My OperaFree Time
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 10:53:41 AM
One thing I am very short on is free time. I will try to update this blog more often once Uni resumes (later this month) when I will have more spare time (weird, ain't it?), but until then you will have to make do will irregular posts.
I have been working on a new game. Of course, if any one you have known me long enough, you will know it will never actually be finished or released. I am horrible at making games. No really, horrible. My sore points are sprite drawing, game idea design, and sometimes (like in the case of SG1) a horrible user interface.
If you ever get the chance to play SG1, don't. It was an awesome idea, I just had no idea how to implement it properly. The player movement was the worst design I have ever seen for any game, ever. There was no flow to it, the movement was awkward and the shooting even worse. I didn't steal the game design off of another game, which was probably a bad move.
It took me five years of using GameMaker before releasing a game demo. Chances are it will be five more before I release another.
This new game I am making will be an epic fail when it comes to graphics. I can't draw, I accept that, so I currently have black squares for almost everything. It really looks awful. If I actually finish it (which I wont), and the game is actually fun to play, I may try outsourcing graphics.
The main reason for creating this game is for testing the new Mac GameMaker. I found two new bugs the second I started making this new game, and both have reportedly been fixed when the next beta version comes out. They both sounded very simple to fix, and apparently were. The bugs were as follows:
- View could not be larger than 100x100
- Shift all objects would only shift them down or right, not up or left (shift all would not accept negative numbers)
I have used blend modes, alpha and image scales in this game. None of these are yet working in GM for Mac, so I have just guessed and hoped that the lack of error messages (well, GM for Mac doesn't actually have error messages (at least I don't get them), the game just crashes) means that I have coded it correctly.
If anyone wants to test, or give me suggestions for which direction to take the (probably never to be released) game in, feel free to get in contact with me. It's not very progressed (one unperfected level, a handful of objects) but maybe that will change.
-Dave
I have been working on a new game. Of course, if any one you have known me long enough, you will know it will never actually be finished or released. I am horrible at making games. No really, horrible. My sore points are sprite drawing, game idea design, and sometimes (like in the case of SG1) a horrible user interface.
If you ever get the chance to play SG1, don't. It was an awesome idea, I just had no idea how to implement it properly. The player movement was the worst design I have ever seen for any game, ever. There was no flow to it, the movement was awkward and the shooting even worse. I didn't steal the game design off of another game, which was probably a bad move.
It took me five years of using GameMaker before releasing a game demo. Chances are it will be five more before I release another.
This new game I am making will be an epic fail when it comes to graphics. I can't draw, I accept that, so I currently have black squares for almost everything. It really looks awful. If I actually finish it (which I wont), and the game is actually fun to play, I may try outsourcing graphics.
The main reason for creating this game is for testing the new Mac GameMaker. I found two new bugs the second I started making this new game, and both have reportedly been fixed when the next beta version comes out. They both sounded very simple to fix, and apparently were. The bugs were as follows:
- View could not be larger than 100x100
- Shift all objects would only shift them down or right, not up or left (shift all would not accept negative numbers)
I have used blend modes, alpha and image scales in this game. None of these are yet working in GM for Mac, so I have just guessed and hoped that the lack of error messages (well, GM for Mac doesn't actually have error messages (at least I don't get them), the game just crashes) means that I have coded it correctly.
If anyone wants to test, or give me suggestions for which direction to take the (probably never to be released) game in, feel free to get in contact with me. It's not very progressed (one unperfected level, a handful of objects) but maybe that will change.
-Dave
