game : found

I started out building a test for one game. There was this one simple mechanic, mixing primary colours to match a another "enemy" colour. There was a greater game idea that used this mechanic in various ways. That was the direction I was heading.

That is not the game I'm making.

Writers always say that their characters and stories tell them what they need to write. This word comes after that one because that is what this character would say or do. The writers task then, is to continue, slavishly  putting one word after another and prune the result into a readable, hopefully harmonious, form.

I have some experience with that mindset creating commercial art and design. There are requirements that are set forth by the client, but after that you enter into the grey area. Does this line meet that edge in an appropriate and harmonious way. Do those colours jibe with that form. There is almost always a point in this journey where I know that the piece could stand as it is. It does it's job and isn't displeasing to look at.
But.
This is that moment for me. If I listen, the piece will tell me what it needs. Something added, something removed, a slight or gross adjustment. The difficulty is never figuring out what the piece needs, the difficult part is listening. It's easy to put your head down and blindly work, "zug zug" fashion, but stopping to listen, that's tough.

If you thought that maybe I went all artsy fartsy there, this is the kicker.

For me, that moment almost always happens when I'm on the toilet.

Maybe it has something to do with having my privates exposed, or having my tract feel relaxed and comfortable, but a problem I have been working on will coalesce from all the tiny bits and pieces in my head in such a striking and clear way that there has to be a physiological reason for it. This happened with such frequency that coworkers brought it to my attention. After coming out of the washroom and immediately blurting "I figured it out!", they posited that I might be doing something abnormal  in there.

And it went that I entered the washroom with a head swimming with ideas that could work in some vague fashion, and I left with a crystal clear idea of the game that I was going to make. Actually it was the game that was always there, telling me to create it. I just need to drop my pants to hear it.

time for a new checklist

Months ago I wrote a checklist. I did a breakdown of my short and long term to do's. When I went to look them over today I found that I had done them. all of them.

umm... I sort of didn't expect that.

The checklist was only for the proof of concept demo... basically could I make some shit move around the screen in response to input. could I do it in less than an hour a day, while learning the tools and C#... in that same hour. I suppose the answer was, yes, yes I could. Dullard as I might be, I managed it.

so, what now. now the tough part. can I take this proof of concept and turn it into a game.
I have started on version 3 of the interface, which includes all the required elements for versus and single player modes. I have my new checklist going that includes all the gamey elements, like stats and a parser for moving all the gamey data to and from some xml files. Some character and enemy designs... really the part I enjoy most.

I think the biggest change in the near future will be moving the colour mixing model from the overly simplistic wheel to something a bit more fluid. I'll still be using a red, yellow, blue, colour model, which, yes I know, isn't really accurate in any study of colour theory, but it is easy to wrap your head around. Sure, you have your rgb, cmyk, lab, and whatever is in your pantone fandeck, but honestly, I may have fudged the gamut, but everyone knows that red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, and blue and red make purple (they really don't but if you don't tell, I won't).

so here's to hoping that in a few months you might be able to load up the newest build and fight a monster... with colour!

also, if you've read this far, what else would you be interested in reading... or seeing. concept art? design docs? code? let me know, maybe I'll put in a post.

New Graphics

New Graphics!

Yay!

'cept they are only marginally better than the old graphics, you might say.

you would be right. but the groundwork is there for them to improve a bit at a time now. The old version had too many problems with pivot locations and ambiguous rotation angles. What was very broken is now less broken.

or you might say I still don't know what's going on here.

you are in good company. I have an idea where this is headed and it still looks like thick nonsense soup sometimes.

or you could even ask, is this really even a game? it doesn't seem... you know .... fun.

probably isn't. on both counts. I have spent the last month or so gutting out the junk and replacing it with the bones of an actual game.

So here is my problem. I work on this game for maybe an hour or so a day, on average. If I am coding I can usually make decent use of that time... if I am doing anything graphics related, forgetaboutit. I have the ability to pour a ton of time into anything graphics. 3D, 2D, video ... whatever. Now, I've done graphics work under deadline. Quite a lot of it, and some real bastard hard deadlines too. That I can do. There is an end that you are trying to achieve. As soon as I leave that focused mentality and give in to the meandering undulations of "concept development" I might be better off just shutting down the PC and staring at the wall. I could sit in front of photoshop or maya for days, feverishly grinding away, and have jack all to show for my time by the end. I'm honestly doubt that it is a problem unique to me. Maybe I should just try to work on any art on this project in short focused bursts, rather than, once again, rebuilding the entire interface from scratch.

learning

So my UI design was lousy. really really lousy.

but that is A-OK.

See, the real purpose of doing this game... and writing this blog, is just to learn.

I set about the task of creating a throw away game... something that I would build to learn the tools, learn some coding, just simply get something built. Now if it turns out the game is any fun, then I would dive right in and finish the thing, but this will not likely be the case. This game will probably always suck. that is A-OK too.

I am rebuilding the game graphics, and therefore the entire UI to make everything a bit more clear... not a ton, but a bit.

This is the fourth full go round on the graphics, not including minor tweaks and additions. This is also the third time I have programmed it. The game started out on the xna framework and then I quickly moved to the unity engine.... much better. I started coding it in javascript and then moved over to C#.... also much better. Every time I learn more and more about the nuts and bolts. Occasionally I learn something about actual game design, but that seems to be a long term education kind of thing.

In redoing the graphics I'm trying to learn how to create a more clear and usable UI, while resisting the artist tendency to try to build "finished" assets.

Of course all this learning is difficult when you are, occasionally, as profoundly stupid as I can be.

but that is A-OK.

iteration

I put up a new build a bit ago, but you probably won't notice any differences. All th changes are under the hood. I'm rooting through and cleaning up code as I go. Bad shit goes out and slightly improved shit goes in.

This is all part of the iterative process.

Also being iterated, are all the graphics. The final look will hopefully be somewhere between story book paintings and slick art deco design. Figure that out... I haven't.

At the moment I am relearning some art tools that I used to be quite proficient at. I always spend so long between using certain tools that I almost always forget some of the most basic things about them. Every time that happens, it always reinforces this one theory in my brain. I think that a person can become an expert on a topic or at some skill, extremely quickly. Most individual skills can be picked up and developed in a matter of months, or even weeks. If you work on them continually for 1 or 2 years, you will most likely be an expert. Becoming a master will probably take the rest of your life, but becoming an expert... thats a pretty quick.

Only thing is, I don't think most people see it that way. I've had so many wildly different jobs in a fairly short period of time, that I have been forced to pick up new skills, become and expert in some, and then drop them to pick up an entirely new set of skills. Most of these skills are either so encrusted with rust that it would take a few weeks to get back up to speed, or they have been flat out forgotten.

Right now I'm learning to program in C#. If I kept at it, in a few years I would probably be an expert in whatever I was programming. That's not me being cocky, I think it really is just a matter of time and exposure to the task. If you ask me right now, I'm really not sure if I'll keep at it or not. I would definitely rather steer more heavily toward the art. Right now, I think I'll go reacquaint myself with some tools I used to be an expert in.

cheat added

so you want to be a cheater, and cheat.

I added a little reset button there in the bottom right. That button resets the color gauges and lets you keep messing around with the colors without having to restart when you run out.

cheater

I put that button in there for testing purposes, while I put in the code that lets you earn back color for making a close match. I will also be adding a cumulative score.

some better graphics and animated bits are in the works too. Soon it will be much nicer to look at, while you wonder why it isn't any fun.

new build and remembering activision

I put up a new build. I fixed some of the little quirks and pretty much moved everything over to mouse control. I added a little glow mouseover effect that I am not at all happy with yet... but what the hell, I'm gonna rip all the art out pretty soon anyway.

I've been reading this history of video games book... for the third time. I remembered something I thought I would jot down here. I got to the part about the founding of Activision... the company pulls in the GDP of a mid sized country now, so it's kind of fun to read about this company started by a hand full of dudes.

One day I was playing Sky Jinx on the old Coleco Gemini (a knock off of the atari 2600) and I remember reading in the manual that it was created by Bob Whitehead....

well holy crap

I knew on some level that people actually made these games, but to my feeble brain, it may as well have been sorcery. This dude. This fairly normal looking guy, he made the game I was playing. Didn't look like a sorcerer.... just a guy.

I spent a lot of school bus rides drawing game levels on foolscap after that.

Seems to me, I just never stopped doing that. Doubt that I ever will.