Hello, hello, hello my dear interwebs!
Exams are finally over and done with and I can get back to developing posting and generally being awesome.
A couple news items first though.
1 Concentric happened. Made a prototype for a casual puzzle game with bubbles and jewels. Definitely a keeper, but it's not that developed. The rest of the Con was awesome. I should know; I spent most of it playing games and shirking on the game jam. Don't give me that look. I needed a fun weekend, and boy did I get one.
2 I just became president of UVic Gamedev. It's an honor. Thank you to everyone who voted for me, and I look forward to working with you to make out club a thousand times awesomer than it already is. Congrats to Marta for VP. It's gonna be great semester.
3 ...? Oh forget the numbers, this is just the rest of the post anyway.
As a way of introducing myself and the club to new members in January, I have challenged myself to make a complete game (as in menus, high scores, few bugs, and impressive tech) over the christmas holiday. I'm cheating a bit by using game maker, but it will make the art and sound integration way easier than trying to do it from scratch.
The pitch is to have a game where the player sprite moves along a curved path. The player will exchange projectile fire with some toer like enemies in fixed positions while they travel the paths and will have to avoid the incoming attacks. I haven't quite flushed out the victory conditions yet, but there's plenty of ways to use the basic mechanics so I can leave that until the game is a little clearer.
Besides, I already have plenty to figure out. Drawing and following curves in game maker is no easy task. My plan is to use a bezier spline, but first I need to learn a bit more about them. I spent most of this afternoon migrating some point moving code (and a lot of other extra code, because course projects are spagetti-code nightmares) into a bezier spline drawer and I can now play with the points in a 7 point curve to se what kinds of shapes different arrangements will produce.
One of the other things I want to experiment with in this project is video posting. Fingers crossed, I'll be able to do some screen captures and show you the prototype as it gets developed. I hope to get the first video posted this weekend.
Now before anyone asks, no I haven't forgotten about stratagem. It's still my back burner project, but the scope of it means I don't have time do constantly pour into it just for the sake of it. I also want to be able to leave UVic with a large portfolio of playable prototypes, and stratagem isn't worth much good if it's the only thing I have and it isn't even finished. Not to mention the 2013 game a month challenge that's been circulating on the gamedev page. I want to have a strong showing for that. So all in all, I want to release roughly one new small game a month to build my roster, and have stratagem as a masterpiece still in development. That being said, I want it playable so I can use it as one of the summer month entries. That way it will be presentable when I'm searching for a co-op again in 4 months.
So that's where I'm at right now. Anyone from UVic gamedev, and anywhere else for that matter is welcome to jam right along over the holiday. I would love it if we had more than one project to show off when December starts.
So long for now. I have to go read about spines. And sleep. Maybe.
