Never give up. Never surrender.
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So... yeah. This is going to be a hard thing to write.
It's been long couple months. I was supposed to do many great things, I was supposed to update this blog. I have to come clean: I didn't.
Now, I have standard excuses: I was tired, I didn't have time, I had to spend time with my girlfriend and preparing for the kid to be born, I was studying lots of things. I was sick.
That doesn't change one thing: I failed. I have set out to make 12 fully polished, even if small games. First month I wanted to create planet-based shooter. It didn't work out. Between me having written very little code and my artist friend not having a lot of time, on the last week I had to cut the losses. It was hard, and I was ashamed, but to just keep making games on the last day of January, I made a 'match 2' game:
Yes, it's ugly. Yeah, it's crappy. But I didn't want to admit that I failed. February I've spent majority of the month being depressed about failing so hard. Eventually I got my act together and wrote a very simple laser & mirrors logic game:
This one was tiniest bit more polished, but still nothing to write home about. I felt that I was back on the right track. Alas, in March again I didn't do much work. What I did was a tiny racing game for blind people. Basically you could hear your wheels falling off the road and starting hitting roadside gravel more and more, until you spun out of control and crashed. Cute experiment, but I didn't even add stuff as simple as announcer explaining controls or telling the score. Since the screenshot won't really convey much here, here's the link. Just click on the Unity screen to enable controls (and make sure you have surround sound enabled). In April ever since the beginning of the month, I had an idea for a very simple game, but I have spent the month developing a system for isometric tile based RPG.
Needless to say, again I didn't have enough time for such a big project. Or rather mental fortitude. I have worked on it for a week and gave up. I had the time to develop the small game about a cube that I have designed, but never went for it. I even had the PERFECT Ludum Dare for it: The theme was Minimalism, which would fit my game to a T. I haven't participated. I have created cool, really optimized mesh system for Unity3D, I have played with voxels for a bit, but all in all - I have failed in what I have set out to do - 12 games in 12 months were no more.
Now it's middle of May, my kid is due in about 2-4 weeks, and I have picked myself up. I have thought about it a lot, and talked with friends about it. I have failed, but I can't give up - the goal wasn't to make the games just so I can show off on my blog. Sure, some of my games that I have made in 1 day for the 7 games in 7 days challenge were better than what I have done here. Is that painful? Sure. Am I ashamed to admit that I failed on the Internet? Sure am. But the goal for this year wasn't just to have these games made. The goal was much more: learn to manage my time on longer projects, so that sometimes next year I can start working on full commercial games from home, hopefully to secure my family's future. I haven't achieved that goal, but that's no excuse to stop trying.
So, while I'll be trying to keep within confines of the monthly schedule, I'm no longer going to feel shackled by it. I won't be hiding just because I didn't manage to do what I wanted to do. The project is tough, but I have to do it. Want to do it. And will do it. I have picked the game I wanted to do most: RPG as simple as possible. I want a top-down view, similar to Zelda, I want lots of cool explosions, fighting with lots of enemies, and generally old school beat'em'up feel (think Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Punisher, Dungeons and Dragons:Shadows over Mystara or Aliens vs Predator). I want to have fun while making the game, because that's the only way I'm going to finish it. After first day of design, here's the first screenshot (obviously, everything is temp graphics only):
The faux-scanline is to make it look even more retro. Like I said, I'm going all out with what I love here, and scanlines make me feel young again ;).
Well, that's it for today
Talk to you all soon!
-------------------------------------------------------
So far in the series 12 Games In 12 Months:
1. Announcement
2. Game 1: Intro
3. Game 1: Week 1
4. Never give up. Never surrender.
It's been long couple months. I was supposed to do many great things, I was supposed to update this blog. I have to come clean: I didn't.
Now, I have standard excuses: I was tired, I didn't have time, I had to spend time with my girlfriend and preparing for the kid to be born, I was studying lots of things. I was sick.
That doesn't change one thing: I failed. I have set out to make 12 fully polished, even if small games. First month I wanted to create planet-based shooter. It didn't work out. Between me having written very little code and my artist friend not having a lot of time, on the last week I had to cut the losses. It was hard, and I was ashamed, but to just keep making games on the last day of January, I made a 'match 2' game:
Yes, it's ugly. Yeah, it's crappy. But I didn't want to admit that I failed. February I've spent majority of the month being depressed about failing so hard. Eventually I got my act together and wrote a very simple laser & mirrors logic game:
This one was tiniest bit more polished, but still nothing to write home about. I felt that I was back on the right track. Alas, in March again I didn't do much work. What I did was a tiny racing game for blind people. Basically you could hear your wheels falling off the road and starting hitting roadside gravel more and more, until you spun out of control and crashed. Cute experiment, but I didn't even add stuff as simple as announcer explaining controls or telling the score. Since the screenshot won't really convey much here, here's the link. Just click on the Unity screen to enable controls (and make sure you have surround sound enabled). In April ever since the beginning of the month, I had an idea for a very simple game, but I have spent the month developing a system for isometric tile based RPG.
Needless to say, again I didn't have enough time for such a big project. Or rather mental fortitude. I have worked on it for a week and gave up. I had the time to develop the small game about a cube that I have designed, but never went for it. I even had the PERFECT Ludum Dare for it: The theme was Minimalism, which would fit my game to a T. I haven't participated. I have created cool, really optimized mesh system for Unity3D, I have played with voxels for a bit, but all in all - I have failed in what I have set out to do - 12 games in 12 months were no more.
Now it's middle of May, my kid is due in about 2-4 weeks, and I have picked myself up. I have thought about it a lot, and talked with friends about it. I have failed, but I can't give up - the goal wasn't to make the games just so I can show off on my blog. Sure, some of my games that I have made in 1 day for the 7 games in 7 days challenge were better than what I have done here. Is that painful? Sure. Am I ashamed to admit that I failed on the Internet? Sure am. But the goal for this year wasn't just to have these games made. The goal was much more: learn to manage my time on longer projects, so that sometimes next year I can start working on full commercial games from home, hopefully to secure my family's future. I haven't achieved that goal, but that's no excuse to stop trying.
So, while I'll be trying to keep within confines of the monthly schedule, I'm no longer going to feel shackled by it. I won't be hiding just because I didn't manage to do what I wanted to do. The project is tough, but I have to do it. Want to do it. And will do it. I have picked the game I wanted to do most: RPG as simple as possible. I want a top-down view, similar to Zelda, I want lots of cool explosions, fighting with lots of enemies, and generally old school beat'em'up feel (think Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Punisher, Dungeons and Dragons:Shadows over Mystara or Aliens vs Predator). I want to have fun while making the game, because that's the only way I'm going to finish it. After first day of design, here's the first screenshot (obviously, everything is temp graphics only):
The faux-scanline is to make it look even more retro. Like I said, I'm going all out with what I love here, and scanlines make me feel young again ;).
Well, that's it for today
Talk to you all soon!
-------------------------------------------------------
So far in the series 12 Games In 12 Months:
1. Announcement
2. Game 1: Intro
3. Game 1: Week 1
4. Never give up. Never surrender.
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