paneowco

We are Pandr and khaoneowie. We aim to create content together and by ourselves in many different ways. Find out more about us and support us on our Patreon if you like!

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games

Because of a recent school project, I got into making indie games. So far, I have been really enjoying myself and learning a lot of new stuff, resulting in my first game, golden maid. It is currently in early access, please check it out and leave a comment on our itch.io site. Khaoneowie Helps me a lot in giving feedback and discussing game design stuff with me. She'll probably also help me with future projects in doing the art, I look forward to that!I plan on maintaining a little blog on this website. The topics will probably be pretty diverse: dev stuff, my thoughts on certain topics/events, and other things. Check it out, please! - Pandr

▼  golden maid

(in dev, early access vers. playable)

This is my very first game that I am making alone (apart from playtesting). It started as a school project, but I quickly became too ambitious to let it be just that, so I put a lot more thought and effort in that I needed to. So much so, that I decided to make it a fully fledged game and publish it on itch.io. I have decided to make the game early access and update big changes (like new levels, etc), so you can kind of experience the game as I develop it, accompanying me on my gamedev journey. I am pretty actively developing the game and my plan is to have finished the full version of the game by 2025 if not earlier.In golden maid, you play as a waiter on their first day of work, where some things don't go as planned and they find themselves in the backrooms, with seemingly no way out. They then have to traverse several liminal worlds in search for 6 wine bottles, scattered across the soulless regions.

►  cassidy tetris

(on hold, don't expect anything)

Imagine playing a nice round of Tetris while Cassidy from Overwatch shouts random stuff. Funny, right? At least I thought so...

►  etc...

(I have a lot of ideas for more game, but I want to focus on golden maid right now)

pandrs corner #5 - 01/02/24

HEY guess who's still alive! After literally 2.5 months I finally felt bad enough about not making any blogs to actually do something about it. I've missed a lot, didn't I? Merry Chrisler, happy new year and all that jazz. What I did for all this time is not amazing to be honest and I a m not 100% proud of it: Basically, I endulged in playing a lotta games. I 100%ed Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order (which is a VERY good game), the first LEGO Batman and the second one, which is one of the very first video games I every played, so it was packed with a lot of nostalgia. I've also made some buddies (lil characters that just walk around) in the platform fighter "Rivals Of Aether", which was big fun.I started a Tumblr blog to post some non-game-related pixel art to kind of force me into creativity, which worked well, I think. I also tried some new ways of being creative, like Blender and FLStudio, but I ultimately decided to focus on pixel art and gamedev for now. Not to mention, I am still at school so that's a big time consoomer.All of that to say that I... Didn't really work on golden maid in the past 2 months. A little here and there, but I didn't post any updates or anything. I am continuing now though, I am already planning a new level since like last week. It'll take some time to finish it (all the art alone is a lotta work) but I'm working on it now. However, I also plan on making some improvements to the already existing levels, so that'll take some time as well but it's coming, just wait a lil. I'll stop here so see ya in the next blog or something. Have a nice existence!

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pandrs corner - old posts

pandrs corner #1 - 4/8/23

Khaoneowie and I are currently creating this website. It's honestly pretty fun to setup all those things and carrd makes it pretty easy. It's hard to do anything for free though, but it's still cool, the cheapest pro thing is not that expensive. I am very excited to maintain this here blog and share my thoughts and progress on stuff, even if probably no one will read this lol. Still, it is a nice feeling to put yourself out there. At least digitally. To see how an image would look in the blog, here's a cat in a bathtub.

Cute, right? That's Franek. Anyways, I am debating if I should remake the biggest part of golden maid, as I have gotten unsure of my ability to convey a liminal space feeling in traditional 2D, which is why the Backrooms are in top down. Now I'm considering making the whole game in top down, which would reset my progress a bit... Maybe it's also cool to be switching back and fourth between traditional 2D and top down. I am currently testing some of that stuff.I'll end it here. Don't smoke, kids!

pandrs corner #2 - 22/9/23

Yesterday, I did some stuff for golden maid: An UI update, connecting the game to Butler (a service that allows you to post updates for your game), making a setup wizard that makes the download of the game more accessible and a macOS version of the game (bc my sister only has a MacBook, and she wanted to play golden maid). There is a little problem with the setup version and Butler, because Butler doesn't update single .exe files (ie. the setup version), because it is extremely compressed or something. Basically, the .zip version supports updates and the setup version doesn't. I experimented a bit with that and came to the conclusion that it's probably best to just have both the setup version and the .zip version downloadable. I tried my best to explain the difference between these two in the download instructions, so I hope everything is transparent and easy to understand. I have read some post on itch.io that they plan on making it so the game makes a desktop icon automatically even with a .zip, but until then, I'll leave the setup version on itch.

That's pretty much all I had to say. Take care of yourselves!

pandrs corner #3 - 22/9/23

Because someone asked me how I make golden maid, I've decided to showcase some of the software I'm using for game development here, just to give a little insight. Most of the software names I mention here are direct links you can click in order to directly get to the software's website where you can download it.So first of all, the game engine I use is Unity. I am very much aware of the controversy Unity is going through and I also hate what decisions they are making lately, but I really like using Unity. It is the easiest engine for me to comprehend (I did try some other ones as well, but most of them had really complex UI and general functions) and I am having a lot of fun developing in Unity and I've decided to keep on making golden maid in it.

> Unity

> C#

As for learning Unity and coding (I code in C#), I recommend just watching a lot of YouTube tutorials (especially Brackeys, he has a lot of great tutorials on a lot of stuff in Unity) and just starting a little project. I heard that recreating a simple existing game, for example Pong or Tetris is a good starting point. It is totally fine doing that using tutorials as well, the most important thing is getting to know Unity itself and getting a feel of problem-solving, which is an important part of game development.Another important aspect of game creation is, of course, asset creation. No matter if you make a 3D or 2D game, you'll need to get the sprites or models for all the things in your game from somewhere. For starters, I recommend using something like the official Unity Asset Store, where you'll find a lot of assets to use in your game. An alternative would be Open Game Art, but I also recommend for you to just search some stores for yourself, I'm sure that there are a lot of them.Of course, you can also create your own game art, which is what I am doing for golden maid. I chose a pixel art style, because I like the aesthetic very much and it is relatively easy (there is still some art theory you'll probably need to learn, like animation cycles, color theory, lighting and perspective, I learned it with YouTube tutorials). I used to create my assets in Pixaki, but the app costs 30€ and is only usable on an iPad. Still, it is extremely easy to use (especially for a beginner) and provides all the tools you need to create pixel art for your game.

> Pixaki (Artwork: "This One Still Works" by Waneella)

I switched from Pixaki to Aseprite recently, because I don't have access to an iPad anymore. Aseprite is probably the #1 pixel art software you'll find if you search for one, and for good reason: It is really really good. It is a little more complicated than Pixaki imo, but still easy to grasp and it has even more tools than Pixaki. I recommend both these softwares for beginners. However, Aseprite does cost a bit as well. You can definitely find some free pixel art softwares if you just google for it, but another one I would recommend is Krita. Krita is pretty much perfect for any game art, but it is a little complex compared to the other two softwares I mentioned. Krita is for "traditional" digital art, but with the help of some YT tutorials, you should be able to set up some stuff in order to create pixel art with it as well.

> Aseprite

> Krita

Sounds and music are also important assets. You could create all these yourself, but an easier solution is to find a website where you can download free-to-use SFX, Music and stuff like that, for example Pixabay. Keep in mind that you can edit the sound files (with the help of Audacity, for example) in order to make them sound exactly as they would fit your game. The same goes for music and you could also find some royalty free music or SFX on YouTube, but you should be careful with that. Always check twice, whether you can use a YT video completely for free (Sometimes, you have to credit the channel!) or not.

> Pixabay

> Audacity

I hope this little guide can give some people a basic understanding of what to do when learning game development and what softwares/resources are good to use! Of course, I am still a beginner myself at this point, so don't tak my word for anything.That's about it for today's post. I hope to inspire some people to start developing games themselves! See ya

pandrs corner #4 - 13/10/23

the parallax update (1.4.0) is finally published! It took a long time but better late than never, right? (I basically had to reorganize/heavily edit all of the existing background sprites which was not always very fun). Anyway, just to briefly explain what parallax scrolling is exactly. (From Wikipedia) Parallax scrolling is a technique in computer graphics where background images move past the camera more slowly than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in a 2D scene of distance. Yeah it's simple, but it makes 2D games wayyy more immersive in my opinion. It also just feels a little more polished and high quality. I think you notice it right away as soon as you start walking in the game and it just looks so much better.Anyway, I am working on the next update that shouldn't take too long (because it won't add too much, just some QOL stuff), so I'll see you in the next post. Until then!

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streaming

I want to stream on Twitch or on YouTube sometime but I am kinda scared. ;___________; Since I really enjoy playing OW which is why I would probably start with streaming that. But no expectations! - khaoneowie

art

I have been drawing for over 3 years now (Ig??) but I feel like I haven't improved a lot which may be caused by my lack of motivation. Pandr always tries to motivate me but it's no use, ngl. Though, our "PaNeow" project kinda wants me to try drawing again.
As you will see in the gallery below, there are several different names credited (jaeyeolla, ohyeahdeath, 605two, seongeunie, 5t4rv, marukiseo) which is because of my tendency to simply delete my existence.
- khaoneowie