On Eurogamer and Visiting 22Cans

Some of you may be aware that I went to Eurogamer on Thursday and then went to visit everyone at 22Cans on Friday before coming home.

Eurogamer was pretty good. It was the very first gaming convention that I have ever attended and so I was pretty excited about being there. The vast majority of the day was spent chatting with my fellow students and the tutors at the Train2Game room in the press area of the Industry Fair. I learned quite a bit and got some great feedback on the game I am currently designing.

The games on show weren't very exciting, in my opinion. The triple A games were mostly cookie cutter games (e.g. "Football Game 14" and "Racing Game 6" and "Go Kill People 7"), which is great for the fanboys/girls but extremely boring and samey and not at all exciting. The vast majority of the interesting games were in the indie area. Sir You Are Being Hunted, Off Grid, Dream and Murdered Soul Suspect were the three games which piqued my interest the most in the entire convention.

I also had a nice chat with the people at SpecialEffect, a gaming charity which helps disabled kids to be able to play games, about a game idea I have. They liked the idea and invited me to send them a game concept when I get one working.

 My visit to 22Cans studio was very fun. Everyone there is really nice and they all made me feel very welcome. Unfortunately, the coffee machine was broken (again) so I didn't get to try "the best coffee in the world". Luckily though they did have a cafetière, which Sam was kind enough to fix coffee in (twice) and it was very good. I got to play the 1.3 build and have to say that the changes they've made are really good and are comprised of some suggestions from the backers and beta players. The wait for the update will be well worth it!

Now, most people, when attending a game convention, will buy prints, t-shirts, posters and so forth. And most people, when going to a gaming studio, will ask everyone for their autographs and take loads of pictures. Well, I'm not most people. For starters I didn't buy anything at Eurogamer. In addition to that, I didn't take any photos of the 22Cans studio or ask any of the devs for their autographs. What I did do, however, was notice an oak tree not too far from the studio. I spent 5 minutes walking around said tree until I found an acorn which was unblemished, not cracked, and still had it's cap attached.

This is the acorn. And I am such a huge geek.

June's Game: Paddle-Putt Island

Paddle-Putt Island

June's game was done as a collaboration between Calalaera as the Senior Programmer, and myself in the Junior Programmer role. It was done completely in C++ using CodeBlocks and SFML. 

Paddle-Putt Island can be thought of as a spiritual successor to Golf, the well-known Atari 2600 game from decades past. The playable, one level demo gives a nod to greyscale mode. The full game will contain the following:

• Nine holes
• Eight bits of glorious colour
• Weird and wacky level design
• In-jokes up the wazoo
• Easter eggs, of which greyscale mode will be one
• And expansions to come!

We are also working on release date DLC which will be made available once Paddle-Putt Island gets through Steam Greenlight. This DLC will be another 9 hole course which will, we hope, put the "silly" in "silly golf".

Go take a look at the demo online - or better yet, play it yourself!

Please let us know what you think of the game. We realise that this game will not appeal to the majority of people. Rather, it is specifically aimed at those who enjoy very simple retro games. 

My Next Game Project

As most of you who read this blog will know, I am attempting the One Game a Month Challenge. My first four games were all different games done with different engines and/or different programming languages.

Starting this month (May), each month's project will be part of a larger project. The next eight "games" will be based on chapters from the book "Guilty Pleasures" by Laurell K. Hamilton. Obviously, this is a fan project and all of the respective copyrights (characters, storyline etc) belong to Ms. Hamilton and as such, it will not be sold. Ever.

Why do a project that I will never be able to sell? There are a few reasons. First, I'm neither a game designer nor an author and as such could never make anything like this on my own. Second, I'm a huge fan of Laurell K. Hamilton and her Anita Blake series and thought it would neat to try to make a visual/interactive game based on one of the books.

Saying all this, I'm still not certain how to approach this project. Do I turn it into a storyline based RPG type similar to Elder Scrolls (but in 2D) where the player chooses conversation lines? Or do I give it more of a "bookish" feel where the player basically watches the story unfold and is only given control to do things like click various items for back story/more detail and battles?

Each approach has its pros and cons. An RPG would give the player more freedom, but they wouldn't get the detail and back story depth that an interactive "book" game would give.

Also, I'm not certain how I should make the game itself. Do I make it in C++ or should I use a game engine like Construct2? I have no idea how to use graphics in C++, but I would be able to type the code itself fairly easily. While with Construct2, using graphics is as easy as double clicking on the screen, but I find the code itself a bit difficult to use - especially with complex ideas. Ah, if only there was a game engine that handles graphics as easily as Construct2 does and uses C++ as well! The closest I know of is Unity, but that uses C# and is for 3D games/graphics.

April's Game: Spring to Space

Spring to Space

This month's game for the One Game a Month Challenge is called "Spring to Space" and comprises three levels. The game starts deep underground and your goal is to jump up to the moon, hence the title. Each level has enemies to avoid, hit one and you restart the level. There is no way to kill the enemies, avoiding them is your only option. Once you reach the highest point of the level and go through the portal, the next level will start.

You may have noticed that the graphics are very simple placeholders in this game instead of the more polished sprites in most of my previous games. The reason for this is simply because I've spent the last three weeks trying to learn the basics of the Construct 2 game engine. For some reason, I've found it to be quite difficult to get my head around. Since I didn't want this month to go without a game however, I took what I had learned and tried to make something simple and working.

You can find the game in my public Dropbox folder. Simply download the zip file, extract the contents and double click on the springtospace.exe file. This release is for Windows only. If you have Linux or OSX, let me know and I will release versions for them as well. Be warned that I've only tested the Windows version though.

This next month I'll be learning more about the Construct 2 game engine so hopefully next month's game will be better.

March's Game: Chest Work

This month's game is finished!

I decided to go along with the optional theme on the One Game website and made a very simple, very short roguelike.

The premise is as follows: You're a rogue and have found yourself in a room with no doors or windows. Said room contains six chests and three traps. Your goal is to unlock all of the chests without dying, collecting whatever treasure is found within.

Sounds simple, right? It is. There is one small thing though - there's a one out of six chance that any given chest will be trapped. If it is, and you fail to disarm it...well, let's just say I don't envy your fate.

This is a typical retro-style roguelike, so the 'graphics' are ASCII. That is, everything is represented by a standard symbol. The rogue is 'R'. Chests are 'C' and 'c', for unopened and opened chests respectively. Traps are represented by 'T' and 't' (armed and disarmed). Finally, the walls are marked by the '#' symbol. Movement is done using the 'W, A, S, D' keys ( W - up, A - left, D - right, S - down).

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, this is the first game that I've done in C++. As such, it's only available as an exe file and can only be played on Windows (as far as I know).

The exe can be downloaded here and if you would like to have a look at the cpp file, you can find it here.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

A huge thanks to any one who plays this game, gives feedback on the game and/or the code, and especially to 'Calalaera', who helped me with the code syntax and layout.

1GAM Month Three

March's game is being done in C++ and is proving to be very educational. The more I work on it, the more I learn and the more comfortable I'm becoming with the code and syntax. Saying that, my bf is helping me and has basically walked me through everything, giving hints and suggestions to try to encourage me to think up the code with minimal "cheating".

Today we finally got the game pretty much up and running. I say "pretty much" because some things aren't coded in completely yet and there are of course a few bugs to work out. It works enough to have enabled me to get a screen shot of the game though.

The game is called "Chest Work", which is a pun/word play on the phrase "Guess work" and is a very basic old-school roguelike which uses ASCII characters to represent people and items. In this instance, 'R' is the rogue character, 'C' is a locked chest, 'c' is an opened chest, 'T' represents an armed trap, and 't' is an unarmed trap.

As the game starts you find yourself in a room which contains 6 chests and 3 traps all randomly placed around the room. Some chests are trapped, some are just merely locked. All contain treasure. You have 3 lives. Traps which you fail to disarm take away one life. Fail to disarm the trapped chest however and it's an automatic game over.

As of today, all that's left to do is the coding for the traps and bug zapping. With a bit of luck and some hard work, it'll be done by the weekend!

February's Game: Water Calamity

This was a close one, but today I finished this month's game.

Several things contributed to my tardiness at getting the game done. My son was off school for a week (half term break), I had lots of various appointments, was ill for several days. Mostly though, I just lost the drive to work on the game and kept putting it off which caused me to have less motivation and so on through and endless loop. Today though, I said "Enough is enough!"

I pledged to do this to improve my skills in coding and to prove to myself that I could make 12 simple games. My ambition in doing the One Game A Month challenge and the reason I'm taking a course in game development is so that I might eventually be able to start a career from a hobby. I'm not going to get anywhere by just sitting around playing games all the time, no matter how much I'd like to do so!

"Water Calamity" was originally called "Water Catastrophe", but due to a brain blip on my part while I was making the splash screen/overview/instruction page, the name got slightly changed. The story behind the game is this:

The petting zoo has run out of water. You must drive the van to the nearest watering hole and fill up the water tank and bring it back to the zoo.

Seems pretty simple, right? Not really. The van uses up fuel quite quickly; so quickly, in fact, that you will run out of fuel long before you reach the watering hole. Don't worry though - the van can be refuelled simply by running over junk food that is conveniently strewn along the road. Also, once you get to the watering hole, you'll find that the local wildlife don't really like you taking all of their water! They quickly run after you, into the van and try to drink the water before you get back to the zoo. This time there are even more conveniently placed rocks in the road. Run over them and the local wildlife gets thrown out the back of the van, bouncing across the road like their rear ends are made of rubber. If you make it back to the petting zoo, the animals there greet you happily. The End.

Just like last month, you can play the game on Steam (you need to download GameMaker in order to play, but there is a free version)  or download the exe (the exe only works on Windows). Again, there isn't a web browser (HTML5) version because when I tested it, it was super buggy, doing all sorts of weird things that did not happen at all on either the Steam Workshop or downloadable exe versions.

Please play the game and let me know what you think!
 

1GAM Month 1 Feature #5

This is the final feature for the month of January. In two short days February will be upon us and all of us who are taking part in the one game a month challenge will start building new games. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

Thinking About February

February's idea for the One Game A Month challenge is another simple game. This one differs from the last game in that it is completely my idea, based off of a dream I had awhile ago.

The game design is as follows:

You own a petting zoo full of cute creatures, but your zoo has run out of water. You must drive to a watering hole, fill up your van with water and drive back.

There are a few problems though. First, your van uses up fuel rather quickly. The other problem is made apparent when you drain the watering hole. It seems the local wildlife don't appreciate you taking their water, so they jump into your van and do their best to drink as much of the water as they can before you get back to your zoo!

As we know, problems always have solutions and these are no different. Lack of fuel is easily solved as the "fuel" your van runs on is junk food and there is quite a bit of it littering the road. Simply run over it and your van automatically converts it into fuel. As for the animals...well, there's only one thing you can do - throw them out! This is done by hitting potholes and rocks in the road. Hit enough of them and an animal will fall out of the back of the van. The less animals there are in the van, the less they can drink!

This game is going to be done in GameMaker again as I still don't know enough C++ or Python to do much in the way of programming (I'm still learning the basics). I'm also not certain how I can turn this idea into an actual game; that is, keeping count of the animals, determining how to get GameMaker to randomly choose an animal to bounce out of the van and so on, but I do have a few ideas. If anyone can give me a hint or two, I will definitely listen!

January's Game: Circus Calamity!!

With just over a week to go before the month is behind us, I am happy to announce that I have finished my first game for the OneGameAMonth challenge.

It is, to put it simply, a game. It is called "Circus Calamity" and is a very simple point and click game. The object of the game is to click everything that moves (except for the bombs - you don't want to click them, trust me) until they go away. Click enough and you'll get a nifty surprise bonus item! What do you do with this nifty bonus item? You click it, of course! (What, you were expecting something else?)

Since I am not (yet) fluent in any programming languages, this game was done using GameMaker and the graphics and music were found free-to-use on various websites.

To play the game, you have two choices. If you own GameMaker on Steam, you can find the game here or you can download the exe here. The exe only works on Windows; if you don't have Windows, I do apologize.

My next few games will probably be made in GameMaker again. Hopefully before the year is out, I'll be far enough in my C++ course to be able to make a simple game outside of GameMaker. We'll see, I guess.

Roll on February!

1GAM Month 1 Feature #4

Zombie Forever by BillySpelchan

The 4th feature for OneGameAMonth is strategy game Zombie Forever by BillySpelchan.

Zombie Forever is a turn-based game wherein you play a zombie. Your goal is to turn other people into zombies to create a massive zombie army. Obviously, the humans don't want to be part of your army, so they fight back. The game ends when either everyone is a zombie or when all the zombies are dead.

You control your zombies using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Attacking is done by walking into people. Movement is limited to one space for every hit point you have, so 3 hp equals 3 spaces per turn.

This is a pretty good game which requires quite a bit of strategy to play. The only thing that didn't "work" for me was that you have to be careful when moving as you can damage your own zombies if you bump into them. Once you get used to the movement mechanics though, avoiding running into other zombies isn't too difficult.

With just over a week left in the month, January's challenge is nearly at its end. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone else's games!

1GAM Month 1 Feature #3

Undead Stones by PistillPhil

The 3rd feature for the One Game A Month Challenge is Undead Stones by PistillPhil.

Undead Stones is a simple one player game where the player controls a wizard's apprentice who wakes up to find that the place has been over run by skeletons. The only problem is she only knows one spell and all it does (after several tries) is freeze the fiends in their tracks!

The controls are easy: W, A, S, D to move the character and the arrow keys to fire the spell in a given direction. The challenge is to freeze the skeletons before they run into you. Get hit too many times, and the game is over.

While the game itself is enjoyable to play, there are a few things that can be done to improve upon it. On my monitor, the game is too big, rendering the score impossible to see. Also, the ending could be more concrete. Currently "game over" is signified by the room being over run with the undead, yet you can still move around and fire your spells. Even with these minor problems though, the game is quite re-playable.

Keep up the good work everyone! 

1GAM Month 1 Feature #2

 

Shapes by BeigeTurner

This weeks One Game A Month feature is Shapes by BeigeTurner. This game was chosen randomly from the uploaded games on the 1GAM website.

Shapes is a simple shape-sorting game aimed at very young children in which you drag shapes to their corresponding holes with the mouse.  The graphics are simple but colourful and the game-play is easily self taught.

In total there are 4 levels with the shapes getting slightly more complex as you progress. If you drag a shape to the incorrect hole, it is flung back onto the board and you get another try.

Overall the game is fun and educational, though I feel adding sound effects and music would add to the appeal and hold the interest of the target audience longer.

As always, if you would like a review of your game here, simply at mention me (https://twitter.com/MuirDH) with a link before Tuesday the 15th! First person to do so gets the feature!

1GAM Month 1 Feature #1

Fire Power by Chris Willoughby

The first One Game A Month feature is Fire Power by Chris Willoughby.  This game, according to Chris, was done as a "warm up" exercise for the challenge.

Fire Power is a simple click-and-drag game in which you're a god. In the upper left corner of the screen you have a power bar and three icons which signify different powers: fire, water, and earth. The goal is to keep your power bar full and reach ever higher scores by wreaking havoc on the earth below you. Simply click on a power and set fire to the forests, flood them, or bury the area in dirt.

If Chris's actual submissions are anything like this game, we're in for some nice treats over the next 12 months!

Next week I will start featuring proper 1GAM submissions. If you would like a review of your game here, simply at mention me (https://twitter.com/MuirDH) with a link before Tuesday the 8th! First person to do so gets the feature!

One Game A Month

2013 marks the start of a new adventure in my life. I have enrolled in Train2Game, a distance learning course, in order to learn how to code video games (i.e. Game Development).

 In the spirit of learning, I have joined up to the One Game a Month Challenge in the hopes that doing so will  give me more knowledge, contacts, and confidence in my work.

You're probably wondering what this challenge is all about. In a nutshell, you make one game a month, every month, for a year. Which means by the end of December 2013, I will (theoretically) have 12 completed, playable games.

The first few games that I make will be done in Game Maker. This is primarily because I have yet to learn any programming languages. Hopefully in the months to come I will be able to start making games using Python and C++, but that's then and this is now. For now, baby steps.

Already I have a list of game ideas for each month. This list will not be posted here however - not because I don't want to share, but because the list will probably change as the year goes on. However, I will say that the first several planned games are based on the Game Maker game tutorials that Train2Game students make at the beginning of the course. My plan is to take these games and polish them up a bit, changing the mechanics slightly, adding bosses, levels and various bonuses. Think of them as a stepping stone of sorts - building on what I already know so that I can reach a higher level for the next game(s).

Also, in the spirit of goodwill (the 1GAM motto is "Be good to each other"), I will feature one game per week on this blog. The first person to @ mention me on Twitter (@MuirDH) each week with a link to a playable game (WIPs are allowed as long as they're playable) will get their game reviewed and featured on this blog. For clarity, since the 1GAM challenge officially starts on the 1 January 2013 (Tuesday), each week will start on a Tuesday. I will post reminder tweets each Monday so no one forgets.

Happy gaming!