Tuesday 25 March 2014

Mobile Game Update #8 (Hack, Graphics, Landscape!)

I can't overstate how privileged I am to live and study in Hull. For someone who wants to get into the games industry and sees my degree as more of an opportunity than an academic requirement I am in a perfect situation to meet new people and go to awesome events. One of the more recent events is the Hull Hackathon which I'll save for a blog tomorrow. What the event brought though was something awesome. My game is starting to look how I imagined it.

Thursday 20 March 2014

Mobile Game Update #7 (Fun, '80s music, a working game)

This is the first blog after submission of my Windows Game Ambassador application so I guess I've proved to myself I don't need that goal to stay dedicated to this awesome project. 1 minor case of being burnt out happened after the problems covered in the last blog (that Monday blog was a really late Wednesday blog to be honest) but I'm back and persistent as ever.

Monday 17 March 2014

Mobile Game Update #6 (Windows Phone, touchscreens, menus)

Developing any game without hacking it together (at least by my standards) seems to take a lot of time. Since this is a long term project I don't want to make something I would have to tear apart at some point in the future. Game jams are fantastic but I don't think it should be where I form my habits for development. Even with the teething problems I have something on Windows Phone that works, well sort of works...

Monday 10 March 2014

Mobile Game Update #5 (Sprites, Backgrounds, Ukulele Music)

The great advantage of being slow to update my blog is I now have loads to show you guys. I tried improving things and shifting stuff onto the classes last time and not long after I made that blog post I made a new project, copied the code I KNEW worked and started from a less class dependent game but one that actually worked. From having something that worked, I decided to keep within the boundaries of my knowledge and only really use classes when it makes complete sense and I know exactly what to do.

Thursday 6 March 2014

Mobile Game Update #4 (Disasters, failures, coffee crashes)

Making games is extremely hard. Making games while trying very hard not to not hack everything together and enforcing the class diagram is even harder. Doing all that while learning on the go is probably one of the most difficult things I have ever done so far. I love doing all this but it's hard shaking off that feeling you're out of your depth. I don't have much to show but I desperately need the distraction right now so here it goes.

Monday 3 March 2014

Mobile Game Update #3 (Video! Bad Handwriting! Progress! )

The last blog was only a few days ago yet it feels like so long ago already. I've been busy since my last blog but not always with something I'd like to take up my time. My weekend was devoted mostly just to getting XNA on Visual Studio to work on my desktop. I'll talk about that at the end because it's not important and I really want to talk to you about what awesome things this Monday has brought! Seriously, this is one good update blog.

Sunday 2 March 2014

Mobile Game Update #2 (pictures, title name and software engineering!)

Behold, yet another update blog! This thing and myself might actually have a chance of getting somewhere in the next few weeks. I won't say I did this on my own or without any serious effort but I spent the Thursday night and up to Friday evening getting some concepts of classes figured out in my head and how I should apply this for games. I want to do this properly though and that costs quite a lot of time! My Saturday was sadly spend recovering from such a long work session. I promised someone I would sleep though.

Still, I am quite happy with what has been done so far.

Indie Game: The Movie: Thoughts.

It is March 2014 and I have finally watched Indie Game: The Movie. As time passed I ran out of reasons exactly why I hadn't watched it yet. I think being on Netflix and someone reminding me about it while at a desk trying to do something that wouldn't fry my brain (blog update #2 after this blog, it's a blogathon!).

What did I think of it exactly? Well, I have more thoughts on it than I expected and Twitter is no real format express them with a limit of words.