A Game A Week(ish): Zombie Slayer

On Venus, a week is 1701 Earth days, or 4.65 Earth years. So on Venus, this game would have been made in 0.0111699001 weeks!

Yeah, okay. 19 days is a little longer than a week. Midterms intruded, then fall break. In total, I probably spent about 10 days working on this game. I won't be able to do a detailed breakdown, but I will give best estimates on how that time got spent.

Without further ado, the next game! It's called Zombie Slayer.

Zombie Slayer - total development time ~8 days

What it is: A game about shooting zombies in a procedural town. There is no win condition, just try to shoot as many as you can before they overwhelm you.

A Game A Week

My attention span needs work. I have a tendency to get excited about a BIG IDEA, start prototyping and blogging, and then losing steam a few weeks later when I get excited about THE NEXT BIG IDEA.

To solve this problem I've decided to never spend more than a week making a game!

Okay, that's not really the solution to my short attention span. And it's not really the plan for the rest of my life. But at this stage in my game development career, the two most important things for me to do are 1) get experience making games, and 2) build a portfolio of finished* projects to show prospective employers, teammates, and my legion of devoted fans.

A Game A Week: Dungeon Runner

The first ever game-of-the-week™ is a game about running. And jumping. You do that too. It's called Dungeon Runner.

Dungeon Runner - Total Development Time 12 days


What it is: A game about jumping over gaps. Run all the way to the end of the dungeon to win.

Coding Beauty: Part 2

Last time, I talked about the level and art design of Ori and the Blind Forest. I spoke of the two broad steps to creating its sumptuous platformer levels: first, design the basic platform layout; then texture it and add details to bring it to life. I've begun implementing the algorithm that will achieve step one of that process.

Here's what the results look like so far:

Coding Beauty: Part 1

Look how beautiful Ori and the Blind Forest is:

I mean, that's gorgeous. The dilapidated tree trunks in the background, the ominous foreground, the interplay of light and shadow -- not to mention, if you actually play the game it's all animated. The grass sways, leaves blow through the air, mist snakes through the trees. It's really freaking beautiful.

Pixel Pushing

Hey all! It's been a while, hasn't it. Last post was shortly before finals week, I believe, after which May term classes and a new job ate up most of my time. That doesn't mean I haven't been working on game development, though!

In my last post (long, long ago), I talked about procedural generation. Procedural generation (proc gen for those of us In The Know) means using algorithms to create levels, enemies, worlds, characters - anything, really - instead of making those assets by hand. It allows for a single developer to develop A LOT of content quickly, as all he (I) have to do is write an algorithm. Now, I don't want to minimize that - those algorithms can take months (if not years) to develop. But once the code is working, it can literally generate an infinite amount of unique content. That's pretty sweet.

How To Make A Cube In 81 Easy Steps

Hi all! It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. I've been very focused these couple of weeks on trying to generate buildings from an algorithm. It's been slow going. The basic algorithm goes something like this:

1) Generate a shape.

2) Do stuff to the shape.

3) Texture the shape.