April 28, 2011

Making a Game Again?

I've gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my glasses-missing headaches and I'm going to Ikea and some other shops for, you guessed it, shopping! Sure it's fun and sure I need to do these things but the only thing on my mind now is making a new game. This weekend Ludum Dare is on again and I would really, really like to enter it! It's been over a year since my last Ludum Dare and almost 11 months since my last game.

I want to make games again..

I can't promise a new game this weekend but I think I might have the time for some game creation on friday, saturday and sunday evening/night so I just might. The last time I even had a massage course the whole day on sunday/saturday so I should be fine.

This time I also think I can come up with some more sound and music compared to the last time (where I only had two thuds!). I got LMMS, a free music creation program. I really suck at making music though lol.

I haven't made a game since I switched to Slackware either, luckily SFML is cross platform. I've also got my old 7days library, my collection of old game creating codebase which I was pretty proud of for a while.

For graphics I think I'm aiming for some pixelated cool stuff with mtPaint. Pixelated stuff looks awesome, if you're good at it, and I'd like to make something similar.. At least a little similar.

Unreleased fun pixel graphics

So for a quick recap, if I'm going to make a game again this is what I'm going to use:

1. LMMS for music
2. SFML as the core game library (graphics, sound and input)
3. 7days library for useful stuff
4. mtPaint for pixel graphics

As usual it'll be made in C++ (I might do something else another time) and I'll probably listen to Raubtier, Sarah Brightman, Hans Zimmer and some classical composers (Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi etc).

March 25, 2010

No game this month

Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It's a failure I know but once again I lack inspiration and then it's really hard to do something. Instead I've been thinking of something I could do that would make me wanna code like really bad again. I'm thinking of patching up this website, the forums are bugging me like hell as I didn't write it, switching rendering framework for my games and just now today I've done a few Project Euler challenges in Haskell which was pretty fun (but hard as I'm really bad with it).

Next time I've got my sights on the Ludum Dare which instead of a seven day game is a two day game! We'll see how that'll go.. If I have the power and the time to.

I've also written a small piece about the Evolution of RTS games, heavily shortened to fit a perfect 5 pages a feat I'm quite proud of. Of course I wanted to write a hell of a lot more.

In short: Not much has happened and not a lot is happening but we'll see what the future has in store.

December 16, 2009

Pushing toward Git

The time has come; it's time for me to move my source out in the open for the first time.
I present to you the source of the upcoming game (which has no name yet):

Available on Github

It's nothing special really, if you want take a look at the code and help me improve it.

December 14, 2009

Breaking the rule of three

It's pretty darn stressful making a game in a week, especially when you have this big great vision on how your game should be (which is always grand). For me making Balls, Black and White and Jonas IceCream Stand where truly stressful, MenuCity and Bugger not so much but still.

This is why I'm giving me an early Christmas gift: I won't make the December game in a week. In fact I haven't even logged the hours, I just work on it a little here and a little there and boy it's nice not having to do something all the time.

But there are downsides of course. I'm breaking my rules which is... bad and I don't have that productivity boost I always get when under a deadline so now I'm pretty far behind.

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 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.