While development is being done on the game demo, I would like to keep some public updates coming regardless. Today I would like to unveil the surprisingly long history of this game, how it got to where it's at, and a bit of what's in its future.

The Origins

I have hinted in the last update that I first started programming a while back now, in a language now more dead than Latin. The language was Turing (by Holtsoft), a learning language that was used in Ontario high schools for a number of years, before the company behind it eventually ceased. The fascinating history of the language and all the cool things made with it is still archived on the website that refuses to die (Thank you Dan and/or Tony) - CompSci.ca. In fact because I joined this forum when I was first learning to code, I can count how many years I've been doing this by counting the "year stars" next to my profile name in the forum posts.

Unfortunately I never did post my first game to the submissions section on this forum, as it acts as a great archive of some of my earliest work. Some of it I'm still very proud of (even if the code was messy by my current standards). My first game I ever made though was the very first prototype of PONGslaught, a game that started out in Turing. It had a much simpler name back then, LPong, and just started out as a learning experiment. So it began with just pong. I was still learning to code so I picked the easiest game I could think of.

And I was happy with it, but I wanted to keep pushing myself. So organically I started adding combat. First was just a basic gun to shoot the other paddle. Then heat-seeking rockets. Then mortars. Then randomly spawning map obstacles. I added so many new features to make this pong game a combat game I split the game into 4 different modes to streamline different synergies of features. Each mode with its own theme and color palette too, like Alien or WW2.

In hindsight the code was terrible, being my first game, but I am still proud of the execution of ideas. And despite all graphics being made up of basic geometry (draw calls for draw_box, draw_tri, draw_circle, etc) there was an elegance to the style that made it work. Like the DOS games from my early childhood that inspired me, the graphics were just enough to invoke imagination and focus on gameplay itself.

The Prototype

Over time I ended up choosing a career path of game development, though the road to that point is a story for another time. It was during my time in college for game development I ended up reviving the idea I had back in high school, that old combat-pong game I made. Luckily I didn't reduce it to being just a school project, as it could have lived and died in that context. It was a side project at this time, and really just a slow accumulation and refinement of ideas before I turned it into something playable.

This research and testing phase lasted for quite some time, and the aesthetics were developed around this time too. This prototype was still in a very iterative stage, and limited to my art abilities at the time. Besides college itself I was in a mindset during these years of obsessive study into game development, game design, and all tangential fields. I watched probably every GDC talk (publicly available anyway), every game design youtube channel, podcast, book, everything I could absorb.

This did slow down development on this side project, but for the better. It allowed me to iterate on ideas, refine the scope and features, and make big design changes without worrying about "just finish the game" mindset clamping what would end up becoming the current design. I did a lot of testing during this phase, from strangers, friends and family, whoever would play, especially those who don't even play games. There are many oversights and issues you wouldn't think of on your own without that crucial external feedback.

The Demo

Once I had a solid concept, core game loop, and overall design I was satisfied with I put together a public demo. It went through a couple different builds, as I had unfortunately made the common mistake of trying to turn prototype code into development code. The mess started to slow me down and so a refactor had to happen. During this refactor though I upscaled some of the older art from the prototype and started experimenting more with shaders and VFX.

The original prototype is no longer public, but this second build of the demo is what is still hosted here on itch.io, currently the only public demo of the game. I'm quite happy with how the game turned out, as it is here, but for reasons explained in the last update post there was a number of years that have passed since I last updated the demo. Looking back however it never did live up to the game I planned out, though not for a lack of scope control. I couldn't make the game up to the quality I had in my head, and still had some things to learn.

The Future

In those years I have upped my programming skills, my art skills, design, everything I could. I stopped work on the game but I never stopped learning in this time. Also in this time away from working on PONGslaught the game engine I use, Godot, went through a MASSIVE overhaul. There were certain features I couldn't do in the old engine and bottlenecks in speed I couldn't solve, and now all these limitations are gone.

This time however, having learned from my past mistakes, I have planned the architecture of the game code much more this time around, giving me an extremely robust system I can use to quickly scale the game. I will explain more about the technical restructuring in the next update post, but for now I think I have given a good look into the history of the game's development. Looking forward will be in a future update post, outlining a general timeline of development toward new developments for this project.

For now, here's a sneak peek at the new title screen logo for the game, enjoy.

Stay In The Loop

There now is an email list to keep up to date with development on the game.
Emails collected will only be used for this purpose, of course.

Join The Email List!

Until next time,

Cheers

Leo LeBlanc

Ivory Lion Studio