Datastreams

Internet was not working for some unknown reason last night, nor this morning, but is fine now. The irritating thing is that the modem was reporting full green. :(

I think most people that know me are aware of the fact that I’ve time and again made attempts at designing my own game. This has always ended in the idea being set aside for all kinds of hang ups. Learning programming (any language really) to build from scratch is a rather daunting proposition and one that would always end with me getting annoyed. Not because I can’t learn it, but because I have no frame of reference on how many points would even apply to game development. Programming books are pretty bland that way, and the ones that are geared to game design are written assuming you’ve got a few years of programming experience behind you. Mores the pity as I know in the long run this is the most versatile approach.

The other tactic I’ve tried is looking at the myriad of game development toolkits available on the market. These range from programming languages in their own right (usually built on C) that function through their own package to wysiwyg studios that are geared to a specific type of game ( I recall one off hand meant for side scrolling platform games but forget the name). My problem here has usually been me encountering a technical limitation early on that would drive me absolutely nuts. One suite I played with (not gonna name names) had no native undo/redo tool. I was working on my laptop at the time and after the third time I accidentally brushed the touch pad and wiped out the last chunk of work I did I canned it. Others would function as a single executable file. Etc. etc.

Last month I got up on the idea again and started looking around. After every previous “failure” I’d tell myself the time is not right and I’ll look into it all again in a year or two. I don’t know why I haven’t seen Torque before but now that I have it I’m happy. The basic package I got is a front end that requires little to no coding. Large community supporting it. When I reach the point that I do want to play with the guts of it I can. I can design for multiple platforms (not necessary, but something that appeals to me).
I’m still going through all the tutorial stuff but am having fun with it. Now that I got the tools I need, the instructions to go with them, and at least the knowledge that I can pretty easily go about seeing how things get applied to other things, something else has come up.

It’s not enough to just want to make a game.

I should point out that I’ve always known this. Saying “I’m gonna make a game” is like saying “I want to make a movie” or “I want to write a book”. Sounds good but there’s a lot more to it than that. You need an idea to start with, what kind of game. This I’ve always had a small pool of different ideas floating around in it. Just about all of my ideas are not simple straight up puzzle games so next comes story, or at least some sort of device that would make the player want to play and keep playing. This is something that’s always been a little more nebulous and is something I need to address. Having sat down and scratched out my ideas alot of them are great starting points but lack a central plot device to really go anywhere. So story is a really important part.

Another interesting thing that is coming up as I look at these ideas is that some of them just don’t work together. Random notion x just doesn’t fit with any old thing. It needs specific conditions so it goes back in the pool. I guess I knew this would happen as well, but again, it’s interesting to actually see it in action then just planning ahead for it.

I’m not even going to really address graphic design and sound at this point as that’s a whole other can of worms. The main purpose of this was to point out that the major stumbling block of the past has been addressed, as well as highlighting the next point that will need addressing.

I can already hear one person shouting “It’s about time!”

There, new layout, new feel, etc, etc.

Just need to fill in links as needed, for now the silly looking “line 1..” can stay. There, more happy with that.

Only foreseeable problem is that this is a fixed width template at 1024px. Might make things interesting at home with my 1920×1200 but then again I haven’t used a full screen browser since I actually ran my desktop at 1024×768.

The why post I promised will be up later, mind you there are a couple of clue by fours already up.

Unlike the last theme I was using I can increase the font size (ctrl+scroll wheel) and not have it bleed out of boxes like the last one did.

Heh, sneaking in updates and corrections at work. *ninja vanish*

Figured I’d keep the old install and just upgrade it, but it broke. Here we go again.