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About Me: Sorry, but I haven't yet shared the information about myself that would typically display here. Check back later to see if that changes, or if I instead choose to remain an enigma. |
Serendipity. One of my favourite words. And, a particularly apt one at the moment.
The original problem with the ants led to me creating 8 spawn points for the ants, in an effort to control them better. That has actually turned out to be a rather good device to use for all the insects in the game. By having holes in the ground, any insect that I wish to spawn has an instant starting point. The main benefit of this is that since the insects always spawn from the holes, I don't have to check that they aren't about to spawn right under the Doodlebug. Basically, if the player is parked on top of a spawn hole, and gets killed because an ant spawned up his jaxie, then it really is the player's own fault he died!
The ants were easy, then impossible, and then suddenly very easy again.
I designed my first ant, and it was good. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. Which was, walk around slowly, changing direction at random after a random number of steps. So, I decided to use the ant object multiple times. This was ... a mistake. Because, basically, all the ants decided to just copy the last ant created. Well, not exactly. Whilst each ant moved about independently, all the sprites faced in the same direction as the last ant created!
So. Today, I made the basic prototype engine for Doodlebug, designed the player sprite, and put up a basic control scheme. At the moment, the doodlebug is moved with WASD. A and D rotate, W moves him forwards. Also, the mouse moves a reticule around the screen, and the player fires ... well, it looks like pooh, but isn't meant to be pooh ... at the point the mouse is at when the fire button is pressed.
There are currently no enemies, and I have yet to finalise the playfield. I know it is to be bigger than the visible screen, but I can't yet decide on how much bigger. Also, I need to decide on whether there is a boundary, or if the playfield warps back onto itself. Obviously, this will come with testing, to see which one makes better use of the enemies.
What I plan to do now on is to share my creative process, as much as possible, and blog the game-making process here.
The gestation of an idea.
It started with joystiq linking me to a flash game, called Super To-suta. Which was ... pretty awful. So awful, I am not going to link you to it. It was some rather bizarre shooter thing, the likes of which you have played a thousand times already, which was almost completely uninspiring and almost entirely lacking in merit. I left the game convinced that the only reason it was linked to was because it used Katamari Damacy's STUNNING music, Katamari on the Rocks. Seemingly, joystiq and Kotaku both link to pretty much anything Katamari-related.
I shall start by linking to the recently finished Alias 3 contest thread.
I find it somewhat puzzling that on a website with a couple of thousand listed members, only EIGHT people bothered to try their hand at the contest. I mean ... competetive games built this frigging industry! When PONG exploded into the world's consciousness, it wasn't because it was the tale of a ball and it's epic struggle against the mighty bat empire. Nor was it because you could invest hours of your life customising your bat before taking it into a raid against the evil bat-overlord with 40 of your friends.
No, PONG was the simplest form of game. Mano รก mano. 1 vs 1 combat, with no prize for second place.
I submitted my first review since Meteos. And, (in a move that is entirely meant to show Venter up for the fool he has seemingly become,) it is a review for Wii Sports. Because, when his review annoyed me, he challenged me to write my own. Done!
I am not sure wether I should be annoyed at having to have my review approved or not. In one way it is a good thing, that the site will not accept just any old bollocks, but in another way it is a slight on myself. I have always delivered what I consider to be top quality product to this site, and I guess I feel that I should be treated with a touch more respect because of my long-term support. I still maintain that all my articles were the best reason to visit this site, at least for a while!
Since starting my Computer Games Production course, I have been a busy boy indeed. One of the modules has me using Game Maker to create a mini-game every week, based on a different theme. So, we have had such things as 'Collection', or 'Colour'. Usually, I make a game engine first, using blocks and circles for the graphics. I go back and make the sprites later.
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