September 12, 2011

10 Games in 10 Languages

For school we have this programming course for Java. It isn't anything special really and it would be really boring if I don't like to program, it almost is anyway, if it weren't for the fact that we're to create a game! Just any game will do and we're in a group of two and we have about a month to complete it. Mmh I like.

Me and Li, my conspiring friend, have a pretty decent idea of something we can make. The only minor thing is that neither he nor I know anything about Java. Turns out I've done some gamemaking in mostly C++ and it's really not different so we'll see how the game finishes.

Now this game me a bit of an idea, or rather it resurfaces and older idea, namely to make a few games in a couple of different languages. I like to explore different languages and I like to make games so why not combine them?

I'll try to make 10 different games with 10 different languages, starting with this Java game. I won't make this one alone but that hardly matters I guess, there's plenty of time to code in solitude later.

These are some I had in mind:

1. Java
   This one is slated for release in the middle of October

2. C++
   I'm not sure if this one is considered cheating? I mean I've made a few already.

3. C
   I haven't done much pure C, and this looks like a nice time as any.

4. Lua
   I've used you to change values without compiling before, but do you have more to offer me?

5. Clojure
   I do love lisp and as it runs on the JVM it shouldn't be too different from Java.

6. Scala
   Scala is one of those languages you just got to try someday. Also a JVM, piece of cake right?

7. Perl
   Perhaps my current favorite language, it's just so fun to write you know?

8. Python
   When you're gonna do the Ludum Dare many are recommending you to use Python with PyGame, it's time to find out why.

9. Coffee-script + html 5
   One of the more hyped up web technologies right now and I haven't used them? Shame on me.

10. Haskell
    Oh Haskell, I've tried to get you down the last two summers but you won't quite let me. Enough is enough, you're going down!

I might change one or two later on if I find something better to try out (C++ is a bit lazy to include) and I certainly won't do them in this order. There's a big chance I won't do them once a month either, but that's the general goal I'm setting up.

Now it's time to do some other, more boring, school work...

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).

December 18, 2010

Christmas break

So school is on a break and I welcome it with all of my heart. The semester has been pretty fun and I really enjoy studying here. We had lisp the whole time which is a pretty sweet little language and if you haven't, give it a shot. Then we had math and I do like math, although I wasn't really motivated this time around and I dunno why. Maybe because I think I got it pretty fast and that didn't really motivate me to study when the test came around and I got far too many dumb mistakes I think.. Not good, not good.

Speaking about math then I took an extra course, mathematical statistics or something funky like that but meh it wasn't all I thought it'd be. In fact it was almost a bit boring and when I got problems with my stumach again (dunno why, but I think it has to do with stress or my irregular eating patterns, or both) so I kinda dropped it. But nothing's really missed: we're gonna have something similar later on anyway.

Now I haven't made anything game related in a while which sucks. A month ago or something I was poking at some prototype but it hasn't gotten anywhere yet. I was going to enter ludum dare 19 but then I kinda just didn't, and now it's too late to do anything. And I have like a thousand ideas I'd like to do, but I don't seem to have done anything.

Argh!

And then there's my other programming interests of course. I've been poking at Haskell a few months ago but now I actually want to learn the damn language and the best way to do that is to make something real from scratch, so I've started my own (atm extremely simple) irc bot. Then I've bought the classical K&R C book and some book about Erlang and I'd like to get going with those too.

Add to that we're gonna do Ada in school after christmas which could be pretty darn fun too. There's surely not a shortage of stuff to at least!

October 6, 2010

Going to University

I mentioned in the last post that I'm going to the university, which might explain my lack of activity here and for that I'm sorry. It's not as hard as I had imagined, and I don't have that much in school but there's still a lot that's going on. For example now how to make something which doesn't focus on pasta or meatballs and I've also done the laundry a few times. These are all thanks to my girlfriend and without her I doubt that I would eat anything other than pasta and I would constantly wake up just to find that I don't have any clean underwear left.

There are still a few homework things I need to do from time to time, but those are often either math or lisp which are pretty fun so no harm has been done to me yet.

I should really begin with the game making again now when my schedual is opening up a bit.

A secret preview of my latest game project.

September 19, 2010

The great Hochstapler

Hey there. A lot has happened lately since my last update and my last game here.

I'm now a pretty happy student at Linköpings university and I'm reading something similar to Computer Science or Computer engineering, but I guess it'll become whatever you make it to be. For starters we're reading a bit math and a bit common lisp, which is fun but hopefully this is just the beginning.

Me and Veronica are now living in a fairly nice apartment and I think I've increased my cooking skills a few magnitudes since I got here. Admittedly that's not a too big of an accomplishment...

I haven't had any time, or energy, to focus on game development. There are a few things I'd like to do but we'll see what happens. My friend on the other hand has been productive and he has just finished one of his big game projects: Hochstapler.

Hochstapler, the epic production from Gridlock Games

It's a really fun game with some inspiration from the old commodore and I really recommend you to give it a try. The only downside is of course that I just can't beat his highscore!

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.

March 2, 2010

March Theme: 10 seconds

Well well here's something interesting. The Experimental Gameplay Project has given us a really interesting thing to focus on: Time. Like Braid, it's time for us to make something interesting with time itself. 10 seconds is the constraint and that's not a lot, but perhaps enough?

February 1, 2010

February gets Themed: Rejection

The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn't follow suite! With valentine coming up I might just have found a pretty nice idea, just now, writing this...

Booyah!!

January 1, 2010

New Year, New Theme: 100 Things

Happy New Year, Everyone! 2009 was great in many ways; I drove a submarine (yeah quite literally), I released 6 experimental games and recently I discovered the completely amazing game Evil Genius but lets try to make 2010 even better!

So let's forget our small mishaps (yes I'm looking at you - December month without a game) and roll out a new theme. As usual I'm following The Experimental Gameplay Project's theme which happens to be 100 Things.

And Things could mean anything from sprites, sound effects to pixels or enemies.

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.

December 4, 2009

December Theme: New World Order

The The Experimental Gameplay Project drives on with the Art Game theme which will last the rest of this year but that's something we can't accept! I've done my game and I didn't force myself out from the Haskell world just to do nuthin so here's a new little theme for me :)

What does the U.S one dollar bill, the French Revolution and Zion have in common? It's the conspiracy New World Order of course!

The paranoid can find it anything so this shouldn't be a problem?
Right?!

November 1, 2009

November Theme: Art Game

Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven't been "my" themes: I've been following their lead and their themes and this month is no exception. This months' apparently a big theme - Art. It's even a collaboration with a big art museum...

The idea that games are art is an old one and there are a few games considered art - but it's really hard to make an actual art game. But I'll try :)

October 1, 2009

October theme says: Numbers

New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I'm following The Experimental Gameplay Project theme which this month is numbers. What's it gonna be? A sudoku game or something more... thrilling? I'll see what I can do :)

September 12, 2009

September theme: Failure

I'm out of the busy mode and here's the new theme! I've got an idea and I'll be beginning very soon I hope and again I'm following Experimental Gameplay Project's site.

Let's rock!!

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 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.

July 25, 2009

My first theme: Addictive Gaming

In true experimental spirit I'll now announce the theme for my first game: Addictive Gaming. I won't be following the lead from the Experimental Gameplay Project's site but I will follow their three laws (7 days, alone, themes).

Puh... my first game! Wish me luck =)