So, I honestly should have started this dev blog a while ago, but to make up for my all the back log, here is my back blog: History:
So, after my first year of university, in the summer of 2016, I started to work on a game design for what I thought would be an amazing game. Technically, I started working on it at the end of March, but final exams slowed down progress, so I wasn't able to fully focus on it until the end of April. I was particularly inspired by my newfound love for a small indie game called Undertale, which was released earlier that school year; my initial design very much wore its inspiration on its sleeve, at least, even more than it does so still. While I'd always dreamed of being a developer, it was this game that showed me that, if you work hard enough and have the skill and effort needed, a single person (or very small team) can make a game all on their own. And so, with an idea in my head and some code on my laptop, I set out to make my first big game.
It was... tricky. I relied mostly on what I knew from highschool, prototyping the game in Processing, an offshoot of the Java programming language, rather than working in a more grounded engine like Unity or Gamemaker. Why do I, to this day, often use Processing for making games when using an engine is easier than coding from scratch? Well, there's probably a longer answer, but the short of it is it was, and is, what I'm used to and most comfortable with, and can use quickly to make something. So, the prototype was coded in Processing, and so is the version I'm still working on today.
After creating a small mess of code for barely half of a demo of everything, I started to draw what is sometimes affectionately referred to as "dev art", meaning just art made by the game developer that really has no place in the final product. I still am a rather poor artist, but I was even worst 2.5 years ago. So, anyways, I copy some images for reference and sketched up some simple sprites and maps for the demo.
...I still cringe thinking about how they look...
Don't worry, I'm a bit better at drawing now.
Next was figuring out music. I basically asked some people quite close to me if they'd be willing to help me out for free so I could get this thing off the ground. The one guy said he was busy. The other said he wanted to be paid hourly, in what could easily end up being a few hundred dollars. I told him I didn't have that money. He told me tough luck; and then he agreed to help me a bit in his spare time.
This was also back when Kickstarter was still somewhat of a viable option for crowdfunding games, just before the incidents of No Man's Sky and other similar situations soured the experience for gamers and the fate of the useful crowndfunding resource was, for now, sealed. But back then, my optimism (and likely my naivete) told me that kickstarter was the best way to go! So, though I never actually submitted the project to the platform, I did a lot of work researching and estimating price and time budgets, accounting for possible merch, writing written descriptions, creating various social media accounts, and probably other things that I've forgotten about; it was much more work than I anticipated. But, alas, it was not to be, because...
As I kept coding, my program was becoming more tangled and wrapped around itself than a set of earbuds in your pocket at the end of the day. Eventually, I hit a wall that I could not overcome; scaling. Not that the problem was that I couldn't scale the problem (I mean, I couldn't), but that the image renderer was having a massive problem scaling images; such that, while it ran fine on its default size at a full 60 fps, scaling a full sized map with all the sprites and everything to full screen mode slowed it down to a horrendous 5-20 fps. The default Processing image renderer was not built to scale. And so, with that and other complexities (including major issues in the combat spell system) furthering my depressing dive into personal failure, I decided to put the project on hold.
After deciding to let the first version of Echoes of Lotus rest at the end of the summer of 2016, I decided to pick it apart, focusing on what worked and fixing what didn't. The result was a prototype for a mobile version, using an extremely similar combat system, with many improvements, such as a more complex spell tree and better spell effects.
The shift went from simply leveling up unlock spells to also include a gacha game element, where, instead of collecting cats, cute anime girls, or human personifications of food (look it up), you could win spells that may exist further down the spell tree, fast tracking what spells you unlocked. I was still kinda attached to the story of Echoes of Lotus, so while the working title was "Wizard Duels", the idea for the game's narrative was that perhaps it could be a sort of prequel, where all players are wizards, before they went underground, as they do in the main game.
While I picked at that occasionally over the years, leaving it dormant for many months at a time, I spent the next 2 summers of 2017 and 2018 creating Ghost Story (2 months) and Couple's Quest (just over 4 months). I was quite proud of these, extremely rough as they were (perhaps I'll post the download links here later?). They were small, short term projects that allowed me to test what I'd learned at school and on my own and create something nice with them.
The last semester before the summer of 2018, I had a class called "Professional Practice in Engineering". The final project was basically a "submit a topic for approval; if it's ok'ed, then write a nice long report about it and give a creative 5 minute presentation. Bonus points for a media component". What's that, you say, Professor? A MEDIA component?... Well then, that gives me an idea!
I chose the topic of Net Neutrality (which actually had some massive developments State-side earlier that very semester and was a hot topic because of it), wrote a rather slamming essay summarizing the extensive history of the topic, and covering a long list of arguments from the perspective of consumers, large ISPs, and small ISPs (from a neutral viewpoint) before coming to my conclusion (spoiler alert: Net Neutrality - good thing)... and made a video game for the presentation (I actually did run this by the professor before just to make sure it was allowed). The game itself was rather janky, Frankensteined from some old and some new code into what was just barely a functional enough side scrolling beat-em-up where the player punched their way through a large ISP, the FCC, and afterwards, Donald Trump himself. I had about 3 weeks to put this together, with all original art assets and levels, in the middle of the busiest time right before final exams; so yeah, it was kinda rushed. It got a couple good laughs at the presentation, as I had hoped, possibly because of how the rather lack luster art was set to Eye of the Tiger, edited by a total noob in windows movie maker. XD
Suffice to say, I got a great mark on that project.
So, after all of that, I believe I've gotten better at both programming as well as game design and development.
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