Parthon Software

It’s been a long time since my last post, a lot has happened in my life.

This post is really just to say that I’ve started making games stuff again. I started with a Left 4 Dead map of Perth, my home city, and will be continuing on with it for the next week. I’m excited to see how much I can get done.

I’m also looking at starting work again, this time not on a specific engine, or even a type of engine, but on a game. I’m not sure which one yet.

As for the thousander club update. From the 20 hours I worked on my python engine in February and the 60 hours I’ve working on my map this week, that puts me at 80 hours total. So only 920 left.

Wow, it’s been one hell of a quarter.

I had so many plans, but they all fell by the wayside. I recently sat down and went through my plans for the next year and the one thing that always came up was: I just haven’t put in the time.

This year I’m taking on the Thousander Club Challenge, which I heard about from Gianfranco Berardi of GBGames.

So, 20 hours a week for 50 weeks. 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. It’s very doable, even with a full time job. What has me worried though is that if I add up all the time I’ve worked on games, it would barely come to 400 hours over the last 10 years. This year I’m doubling it and more, working towards completing a game. I’ve found my notes for the first game that I wanted to make, Randor, and that’s the first one I’m going to finish. It’s going to be one hell of a year.

So I worked hard on Beyond Earth and hit a few problems with the user interface. The game design was straight forward, but the user interface was turning into a nightmare. I really have to strip it down and redesign a version that works. In the meanwhile I found the original design notes for Randor and Trodlins, my first two game ideas. I really want to recreate them again, not as they’ve changed into, but for what they were in the beginning. I still need to get better at my artwork for that though.

So that’s where it’s at. Projects are either on the backburner or in concept stage. I’m still not sure where to take my games making. I love to do it, but it’s long hours and a lot of work, and I’m not the most dedicated kind of person around. But I do know that I’ll keep coming back to making games for the rest of my life. It’s just whether or not I finish them is the question.

After losing focus on The Sporeal Invasion, I decided to go back to an old design and remake it. I wasn’t inspired by the Sporeal project at all actually, the first game I’ve worked on where I didn’t have any drive to finish it, unlike all the others.

Instead, I’m going to try something completely different. The crunch of having only two weeks to work on a game really helped, although two was too long and made me burnt out quick. For the next project I’m going to give myself one week to finish the next game I’m working on and present it. Because I’m fairly booked up tomorrow, I’m starting Sunday, so expect a release next Saturday.

The game I’m working on is Beyond Earth, an idea I’ve had for a while. It’s a space strategy game, vary similar to Master of Orion, but lots of modern upgrades and interesting gameplay tweaks. I’m not looking at making the game more complicated, but it’s becoming complicated as I add more to the concept. Oh well. The main focus though is macromanagement instead of micromanagement, without using automated tools. The player controls every aspect of the game, as they should, but the game itself should be straight forward and simple. Just the right amount of information and tools at the right time is the main focus.

I expect a playable version after Monday with a more complete game closer to the end of the week.

I’ve been working hard on the game but have reached a bit of a roadblock, and that is time. I’ve got two days left to finish it off, and that’s only about 8 hours of free time at most. I’m going to do my best, but it’s cutting it fine.

The main parts left are the world map system which includes missions and bases, along with research, engineering and exploration. On top of that I have to invent more level generation algorithms and bind that into a win/lose structure. Lastly, I need some good art. Either way, however this game pans out I’ve learnt a lot. The main two would be: it’s easy to get burnt out and distracted while coding a lot if you lose sight of why you are doing it all in the first place, and that my skills are good, but they need to be way better to go indy, but all that takes is practice.

I’m looking at a few different things over the next 5 years, different goal setups so to speak, and I’ll spend this sunday doing a planning session. Expect a long post from me then. After that I’m working on a demake of sim city, which I’m retitling to Town Planner Tycoon. It’s not a hard challenge, but it will be fun. That’s due at the end of August. Then after that it’s back to work on the RPG.