I haven't finished a game since I was 14. Time to fix that.
Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 2:36 pm
I picked up Love because Game Maker was starting to become a little bit limiting, and it's a great engine, but the more manual approach posed a problem for me. I generally get motivation to program things for about a week at a time, and then I don't come back for a while. I'm always more interested in programming the broader systems that the game uses rather than specific details, and whenever I came back to a game, I would start over because I "lost my place" in the code and would rather start over and do the fun parts again than just break down and make the game. As I continued to leave more and more projects unfinished, I got more and more discouraged from making games.
The game developer in me never quite left, though, and now I'm going to fix this. I'm going to finish some games!™
My strategy is to start making some pathetically small games, but increasing the size and scope of each subsequent project until I can actually finish proper games.
Round 1: Pong
It's pong. It was easy.
Round 2: Simple Shooter
This one had a simple class system, although the organization wasn't great. Still, slightly bigger!
Round 3: Testing Libraries
In this one I tried to use some libraries. HUMP is just as good as I remember, and collision libraries are good if you build your code around them instead of trying to shove them jankily into your own code. I've been burned by some libraries that aren't that great (although that was probably user error, actually), but there's really no reason not to use libraries, it seems.
My current project is an Asteroids-y game. This is the first proper game that could actually be fun, and I'll give it menus and stuff. My week of motivation has passed by for now, but when I come back, I'm at least not going to start it over.
Also, I'm torn between using Love and Unity. I feel like Unity makes some things unnecessarily hard for 2D games, but at the same time it has so many nice things built in, like the component system and the new audio mixer. I can't decide what to do.
Anyway, this post is pretty much to keep myself accountable, and maybe someone else cares? idk probably not oh well
GUYS ENCOURAGE ME
The game developer in me never quite left, though, and now I'm going to fix this. I'm going to finish some games!™
My strategy is to start making some pathetically small games, but increasing the size and scope of each subsequent project until I can actually finish proper games.
Round 1: Pong
It's pong. It was easy.
Round 2: Simple Shooter
This one had a simple class system, although the organization wasn't great. Still, slightly bigger!
Round 3: Testing Libraries
In this one I tried to use some libraries. HUMP is just as good as I remember, and collision libraries are good if you build your code around them instead of trying to shove them jankily into your own code. I've been burned by some libraries that aren't that great (although that was probably user error, actually), but there's really no reason not to use libraries, it seems.
My current project is an Asteroids-y game. This is the first proper game that could actually be fun, and I'll give it menus and stuff. My week of motivation has passed by for now, but when I come back, I'm at least not going to start it over.
Also, I'm torn between using Love and Unity. I feel like Unity makes some things unnecessarily hard for 2D games, but at the same time it has so many nice things built in, like the component system and the new audio mixer. I can't decide what to do.
Anyway, this post is pretty much to keep myself accountable, and maybe someone else cares? idk probably not oh well
GUYS ENCOURAGE ME
