Some Links for Everyone!

Hello hello! Sorry I'm a day late! Not much has been happening in the realm of game design for me this week, so I wanted to use this week's post to give back some knowledge to you folks! Unfortunately, the article I was going to write is not done just yet, so I decided I would post some links to articles that have helped me out a lot instead! Hopefully these links can help you all out too :)

I'm gonna sort these links into a few categories. In keeping with the theme of the blog, all links will focus on game development in some fashion, particularly indie development. Several of these links go to articles on Gamasutra.com, which you probably should bookmark, if you haven't already. It's the premier source of information for game developers of all stripes.

Game Design

Mark Overmars' 'Designing Good Games' - This paper was written by Mark Overmars, who was the original creator of the Game Maker software. In it, he discusses good practices for designing games. It's particularly interesting for its strict definition of what a 'video game' actually is (Sim City would not be a game, by its standards, for instance). This was one of the first pieces I ever read about game design, so its near and dear to my heart :)

Jon Jones's gamepitches.com site - This is a great resource for finding GDDs and other design assets from game studios throughout history. The site has tons of reference material for your own design work (especially if you are being formal about it). Check out the early design document for Grand Theft Auto (at the time called Race n' Chase), for instance. I highly recommend this site.

Assets

Jason Yu's 'An Examination of Leitmotifs and Their Use to Shape Narrative in UNDERTALE' - The asset section pretty much exists just for these articles :) This is an excellent 2-part series about the construction of the soundtrack of Undertale, written from the perspective of a classically trained musician (but related through language that anyone can understand). I personally started looking at my own crappy little music pieces through a whole new lens after I read these articles. I think anybody who makes their own game music will benefit from what Yu has to say here.

Programming

Pete Shinners' Line by Line Chimp Example - I've already mentioned this on the blog, but it bears notice here, as well. This is the ultimate one-stop crash-course in Pygame by the creator of Pygame himself, Pete Shinners. It assumes a basic knowledge of Python. If you want to get involved in making games with Pygame (which I wholeheartedly recommend), this is the starting point.

Lars Doucet's 'Flash is Dead, Long Live OpenFL!' - Haxe is one of the most interesting programming languages available right now, and this article by the creator of Defender's Quest offers a great, enthusiastic look at the advantages and disadvantages of using it. It is mainly written for those who have been developing in Flash, but even if you've never written a line of Action Script (I sure haven't), this article has a great deal of good info. Read it, and then get to making great cross-platform games with haxe! :)

The Games Business

David Galindo's 'How Much Do Indie PC Devs Make, Anyways?' series - This frank look at making it in the indie games business, presented by David Galindo of Cook, Serve, Delicious! fame, offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at indie financing. The author honestly looks at his successes and failures during his quest to make it in the business. Highly recommended. Should be required reading for those who want to be independent game developers.

Tanya X. Short's 'The Secret to Scrappiness' - This is a great article that is equal parts inspiration and sound advice. Its all about finding your own way to survive in the games ecosystem. Short talks about the ways she had to get creative in order to carve out a place for her company in a world of low discoverability and information overload. Read the whole article, it is definitely worth it.

Independent Developer Resources

J. Kyle Pittman's 'Booth Hacks' series - In this series, J. Kyle Pittman covers an under-discussed detail of marketing your game that is crucial to indie devs - setting up a booth at conventions. This is a very specific set of articles, but they're just what someone like me (who has never even been to a con and who fears the idea of running a booth there with passionate fervor) probably needs to read. Check it out!

Jeff Vogel's entire blog -  I honestly probably don't need to direct my readers to Vogel's work, but I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention the godfather of all indie devs, on the off chance that you haven't heard of him :) Just about every article on there is loaded with wisdom, even if some are outdated by this point. I recommend just browsing through the archives and reading what jumps out at you. Jeff Vogel has produced a lot of content, so there's surely something there that will help you.


There ya go! A few quality links from across the web that I've come into contact with in my time :) There are lots more articles that I've read that have helped me, but that I didn't include for one reason or other (almost always that I forgot the name and couldn't find it :/ ). I hope you all get something out of these links!

See you later!

Still Kickin'

Hey all, just checking in to let you all know that I'm still at it. I have been pretty busy with a few things related to game development (namely, learning a new programming language), but all in all not much has changed. This is just gonna be a quick post to let you all know I'm still around :)

I have been making plans lately for the future of my game development endeavors. One thing that I definitely want to do over the course of next year (my first year post-college) is to try and get a game out of commercial quality that I can sell for money. I have actually been developing a GDD, but all details are unfortunately bound for the future. Just have to wait and see what I come up with!

That about does it. One more thing, I finally broke down and got a Facebook page! Here it is! I friend pretty much everybody, but its also completely barren for the time being :)

So long for now! See you all next week!!

One Hour Game Jam Complete, RUNNERMAN Released!

Hi, hello, how are ya? Well, I guess I'm doing fine. By the way, I completed the One Hour Game Jam today! Yep, that's right, I made a game from (pretty much) scratch in exactly an hour (I was racing the clock at the end!) and it is now playable online! Check it out below :)

 

Its beautiful! No, wait, the other one. Hideous.

This is RUNNERMAN, a very VERY simple and bare-bones game that I made using python and pygame today between 3:00 PM and 4:00 PM. You can download and play it here. You start running by pressing the Right Cursor button, and jump while running by pressing the Up Cursor Button. The goal is simply to jump high. There's not much to it :P

The One Hour Game Jam was a lot of fun, but it was very challenging. It was my first game jam ever, so there's that as well! I liked it though, and even though I'm not exactly in love with what I was able to produce, I would definitely do it again! Next time, though, I'll use something that allows me to produce results faster. PICO-8 in particular looks interesting, and several One Hour Game Jam participants use it. Maybe I should give it a shot too :)

This game will serve as my #1GAM entry for July, and I'll get around to putting it on the site in a little bit.

That about does it for this week! If you play this bad boy, let me know how much you hate it in the comments! :D

So long!

Games on the Menu #2

Hello hello everyone! I'm back again, but I don't really have too much to say regarding game development. I'll have a bit about that at the bottom of the article, but first, I thought this would be a great chance to talk again about the games I'm currently playing! I did this once before back in April, and I'm playing some different stuff now, so I figured I should update you all :)

As I said back then, I'm no professional reviewer, and I've kinda decided that I'm not really so much reviewing these games as I am trying to describe what I like about them and why you, the reader, might want to check them out. After all, I'm not going to play games I don't like for long periods of time, and these are all games I play regularly, which means that any "review" I might do would be pretty pointless since there's no chance of me saying the game is bad :P

Anyway, that aside, let's move on!

THE CROOKED MAN

FREE HUGS!

The Crooked Man is a horror/exploration game by Japanese indie developer Uri, who created it using the WOLF RPG Editor (which is kind of like RPG Maker). I love RPG Maker horror games (Ao Oni being far and away my favorite), so I had been meaning to try this out for a long time. I finally got around to playing it the other day, and it's pretty cool! I won't spoil anything, but safe to say, if you are into horror games, check it out. It's not really SUPER scary, but it's pretty compelling and interesting, and the monster is creepy. I'd probably have already beaten it by this point, but I keep forgetting to save for an hour or better at a time, and then dying, thus losing lots of progress. Always remember to save, kids!

COBRA TRIANGLE

Now all that's missing is David Wise's awesome soundtrack!

Not too long ago, I busted out my NES for the first time in over a year, and had a look through the games I had to play. I had several that I had never actually tried (I had been given several cartridges a while ago, and wasn't playing the NES at the time). One that caught my eye was this early Rare title, Cobra Triangle. I gave it a shot, and I'm glad I did! Cobra Triangle is an isometric action game with shooting/racing elements. You pilot a speed boat through various levels and try to accomplish different tasks while watching the clock and attempting to avoid damage. It's very fun, and each of the levels is unique and well-designed. It is also SOOOO HARD. This game will whoop your rear end every time you try to play it, and then some :) It's very good though, and as long are you aren't put off by the difficulty in other classic games (Cobra Triangle is hard, but not the hardest on the NES and definitely not the hardest ever), give it play or two. I consider it to be an underrated title, along with some of my other NES favorites like Section Z and Legend of Kage.

BASTION

Did I mention I'm behind the curve? Yeah, well, I am.

Bastion is an action adventure game by Supergiant that was released way back in 2011 for Xbox Live Arcade. I remember seeing it there, back in the days of 360 yore, but I never tried it (I was too busy trying all those atrocious Minecraft knock-offs that were in the Indie Game section of Xbox Live). I finally got this game a few weeks ago on Steam, and I like it so far. The game looks beautiful, of course, and it makes for an engaging dungeon-crawler-esque game. I like the customization and upgrade options. It's a pretty good game all around.


So, that will about do it for this week's games :) But before I go...


So, here's my plan for #1GAM this month: I want to take part in a game jam! :D I've never actually done one before, but after having gotten some practice under my belt, I feel compelled to finally give jamming a chance. I want to take part in the LudumDare, but that isn't until the end of next month, so I've decided that instead I'll go for the One Hour Game Jam! 


For those unfamiliar, the One Hour Game Jam is, just like its name implies, a game jam that lasts for exactly one hour, held every Saturday. At the start of the hour, a theme is announced, and the participants must turn in a complete (though almost certainly microscopically small) game after just 60 minute. This is a pretty extreme challenge to undertake, but I have a decent backlog of code that I can shape to fit any game I'm making. I observed the action this past week, and I'm looking forward to participating myself, either this coming Saturday or the next. Stay tuned!


Well, that should about do it for today. See you around! Remember to save your games!!