Ahaha, I haven't posted anything for a while now... ^_^;;
As of now I've begun my very last semester of college this week: I'm only taking 6 hours this semester, so hopefully that'll be enough time for me to get the ball rolling with this game! My current target is to finish this game by October 6. Honestly, I'm not particularly good with deadlines, and my hope is to turn this game in to the Indie Game Festival (whose deadline is Oct. 17), so this earlier self-imposed deadline should help me meet the actual deadline!
I'm still working on the editor that'll be used in making the game itself. I have a fairly solid grasp on what the gameplay will be like: once I get the editor done, it'll be a matter of dropping in elements and balancing out gameplay. I'm fairly confident in the gameplay and its representation of the elements of discipline and diplomacy. To be honest, the code has gotten messy, and I've been agonizing over optimizing it. I think what I'll need to do is just reevaluate all of my classes, and then rewrite some of them from scratch again. Hopefully that shouldn't take too long, since I've solved the logic for most of the original classes!
Right now, I am participating in my very first Ludum Dare competition! The premise is, a bunch of crazy people converge online and set themselves on the insane task of individually making a complete game from scratch, including the art and music, within 48 hours! It's also fairly difficult to plan ahead, since a theme is randomly drawn and given at the start of the competition. The theme this time is evolution, which had me nervous at first, since it seemed so labor-intensive. Hmm, I think I have a pretty good idea for a game that I can reasonably craft within the timeframe, though. We'll see!
My idea is to have this crazy damsel that concocts a dungeon full of traps, and places herself at the end! You play the part of this damsel, piecing together the ultimate deathtrap. You then press start, to see a string of eager knights lunge headfirst into the dungeon in an attempt to reach you. Each knight has randomly generated stats: based on what knights make it past a trap, the next line of knights are affected, effectively 'evolving' the knights until one gets the stats needed to make it up to you successfully! There'll be a time constraint, meaning you would not want to make 'the hardest deathtrap possible,' as well as endings based on how awesome your knight-in-shining-armor turned out to be. Hmm, the hardest part will be the knight AI, and the editor for the deathtraps, if I manage to get to that. If I don't, though, I guess I'll just have the traps be randomly generated: I think I will though. The idea shouldn't be too graphics or sound heavy, so I should be able to focus mostly on the code. Wish me luck!
Also, here is a really early prototype of the editor I have now: none of the erase/flood-fill staples are implemented here, and the save is broken in this one: I'd give a link to my current one, but I switched to an AIR app a while ago, meaning you'd have to download and install and all that.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4072122/storage/IceGame2.swf
Basically it's a tile-maker: you use the sliders on the far right to make a color, drag-and-drop the color onto the palette, then draw as you wish on the grid.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Cannes and Resolve
I'm at the Cannes Film Festival right now, in its second week. The internet is really bad at the hotel I am staying, so it's difficult for me to do basic things like check my email, much less blog. Right now I'm just chilling at a French McDonald's for their WiFi. I think it's kind of stingy that you need a receipt to use their restrooms (they even have a security guard that watches to check that you're entering with a receipt!), but at least WiFi is free!
In all honesty, I find it a bit depressing here. Everyone around me is into film and doing their best to network, but since I've sworn to myself that I was devoting myself to game programming now, I find that the festival is no longer relevant to me. It would be a wonderful opportunity for me, were I still animating: not many animators seem to attend this festival, and so all the people I've met have been greatly excited when they learn I animate. I could take this opportunity and expand my options, but the thing is, I don't want to stretch myself thin. I don't want to compromise. The thing that killed my prospects in animation was my compromise of the time and energy I devoted between my programming-centered classes, my premed classes and my animation. If I am entering a field, I want to bring the very best of myself I possibly can. It's the only way I can really become good enough to truly contribute to it. And so, despite the great networking possibilities here, I know I need to stay focused on this new path I am seeking to follow.
I am going to stop giving out my animator business cards. And from now on, I should make it clear that, though I did animate for parts of my director friend's short shown here, I am no pro animator. My last work as an animator will be on my friends' current project, the Jabberwocky, which you can see here: http://www.facebook.com/bewarethejabberwocky. Well, obviously I am going to do all animation in my own personal projects, but apart from that, yeah. This is the last one for me. I regret that I wavered so much when I aspired to be an animator, and I want to make up for it. I am all about video games now.
I have a lot to learn regarding video games. I know a lot about the animation industry: I know what a winning portfolio looks like, I know just how important draftsmanship is, I know what the job market is like, and I can predict with a fair degree of accuracy whether an animated feature will be successful or not. I know how many figure drawing pieces most schools and hirees look for in portfolio, and I know the various types of jobs available within the field itself. But I know nothing about video games. I know nothing about the industry, its literature and the kinds of skills needed. I think, specifically speaking, I would want to program the graphical effects in a game, like water and wind and such, which I think goes under the label of feel engineer, but I'm not sure. I also know that, after I make these 13 element-based games, I want to make educational games and release them for free online, as a way of contributing to the general good. I think if I actually make these 13 games, I'll be pretty good and experienced, yeah? Hopefully I won't be like, in my late 40s when I do finish these games.
As for progress on my current game, hmm, it is a lot slower than I would like it to be. I haven't been able to work on the actual code, because I a) don't have FlashDevelop, the IDE I'm working in, b) I have no internet to look things up and c) I'm a n00b. I wish I was proficient enough to program without having to look everything up, but I'm not: I've a long way to go before I can really call myself a programmer. I have a pretty good idea of how I need to structure everything, though, as well as a good idea of how to design the gameplay itself. So yay! I heard that before actual game developers start programming, they make two kinds of design documents: one for how everything in the game will be laid out, the front end, and one for the actual intricacies of the programming itself. I hope to have things worked out in detail for a level/sprite editor I am going to build into the game. I've also been practicing sprite art, which is a lot harder than I thought! Here are a few conceptual sketches I've done of the main character:
In all honesty, I find it a bit depressing here. Everyone around me is into film and doing their best to network, but since I've sworn to myself that I was devoting myself to game programming now, I find that the festival is no longer relevant to me. It would be a wonderful opportunity for me, were I still animating: not many animators seem to attend this festival, and so all the people I've met have been greatly excited when they learn I animate. I could take this opportunity and expand my options, but the thing is, I don't want to stretch myself thin. I don't want to compromise. The thing that killed my prospects in animation was my compromise of the time and energy I devoted between my programming-centered classes, my premed classes and my animation. If I am entering a field, I want to bring the very best of myself I possibly can. It's the only way I can really become good enough to truly contribute to it. And so, despite the great networking possibilities here, I know I need to stay focused on this new path I am seeking to follow.
I am going to stop giving out my animator business cards. And from now on, I should make it clear that, though I did animate for parts of my director friend's short shown here, I am no pro animator. My last work as an animator will be on my friends' current project, the Jabberwocky, which you can see here: http://www.facebook.com/bewarethejabberwocky. Well, obviously I am going to do all animation in my own personal projects, but apart from that, yeah. This is the last one for me. I regret that I wavered so much when I aspired to be an animator, and I want to make up for it. I am all about video games now.
I have a lot to learn regarding video games. I know a lot about the animation industry: I know what a winning portfolio looks like, I know just how important draftsmanship is, I know what the job market is like, and I can predict with a fair degree of accuracy whether an animated feature will be successful or not. I know how many figure drawing pieces most schools and hirees look for in portfolio, and I know the various types of jobs available within the field itself. But I know nothing about video games. I know nothing about the industry, its literature and the kinds of skills needed. I think, specifically speaking, I would want to program the graphical effects in a game, like water and wind and such, which I think goes under the label of feel engineer, but I'm not sure. I also know that, after I make these 13 element-based games, I want to make educational games and release them for free online, as a way of contributing to the general good. I think if I actually make these 13 games, I'll be pretty good and experienced, yeah? Hopefully I won't be like, in my late 40s when I do finish these games.
As for progress on my current game, hmm, it is a lot slower than I would like it to be. I haven't been able to work on the actual code, because I a) don't have FlashDevelop, the IDE I'm working in, b) I have no internet to look things up and c) I'm a n00b. I wish I was proficient enough to program without having to look everything up, but I'm not: I've a long way to go before I can really call myself a programmer. I have a pretty good idea of how I need to structure everything, though, as well as a good idea of how to design the gameplay itself. So yay! I heard that before actual game developers start programming, they make two kinds of design documents: one for how everything in the game will be laid out, the front end, and one for the actual intricacies of the programming itself. I hope to have things worked out in detail for a level/sprite editor I am going to build into the game. I've also been practicing sprite art, which is a lot harder than I thought! Here are a few conceptual sketches I've done of the main character:
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
DevArt Update!
Link to Updates 1 & 2 from my DeviantArt journal:
I've also decided to go with the idea of setting the game on Mars. You'd be collecting ice and stuff, or something. Inspiration was from this video here:
Update 1: http://fav.me/d4yccms
Update 2: http://fav.me/d4z9he1Also, I've already mentioned this in Update 2, but I'll be in France for the next two weeks. I'm going to try and get stuff done for the game, but I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do. I aim to get something done each day, at least! Even if it's something stupid like throwing white pixels on a black background for space or something.
I've also decided to go with the idea of setting the game on Mars. You'd be collecting ice and stuff, or something. Inspiration was from this video here:
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Elemental Game #1: Ice!
So, I've already said this on my deviantart account, but I've decided to more seriously try my hand at game-making. For a while, since early middle school, I've been set on becoming an animator. Upon entering Georgia Tech, though, my chances of realizing these aspirations seemed increasingly dire. Things took a drastic turn the spring semester of my junior year, though, when I took both a Computer Graphics class and (at long last!) an animation class. I found myself gravitating more to the work in the Computer Graphics class, thanks to the teacher's excellent and engaging lectures, but paid this preference no heed. The next two semesters, I had group projects dedicated to making games, as well as group projects dedicated yet again to making film. In both, I found myself sucked more into the game projects than the film projects, despite the realization of my dreams to be actively animating. It finally hit me near the end of this semester that, I might not want to do animation after all. That, rather, the career path that would make me happier might have been staring me at the face, here at Georgia Tech, after all.
To test this, though, I believe it is important that I successfully make individual projects of my own. Only if I can prove to myself that I have the devotion to pull off such projects will I know for sure that this is the path that is right for me. I know nothing about games: I grew up on mostly educational software, and I've spent the majority of my time getting to know the intricacies of the animation industry. But I know that no other group project has made me happier and more satisfied than the group projects dealing with making games.
I really enjoy setting up constraints for myself and putting an element of chance into the mix, so I've decided that I'll be making thirteen games, based on thirteen elements. I've also designated thirteen virtues, leadership traits, and colors, which I'll draw randomly to get the constraints I must follow in making a game. I also draw the gender randomly, in honor of my game teacher this semester, Professor Pearce. The idea excites me, and a desire to know what I could draw next for my second game is motivation enough to push me to make progress on my current game. Here are my constraints:
Element: Ice
Virtue: Discipline
L.Trait: Diplomacy
Color: Red
Gender: Female
I already have a story and a game mechanic idea in mind, but it occurred to me last night, that I could set the game on Mars! I mean, Mars is red, and it's freezing: it has ice caps, just like Earth! What other possible setting combines the color and element I drew as nicely?! True, that completely obliterates my story, but, it fits the constraints so well! Lol, in all honesty, I need to stop changing things around. Still, if there's anything I've gleaned from my game-loving professors, it is the playability of a game that is paramount, not story, not graphics. I know for sure that the game I'm making will be based in Flixel, since I used it this semester. I have to make sure I start off small: I find them boring, but I'll be basing the mechanic on a traditional RPG. Hmm, I think I'll aim to finish this game by August. Anyways, I'll update on whether I plan on changing the game's story and setting!
To test this, though, I believe it is important that I successfully make individual projects of my own. Only if I can prove to myself that I have the devotion to pull off such projects will I know for sure that this is the path that is right for me. I know nothing about games: I grew up on mostly educational software, and I've spent the majority of my time getting to know the intricacies of the animation industry. But I know that no other group project has made me happier and more satisfied than the group projects dealing with making games.
I really enjoy setting up constraints for myself and putting an element of chance into the mix, so I've decided that I'll be making thirteen games, based on thirteen elements. I've also designated thirteen virtues, leadership traits, and colors, which I'll draw randomly to get the constraints I must follow in making a game. I also draw the gender randomly, in honor of my game teacher this semester, Professor Pearce. The idea excites me, and a desire to know what I could draw next for my second game is motivation enough to push me to make progress on my current game. Here are my constraints:
Element: Ice
Virtue: Discipline
L.Trait: Diplomacy
Color: Red
Gender: Female
I already have a story and a game mechanic idea in mind, but it occurred to me last night, that I could set the game on Mars! I mean, Mars is red, and it's freezing: it has ice caps, just like Earth! What other possible setting combines the color and element I drew as nicely?! True, that completely obliterates my story, but, it fits the constraints so well! Lol, in all honesty, I need to stop changing things around. Still, if there's anything I've gleaned from my game-loving professors, it is the playability of a game that is paramount, not story, not graphics. I know for sure that the game I'm making will be based in Flixel, since I used it this semester. I have to make sure I start off small: I find them boring, but I'll be basing the mechanic on a traditional RPG. Hmm, I think I'll aim to finish this game by August. Anyways, I'll update on whether I plan on changing the game's story and setting!
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