit of time to do and to get through the approval process of your game, page, and demo. I had plenty of time this time around and signed up months ago. October 13th -20th my game along with many others will be featured on Steam’s front page and in a special category. In fact, Grav My Balls and noox will both be featured.
My friend UdonEngineering is working on a game called noox. noox is a ghost hunting game where you collect evidence around levels and try to figure out which kind of ghost is haunting the area. You use tools to find out what clues the ghosts leave behind to determine what kind of spirit it is. This can be done solo or with friends online. His game got started around the same time as Grav My Balls. He will be getting his project done in October which is very exciting. I have helping with art and animation for his game. It has been incredibly fun to see the game take shape and contribute as he has done the same for me and my project. Udon will be the first of us to release his game to the public. His demo is up now and it is being constantly updated with new features, fixes, and polish.
The demo for Grav My Balls got a few updates to help with teaching and fixing bugs as well. I was heavily updating it around the time that it launched but I have not touched it in a while. I was set to have it be in the same state it currently is for Next Fest. I was pretty sure I broke a few things in the demo by editing some tools so I did not want to push another update on it. That has changed. Udon again has inspired me to keep working on it. He did an update on the game based on a feature I wanted to add. This adds a whole lot to the project’s aesthetics albeit being a relatively small new feature. He has added an “idle” to floating objects. I love this new feature. It is a simple toggle on all of the gravity objects. I have scattered gravity objects that are just floating in space and I wanted to add some minor movement to them. This does not disrupt the ability to change the gravity on it with your balls. It looks wonderful and it will help me fill in blank areas in the map that could use a little extra detail. It also adds some life to the areas that already have objects that are floating.
This was a silent update. I didn’t even notice it as I pulled latest from Git. I always do this even if I believe I was the only one to touch it recently. It’s good practice and I do the same at my current non dev job. I noticed it as I was streaming progress on a new level. You can see my reaction on my Twitch channel on a recorded stream. It was awesome because I also fixed a hilarious bug that it created. The gravity object’s idle turns back after being hit with a reset ball. A gravity on version of that ball made it hit the ground and start bouncing around. I fixed it on stream with minor issues and fix attempts. I am getting better at coding all the time and that makes me feel amazing.
Streaming on Twitch has been a lot of fun. One very good reason why is because of the bot that Udon helped bring to life. We set up an app that runs on my other computer that has me projected on a gravity object via webcam while my dev screen is in the background. Chat can type in commands and try to turn gravity on and off on me, spawn other gravity objects, shoot balls, do fx on my gravity object too. This will be an ever evolving project to do on the side that will help get the main game out there. Twitch has been nice to keep me motivated and working on the project online helps keep me moving. The next goal with that is to get a Twitch Affiliate status so I can monetize the channel and even better then that is to make channel redeems even easier to do. It will make it so I can make buttons instead of typing out long commands to launch balls and spawn objects. I am really excited for this and to just get more people watching. The goal is not to make money on this, but to get the good word out on the game and demo prior to release.
On that note I need to get all of my social media stuff up and running. I will get this out before Next Fest so I can promote the game, the stream, and even this blog. I am hoping for more engagement on everything. I have a feeling it will be hard to manage all of it but that is where I want my time to be going. I’m looking forward to Next Fest and the challenges and hopefully the attention it will bring. Please try out the demo now or during the event. I welcome all feedback.
Before the journey home
I have decided to move for many reasons. The biggest one being the game. I want to focus as much energy as I can on Grav My Balls. I still have opportunities to work a day job part time which could be a blessing if it does not distract from the game development. It will still be a good way to slow down the burn of savings during dev time. I am going to try this for a bit until I get used to the new space and also the new lifestyle. I will be fully remote and also putting in the majority of the time into game dev.
The move has been complicated. It is something I wanted to do because I also needed a change. What better way to do a big change is to go back to something familiar. Its like change but old change. Among the many reasons is to be around my family. I have lived away from them for a long time and I feel as though I am missing a lot. I have lived out here with no family for a long time. Not the entire time but the majority of it. When I feel like this whole idea was a mistake, I think about my family at home and how close I will be. The thought makes me happy. I can also take a break from expensive visits. One more big ass expensive one to go but it will be the last one for a while.
I have not lived where I am heading in over a decade. I left when I was 26 and to put it simply, I was still a kid. Technically an adult but definitely not experienced. Definitely did not have the responsibility of an adult. I am making it a point to use my work ethic that I have now and apply that energy full ass into game dev. There will be times of learning but I want to stick to a mentality of “Make it exist and make it pretty later.” Getting your ideas out or trying to make mechanics work. Make rough, blocking levels to test them out. Make forward progress and do not procrastinate.
Staying motivated and serious about developing Grav My Balls is my priority. I am going to start a dev stream with really anything I am working on at the time. I can switch it up because I am tackling a lot of aspects for the game. The whole development will not be streamed so I can stream what I feel like working on that day. To be honest, I will have times when I am coding but that will be a struggle. Chat could maybe help me when I do not know what I am doing. With code, that will be often. But other times, you could be seeing me sculpting assets or characters, setting up rigs, animating. There will be playtesting streams too. I am also hoping to do streams with Udon. We have done that before but now I will have my own channel. Udon is starting to cook something up just for my stream. He has an amazing chat bot game on his stream and I am asking for his help to make one for me too. We have both come up with some cool ideas and I’m excited to see it in action. I will be joining in on the bot dev during the trip to Jers and after I am set up in my new spot.
A bit of back story and how this game came to be.
My name is Chris Cannavo and I am making a game called Grav My Balls. I am doing a lot of crazy things right now because I have not been this invested in my own art and ideas in a long time. This game has been in development for over a year now from concept to demo. It has been a small group effort of me and my friends. We have all been developing games for a while and helping each other with our own independent projects and concepts. I will not claim to be a solo dev because my projects have typically started from something I wanted to make and my friends have guided, helped, and heavily contributed to it. And as I have learned from past projects, game development is fucking hard. There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into them. I like to say that game development will give you the highest highs and lowest lows. When something you built has issues it can feel devastating but it’s quite the opposite when something works. When things are working, It always brings a smile to my face and it makes me feel like I can keep going and make cooler stuff. It’s a wonderful feeling to see things coming together and even better when it’s fun.
I have wanted to work in video games since I started animating in 3D. I have been passionate about games for most of my life and I wanted to make something that I would like to play. I have grand ideas for a character action game called Slotter. It was the idea that got me interested in learning how to make them myself and not just contribute art even though I would like that to be my focus. I started work on an idea but it was very art driven too. I wanted to learn the process of the art creation of characters from start to finish. I was currently learning Zbrush and I was sculpting, then modeling, rigging, and animating for my game idea. Then when it came to the code, I did my best to basically reverse engineer a bunch of youtube knowledge together to put together my game. I am getting better at the coding aspect thanks to my friends but it is my slowest to learn skill. We have a working version of this concept but then it turned into a slow burn. It is basically a very ambitious idea that would take a lot of time and money. This is not something I can do alone so the progress was slow.
My good friend Udon Engineering made a game as a gift and it was amazing. A simple and thoughtful concept with a very focused amount of dev time. I was really impressed with what he was able to make. It inspired me to try to think of a game concept that was simple but also fun. Something that could be made in a reasonable amount of time and done with limited resources. Also, something that I could make. Not to say that I wanted to try and tackle it all on my own but it would be something that I could hold myself up to as an equal. That being said, I still need a good amount of help on code but I am getting better each time I focus.
I started with a first person template and did something I know how to do. Flip a checkbox in code! When you shoot the gun, it turns off gravity on the object you hit. This was the first thing done on Grav My Balls. After that the idea kept growing. Turning gravity off and on was the start and more ideas came naturally just from playing around with the idea. The ideas got crazier as I started to make levels around this concept. More ideas kept building until it is what you can play today. Little things and gameplay frustrations would turn into tools, mechanics and thoughts about how to make the game better. The concept of lock balls and grab balls were all born from overshooting objects you hit before. Instead of trying to catch up to an object that went past where you wanted it, you could freeze it in place and then pull it right back over. It is fun to just watch the objects you hit fly around the level. I have “something” with this game. I want to make it the best game I can while making it the game I want to make.
The first real blog post.
I want to have a companion blog that follows the current development of Grav My Balls. This may even turn into a travel blog in the next week. I will be doing game dev almost full time but have also decided to complicate the hell out of it by moving across the country first.
Grav My Balls 