I've been working on a strategy RPG for a while now. I wanted to keep all the damage values in the very small range. Like 2HP enemies, 1 Damage spells and so on. I couldn't come up with a format for this game though. Then last night I got insight. Why not make it in the form of a TCG game? Construct a deck of spells and summons and have them duke it out. Magic: The Gathering even uses small scale critters... But I didn't want to design a whole TCG. I just needed about a dozen or so "cards."
How about turret defense? Those games are popular and most people make at least one. But building turrets to defend against waves wouldn't be what I'm going for. So what about turret attack? Summon waves of creeps to attack the enemy. They aren't completely unheard of. Nah, it doesn't quite work either. There could be turret attack levels, but it shouldn't be the whole game.
I finally decided on a format. AI combat. Each spell has certain rules (printed on its card). A fireball's rules might be "FIRE: 1 Damage. Movement: Forward 2". Once you play the spell the fireball is created and would follow its AI pattern precisely until it hits an enemy or the outer boundary. Of course, with a movement pattern of just Forward would mean anyone could just step out of the way. So let's make the hero's immobile! That wouldn't be fun by itself... so let's add movement cards! Moving one space to the side would mean you can no longer [be] hit by fireballs anymore. So, play the movement card ON the fireball. Once it's beside your enemy just use a movement card to turn it towards the enemy, you now have a sideways moving fireball. On the other hand... the enemy could move himself one space to the side and one space forward in two turns. The fireball would never be able to reach him since with "Forward 2" movement the fireball would always be one tile early/late no matter how you turn it.
Spells would have very simple AI representative of ballistics. But critter summons would be different. A Goblin could have the card "POWER: 1 Damage. 1 Health. Movement: One towards boss (Tie Horizontal)". This would summon the Goblin. He'd move one towards the enemy leader taking the shortest possible path. In the event of a movement tie, the same number of tiles to the destination, the Goblin would prefer the horizontal option. With this in mind, a summoner could use terrain or create walls to prevent the enemy Goblins from reach him (which in turn would limit the enemy in what they can do for attacks).
A lot of Goblins could be trouble. They'd absorb all your fireballs. So why not a Hunter? A critter who's AI pattern is nearest any enemy. They'd seek out and attack Goblins. Back to movement cards; use a movement card to get the Goblin out of harms way while getting it closer to your enemy. Suddenly I got a strategy game going!
All sorts of classic RPG staples like Healing, poison, monsters, bosses and treasures could be summoned to the field in your attempt to defeat the enemy. Slimes that rarely move, traps that deny passages, creatures immune to magic, creatures with amazing speed... Well, looks like I have a lot of work to do. What I like about this project is movement and reactive AI doesn't even need to be in the game, every enemy moves exactly how its card says it will. If the critters are acting stupidly, that's intentional!
I don't work properly, Lok.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
The Process: Resources
heroofdark asked;
What do you do to get sprites, music, sounds and other resources? Do you create them or get them from the internet? And if you create them, what program do you use, or what website do you go to? I'm getting into GameMaker (still on tutorials until the semester ends), and I'm wondering where to get other resources than what's prepackaged.
Sprites
I first start with place holder sprites. I make these in Gamemaker's in-program graphics editor (basically MS Paint+1). My placeholder graphics are usually solid squares, circles and so on representing the hitbox.
Next, when I'm ready for animation, I download some sample sheets from the internet. Google Image Search usually. If I'm making a platformer I use Mario for example.
Once all the animations are working correctly I replace them with actual graphics. I make these in an old program called Grafx2. It's a 256 colour editor with quick functions for shapes and shading. I use it since it's very fast, not because it has a lot of features.
Backgrounds
Depending on what I'm trying to accomplish I use a combination of Grafx2 and GIMP. Grafx2 has a very nice circles/spheres tool. Here's a sample I made:
It takes roughly 30 seconds to make one of these in Grafx2. After that I open up the image in GIMP and add a lot of filters. Take a look at these two pictures. Notice the arrangement of the circles. I used the same spheres template for both of them.
Making graphics like this is my favourite part. Unfortunately it's very hard to stay thematic when designing like this. Suppose I need a forest and an ocean; If I'm quick designing like above there might be nothing even remotely resembling trees or water. Other than that the combination of Grafx2 and GIMP is great for me. In the past I used a program called sTile or something like that for making tessellations, but I've never been able to find it again since my Windows 3.1 days.
Music and Sound
Typically I use the FL Studio demo. I'm not attached to it, but I'm not very good with sound anyway. The only downside to the demo is you can't save works in progress. However, you can still export files. This means if you "one-shot" it you still get most of the functionality. This is not good for making music, but great for making sound effects. A couple "3x osc"'s and reverb effects and you have a sword strike or fireball... easy. I don't really have a program for making music. In the past I used Noteworthy Composer to edit MIDI files, but that's not really good for music in modern games (even indy ones).
---
Feel free to leave a comment if you have any more questions.
[][][][][][][], Lok
What do you do to get sprites, music, sounds and other resources? Do you create them or get them from the internet? And if you create them, what program do you use, or what website do you go to? I'm getting into GameMaker (still on tutorials until the semester ends), and I'm wondering where to get other resources than what's prepackaged.
Sprites
I first start with place holder sprites. I make these in Gamemaker's in-program graphics editor (basically MS Paint+1). My placeholder graphics are usually solid squares, circles and so on representing the hitbox.
Next, when I'm ready for animation, I download some sample sheets from the internet. Google Image Search usually. If I'm making a platformer I use Mario for example.
Once all the animations are working correctly I replace them with actual graphics. I make these in an old program called Grafx2. It's a 256 colour editor with quick functions for shapes and shading. I use it since it's very fast, not because it has a lot of features.
Backgrounds
Depending on what I'm trying to accomplish I use a combination of Grafx2 and GIMP. Grafx2 has a very nice circles/spheres tool. Here's a sample I made:
 |
| This is a quick sphere template |
It takes roughly 30 seconds to make one of these in Grafx2. After that I open up the image in GIMP and add a lot of filters. Take a look at these two pictures. Notice the arrangement of the circles. I used the same spheres template for both of them.
 |
| Added mosaic and reflections |
 | ||
| Lines for webs, spray tool for spider. |
Making graphics like this is my favourite part. Unfortunately it's very hard to stay thematic when designing like this. Suppose I need a forest and an ocean; If I'm quick designing like above there might be nothing even remotely resembling trees or water. Other than that the combination of Grafx2 and GIMP is great for me. In the past I used a program called sTile or something like that for making tessellations, but I've never been able to find it again since my Windows 3.1 days.
Music and Sound
Typically I use the FL Studio demo. I'm not attached to it, but I'm not very good with sound anyway. The only downside to the demo is you can't save works in progress. However, you can still export files. This means if you "one-shot" it you still get most of the functionality. This is not good for making music, but great for making sound effects. A couple "3x osc"'s and reverb effects and you have a sword strike or fireball... easy. I don't really have a program for making music. In the past I used Noteworthy Composer to edit MIDI files, but that's not really good for music in modern games (even indy ones).
---
Feel free to leave a comment if you have any more questions.
[][][][][][][], Lok
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
It's Working.
Got the main physics engine completed. A simple platformer with working platforms. Now I just need graphics, sound, rooms, other graphics, fonts, timelines and a story.
Procrastinating about League of Legends is keeping me on track with development.
Procrastinating about League of Legends is keeping me on track with development.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Sidetracked by gaming
Discovered League of Legends. Also played a lot of Defense Grid: The Awakening. Also started a Dwarf Fortress LP blog.
Back to business. I tend to get sidetracked by designing gimmicks. Most likely because I'm good at designing gimmicks. So for now I want to make a zero gimmick zero frills platformer, absolutely nothing special at all. No wall kicks, no climbing, no drop down platforms, no nothing. It might sound boring, but I really need to produce ANYTHING. I can always add "features" later.
So I went back to my NES library and played all my platformers. I think the game I'd like to model most after would be The Adventures of Rad Gravity. It's pretty lame, but it's unusually stable and quite interesting. One of the more... interesting games I've played. No tricks whatsoever at the start. Maybe I'll even give the game a non-distinct name like The Misadventures of Chad Tragedy or something dumb like that.
Either way, procrastination remains my greatest enemy... however, since starting League of Legends my procrastination of playing ranked games with bads has me back in the programming saddle.
Till next time, Lok.
Back to business. I tend to get sidetracked by designing gimmicks. Most likely because I'm good at designing gimmicks. So for now I want to make a zero gimmick zero frills platformer, absolutely nothing special at all. No wall kicks, no climbing, no drop down platforms, no nothing. It might sound boring, but I really need to produce ANYTHING. I can always add "features" later.
So I went back to my NES library and played all my platformers. I think the game I'd like to model most after would be The Adventures of Rad Gravity. It's pretty lame, but it's unusually stable and quite interesting. One of the more... interesting games I've played. No tricks whatsoever at the start. Maybe I'll even give the game a non-distinct name like The Misadventures of Chad Tragedy or something dumb like that.
Either way, procrastination remains my greatest enemy... however, since starting League of Legends my procrastination of playing ranked games with bads has me back in the programming saddle.
Till next time, Lok.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Procrastination
Let no one accuse me of being lazy. I've been extremely productive these last few days. Unfortunately my efforts went into projects that are not at all related to game making at all. I'm not easily distracted, but I seem to take any excuse possible to get out of what I want to do.
Clearly the only way I'll ever get work started on this game project is if I take up an even more ambitious project and procrastinate about that instead. Let task aversion run its course.
Meanwhile, I've been thinking of starting additional blogs for Let's Plays and game reviews.
Never let mental illness keep you down, Lok
Clearly the only way I'll ever get work started on this game project is if I take up an even more ambitious project and procrastinate about that instead. Let task aversion run its course.
Meanwhile, I've been thinking of starting additional blogs for Let's Plays and game reviews.
Never let mental illness keep you down, Lok
Friday, November 12, 2010
New Project: I want a new RPG that goes faster to get where he was
I had previously worked on a Zelda clone, but it didn't really appeal to me. It seemed to run a little slow. So I thought about all the speedier top down games and really there weren't a lot. Notable ones included the early Ys games, the best of which being Mask of the Sun. So I'm starting an Ys clone. Well, Ima write my own material of course, but I mean I liked the speed of play and the "ramming" physic to do damage. The game should run fast and smooth. I'll have to be very careful with optimizations so I can have the game running at very high frame rates. I might add classes later, a thief would hit harder from behind for example.
Today I will use placeholders and get the movement done. Then I will add a simple damage mechanic to make sure enemies are harmed when hit at "angles". Add more collisions for head to head hits and taking hits while stationary. This should be good for day 1 on this project.
Ideally I'd like this to be a roguelike, but procedural mapping is hard... like, really hard. Let's just get it started first.
Today I will use placeholders and get the movement done. Then I will add a simple damage mechanic to make sure enemies are harmed when hit at "angles". Add more collisions for head to head hits and taking hits while stationary. This should be good for day 1 on this project.
Ideally I'd like this to be a roguelike, but procedural mapping is hard... like, really hard. Let's just get it started first.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
GameDev time: Day 1
Abandoned Projects List
Ok. I am currently using the GameMaker 8 engine for all of my projects. I am familiar with it and know what it is capable of. Plus, I am pretty much incapable of learning new things at this point... I found it to be the one most similar to QBasic and it has nice autocomplete functions.
My current projects are mostly in their starting phase. I get the basic physics done in about a day and from then it's just making rooms and replacing placeholders.
Platformer 1
My first project was a simple platformer. Something along the lines of old Prince of Persia; Wall climbing and jumping, etc. Using single sprite images as placeholders made it difficult for me to imagine how much time would be needed for simple animations like hanging or walking and I eventually got bored. I didn't really need to make a game like this anyways, but it was a nice start.
Platformer 2
My next project was a bit simpler, a faster paced action game. Things like wall kicks and jump through platforms. I wanted the game to run at a much higher speed than most platformers I see. Unfortunately, I played a certain flash game which was basically what I was going for only done way better. So I scrapped the project and moved on.
Shmup 1
Next I wanted to make an artistic looking bullet hell action game. Even though there are dozens of quality ones out there already I could work on presentation rather than good physics. I was doing pretty good at making neat bullet patterns based on mathematical formulas and what not. Then I entered a sort of phase where everything had to be a physics gimmick and the project fell apart. I had the idea of a protagonist that couldn't shoot, but rather changed gravity to get bullets to orbit him. While there are probably better ways to go about it I used the in-engine hard physics to do it and got a rather erratic result. Shmups need to control well to be playable with a low to zero amount of random chance. Until I "master gravity" I'm done with the project.
Shmup 2
So I copied my engine from before and started a new project. This time I wanted a nice slower paced action scroller along the lines of 1943, Twin Eagle and other classic NES titles. I mostly discontinued this project due to boredom/lack of ambition. I seem to prefer working on complicated things so I lost interest. Of all my projects I should probably continue this one... just to get something out there.
RPG
This project did not last long. It's basically just the protagonist placeholder moving with the arrow keys. I wanted to make a Zelda clone.
Platformer 3
This one I have the most interest in completing. I came up with a very innovative idea for handling the story and coupled with my recent studies of Astrology, Wu Xing, Kabbalah and Numerology I wanted to make a gripping story about a young man who can't quite accept his death. Somewhat overplayed I guess, but I thought it was good. The player would progress through the five worlds in idiosyncratic stages mirroring the Creation Cycle on his quest to find a literal Tree of Life. And then, of course, die. I had the intention of adding a second play through where, since the player knows what to expect, the player might know to attempt to complete the Destruction Cycle to get a different ending. I got really caught up in making a compelling water stage and fire stage without relying on trite stereotypes. I wanted to convey that everything was useful when used constructively and destructively... eventually the protagonist would die in the first ending since that is the way of things and live in the second ending which would be destructive to the world in general. I consulted the usual material (Tropes) and worked for a long time. I eventually got sidetracked when I decided to make a Graphic Novel. I want to get back to this, just need an artist or something.
Graphic Novel
Not a game, but worth mentioning. I spent a year on this thing and got no where. The ideas and concepts will probably haunt me forever... or at least until I make enough money to finish this story. It's mostly based in Astrology with the characters reflecting the ancient personalities of the planetary gods. However, whenever my story wasn't turning into Sailor Moon it was turning into a textbook on Astrology. I just couldn't balance them so I gave up. Procrastination marches on..
Current Projects
The Weatherman
While browsing my favourite forum someone asked something along the lines of "Why are there still TV weathermen? We have internet." And somehow the creative ball started rolling. The weatherman was a public icon where I grew up. His signature tap of the pointer and out of "Good Evening" was quite memorable. Other people came forward with interesting stories of when they met their local weatherman and other news personalities. At that moment I decided I had to make a game about a Weatherman... and not someone who controls weather, a literal TV Weatherman. While covering a sudden massive flood caused by a local super villain The Weatherman gets fed up with being stuck in the Channel X station, steals a news van and goes to the site. Somehow he defeats the super villain and is praised as a hero even though he's didn't actually do anything. Queue a Fake Ultimate Hero story... I intended each world to be dedicated to a different weather effect: Snow, Rain, Earthquakes (As a nod to various RPGs who treat Earthquakes as weather) and eventually a final showdown... Meteorologist Vs. Meteorologist. In between stages/worlds would be some comic relief playing up various stock about TV personalities and fake infomercials.
Of course, as much as I want to work on this project I really don't know what kind of game this should be. Is it a platformer? An adventure game? Perhaps an RPG? I just couldn't decide so I basically just made a bunch of concept art and hung them on my wall.
CYOA
There isn't really a definitive Choose Your Own Adventure Video Game. There lots of games with token dialogue boxes and optional endings based on choice scoring, but nothing along the lines of the good old CYOA books. I'm guessing this is because developers want to make sure players actually get to see all the script they wrote for them. Well, I'm doing things different. I want my game to immediately cut off practically half the content right from the get go. I wanted to play with the concept of a player itself. Since a player is likely to play the same type of game in the same way I wanted to create a massive chain of events and trees so that it would take completely different minds to find everything. And, as a nod to CYOA itself, have a few "island" entries that are impossible to get to... so only someone viewing the source code could find them.
I came up with many interesting solutions to puzzles. For example, near the start of the game (assuming you go down that path in the first place) there is a door you have to get some keys for. Why a door needs 5 keys is strange anyway. The player could collect the keys and use them, or if they are silly... pound the keys into a dirt wall to make a ladder. My core philosophy for making individual trees is to have path for each of the four main player archetypes (Bartle). Puzzles for the Spades, difficult platforming tricks for the Diamonds, a dark path for the Clubs and a compelling story (romance or otherwise) for the Hearts.
I'm not a very good writer so this one is on hold, but I'm constantly working on it.
Time Travel Adventure
I never liked adventure games back in the day. Hugo's House of Horrors and Maniac Mansion and so on. But recently I've gained a new appreciation for them. I wanted to make one. In my game I wanted a nice simple main story for the player to complete with a relatively mediocre ending and resolution. Gather/use items from a limited inventory space to resolve situations and progress the story through a number of chapters. Until after you beat the game... when you unlock Chapter Selection. While it may seem simple at first, the player will discover they can take items from later chapters into earlier ones. Even NPC's will react to certain items and carry them into later chapters. This is probably too hard to do though since I wanted to avoid getting into situations where the game becomes unplayable because they can no longer access areas they need items for (like getting a key stuck behind it's very door).
Procrastination is my biggest enemy. I'm very productive once I get going, but I'm rarely going. I think I got a mental problem or something. Maybe there's a medication for procrastination. Heh. Anyway, comments about what projects I should work on or even new projects would be appreciated. As I continue my work I'll upload pictures and demos and so on.
Really I should just get something done... even a Nibbles clone.
Ahh I'll get to it later, Lok
Ok. I am currently using the GameMaker 8 engine for all of my projects. I am familiar with it and know what it is capable of. Plus, I am pretty much incapable of learning new things at this point... I found it to be the one most similar to QBasic and it has nice autocomplete functions.
My current projects are mostly in their starting phase. I get the basic physics done in about a day and from then it's just making rooms and replacing placeholders.
Platformer 1
My first project was a simple platformer. Something along the lines of old Prince of Persia; Wall climbing and jumping, etc. Using single sprite images as placeholders made it difficult for me to imagine how much time would be needed for simple animations like hanging or walking and I eventually got bored. I didn't really need to make a game like this anyways, but it was a nice start.
Platformer 2
My next project was a bit simpler, a faster paced action game. Things like wall kicks and jump through platforms. I wanted the game to run at a much higher speed than most platformers I see. Unfortunately, I played a certain flash game which was basically what I was going for only done way better. So I scrapped the project and moved on.
Shmup 1
Next I wanted to make an artistic looking bullet hell action game. Even though there are dozens of quality ones out there already I could work on presentation rather than good physics. I was doing pretty good at making neat bullet patterns based on mathematical formulas and what not. Then I entered a sort of phase where everything had to be a physics gimmick and the project fell apart. I had the idea of a protagonist that couldn't shoot, but rather changed gravity to get bullets to orbit him. While there are probably better ways to go about it I used the in-engine hard physics to do it and got a rather erratic result. Shmups need to control well to be playable with a low to zero amount of random chance. Until I "master gravity" I'm done with the project.
Shmup 2
So I copied my engine from before and started a new project. This time I wanted a nice slower paced action scroller along the lines of 1943, Twin Eagle and other classic NES titles. I mostly discontinued this project due to boredom/lack of ambition. I seem to prefer working on complicated things so I lost interest. Of all my projects I should probably continue this one... just to get something out there.
RPG
This project did not last long. It's basically just the protagonist placeholder moving with the arrow keys. I wanted to make a Zelda clone.
Platformer 3
This one I have the most interest in completing. I came up with a very innovative idea for handling the story and coupled with my recent studies of Astrology, Wu Xing, Kabbalah and Numerology I wanted to make a gripping story about a young man who can't quite accept his death. Somewhat overplayed I guess, but I thought it was good. The player would progress through the five worlds in idiosyncratic stages mirroring the Creation Cycle on his quest to find a literal Tree of Life. And then, of course, die. I had the intention of adding a second play through where, since the player knows what to expect, the player might know to attempt to complete the Destruction Cycle to get a different ending. I got really caught up in making a compelling water stage and fire stage without relying on trite stereotypes. I wanted to convey that everything was useful when used constructively and destructively... eventually the protagonist would die in the first ending since that is the way of things and live in the second ending which would be destructive to the world in general. I consulted the usual material (Tropes) and worked for a long time. I eventually got sidetracked when I decided to make a Graphic Novel. I want to get back to this, just need an artist or something.
Graphic Novel
Not a game, but worth mentioning. I spent a year on this thing and got no where. The ideas and concepts will probably haunt me forever... or at least until I make enough money to finish this story. It's mostly based in Astrology with the characters reflecting the ancient personalities of the planetary gods. However, whenever my story wasn't turning into Sailor Moon it was turning into a textbook on Astrology. I just couldn't balance them so I gave up. Procrastination marches on..
Current Projects
The Weatherman
While browsing my favourite forum someone asked something along the lines of "Why are there still TV weathermen? We have internet." And somehow the creative ball started rolling. The weatherman was a public icon where I grew up. His signature tap of the pointer and out of "Good Evening" was quite memorable. Other people came forward with interesting stories of when they met their local weatherman and other news personalities. At that moment I decided I had to make a game about a Weatherman... and not someone who controls weather, a literal TV Weatherman. While covering a sudden massive flood caused by a local super villain The Weatherman gets fed up with being stuck in the Channel X station, steals a news van and goes to the site. Somehow he defeats the super villain and is praised as a hero even though he's didn't actually do anything. Queue a Fake Ultimate Hero story... I intended each world to be dedicated to a different weather effect: Snow, Rain, Earthquakes (As a nod to various RPGs who treat Earthquakes as weather) and eventually a final showdown... Meteorologist Vs. Meteorologist. In between stages/worlds would be some comic relief playing up various stock about TV personalities and fake infomercials.
Of course, as much as I want to work on this project I really don't know what kind of game this should be. Is it a platformer? An adventure game? Perhaps an RPG? I just couldn't decide so I basically just made a bunch of concept art and hung them on my wall.
CYOA
There isn't really a definitive Choose Your Own Adventure Video Game. There lots of games with token dialogue boxes and optional endings based on choice scoring, but nothing along the lines of the good old CYOA books. I'm guessing this is because developers want to make sure players actually get to see all the script they wrote for them. Well, I'm doing things different. I want my game to immediately cut off practically half the content right from the get go. I wanted to play with the concept of a player itself. Since a player is likely to play the same type of game in the same way I wanted to create a massive chain of events and trees so that it would take completely different minds to find everything. And, as a nod to CYOA itself, have a few "island" entries that are impossible to get to... so only someone viewing the source code could find them.
I came up with many interesting solutions to puzzles. For example, near the start of the game (assuming you go down that path in the first place) there is a door you have to get some keys for. Why a door needs 5 keys is strange anyway. The player could collect the keys and use them, or if they are silly... pound the keys into a dirt wall to make a ladder. My core philosophy for making individual trees is to have path for each of the four main player archetypes (Bartle). Puzzles for the Spades, difficult platforming tricks for the Diamonds, a dark path for the Clubs and a compelling story (romance or otherwise) for the Hearts.
I'm not a very good writer so this one is on hold, but I'm constantly working on it.
Time Travel Adventure
I never liked adventure games back in the day. Hugo's House of Horrors and Maniac Mansion and so on. But recently I've gained a new appreciation for them. I wanted to make one. In my game I wanted a nice simple main story for the player to complete with a relatively mediocre ending and resolution. Gather/use items from a limited inventory space to resolve situations and progress the story through a number of chapters. Until after you beat the game... when you unlock Chapter Selection. While it may seem simple at first, the player will discover they can take items from later chapters into earlier ones. Even NPC's will react to certain items and carry them into later chapters. This is probably too hard to do though since I wanted to avoid getting into situations where the game becomes unplayable because they can no longer access areas they need items for (like getting a key stuck behind it's very door).
Procrastination is my biggest enemy. I'm very productive once I get going, but I'm rarely going. I think I got a mental problem or something. Maybe there's a medication for procrastination. Heh. Anyway, comments about what projects I should work on or even new projects would be appreciated. As I continue my work I'll upload pictures and demos and so on.
Really I should just get something done... even a Nibbles clone.
Ahh I'll get to it later, Lok
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
My History of Game Development
I have no idea what my first computer was. All I remember is it wasn't like the computers at school which were monochrome green. Mine was monochrome orange. It had a 5.25" Disc drive, but not enough video capabilities to even run Crystal Caves (or was it Caverns?). It had only two games: Bounty Hunter (name the American states and their capitals) and Monopoly (Not bad for ASCII... or ANSI, or whatever).
I wanted to make a game too. All I had to work with was EDIT.EXE, my first "programming" language. Simple batch.bat files to run simple code. My first program? "echo Hello World". Well, it was probably something along the lines of "echo Testing" or "echo BAD COMMAND OR FILE NAME", but the sentiment was there. Later I learned "@echo off" and how to use %n statements and choice strings...
Of course about this time the popular game was Hugo House of Horrors and the stuff I was making couldn't possibly compete with that at the time. It was just a hobby after all.
Later we got our second computer. A Leading Edge Fortiva 5000 for $1500 (Windows 3.1 man, CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY~!!!!). I played some of my favourite games at the time; Castle of the Winds and Excelsior Phase One. I made our first computer upgrade to make the thing able to run Descent... the discovery of UniVBE. I also discovered QBasic.
I spent many years making simple games in QBasic. Most of which are lost now (They're backed up on 5.25", assuming they're intact all I'd need to do is buy a reader). Rock, Paper, Scissors with simple animations, a Bomberman clone... even a simple RPG (largely inspired by the QBasic game Last Fantasy 3, GO DOOMER!). By the time I made my first AI, the N64 was released and I pretty much gave up. I was too far behind the times.
So I played other peoples games for a while. My computer was really getting old. 700MB just wasn't cutting it anymore and even the Pentium 90 was getting old. Diablo was always beyond my reach. Still, I enjoyed Descent 2, Journeyman Project Turbo and the entire Apogee Shareware lineup. When the computer finally died of some unknown partition error I gave up on PC gaming completely and went back to consoles.
Some time shortly after the millennium I played Phantasy Star Online... then I awoke in 2007* I found the gaming world was in ashes. Games lacked the innovation I loved from the old days. I tried getting back into QBasic, but it just wasn't good enough. I dabbled in Visual and C, but I just didn't like it. I finally settled on GameMaker (4 at the time if I remember correctly). I've been "learning" it ever since. And by learning I mean procrastinating.
I never really took it as seriously as I used to. I mostly just played all the free games I could find... a demo here or there. Then I discovered Cave Story. What is this? An indy game that's good? Certainly it couldn't compete against multi-million dollar corporations. Well, I liked it. So I looked up more Indy games and more indy games. Then I noticed something... I've always been indy. While people were playing Doom I was playing Castle of the Winds. While people were playing Duke Nukem 3D I was playing Jumpjet and Slan and Evasive Maneuvers. While people were playing Worms I was still playing Scorched Earth and Clonk (Radikal at the time). At that moment I decided I absolutely must create a notable indy classic.
Of course, it's been 2 years now and I'm still basically where I started. I thought a little history lesson might be insightful. I must get a project done, even one of them.
Goodnight World, Lok.
*Yes, I pretty much spent 7 years non-stop on PSO... multiboxed and everything. The sad part is I've never played it online except for about a week during the open beta of Blue Burst.
I wanted to make a game too. All I had to work with was EDIT.EXE, my first "programming" language. Simple batch.bat files to run simple code. My first program? "echo Hello World". Well, it was probably something along the lines of "echo Testing" or "echo BAD COMMAND OR FILE NAME", but the sentiment was there. Later I learned "@echo off" and how to use %n statements and choice strings...
Of course about this time the popular game was Hugo House of Horrors and the stuff I was making couldn't possibly compete with that at the time. It was just a hobby after all.
Later we got our second computer. A Leading Edge Fortiva 5000 for $1500 (Windows 3.1 man, CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY~!!!!). I played some of my favourite games at the time; Castle of the Winds and Excelsior Phase One. I made our first computer upgrade to make the thing able to run Descent... the discovery of UniVBE. I also discovered QBasic.
I spent many years making simple games in QBasic. Most of which are lost now (They're backed up on 5.25", assuming they're intact all I'd need to do is buy a reader). Rock, Paper, Scissors with simple animations, a Bomberman clone... even a simple RPG (largely inspired by the QBasic game Last Fantasy 3, GO DOOMER!). By the time I made my first AI, the N64 was released and I pretty much gave up. I was too far behind the times.
So I played other peoples games for a while. My computer was really getting old. 700MB just wasn't cutting it anymore and even the Pentium 90 was getting old. Diablo was always beyond my reach. Still, I enjoyed Descent 2, Journeyman Project Turbo and the entire Apogee Shareware lineup. When the computer finally died of some unknown partition error I gave up on PC gaming completely and went back to consoles.
Some time shortly after the millennium I played Phantasy Star Online... then I awoke in 2007* I found the gaming world was in ashes. Games lacked the innovation I loved from the old days. I tried getting back into QBasic, but it just wasn't good enough. I dabbled in Visual and C, but I just didn't like it. I finally settled on GameMaker (4 at the time if I remember correctly). I've been "learning" it ever since. And by learning I mean procrastinating.
I never really took it as seriously as I used to. I mostly just played all the free games I could find... a demo here or there. Then I discovered Cave Story. What is this? An indy game that's good? Certainly it couldn't compete against multi-million dollar corporations. Well, I liked it. So I looked up more Indy games and more indy games. Then I noticed something... I've always been indy. While people were playing Doom I was playing Castle of the Winds. While people were playing Duke Nukem 3D I was playing Jumpjet and Slan and Evasive Maneuvers. While people were playing Worms I was still playing Scorched Earth and Clonk (Radikal at the time). At that moment I decided I absolutely must create a notable indy classic.
Of course, it's been 2 years now and I'm still basically where I started. I thought a little history lesson might be insightful. I must get a project done, even one of them.
Goodnight World, Lok.
*Yes, I pretty much spent 7 years non-stop on PSO... multiboxed and everything. The sad part is I've never played it online except for about a week during the open beta of Blue Burst.
Nov 9, 2010: Start of the GameDev Blog
Hello World
Start of the blog, template junk and whatnot. Checking the layouts and the timestamps and things like that.
Start of the blog, template junk and whatnot. Checking the layouts and the timestamps and things like that.
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