No Name Games

Last night while some of my classmates were diligently finishing their computer graphics assignments, I was blissfully pissing time away playing a flash game on Kongregate called Sonny. A friend from class started up a conversation on GTalk regarding implementing multiple mouse object selection in GUIs. Digression ensued:

I nominate this guy:

Based on the lives that we live today, society has failed to deliver on many of the promises about the future (now the present) offered by the cultural media from the late 80s to early 90s. These promises included flying cars, cryo-preservation and reanimation, and possibly cohabitance with alien life forms. In fact, the only real revolutionary piece of technology between then and now is what we call the Internet…which wasn’t even close to what had been predicted. Although the projections were mostly disappointing, there is still hope!:

Earlier today, I met with Andy and Joe to discuss game design/development ideas at a Starbucks in Sacramento. I don’t normally like being That Guy who buys a coffee for $1.89 and decides that two dollars is a reasonable price of entitlement for your very own corner office at a coffee shop, but I got over it. Boy I’m glad I did since I had the pleasure to sit by a woman who was having a deep and involved conversation with her invisible friend.

Meanwhile ideas were formed, pictures were drawn, caffeine was consumed. Some of the more serious talk was about the use of non-traditional perspectives in 2D games. Some of the wackier ideas that were thrown on the table included steam-punk weapon-wielding ninja heroes fighting for humanity’s existence against an army of sentient future robots…yanno, since it’d be foolish to trust anything with a computer at that point.

Sometimes the hardest part about making a game is getting started. Have an idea for a great game? Awesome, that’s a great first step! Cool, let’s figure out the scope. We’re gonna need sprite sheets for animations, background and miscellaneous art, music, sound, a tailored game engine mostly from scratch, code up the game, make map and other editors, test, debug, refine/tune, and then spend countless hours on feature creep and polish. Got an idea for a great game that can be made within a reasonable time…say like 2 years or less? That’s a bit tougher to do. As one of my game dev friends likes to say, “embrace futility” and you’re well on your way down the road of game development!

In other news, Andy whipped up some possible concept art.

Made by Andy. Check out his site www.rezenstudio.com.

-GD

I can’t think of a more relaxing gaming experience.

Being avid video gamers ourselves, Joe and I had a discussion the other day about good video games that we had played during the recent “next gen” era of console and PC games.  The topic of Bioshock was broached.  The game looked awesome, it had a unique upgrade system rooted in genetic biology, and it had a unique and super-immersive atmosphere.  By all accounts I should have loved the game, but I did not love it.  Like a gorgeous model with a cleft-hoof for a foot, I just could not get past one aspect of the game–”hacking.”

Hacking in the game was cute at first, if not nostalgic.  It brought back memories of my old school days of gaming in the early 1990s when the Sega Genesis and the 8-bit NES were competing for dominance.  I could not tell you the number of hours I spent at my neighbor’s house helping Sonic and his sassy red sneakers run through mysterious landforms shaped like 360 loops and slide down infinite water labyrinths in order to save some rabbits and penguins or some shit.  These were the formative years of a young gamer nerd’s life when glorious Windows 3.1 games and their MIDI sound effects were alive and strong.  SkiFree, JezzBall, Chip’s Challenge, and Pipe Dream…ahh yes, Pipe Dream.  Apparently someone at Boston2K also liked Pipe Dream.  Liked it enough to remake the game and cast it as THE mini-game that you played when you were trying to hack an electronic device. every. single. time.  I stuck with it for a while hoping for the best; hoping that they would eventually change the minigame after level 1.  I was wrong.  If I wanted to play freakin’ pipe dream, I would go fire up my Intel 486, hit the turbo button and go to town.  Not play it on my circa 2007-2008 dual core PC with an 8800GTS graphics card.

And that’s why I never got past level 2 of Bioshock.  What otherwise good games have you readers played that had something wrong about it that you could simply not get past but left you saying “what the hoof?”

-GD

After many man hours, we’ve finally finished our first game/glorified demo.  Some of my roles on this project include:

1. General development

2. Collision detection

3. Token Asian

4. Minigame gameplay development

5. Catalyst for awesome

6. Math guy. (see #3)

7. Programmer artist (manipulation and desecration of Joey’s beautiful art assets)

Astromines was intended to be a low-key development test project to see how our new team worked with each other and to see what roles people were best at and I’d say that it turned out a couple of shades more awesome than I had expected going in.  Now it’s time to start something new and I won’t rest until I’ve successfully made each one of you shit your pants with fun…or until I get a real job.