So it’s been a quiet few weeks on the blog front, and there’s a good reason for that…I decided to do a game jam!  The GameMaker Studio 2 Betajam – to be exact.

This was actually the very first jam I’ve ever participated in, and the fact that it was over 2 weeks (instead of 2 days) really helped make the entire experience a little less daunting.

The theme of the jam was magic, but I didn’t really restrict myself to this, which is pretty evident when you see that my game takes place in space and is primarily about blowing shit up.

The premise of my game is simple, you’re in space surrounded by darkness trying to rescue stranded aliens. The player will collect suns to increase their visibility radius and help them better avoid the asteroid and space mines floating around.

My initial game idea actually started out as a side-scrolling platformer with a little robot character. I worked on this for about a week before pivoting to the space game idea I randomly came up with. It seemed crazy at the time to change my game with only a week left in the jam, but it was important to me to make something that I could be proud of. This is part of the difficult decision making that I hadn’t experienced during my casual game development, where hard deadlines don’t truly exist.

I’ve read a lot that “finishing a game” is a skill on its own, and now I have a much better understanding of what that means – if only on a small scale. All of the little decisions that have to be made, the compromise of understanding that working on one feature likely means something else in the game will suffer as a result, and ultimately having the ability to say something is “good enough” so you can move to the next item on what feels like a never-ending todo list. 

My ultimate goal was not to win the jam, but to prove to myself that I could start and finish a game in 2-weeks – and make something that is relatively fun to play. I think I accomplished this, and even surprised myself in the process.

It can be scary to put your work out into the world for everyone to see and judge, but I’m extremely proud of what I’ve accomplished in a short period of time.

A lot of credit goes to my girlfriend, Shaye, for putting up with me during these 2-weeks while I worked seemingly nonstop to get this thing completed. Also to my brother, Matt, who motivated me to join the jam in the first place. 

Check out and download my game from Itch.io here:

• https://buffleheadgames.itch.io/space-jam-game

Also, be sure to check out Matt’s game and his blog here:

• https://puddledockgames.itch.io/flock-frenzy
  
• http://puddledockgames.com/
  

Thanks for reading!

As mentioned in my last post (which was also my first post), I’ve been tinkering with GameMaker Studio for almost a year now as my choice of game development tool. This was largely due to the overwhelming amount of videos and documentation around the software, along with the ease with which someone unfamiliar with programming can dive right in and get some pixels jumping around the screen.

While I’ve learned quite a bit in that time, and have completed many, many tutorials, I have yet to release a game (or finish one for that matter). This has been something that’s really bothered me lately. The ability to finish a game is a skill on its own, and one I have yet to acquire.

While I’m still hesitant to divulge my amazing game idea, I will say that it is a platformer style game.

All of my previous work in GameMaker has revolved around the idea of making a top-down 2D game (think old school Zelda), so the decision to switch to working on a platformer (think old school Mario) required new learning and rework to my existing code. For example, now I have to worry about allowing the player to jump and account for things like gravity. Not a big learning curve, but a hurdle to jump (much like in a platformer) nonetheless.

So, as a sort of development update, the gifs below show what I’ve accomplished in a relatively short period of time.

As you can see, I am using very simple placeholder assets in order to test my code - as I’m still in what’s called the “prototyping” stage. No need to create art assets yet until I’ve proven the concept first. Regardless, I’m happy with this progress.

Below: Basic player movement with shooting.

Below: Local multiplayer with a split screen view.

My next focus: Improved player movement controls.

Thanks for reading.

Hello! My name is Michael, and welcome to my game development blog! 

This devblog is something new which I’ve decided to start this year to help give more transparency into what I’m working on (for anyone that happens to be interested), as well as give myself extra incentive to complete things so I have cool stuff to post about.

As a little background on me, I’ve been working in the videogame industry for the past 11 years – and before that, I went to school for game design and development (detecting any themes here?) I LOVE VIDEOGAMES!

It wasn’t until around late February 2016 that I finally decided it was time to see what this whole indie development thing is really all about. Since then, I’ve been head-down learning as much as I can about the indie scene in general – along with what tools are available to make my solo game development aspirations a reality. 

Currently, I’m in the early design and prototype stages of development for a new game – early as in, I just had the idea a month ago. I won’t give away details just yet, but know that I am extremely excited and eager to take the idea that’s been floating around my brain and slap it onto a computer screen (that’s how it works, right?).

I do all of my development in GameMaker Studio (now GMS: 2.0). I wouldn’t consider myself to be a great programmer by any stretch, but I’m working on it. I’m also trying to teach myself pixel art – it’s much harder than it looks.

My goal is to provide progress updates around my work, share lessons I’ve learned along the way, and discuss thoughts regarding my game development experiences (good and bad).

I’ll end here for now, since the point of this post was really just to introduce myself. My first actual development post will be up shortly…promise.

I truly hope you decide to join me on the adventure that is my first game.

Thanks for reading.