Making games and tools in off hours. Inspired by the #indiedev and #gamedev communities, and #Nintendo, the #NES and #SNES in particular. Learning I was wrong about something every day.
If game developers are willing, I’d like to be their Mister Rogers.
You determine the metric of success for your project. If you want to make money, if you want critical appreciation, or if you are even making an exploration or satisfying a personal interest.
Is a #SteamWishlist anonymous? I have an account, but don’t regularly purchase or play games on PC. I’ve been thinking about wishlisting just to bump #IndieDev people, but wasn’t sure about the visibility.
Games like #SuperMetroid and #LinkToThePast are often categorized very differently. The formula though seems nearly the same. Gated challenge areas that give new capabilities, that enable wider exploration.
The difference is largely in visual perspective and control mechanics. Sometimes our genres seem like a feeble attempt at drawing boundaries around an inherently flexible medium.
Don’t carry a second hand opinion about a programming language as an excuse to shy away from something.
Give it your own look. Worst case, you agree. Best case, you discover something you love.
Regardless, you will improve your craft to have broader experience, your own first hand insights, and a new tool, even if it won’t become a go-to solution.
Frankly, learning a new language isn’t all that hard, and it gets easier every time.
Uploaded my first project to itch just now after “accidentally” making a pixel font while working on my tile editor this weekend. Not sure I’ll have a use for it soon, but thought someone else might be interested.
If you don’t want to “build your own” Flappy Bird, you can just hit “play” to try it with the default graphics that I recently freshened up. Including some of the test tiles I had made working on my NES game.
Hey #gamedev fam, the weekend is almost here! You're doing great, and whatever you manage to accomplish is enough!
If you’re playing something, or even watching a show, you want to create games because other things have inspired you. It’s okay to go at your pace, and stay open to finding some new inspiration for what’s next.
We don’t need to be so tentative #gamedev people. There are way too many “aspiring,” “someday,” “dabbler,” etc. folks around.
We see your artwork, your vision, your demos. Even if it’s not your day job, if this is what you’re truly passionate about, you can claim it outright. People have written way messier code on way worse projects as “professionals.”
What you’re working is almost certainly more interesting than Space Invaders or Donkey Kong. They both changed the world.
How is Metroid, generally critically acclaimed and well regarded, among the poorer performing first party franchises. All while the genre that it co-authored is among the most popular for indie games.
One of my main reasons for starting a #gamedev project for the NES that I haven’t talked about yet… It’s not a moving target.
Building against a modern PC or console architecture, or even a popular engine, means tracking changes or keeping things up-to-date. With a hobby project, spending extra resources to move things forward is a drain against the game part of game development.
The NES grounds the capabilities and limits that spend.
Progress this weekend was coming up with a shell animation. Wasn’t sure I could fit a convincing spinning shell in just 8 pixels wide, but this feels pretty good to me.
Also, changing width introduces more complications with altering the collision box. Shell mode, is going to be an important part of our traversal mechanics.
Also over the weekend, tweaked the sprite work. After playing with a ton of palettes, and toggling pixels to smooth out our three frame run cycle, pretty happy with the results. Gave our heroine a hair (head?) bow for good measure.
She has a working name, but it might give away some mechanics. Saving a reveal for when those have been tested out a bit.
Spent time this weekend wrapping up the edge cases around platform collision. Now our hero can collide with blocks on all sides, walk off edges, and jump through platforms.
