Orez Games

Day 3 of Game Development Week Overview

This is all I did. I created the directory that would eventually lead to making Eatnonymous. Today was interesting. It was the kind of day where you look at the clock, feeling like you have only been up for an hour, and it's already 3 P.M. I turned on the TV, started to watch the movie Big Fish, and I had a nap. I never have naps, usually.

I'm starting to wonder if I'm trying to force a game out of me. Part of the reason I got a Tumblr was to document my experiences as a game developer. All I have to show for it is two barely interactive fictions that I made as part of high school assignments. Now I'm in university, taking computer science courses, but I don't really have games to show for it. Do I not want to make games?

Then I realize that I'm lazy. I say I want to be a writer, yet I rarely write. If you follow my main blog (pocketforstupidcomments), I said I would draw every day. I've kept at it longer than any of my other creative ventures, but I don't do it every day. I need to kick myself in the pants and get my blood pumping.

At the same time, I don't know if my previous "LEARN GAME MAKER IN JUST ONE WEEK" attitude was good. In fact, I think I'm prematurely ending Game Development Week. I still want to make games (and MaverickPixel, you will get your birthday game eventually) and I still want to make the two games I mentioned. But I want to go at a different direction.

First things first, I'm bringing back Tissues. Tissues is the perfect project for me. I still have to learn RPG Maker, but I don't think that would be as much of a problem as with other engines/game makers. It is also a nice, happy game, and I need one of those to work on. Most of all, it is me trying to keep my word and do things that I said I'd do.

Also, I'll work on actually learning the platforms I use in depth, be that Game Maker, Flash, Pygame, or even C++ with some kind of library or framework. I'll work at getting the knowledge I need first. For example, although I know some Python, I'm still a beginner, just now exploring topics like recursion, classes, and abstract data types with any depth. So I'll work at it.

Day 2 of Game Development Week Overview

I mostly still did Game Maker tutorials. The first tutorial I did today and the one I did yesterday did teach me about the Drag and Drop interface, but the tutorial I did where this Breakout clone came from (Once again, none of the assets in the picture are mine, but YoYo Games' creation) was supposed to teach me about how to write Game Maker Language, and I learned nothing. I just did what it told me to, and the last instructions, which would teach me to make a title screen, a high score system, and other finishing touches didn't even work. I didn't really try that hard. Like yesterday, today was a write-off.

I also started a side project in easy-to-use hypertext system Twine, but that project will probably not be finished. It's based on a really dirty and bad question that I asked myself today that I found so ridiculous that I had to write it down. But that game would be NSFW and generally way too much information than you want to know about me. However, if there is interest in my short, personal, disgusting joke game, I might release it.

Tomorrow, I might start work in Ren'Py to start working on Eatnonymous. That will be nice, because almost all of the programming I've done in the past year is Python, and I'm familiar with Ren'Py.. I also might skip the built-in tutorials and just fiddle around with Game Maker.

Day 1 of Game Development Week Overview

OK, time to get embarrassing: I haven't actually worked with Game Maker before. So all I did today was do a basic Game Maker tutorial that came with Game Maker and make this "Catch The Clown" game, where you click on a clown that changes directions frequently, as well as speeding up every time you click on the clown. (Note: None of these visuals are mine, but rather the property of YoYo Games.)

I would have done more Game Maker tutorials, but I was out with my parents for most of the day and watching movies with my Dad for most of the night.

Thoughts:

-The two-person random door shooting game I mentioned earlier is way too intense for a nine (and, to be honest, let's call today a write-off, eight)-day period for a beginner like me. I still want to make it, but not this week.

-I still want to make Eatnonymous, but not in Game Maker. I'll make it in Ren'Py, because it's Python-based, and Python is the language I'm most comfortable with; it's text-based, and I have no idea how to make a good text-based game in Game Maker; and the fact that I have used Ren'Py before.

-So, if I'm not making those games in Game Maker, why even try learning Game Maker? Well, it's my friend, MaverickPixel's  birthday today, so, as a gift, I asked him to make a game idea that I would make. He came up with a game on the spot that's based on bad MIDI music, stick figures that bump into each other, and the refrigerator. So, I came up with a game idea that I could make around those things in Game Maker.

So, that's the first day of Game Development Week. I have until February 23 to make a game. Can I do it?

So, as you can tell by this blog, I'm not very committed to game development. Maybe this is a sign I'm actually not interested in game development. However, I'm putting that aside for a just over one week period, because from February 15 to February 23, I have Reading Week at my school. And instead of getting caught up and being the best student I can be, I'm going to try to make games!

I have a couple ideas that I want to strive for, but recognize that I could fail with these ideas, as they might be too big. Even if I fail with these, I'll still make a game.

Eatnonymous - You are on a date at one of the most mysterious and bizarrely romantic places to go on a date - A restaurant completely in the dark. There is no judgement over looks or how fancy one's clothes are, just a date with a person and their personality.

However, there's a chance that your date might be trying to poison you. Try to figure this out through the dialogue. If you refuse to eat food that is not poisoned, the date ends. If you eat poisoned food, you die (obviously). If you make the right choices of things to eat, you win! Hopefully, you go on a date that's nice and non-life threatening!

I don't want visuals other than text, so I could theoretically do this in something like the hypertext authouring system Twine. I do want there to be a little randomization with the dates and the dialogue, as well as some sound for ambiance. Twine can do these things, but I can also use the Python knowledge that I have learned in the past year and use the Python based visual novel maker Ren'Py to do it. However, since I'm using Game Maker Studio to make the next game, I might use this game to experiment in Game Maker for that game.

-The second game is a two-player local multiplayer game. There are four floors of five doors. If a person enters a door, they get sent to another door that was randomly decided before the match.

Two people have guns, and each person is trying to shoot the other person. Use the doors to traverse around the floors and try to shoot the other person. Another game about shooting people, how original and progressive. 

So, next Saturday will hopefully be the start of this venture. I'll post progress on this blog. Time for me to stop talking and start doing.

If this already is a game, well, darn. It's pretty derivative, anyway. It's probably also too cumbersome.

One hundred squares are placed in a 10x10 formation. Most of them are grey, five of them are yellow, and twenty, 10 red and 10 blue, player squares are put down. The player squares and the yellow squares are put out at random. Each player has five additional squares of their red or blue colour to be kept with them

Both players puts a player figure on a square to the end of the board that is opposite of the other player. The player take turns rolling a six-sided die to move that many squares in any up-down-left-right manner they so choose. If they land on another player's red or blue square, they replace that square with the square colour of the player who landed on the square.

After each turn, the player has to take a card from the top of a deck. It will either be one you have to use right then and there or one that can be saved for later in the game. (Of which type of card this is has to be declared.) Some will benefit, like, "Go two squares away from the nearest square of the other player". Others, like "Go to the nearest yellow square" or "Send the other player to the yellow square nearest to them" depend on the context of the game.  "Miss two turns" is, of course, bad for the player who gets it.

Some cards, like "Flip Proportion", which will flip the amount of squares each player has (so, if one player has seven claimed squares, and the other, thirteen squares, the first player can claim enough to have thirteen squares, leaving the former leader with seven), can be both a use right then card or a save for the right moment card.

I have decided on an Internet name: Orez. It's zero backwards! (And Romanian for rice, but that had nothing to do with my decision.) I got it from looking at my Smashing Pumpkins shirt in a mirror!

Because of this, I now have a Gamejolt account (http://gamejolt.com/profile/matt-kluk/92918/) and a Glorious Trainwrecks account (http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/user/21649) under the Orez name, where I will upload my future games!

Actually buying RPG Maker. VX Ace, which is on sale on Steam for the next two days!

So, yeah, I will fiddle around with it. I might make a small game around the fact that databending images in Audacity to look glitchy works well with Bitmap images, the default file type for sprites in RPG Maker.

For clarification, that kind of databending looks like this:

So, for an English assignment about The Wars by Timothy Findley, we could choose to tell the stories of the soldiers that the protagonist meets. What better way to separate and develop these stories than through the hypertext of Twine?

The Most XYZZY Nutrient Adventure Ever! (from January 2012)

After thinking that I lost it forever, I found my first game! Well, if you can call it that. It's really an incredibly linear text adventure where all you do is type the direction it tells you and grab two things (and you don't even have to take them to win.) It was the comprehensive final review of a Biology class that I took, so edutainment! Yay! Also, you play as a joule named Johnny that, according to the pictures that I sent to my teacher, is represented by an Awesome Face. (Ugh. Memes. Gross.)

So, yeah, the first game I ever made! I made it shortly after discovering interactive fiction and, if I was to do it again, would make it in Twine instead of Inform. But, as my first game, it has value to me. I guess it could have value to those learning high school biology.

You can play it online here.

As you can see from my *immense and frequent* (read: rare) updating, you can see that I am not very motivated and that I'm kind of lazy. Fear not, I'm still incredibly interested in programming, and I want to program more. Hopefully when I'm finished this year of school, I can program more, but even now, I'm making a conscious effort to add coding to my schedule, so yay!

Anyways, I'm thinking of retiring the "NewDev" name, as I was clearly not dedicated to game development with the name. I want a nickname that is  unique and that I would be proud to have represent me, but I haven't thought of one yet. Maybe just my real name.

And now, the announcement: I am planning an actual game! One that I am dedicated to making, even though I just recently thought of it! I told the idea to my friend MaverickPixel (whom I will likely be collaborating with), and he came up with the brilliant title of Tissues. The game will:

-likely be made in RPG Maker

-will likely have all of the tiles/character art be drawn in crayon

-will be about a little girl determined to say, "Bless you!" to everyone who sneezes.

Release date: I don't know, could be a couple months, could be ten years, how do I know, it's barely even a thought!

Still, this is the only game idea of mine that I feel is "good" and "able to accomplish", so I feel happy about the idea of making it. And, for a while, I didn't know if making games would necessarily make me happy, so I'm even more joyful at this realization.

Now, I looked for the examples given in the download, and I saw a lot of high level coding being used to make a lot of impressive applications. I feel I would be moving away from the fantastic art functions of openFrameworks by utilizing it to make (poorly-made) videogames.

But everything needs to be bastardized every once in a while!* I will eventually make a game in this framework, because I have nothing better to do, I guess. I'll fiddle around with it until I can get a good game idea with it.

You can get openFrameworks here.

http://www.openframeworks.cc/

So, it is New Year's Eve. For many, it is a time to reflect back on the good memories they now have. For others, it is a chance to plan out their futures as best as one can. I guess that the latter is what I'm doing in the post.

However, now that I have a new hard drive, I'm treating it as a blessing in disguise. The only IDE I've really used before this was CodeBlocks and the only text editor I really used was jEdit. Now, I feel like working with new programs, if only for experimentation. After learning that NetBeans has C/C++ support, I thought, while Java has its cause célèbres, it might have worth to learn something new, perhaps taking on Java one day. I could also finally learn Vim, like what all good little programmers seem to like.

I really need to get my goals into place. Some of these will be programming/game related, some aren't, but they are my projects, and these are my goals. I just have to organize them a little bit. They are: