#efaj

I started with Game Maker, free edition of course, and for the lulz. I had plenty of spare time. I worked on art with a pixel-art approach (edit pixel by pixel) and got to the point of being better at “photoshopping” with Paint than most with PS. I did like 5 games:

Ninja Attack 1 and 2. You were a cyborg ninja that could fly in 2D with a story reminiscing a young Hideo Kojima. The second added a few stages in spaceship combat. Broken as heck, but it got me (unknown to me at the time) into event programming and knowing the top level programming of games.

Tanks, a 2d top view 2 player game. Done because my younger brother wanted a game with tanks.

Mink, a hybrid of Link and Mario (so, like the 2d segments of Oracles and Zelda II) however this never got far. I pictured him being the son of Link and Mario, and would hint this in the end game (guess I’m no homophobic since youth?). Unlike Ninja Attack, it’s focus would be platforming and puzzles, and it’s upgrades would be for puzzles, unlike Ninja’s which were for combat. Never got far, it’s one level was done around a bug: A wall jump that I couldn’t get rid of, so you got that upgrade before being able to advance.

President Evil (name based on a photoshopped image around W.Bush’s period). With this, I claimed mastership of Game Maker and swore to stop using it, to grow beyond it. A 3D shooter game (in 2D graphics, like Doom) done for my first course in University.

After that, my next game was done during the end of year vacations on University. I got an R4 and then checked out Super Smash Bros Rumble, a homebrew game for the DS. However, it kinda had stopped updating for some time, and near christmas, it’s developer announced it was quitting. I was online at almost that exact time, I thought about it for like 5 mins, and kinda felt compelled that it would be a terrible christmas present for it to go without a dev… so, I barged in. I took charge of it, learned almost everything through googling (though I knew Java before this), ended up changing it to Super Smash Bros Clash in a very authoritarian decision (fortunately, close friends I made followed, and when they saw results, many more did). This was done in C++, using libNDS (which was like the most lower level way to work on the C++), so it was a drastic change from my usual top level development. But this time, I had people helping with sprites, music, and everything else that wasn’t programming. I only used my skills for basic proof-of-concepts, so I could get things working, and then instructing the others on how to make the things to work on the game, like, the sprite format and the order of sprites, or the way to make cuts in the music to allow looping (with a non-looping intro). This was also a good practice in leadership, embodying my practice of leading through example. (which means that a leader must know a bit about every aspect). I’m also proud that this was one of few homebrews with peer-to-peer multiplayer on the DS, and it was also good networking practice, though it was a crappy implementation that used to end up with differing states over time.

Even though I did want to follow up with another free fan game, I felt it was time to be serious. This was the birth of Crenet Games. So, I would no longer just take assets, and make original and well done Intellectual Property. This would allow the game to go even further, as I could focus on it (or so I thought). My best friends showed interest in making a game too, they started helping back in Clash, and after I learned 3D rigging and animation, I taught them, and they were able to help more with this new project: A 3D PokeMMO (this was around 2010, way before X and Y, even Black/White)

You can see it’s original website here: http://crenet.crenet-games.com/

Took me a pair of years to get the engine done (Using C++, Ogre3D, Bullet Physics, another lib for sound -can’t recall-, and lots of lesser libs) and lots of research on Game Engine Architecture (and Game Engines themselves, which none convinced me and I easily managed to get more frames than them). Reading books, like “Game Coding Complete" and lots of Googling. But, I started wondering if the project was viable. I used like 3 months to make a Pokemon Rumble style game with this engine and the Crewons, to try a kickstarter (or even just rally fan support in general), but that failed miserably, so I archived it all.

I then focused on smaller projects that didn’t need such commitment. Instead of launching a cannonball, shoot lots of small bullets, no? One is sure to hit even if not as strong. So, we made Pirates and Ninjas (http://pnn.crenet-games.com/) an android free game with ads. It didn’t quite take off though… but at least some reviews made me feel good. And I was able to toy around with receiving payments for the PC version which was not free.

Thinking on capitalizing the social factor, I then made a webgl game, Shipsteroids (featured in Crenet’s homepage http://www.crenet-games.com/) with Facebook connectivity. Once again, that sucked, and I think no living soul ever played it. (Ads. You seriously need to spend money in ads).

I got rejected for a Nintendo SDK, though, due to geographical reasons (I live in Costa Rica)

However, all this was fun. The skills obtained have earned me money in many things. First freelancing, and more directly I even almost got a big-ish contract to make a simulator -not the Goat Simulator kinds, the Euro Truck kind- but… I declined it because it sounded boring. I was into games for fun, and if I wanted money, I’d do other stuff. That was my train of thought., afterwards, through gamification with a biggish company, and working on a video game for my University.