Hello World (I swore I would never use that term)

Hello World, Indeed!

Greetings to the community here and hello to the rest of the world. I hope this entry will be the beginning of many more as I realized not too long ago I need somewhere to socialize my inner thoughts and ambitions as it relates to game creation. I've just gotta start reaching out and sharing my passions as it relates to computer games. Not withstanding what I don't know my hope is to turn this place into a space I can talk about the issues as I see them. I'm not even sure if I need a response, I just need somewhere to talk about development things as they come up.

I Have A Dream!

To put it bluntly, I am THE independent developer. No money, no dream team, no product, no company. I'm as square one as it gets. A few months ago I started to look into what is available for low to no budget development and was shocked at what I found. I couldn't contain my excitement at the potential and so thus started to document ideas and insights I've been harboring through all my experience playing games. Even without gobs of money for running a business I can't help but wonder how even a moderate income couldn't be achieved with the right skills and contacts. I know, I know. The warning lights are going off in my head too.

I Is Learnded!!!

As some background, I might not be as 'square one' as I dramatically declared, I have some experience creating presentations in Macromedia's Director and Authorware back in the early to mid 90s, so I understand how to manipulate files and content to present in a meaningful way. I do have some graphic design training and I'm artistically inclined which fuels much of the passion inside. I also have some training in 3d graphics and the kind of mind it takes to think in 3d. With that said, I'm not nearly perfect in those things nor am I up to date with all the new stuff available. So theres still a lot I want to learn going into this and I'm excited about the possibilities.

How It REALLY Started!

Ok. Here goes. See, I'm an avid space game fan inside. It really started with Wing commander in 1990 (yea that just dated me) and I've played most of them all, since. The last few years I've been trying out the space games and have been disappointed at the experience they've offered. My disappointment is far more dynamic then that sentence describes but to keep it short thats the crux of it (maybe in a different blog). So I finally realized that there wasn't really ANY game that was going to provide what I was looking for and my passion for art was hungering for expression. There are times in life when the only time change REALLY occurs is because of the frustration and suffering that is being experience. It finally has come to that point for me, enough hoping for others to do what only I know how to do.

That isn't to say my way is the right way, I just have my own idea of how the universe should be. Experience tells me that what I think is going to change...a LOT...cause from what I've learned, walking the walk and talking the talk are two COMPLETELY different things. And maybe thats why those games that disappoint are the way they are, maybe there are limitations I just can't see as the player.

Anyway, thats the start, the impetus for this grand vista of wonderment known as game development.

#$%@ This Is HARD!!!!

Ok now for reality. I like to think that I'm a smart person. I think the reality is I'm a paranoid person. See, I try and read and research a lot before doing something for the first time. In my infinite mass of a brain I have it that somewhere sometime someone has done everything I'm thinking of doing so all I need to do is scrawl through the lower depths of forum hell( thank god for the internet now a days) to find those secret juicy hidden jewels of wisdom just waiting to be harvested. The weird thing is, more often then not I've been correct. In some way or another I've managed to always find an answer to what I seek. Unfortunately for my space game aspirations I've come to the conclusion that I dun know squat. See most if not all of the games I'm basing my ideas off of have TEAMS of people working on all the different aspects. Sound, Graphics, Programming, Design, Marketing, Accounting, Daycare, Barhopping, Pension, Union Dues, Moffia Payout...the list is endless!!! Ok those last few might not have been serious. I know that this is nothing new to you and it really wasn't new to me either, its just one of those things you don't REALLY seriously consider until your fully committed to doing something. Then you gain a better understanding of just how much work and energy is alive in this field!

Plan B!

Thank god for plan B, I LOVE plan Bs. The good news is, the passion is real. I'm still going to create space games. Just not right now...or next month...I might have something going in a year...I hope...maybe...I'm not sure. Release date to be announced at a later date! See what I've learned is that if at any time I feel a lot of discomfort when trying to work on an aspiration then more often then not that is telling me I'm trying to do something I'm not really prepared for. Sooo, I'm going to try something you NEVER EVER DO!! I'm going to start small. You know, the things that every tutorial and every developer with any measure of success worships with an in home shrine. You know, the thing that you do to let your brain take in all you learn at the pace it can handle. You know, the things that you completely ignore when you start a crazy idea!

So with that new mantra beeding through my head I've scaled down my aspirations to something 2Dish while I learn about as many aspects of developing a functioning fun game of purse pulsating pleasure. I'm thinking casual games is a pretty smart idea. For now, maybe. At some point I realize I'll need help and will probably need to bring others in to fill that need. Ultimately what I really think is that I need to change the way I think of the whole process I'm engaging in. I think its kinda of silly to have the whole thought process to be centralized on creating A game. What happens when you've finished that game? Game over! Thats not what I'm really looking for. I want to enjoy the process of creation and learning that goes on and interject the games with the imagination and revelations that go along that process...with you know...the chance for some form of monetary reward for effort that will provide for living expenses and future projects.

Theres an incredibly dynamic balance that needs to occur to realize all the parts and I'm at START.

Enter Torque Stage Right!!!

So as you might have gathered by now since I'm posting on this site, I'm planning on starting with Torque as a basis for learning then seeing where it takes me from there. It just makes a lot of sense from my innocently naive point of view. What you don't see is the jumping of logic thats been going on for the last few months. I was thinking Python and then Lua and then C++ and then Torque then Blitz line of products then Darkbasic for a while there. Ultimately what I realized was that I had no clue how to even start to create a game 'engine'. Which is what I would need to do with most of those products. So humbly I had to say I needed something even more basic to start with. Something that I could gain the awareness of what kinda of things you can do with an 'engine'. Thank god I wait a long time before acting. I was dead set on Darkbasic for a couple months but couldn't get the cash for it so had to wait. During that time I kept reading and researching and try to understand what to do and what to expect and finally relied on that discomfort level to decide I needed to look around some more and be honest about other possibilities.

Finally Torque. I knew about it for a while but let others opinions color my thought process since I had no knowledge for myself to base off of. What stuck with me though was the gentle step process each development product provided and the price was reasonable for what you get. You start off slow with 2d and learn the script language, then you can advance to the basic 3d and scripting then advanced 3d. The C++ based scripting language is a plus cause theres just no way to get away from the fact at SOME point I've got to learn C++. I already know it would be too much to jump in and start with C++ first so with Torque I can still create games and gently use its structure to gain a solid base of knowledge to segway into the more advanced stuff and then greater independence in C++. With most the other programming options I would be doing ALL of that myself without the support and even awareness of what can be done. Its the awareness that I'm really trying to learn. What can be done with all of this and how do I do it? I just don't know yet, but its important that I get those ideas in their proper order and with something I can explore them with.

BLAH BLAH BLAH

My god I'm not used to this much talking!!! Cause really, it all means squat at this point on the page. Its all in the past, and I still haven't done anything with it!

5 Days Left!!!

So I've got 5 days left on my Torque Game Builder demo. I thought I would give a brief run through of the experience for me. I might not be thorough though, that was a lot of typing just now as you know since you've gotten this far down!

For the most part my impressions about TGB is fun! Its going to be fun using it and learning what all those nifty commands and functions can do. I didn't have any problems understanding how to embed code though the tree structure is a lot to take in. I expect to learn that with time. My only beef was really that the demo had none of the behaviors available to it so that limited how much I could really get done with the tutorials. Since it was only a demo I thought it made sense since I could still get a feel for how things worked in the program. Its just, you know, annoying that I couldn't create a space shooter off the bat with behaviors. I did manage to hawk some of the code from the forums for the ASDW object moving controls and get that working, even figured out on my own how to get the game to go to fullscreen mode!

Found out that if you try and drag an image from a web page directly to the editor it would create a while line(1 pixel thin) in the right and bottom side of the image, where if I just saved it to file then imported it properly it was fine. Don't know if that was my system or what.

I imported 3 image of a ship at 252 px, 124px and 60px. Then took the 252px and copied it then reduced it to 60px. Copied the 124 px and reduced it to 60px as well. From this I had them move around to see what kind of graphic quality there would be. From that it looked like its best to resize images outside the program then bring them in for best image quality. Just a simple test I did, though from my experience its similar to the kinds of little tricks in other programs I've explored.

I got some code from the forum that attached the camera to the player. That worked fine, from there I began to try and play with the tile layers and begun to ask myself how I would create a parallaxing layer of stars that appeared to move at different speeds when the player moved in any direction. Not sure if its the same thing as scrolling items but looks like it might be related. Or just moving the tile layers at different speeds. I still haven't figured that one out but those are the kinds of things I'm looking toward with the program. I didn't see anything that would indicate it couldn't be done. Saw a lot of reference functions that might do it.

I'm still trying to wrap myself around the relationships of classes and instances and just what that means. I think I'm getting it and from what I understand its pretty fundamental with C++ and torque's OOP way of doing things.

Another thought I had was if you were trying to target a graphics card with a limited size for the casual game market and you were limited to a 128px texture size, would you need to take a fullscreen background and chop it up into 128px size pieces to get it to show right or what. I'm just trying to anticipate how TGB processes images and how to manage that process. Clearly I don't understand how textures work with the hardware yet.

Anyway, those are a sample of things I'm thinking as I've been slowly playing with TGB this past month. I don't have the money to buy it just yet, that will be a few months off I think but I've enjoyed it too much and really its not much when you consider what you get for it. I remember when Macromedia Director couldn't do nearly all it does and still cost $1000 back in the 1990s. Crazy crazy crazy!

START

So with that I think I'll end this little blog. Who knows what the future holds, I'm always weary of typing out thoughts because they change so much and next week they can be in an entirely different place. Thank you though for the place to at least get out some of what I've been thinking about. Hopefully it will translate into something productive and fun for the future. Enjoy and remember! I'm that silent stalker in the background readying your posts!!! :)