Happy 2012!
Tue, 17 January, 2012 - 15:15:15
A belated happy new year!
I'm hoping to be a little more prolific this year. Last year I only completed one game (Thirty!) so that shouldnt be too hard to top. As mentioned before, with so many games half finished, if I can make time I should be able to see a lot of them through to completion.
Finding that time might be difficult however as I'm getting married this year and have so much to sort out! Also, if I'm honest, a fair bit of my time right now is being taken up playing the awesome Skyward Sword. As mentioned in my top 5 games post I'm a huge Zelda fanboy so it will come as no surprise that I'm loving the game.
Another great game that I mentioned in the same post was XCOM:Enemy Unknown. A remake has been anounced for the end of the year. Some great screenshots here. Wonder if my five year old box will run it!
Also, this week, Lee Brimelow posted a couple of video tutorials about creating Finite State Machines for controlling the flow of your games. As a user of Flixel and its FlxState functions, I have become used to using states to control games. This tutorial provides a neat way of setting an FSM up for yourself and your non Flixel games.
Ludum Dare
Mon, 19 December, 2011 - 10:40:12
After seeing what people had achieved during Ludum Dare 21 I decided that I would definitely enter the next competition. Ludum Dare 22 was held this weekend (16th - 18th december) and despite my best intentions I just didn't have time to produce anything. I had a work Christmas party on friday night, a friends birthday on Saturday and more friends round for a pre-christmas dinner on Sunday. I should count myself lucky that I have an active social life but I was a little dissapointed that I didnt get to participate. Ludum Dare 23 will be in a few months time, but with my wedding fast approaching I may miss that as well!
On the plus side, I have started to trawl through the 700+ entries and there is some inspiring stuff. Not least of which in notch's minicraft. If I didnt know he streamed its development live I'm not sure I'd believe that it was created in 48 hours! Its really interesting to see what can be achieved in a short space of time. As has been said before, a game may take a long time to build and polish but making the "toy", the essential mechanic of the game, can be done relatively quickly. With that prototype you can quickly tell whether the game is fun or not. That is what I will take away from the competition as a "spectator".
How successful the 700 entries are remains to be seen. Games are rated only by fellow participants which makes sense. Only those who have also spent the last 48 hours staring at a screen, chasing out bugs and avoiding sleep will truly be able to appreciate the effort that will have gone into each game.
My top 5 games!
Fri, 25 November, 2011 - 15:49:11
Just a few days ago, a colleague asked me what my top 5 games of all time were. I managed to think of three off the top of my head but I found I couldn't decide on a fourth of fifth. I sat down with paper and pen and listed all the great games I really loved playing. I came up with a list of 21 games! After agonising over the list I eventually managed to trim it down...
So, if you'll forgive the horrendous self indulgence, here are my top 5 games of all time!
5. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64)
The first time I played on an N64 was when a friend at school won one on a radio competition. His mum was worried at how much time he was spending on it (we were supposed to be studying for our A levels) so he leant it to me with all the games for a weekend. I was initially disappointed that he didnt have rogue squadron but I soon got over that, playing Goldeneye almost solidly for the entire weekend until it hurt to blink. Years later when working at GAME, the GameCube was soon to be released and the N64 was well past its peak and I managed to buy one for just 2 pounds (with the expansion pack). I then picked up Rogue Squadron for 4 pounds and finally got to play it. It was worth the wait. A game that perfectly captured the feel of the Star Wars movies. Whether you were dogfighting TIE fighters above Mos-Eisley or taking down AT-ATs it was just great fun. I would play the same levels over and over to try and earn the gold medals. I even got into playing the whole game in cockpit view! I didnt have to wait long for a great sequel. A few months later the GameCube was released with Rogue Leader. Rogue Leader 2 however... was pants.
4. Advance Wars (GBA)
I bought my GBA and a copy of Advance Wars when I first worked for GAME at university. Between trading in old games at preferential rates and my staff discount I got a hell of a bargain. Advance Wars is like a cross between Chess and Command and Conquer. Its pure strategy and had a perfect difficulty level. When I wasn't studying or working I was playing this game. I would carry it in my bag at all times and whenever I had spare time I would have a battle. Its one of the few games that I could play for two hours, lose and not be annoyed. It was another great value for money title. Once you had completed the campaign there were dozens of standalone battles to work through, not to mention a map editor in which you could create your own.
3. UFO: Enemy Unknown (PC)
I picked up this game for 4.99 on the Sold Out range and it proved to be huge value for money. My family had a PC that was slow and dated and I used to spend ages searching through the game stores for games that would run on it. It was part turn based strategy game, part rpg. The game built up like a movie, starting with your first faltering steps into investigating Alien attacks, trying to work out why they were attacking and researching their technology. You could name all of your soldiers and choose how to arm and armour them, making some medics, some scouts and some heavies, but all under YOUR control. I of course named the first soldier after myself! All of the others were given the names of friends. This made keeping them alive during the turn based strategy sections all the more important. Losing a player towards the end after you knew they had been with your team since the beginning was actually gutting. One of my favourite features was that you could design the layout of your base and then later, when it was attacked by aliens, you got to defend it as you had laid it out. It took me a few months of playing on and off but eventually I found the key piece of information, the location of the enemy base on mars! The climax of the game was destroying the mother brain of the alien base and guess who fired the fatal shots... the player named after me!
2. The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past (SNES)
A link to the past was one of the first games I bought for the SNES. It blew my 15 year old mind. I had never played such an enjoyable and immersive game before. It took me a month to complete and truly felt like an epic quest. As it was the first Zelda game I played, everything was new. Figuring out the puzzles, conquering dungeons and picking up clues was hugely enjoyable but I particularly loved the feeling of going off the path of the game and just spending a few hours exploring hyrule. Finding an item or an extra heart container that I knew many players might have missed was hugely satisfying. The music alone brings back great memories. I recently attended the Zelda 25th anniversary symphony and when they played the fairy fountain theme which played on the title screen, I got a huge wave of nostalgia.
1. Battlefield 1942 (PC)
I have never before and will probably never again dedicated so much of my time to a game. Battlefield 1942 came into my life at a time when my life was completely carefree. I was on my university placement year working an 8am to 4pm job. I lived in a ridiculously cheap student house with 1GB (so fast!) broadband and when I wasnt at work or out living the student life I was playing. I hadnt played an online game before and I was absolutely hooked. Every evening after work and every weekend morning for hours I would pwn n00bs! I joined a clan and posted on messageboards, something I havent done for any other game. Cooperative gameplay with team mates was as enjoyable as lone wolfing with a sniper rifle and sneaking behind enemy lines. I particularly like flying around the maps in a spitfire or corsair, strafing and bombing ground targets and dogfighting for control of the skies. The rest of the time I would play as an engineer. I loved the accuracy of the old bolt action rifle! Some of my greatest gaming moments came from this game. Firing a naval gun at a spawn point just as an entire team spawned there on a 64 player server, making a last stand with three other players against an entire team and having an epic battle for highest score with an engineer on the other team. Later I played Battlefield vietnam and Battlefield 2, but as good as they were they werent as fun as bf1942. Who knows, perhaps I'll give Battlefield 3 a go.
And the ones that didn't make the top 5?
Broken Sword, Worms, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, SSX:Tricky, Soul Calibur, Final Fantasy IX, Goldeneye, Jet Set Radio, Metal Gear Solid, Spiderman 2, Battlefield 2, Left 4 Dead, Medal of Honor (PS1), Killzone, Halo and NBA Street Volume 2.
Whats next?
Thu, 13 October, 2011 - 11:31:24
Its been a while since I posted on the blog so I though I would do an update!
Thirty! proved to be very popular and generated a lot of traffic for the site. I originally posted it on Newgrounds as that was where I sourced the music. It recieved a respectable score of 3.35 before it dissapeared into the depths of the portal! I then posted it on facebook and then on b3ta where I was lucky enough to make it into the newsletter which is wear most of the traffic came from. It still gets a handful of visitors most days though, some via stumbleupon.
I was really pleased with the reception that the game got and after toying with the idea of creating an app for my next project I have decided to create a full flash game using flixel. So far I have been planning out the game on paper (learning from previous lessons of rushing headlong into development). I will update the blog with my progress and will keep the community updated via twitter.
Also, its worth reading this article and the others in the series to see the sort of incentives that Flash game development now carries.
Time to crack on!
Friendly URLs
Mon, 22 August, 2011 - 9:49:25
As mentioned in previous posts, I have recently finished working on a multilingual website for a colleague. The website was created using ModX revolution. At the start of the project I would have preferred to use ExpressionEngine, but EE is not free for commercial purposes and paying for a CMS was not an option. The process of creating a new website from scratch and using a new (to me) CMS was both challenging and rewarding. One of the biggest challenges was making the site multilingual. This would require a dynamic approach as I didnt want to have to create three templates for every page. Luckily there are some great developers out there supporting ModX and I found Babel, an add on that did exactly what I wanted. Babel makes it easy for non technical users to add content in multiple languages.
The secondary problem was that I wanted sensible "friendly" URLs. With some help from google and some tinkering with babel and the .htaccess file, I was able to achieve what we wanted. A URL structure that made sense and appeared in the relevant language. This has the advantage of readability and helps the user understand where in the site they are. This also has benefits regarding Search Engine Optimisation as the site's default language is Italian and we wanted Italian google to pick it up. English URLs would not have been preferable.
On finishing the website with its pretty URL structure, I returned to my own site and looked at the mess in the URL bar through new eyes. Individual posts were displayed by id number rather than title and all URLs had an unsightly "index.php?" sitting in the middle.
Luckily EE is well documented and with the new confidence I had gained, I was easily able to modify the .htaccess file to hide the "index.php?". I also realised that the tag I had used for all of the links within the site used the "entry_id_path" tag rather than the "url_title_path". With these two changes made... Behold! Pretty URLs!
Thirty!
Platformer
If pressing x doesnt work, click the game first!
This game was made to celebrate my turning 30 and demonstrates how i felt about!
It is a simple one level platform game in which you have to reach the goal before you get caught.
It was made using flashdevelop and flixel v2.43. Although its the first flixel based game I have posted, it is not my first. I had done a lot of work on another game and was able to reuse many of the classes to make this game in a relatively quick timeframe. The map was created using the flan tilemap editor.
Flixel is a fantastic library that makes a lot of things very easy to do. For anything a bit trickier there always seems to be someone from the flixel community who can provide a solution.
For the first time I have used music in the game. This was sourced from the newgrounds audio portal and all of the music is credited at the end of the game.
I had a lot of fun creating this game, mainly i think because the gameplay is so simple. This gave me time to focus on polishing the look and feel.
Hope you enjoy it!
EDIT: A few people have told me the game is too hard, so I've upped the sprite's acceleration so its a bit more forgiving!
Derezzed Yan!
Mon, 01 August, 2011 - 8:01:19
Its been a while since I posted so thought I would update what Ive been up to.
A lot of my spare time has been taken up developing a multi language website in Modx Revolution. Its been a great learning experience and actually really fun, giving that buzz I get from making things work!
Theres nothing like previewing your changes and realising youve nailed it!
Other than that I have continued to finish off the flixel game I have been working on and that is really close. Also, just because I didnt feel like two projects was enough I have been working on a little something to mark my impending 30th birthday! Below is a sneak peak at the main sprite (me).
Terry Paton
Fri, 24 June, 2011 - 8:59:28
Check out this link for an interesting video from Adobe. Its an interview with Indie games developer Terry Paton who discusses his work and the Flash community. I would love to get to a point where I could just create Flash games for a living but I have a long way to go.
Its my game I'll do what I want!
Mon, 13 June, 2011 - 8:40:29
Ive been cracking away at the little platform game I have been making in flixel and its been great fun. The coding is all done now and its just a matter of coming up with a game world layout and polishing up the graphics. Its been a really valuable learning process but as wonderful as flixel is, there have been a few frustrations. For example ladders. I had little ladders throughout the game. I wanted my sprite to climb ladders to get up to higher parts of the level. There were so many barriers to getting it to work in a way I was happy. After struggling with it for a couple of hours a day for a week, tweaking things, I finally realised I wasnt happy with how it was working. Then a revelation. Why do I need ladders? Mario didnt have ladders. So the ladders are out and are easily replaced by a stack of boxes or a moving platform.
The old phrase "too close to the coal face" sprang to mind. Its difficult sometimes when you get so involved in a project to remember that its your own rules that are tying you down. It was my decision to have ladders. As soon as I realised this it felt like a weight off my shoulders. The project was starting to stagnate a little. Instead of the fun I had been having earlier on, I found I wasnt looking forward to working on the game. With the ladder problem removed, I'm again looking forward to making progress. If only I could control the real world so easily!
Quick catch up!
Thu, 19 May, 2011 - 13:41:44
Its been a while since I posted something, so what have I been up to? As mentioned a while go, I have been working on a website for a colleague. The amount of work involved has inevitably grown from a three page static site to 10 updateable pages. As my beloved expression is not free for commercial use and too expensive for the clients budget, I had to do some research for an alternative. I chose ModX eventually and after a frustrating few days getting used to it managed to get it doing what I wanted. The site is almost finished and will soon be expanded into two more languages. As a bonus I also picked up a small job updating a Flash website.
But what about the games?!
The last game I was working on was a side scroller in Flixel. I had big ideas for this game but I think I need to reign them in a little. The game is almost finished so I'm going to make a lst concerted effort to get it done. Of course the aforementioned website has to take priority! Once that is done my next project will involve ressurecting a game project I shelved some time ago and converting it into a game for the iPhone. I hope to update soon!