Game Development – The Least Annoying Work Ever

Though I’ve continued the neglect of my blog lately, I can honestly say it’s not due to laziness. This time. Over the past month I’ve put in a lot of hours, and a lot of lines of code, working on a game. I mentioned working on this game a couple of times before, but I felt like talking a little more specifically about things. In the overall picture of working in a small team and just coding a game, I’m absolutely loving this.

One big thing I’m happy to announce is that this will be just the first game coming from our newly forming independent studio. We’re still having discussions about the exact name and a last few details, but I can promise I’ll post more once we have everything registered and a website set up.

As for the game, I’m just one of two programmers on the project, and several other friends (and a few new friends!) are working in other capacities such as design, art, and sound. I am quite happy with how the code is progressing, as the engine and game features are nearing a stable alpha state. Most major pieces of the game play are in place, plus I’ve already learned a ton along the way.

It seems like we’ve only just started getting into the meat of development, but already we’re heading into crunch time. I’m looking ahead a few weeks to where I’m hoping for a demo release, but some things seem impossibly far from done. I’m sure the meetings over the next few weeks will start to show the time crunch coming upon us, but I know we’ll pull through.

I’ll keep the updates coming as things progress, it’s just starting to get exciting!

 

Game Programming – I love this stuff!

I haven’t updated in a while, but this is mostly due to the fact that I’ve been working furiously over the past week on my first mini-game. I am participating in the UReddit Learn Game Programming class taking place on /r/learngameprogramming/, and I’m having a great time. It’s only the second lesson so far, which was to put together the basic elements of a Galaga type shooter. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do going in to the lesson, and so I put in the effort to round out the game into a more or less finished state.

The game is called Crack Shot and is a very basic survival shooter. Kill enemies and collect pickups to score points, survive as long as you can. I’ve listed the game and download on the lovely new My Games page here on my blog, which I hope to continue adding my creations to!

Any thoughts or feedback are welcome!