August 25, 2009

Going into Being Busy mode

I'm in the civil service atm and, sadly, we're going to be extremely busy the coming... two months or something? So I can't promise a game the next two months. Kinda beats the point of this site doesn't it? I'm really sorry and that's all I can say really...

Hopefully I'll get a week somewhere with enough spare time to create something. It's a damn sure I'll have to make a game about submarine warfare!!

August 21, 2009

Postmortem: Black and White

All this time working on my latest game I thought it sucked and I was trying hard to make it to not suck. My spirit wasn't high, just check this post and this but now when it's done it's like night and day, or like black and white! I'm damn happy I got it done!! Aah I'll try to make this postmortem shorter than the last one... That was huge.

Lessons I've learned

1. Levels take time
   I know you're all disappointed by a measly three levels in the game and for that I'm sorry. I hadn't set aside time for making the levels in my mental plan so when I ran over the time limit of 7 days I had to cut down on some stuff - this time it was the levels.

2. A codebase rocks
   For my first game I had some basic code from older projects I used, like handling states, a small menu and a vector class among others and that saved me a whole lot of time. Now I had even more code so I got something on screen a lot faster and I could afford beginning with creating the dude and his animation (although I kinda overdid that) knowing I already had the basic foundation in place. Now I'm going to get my coding skillz up and the experience and this is another really big stone which will allow me to make bigger and more badass games later on.

3. It might not suck so hard after all...
   In the beginning I was pretty confident but I quickly lost that momentum and I thought a lot about how sucky this game is... It's not polished, it's not fun and the levels suck etc but it turned out to be okay! I have to stop being so damn negative! These are experimental games for crying out loud, they're expected to fail once in a while and guess what? It doesn't matter!
   

August 20, 2009

Black and White

Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a game where graphics where included into the gameplay but sadly it didn't come out nearly as good as I expected it too.

Yes I know there are a lot of things bad and wrong with this game, but this is a competition with myself to create a game in only seven days and you can't always polish the games like your heart tells you to do.

Black and White

Download
BlackWhite.zip (11.2 MB)

Instructions
Move left and right with the arrows, jump with space and change the blocks with enter. Esc into the menu and there you can enter a highly advanced (not) level editor to change the levels however you want with left and right mouse.

Credits
Music: What we take to the grave - Tom Fahy
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me

August 19, 2009

Incomplete game coming up

Man I'm far too much of a perfectionist, with this mentality I'll never get anything done - seriously. I spent far too many hours, even days, figuring out in my mind how the game should be and I started off going for nothing less than just that. But it turned out to be a lot harder and a lot bigger but still I couldn't let it go and start over with something new, something fresh.

I wonder isn't this something very common? Not just in game development but for everything in life; we always stick with our idea of perfection and stuff that we're familiar with, trying hard not to do something different and unfamiliar. I can honestly say I've tried to make something fresh and different but maybe that's my problem. I'm trying too hard and when it's impossible I still won't let it go... Just maybe it might work if I do it like this... maybe?!

No this month's game is going to be crap, I can see it. Polish, which I believe is the single most important ingredient in a game, is non-existent. And worse yet, the gameplay is bad - in fact it's even worse, it's unplayable and boring! Never mind that I'll give myself tomorrow to give the game a bit more love in the hope of making it just a tiny bit less sucky.

What do you think; should I release the game - no matter what - after one week and ignore my need for perfection or should I give the unfinished and "bad" game more love so it might be a little better and a bit more fun to play?

August 16, 2009

Going down

Ah my first game was so painless so I thought I could do any game I could imagine! Shooters, and mario bros kinda stuff. Well now I'm not so upbeat anymore, I've worked on this game for 7 days now and it's not playable at all. With seven days I don't mean a week, I've had a big break in the middle with no reason at all!

Anyway I realize I can't make the one week mark... which sucks... and the game isn't looking or feeling the way I want it too but I will release it when I've made it slightly less sucky.

August 4, 2009

August theme: Bare Minimum

This time I'll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next game. This could really be anything, from graphics to user interaction... But I've got an idea. It'll be a real challange for me to make but hopefully I'll have a game in a few weeks time.

August 4, 2009

Postmortem: Balls

So it's been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven't made one single game?! Well now I'm not counting the visual basic nightmare mastermind I made a long time ago but a real game. Whatever that means. I've had these monster-projects;

1. point and click monkey island style adventure game - the beginning c++ adventure for me. Kinda harsh start up don't you think? I thought so too - it never got anywhere near completion or playability.
   
2. another heavy game - think fully destructible environment. Need I say more?... No.
   
3. the Game Engine - the project everyone dreams of making games ends up doing and either discover it didn't amount in anything playable, which I did, or you'll end up thinking creating games is extremely hard and it'll take years for just a small game.
   
4. the Dream project - I've been thinking of making a few posts about the games in my dreams. Which I'll most certainly complete! Sometime... Maybe...?!
   

Somewhere about now I got interested in Indie games. I think World of Goo was the first but I'm not really sure. Maybe armadillo run or bridge builder? Damn! I couldn't even google the link to bridge builder aka pontifex 3 - all I found was a thousand torrent sites...

But what I did find was kloonigames, some guy who did the same thing I'm doing. Or I'm doing the same as him: following the footsteps of the Experimental Gameplay Project. Making a game in 7 days, something surely impossible, and I haven't even made any game before! Oh crap! But as Petri (kloonigames dude) so elegantly put it:

My experiences told my that creating, even a small, game takes months, if not years. So to do it in 7 days seem frightening. And not only the code, but graphics, music, sound, levels and all things included. I shit my pants even thinking about it and almost gave up. Luckily I realized that the worst thing that could happen (beside shitting my pants) was wasting a week of my life. I could do that easily with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon.

And here's a summary of my first ever game Balls. It's available here for download.

The Good

1. I got it done!
   It seemed impossible and it scared the hell out of me. But I made it!! Aaah... It feels so good right now. And the game is actually pretty fun! It doesn't suck, it doesn't crash (but it's a bit buggy) and I can sort of say I managed to stick to my theme Addictive Gaming. Now with this over with I can focus on my next game. Not just now but in a while, now I'm confident to try new, bigger and hopefully better things and I know I can pull it off!

   I'm on top of the world! Nothing is impossible! Superman and Neo - you're just sooo jealous right now.

2. It didn't even take long...
   I end up using timelog from kloonigames to track my time. The game took 25,5 hours to make, but I spent 7,5 hours of that time on a break! Either reading manga, playing cs or just surfing around and chatting. This isn't the time to nag about my lack of concentration and that I'm lazy, this is where I realize I didn't even work myself to death making the game. I could afford a break here and there, and now when I think about it they were really necessary.

3. Pressure is good
   I did manage to implement some physics and collision detection, even though it's really simple. This was a first for me and I did it under a tight schedule! A coincidence? I don't think so, a small amount of pressure is really really good. It is during these times I'm most productive and I really do get things done if I have to.
   

The Bad

1. The motivation didn't stick
   Although I made the game and it was pretty good I didn't even remotely invest as much time in it as I could - and I don't know why. I lost that super motivation pretty early in development and when I hit a bug or something that needed a lot of changing to implement I usually cut corners or just ran away screaming.

   Is this the every day life of a developer? If it's this though to get motivated wonder how you can motivate yourself working on a shitty project?
   

The Ugly

1. The code
   Wow - I'm never showing the source of this to anyone! I tried doing the things which would make the game nearest completion, I did cut some corners but in the end the job is done. But it's really ugly and before reusing the code I'll need to clean it up a lot!

   What's that smell...? It stinks of smelly code!
   

August 1, 2009

Balls

Here's my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god I'll be making another tetris clone but the end result turned out a bit different. I'm not sure it's very addictive but it's actually okay! =D

Balls is a game about... balls. Well it's all in 2D so maybe Circles would be a better description but I don't think that captures the attention enough.

I didn't think this was possible but here it is! My very first jewel =)

Balls

Download
Balls.zip (7.1 MB)

Instructions
Well... There's nothing to it really. Move the mouse over the balls to make them shrink, survive until the top is filled with balls.

Credits
Music: Markovich/A.M.P. - Twisted in flight
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me