GBGamesYesterday’s post about my June #1GAM mentioned my huge island to explore and new coconut tree sprites.
After just half an hour yesterday morning that I didn’t think I’d actually take advantage of, I have animated coconut trees:
I intend for the trees to animate when the Castaway shakes them in an attempt to knock down coconuts, but for now they dance in unison in a poor imitation of Super Mario World.
They aren’t pretty animations, but then I’m just making programmer art over here.
In my last One Game a Month project post, I mentioned that I had message routines and created tiles for an island.
At the time, I said the next steps were:
Well, I did it. And I might have gotten a bit overambitious.
Above is an image of my 1024×1024 map so far. Each pixel represents a tile, as it does for the maps of my first major game, Stop That Hero!. I find loading images and defining tiles by colors to be quick and easy.
But I’m starting to realize how much work it is to create such a large world. I wish I had time to figure out some procedural algorithm to generate an island for me. As it is, I’m plotting things by hand, and taking shortcuts as I get bored. You can see the mess of green swirls at the bottom left as an example.
In any case, I thought I should add some other elements to the island, so now there are coconut trees:
I like the way they look when they are clustered together, even if the lack of variety makes them look more cookie-cutter than would be ideal.
I am finding a problem with rendering, however. Specifically with Z-ordering. There is no concept of an obstacle yet, so the Castaway can walk through trees. When he is above a tree and walking down, he’s behind it until his feet hit about halfway down the tree, then he pops in front of it.
I think it is because the render ordering is based on the top-left corner of a blitted image and not the hotspot location, which would be the bottom of the tree and the feet of the Castaway. When the Castaway’s feet get about halfway down the tree, his head is just below the top of the tree, so now the system thinks he is in front. Hopefully that’s what it is and can be easily fixed.
I did run into one problem with the map loading that I’d like to share here. The 1024×1024 map is split into 32×32 graticules (I refused to call them “chunks”). Each MapGraticule is split into 32×32 tiles.
When I loaded a graticule from the map, I did it by getting the pixel offset and then matching tiles to colors in each pixel in the 32×32 area of the image.
When I ran the game, however, I was confused why so many graticules appeared very similar. In fact, they looked the same. What gives?
My image loading code was fine. The problem was when I created the MapGraticule objects for the island map in the first place.
I did so like so:
for (int column = 0; column < WORLD_WIDTH; ++column)
{
std::vector<MapGraticule*> graticules(WORLD_HEIGHT, new MapGraticule(graticuleWidth, graticuleHeight, DEFAULT_TILE));
m_map.push_back(graticules);
}
For those of you unfamiliar with C++, the above code loops through each column in the world, creates a collection of pointers to MapGraticule objects, and adds it to the world map.
For those of you very familiar with C++, you see what I did wrong. I created a single MapGraticule object, but created a vector of pointers…that all point to that same object.
So when I was populating each graticule with the right tile data, I was actually overwriting the same object’s data. When I went to render the world, I was likewise getting the data to render from the same object instead of multiple objects like I expected.
It was a simple fix. I simply added a loop to go through each row and created a unique MapGraticule object for each coordinate:
for (int column = 0; column < width; ++column)
{
std::vector<MapGraticule*> graticules;
for (int row = 0; row < height; ++row)
{
graticules.push_back(new MapGraticule(graticuleWidth, graticuleHeight, DEEP_WATER));
}
m_map.push_back(graticules);
}
My next task is to give the player something to do other than explore the map.
Walking around is fun and all, but the people demand drama!
They want the player to pick things up. They want the player to put things down. They want the player to eat things.
Oh, the excitement!
And I might shrink the size of the island while I’m at it.
The other day, I had merely a walking Castaway demo for Shipwrecked, my June One Game a Month project.
I spent a little more time on the controls than I thought I would. It didn’t feel right. I tried something simple at first:
if (an arrow key has been pressed since the last update)
{
velocity = 1.0
player.setDirection(the direction of the arrow key)
}
if (an arrow key has been released since the last update)
{
velocity = 0.0
}
It worked well enough. The Castaway moves at a constant speed until the key is released, then he comes to a complete halt.
The problem was that if you are switching directions periodically, sometimes the velocity drops to 0 even if you feel like you should keep moving.
So I changed it. Now, instead of checking for key release, I check the status of all four arrow keys. If none of them are currently pressed, THEN set the velocity to 0.0. Otherwise, allow the movement to continue.
It feels much better.
I’ve also added some message routines. Basically, if there is a message to display to the player, it will end up in a queue with a timer. When the message is visible, the timer ticks down to 0, and it removes the message from the queue for the next one. It took me all of 15 minutes to implement.
And instead of a giant purple emptiness, I added some tiles.
In this Shipwrecked message queue video demo, you can see all of the elements of the project in action, including being able to read a few lines in the Castaway’s diary:
I simply painted the tiles down using for-loops, so the Castaway could walk on water right now if I let him.
So the next big things to do:
My worry is that I’ll get to the end of the month without any game play. I still haven’t exactly figured out what actions the player has, nor what the ending looks like.
It’s partly because I’m worried that I’ll be too ambitious. For instance, if I implement the ability to get heat stroke, it means the player needs to be able to avoid it, which means finding or building shelter. Do I have time to implement the ability to collect resources and build a lean-to (as well as draw one that looks half-decent)?
These last few things have come together quickly. Maybe I’ll get lucky and won’t have to compromise entirely on the concept of a Castaway surviving on a desert island after a shipwreck.
Last time, I introduced the Castaway for my One Game a Month project for June. I’ve since created a few more poses and some basic walking animations.
Here’s a June #1GAM video demo I quickly put together:
Next up is giving the player direct control through the arrow keys, which means changing directions and needing to set the right frame when standing still.
And after that, I think I’ll add some basic text displays. I like the idea of tooltips and descriptions popping up when you are exploring the world. Maybe it will tell you if you’re getting hungry, similar to how NetHack does it. Or maybe I’ll be more direct than that. B-)
Soon after, I’ll create the world to explore, and I’m thinking about cutting back on line-of-sight since I might not have enough time to really play with it.
Often people become indie game developers the same way anyone first becomes an entrepreneur.
They fall into it and don’t realize just how big of a job they really have.
It’s one thing to be a hobbyist. You are doing game development for the love of doing it. You make games you want to play, and if anyone else likes it, it’s gratifying, but it’s gravy on top of just spending time on something enjoyable. And if you make a few bucks, so much the better. Now your hobby is helping you pay for pizza and beer.
But if you want to do it for a living, it’s harder.
You may not realize it at first. You might think, “Duh, I know that running a business is different from enjoying a hobby. I’m aware of the difference.”
But you don’t. Unless you’ve got the experience, you can’t prepare for how much pain and effort there is, how much anguish and despair you might feel, and how stressed out you can be due to spending time handling all manner of business-y things and not getting to the “real work” of game development, the whole reason you decided to pursue it full-time.
You don’t know the struggle to believe in your own self-worth when another month goes by in which you haven’t made enough income and you have a family to support, worrying that they are secretly wondering when you’re going to give up “playing with the computer,” go find a “real job,” and place your priorities in the “right” place.
You don’t know what it is like to work, work, work, only to feel like you haven’t made enough progress to justify all of the sleepless nights and bloodshot eyes and missing out on social experiences, and all you know how to do is more work.
Every once in awhile, you’ll pull yourself away from your wheel-spinning and isolation and look out into the world. There, you’ll see huge successes like Minecraft. You’ll read about Steambirds, Triple Town, and plenty of IGF-winning games getting good press. You’ll find threads about how indies need to pursue mobile or F2P or how the only way to make money on PC is through Steam (despite successes like Minecraft).
And then you look at your own efforts, and you start to compare and contrast.
Above: my May One Game a Month project, Hungry Frogs looks quite terrible, especially in comparison to something like Incredipede.
Am I Doing the Indie Thing Wrong?
Being an indie game developer means choosing your own path and following your own dream. In chasing it, though, sometimes it is hard to look at everyone else and not wonder if you’re missing out on some opportunities.
The mobile games space has grown to the point that we’re simply calling them games now. Free-to-play is essentially shareware taken to an extreme, but if you are trying to make a game that requires a purchase to play, good luck. Customers have the option of playing multiple new, effectively-free games per day. Everyone is having a hard time getting their games noticed, and your entire sales model might be a relic that is making it harder for yourself.
Ouya and Occulus Rift are the new hotness. It’s exciting to have another console that isn’t controlled by a company such as Microsoft or Nintendo, and finally having virtual reality headsets at a low-cost? What took so long?
Making games for tablets, creating your own alternative reality gaming, utilizing ads and in-app purchases, accepting donations, successfully driving a Kickstarter campaign, having a larger supportive network of indie friends…all of these things seem to be what all of the other indies are doing.
Why aren’t you?
Following The Money
The April issue of Game Developer magazine (R.I.P.) featured the annual salary survey. It still blows my mind how much average programmers and artists made, considering I’ve always heard how you can make more money programming bank software than working in the game industry. But of course, these numbers come from the major studios for the most part.
This salary survey also featured their fourth annual “Indie Report”, which surveyed independent developers and teams.
And found that they make almost nothing from their efforts.
Their average income was less than $25,000. Only 5% of them made over $200,000 from their games, while 78% made less than $30,000. Half made only $500 or less.
And these numbers are lower from the previous year, meaning that indies today are making less of a living than they were in the past, although to be fair there seems to be a lot of fluctuation from year to year.
But seriously, most indies surveyed (they collected data from 422 indies around the world) said they made less, sometimes much less, than what someone working a minimum wage job could earn in the United States.
Regarding the App Stores that everyone either loves or hates, we’ve all heard about how hard it is to impact your sales success there. Either you get featured or you don’t. It turns out that getting featured isn’t everything either, according to Jeff Tunnell’s post We Can’t Make It Here Anymore. At one point he talks about Color Sheep‘s success:
In spite of winning the two “app store lotteries” and getting featured by both Apple and Google along with stories in the New York Times and on huge traffic YouTube channels, their game has only sold around 50,000 copies, which has grossed $35,000 (after app store cuts). Considering that they spent $10,000 to launch and market their games at PAX, they have netted $25,000 before paying their wages.
At the other end, we have occasional successes. Awesome Guy Andy Moore recently posted Monster Loves You! By The Numbers, sharing the expectation-shattering sales numbers of the game he worked on in collaboration with Dejobaan Games and Other Awesome Guy Ichiro Lambe. Here’s a game that wasn’t really like anything else, that they nurtured from concept to delivery, and it worked out fantastically for the developers.
But even these successes make you wonder if your own efforts to make Yet-Another-Match-3-or-Minecraft-Clone is a waste of time.
Wait, You’re Not the Money?
Until I read the Game Developer salary survey, I was worried that I was missing out. Obviously most game developers wouldn’t be making enough money to do more than pay for an occasional meal, but a good number are probably doing well, right? I felt as if every time I looked up, I saw another example of an indie darling’s blood, sweat, and tears that finally got recognized and had paid off handsomely, or at least enough to pay to move out of his/her parents’ house. Every time I saw a demo of a game that people were praising, I thought I was looking at a game that was killing in the marketplace.
But the truth is, you can’t tell how well a game will sell from the look of a game, the charisma of a developer, or the amount of press dedicated to either one.
You can’t tell what the developer’s quality of life is like, and whether or not he/she is someone you really want to emulate.
And you can’t tell what a developer’s goals are. $20,000 would be plenty for someone with a lifestyle like Jason Rohrer, but is it a match for your desired lifestyle?
Everyone is making it up as they go along, so it isn’t as if some people have figured out how to live your life better than you are.
So why should you stress yourself out about not being like those other game developers?
Comparisons Add Stress
While running an indie game development business means understanding the trends and market demands, it doesn’t mean hopping on the bandwagon. Just because everyone else is doing it, it doesn’t mean you have to follow along.
When I, as an indie of many hats, put on the business owner hat, I realize that there are better things I can do than worry about how other indies are doing their starving-artist performance art. If most indies are putting their games out in Steam Greenlight, or pursuing F2P on iOS, or raising funds on Kickstarter…well, most of them aren’t making a sustainable living. No market, platform, or tool is going to magically make things all better in your struggle to earn enough to support yourself and your family while doing what you love.
And looking at the ones who actually are successful? Well, they already did it the way they did it. Following their lead might mean sharing in their success, but it often means getting scraps along with the other bajillion indies who are also going to jump into the now-open space.
Sure, you can say that some people get lucky. Notch has repeatedly claimed luck played a big part in the success of Minecraft, and I’m sure there was some luck involved in the success of Monster Loves You!, but I also think that putting love into what you do helps a lot.
Being an indie game developer is clearly not for people who should expect to make a truckload of money by churning out game-like software, so all you can do is put your heart and soul into what you’re making. Anything less is probably going to be rewarded appropriately.
On top of it, each indie has a different past. Notch has been making games for years, and some people have been doing so for decades. To compare your fledgling skills against someone who can put together a more highly-polished game in an hour than you can in a month is a good way to build an inferiority complex.
It’s fine to look at someone else’s skills and think, “I want to aspire to be that proficient and prolific.” It’s another to compare the results of your efforts to someone else’s. It will only stress you out and prevent you from being productive.
I know the Internet magnifies the amount and scale of abuse, especially in terms of misogyny, homophobia, and racism.
It’s disgusting, and it has resulted in the silence of some great people, such as Kathy Sierra, and makes it more difficult to bring intelligent and grown-up conversation to sometimes (often?) immature game industry the way people such as Anita Sarkeesian do.
But I had no idea the mindset of the stereotypical 11-year-old, entitled Halo player who loves to curse into his headset had made it into the realm of indie games and the customers who pay for them.
Cliff Harris wrote Who Would Be a Game Developer?, a post about how indies not only have to do the hard work of making a living making games but also seemingly must endure abuse at the hands of fans and customers. Apparently customers are threatening the creators of the games they paid for with extreme bodily harm and a destroyed life.
It’s bizarre posturing from the safety of a keyboard.
But it feels like another offshoot of problem fandom that seems to be everywhere. From comic and game conventions where women, homosexuals, and rape victims feel unwelcome to “you’re not a real geek/gamer/Doctor Who fan/etc” arguments that tend to be aimed at women to a culture of privileged misogyny that creates online communities in which only white, male heterosexuals ever feel welcome, it’s an ugly thing that is highly visible to everyone else.
Even if a large number of the people think it is just good-natured, “oh, you guys!” kind of Internet joking, it has real repercussions. If it happened rarely and in isolation, it would probably be enough to tell the people who are the victims of this kind of abuse that they can ignore it and get a thicker skin and don’t worry about it.
But it doesn’t happen rarely. It’s a fact of life for a lot of people, and we shouldn’t tolerate it.
There’s an entire vocabulary around these kinds of issues:
If you want humor with your education, see Film Crit Hulk’s GODDAMMIT VIDEO GAMES: THE FIRST FEW HOURS OF ARKHAM CITY IS LOTS OF FUN, BUT SUPER-DUPER SEXIST and part 2 (because it is almost required to do a follow-up when you call out stuff like like this), HULK VS. ARKHAM CITY – ROUND 2: BITCHES BE TRIPPIN’!.
What’s really scary is the undercurrent of violence and dehumanization. There is a lack of empathy, and it seems to be almost nurtured into the culture. When a woman is raped, we have television personalities saying she was asking for it, and almost no talk about how the rapist shouldn’t have been raping. And if the guy on TV thinks it, it’s likely the viewers are going to think along those same lines.
Similarly, when prominent figures in the video game industry laugh off, tolerate, or perpetuate misogyny, homophobia, and racism, their fans are likely to fall in line right with them. And when it is part of the marketing and game development, it’s worse.
The Internet brings a previously-unheard-of-number of strangers within communication distance, and while many people take advantage of it to make the world a more understanding and intelligent place, there is unfortunately a loud and obnoxious segment of the population who think extreme violence is super effective at getting their way.
And the more they see and hear each other, the more accepting of that behavior they become. And while most think they are having good-natured fun, occasionally a few think that actual violence is called for and accepted behavior.
So it is gratifying to see people within the industry call out the B.S.
The nature of the Internet and human nature is that we tend to be attracted to those who are like-minded. Talking with someone who has new and different views is a lot harder, especially if those views are opposed to your own.
But we all live here. I think the least we can do is try to have some empathy and consideration instead of dismissing someone else out of hand.
If someone does do something inappropriate, speak up. Show this person that you won’t tolerate it.
We need to be Be Better Stewards, as Corvus Elrod has so eloquently and succinctly put it. We need to call out the bad in a constructive way, and we need to praise the good.
Because what we say matters and has power.
In my last post about my June project for One Game a Month, I talked about the general ideas I had, plus I created a mock-up.
Since then, I’ve thought about what kinds of tiles I’ll need. I’ve decided to set it on an island in an ocean, so it will have standard sand, rocks, water, and palm trees.
The game is called Shipwrecked, and we’re going to need a castaway. Here’s what I created during yesterday’s Game Dev Co-Op Hour:
I still need to provide left and right versions, plus walking animations, but I’ll keep them simple. I’m fairly pleased with my programmer art.
After that, the next task is to give this character a world to walk around in.
Then I can work on line-of-sight algorithms. I’ve been thinking about having the player’s vision deteriorate if he/she is too hungry or sick, so the edge of the fog might be closer than usual if the player is reckless.
I’m pretty excited. I hope my enthusiasm and productivity lasts. B-)
Four days into June, and I hadn’t thought about what to make for the One Game a Month challenge for June.
I searched online for interesting mechanics to play with, but nothing really jumped out at me. If you want to see some ridiculous concepts, try out the Game Idea Generator. B-)
At some point, I thought about the idea of being shipwrecked and needing to survive. Maybe you’re on an deserted island in the ocean. Maybe you’re on a deserted planet in the far reaches of space.
I liked it. The player has to deal with hunger, weather, injuries, disease, wildlife, environmental hazards, all while trying to survive. Maybe help is coming if you wait long enough? Maybe you need to explore the island and build something to find your own way to freedom? Maybe there are others in the same predicament?
I don’t know. But exploring sounded like it had to be a big part of this game. You’re stranded, and you don’t know where you are, so you better get a handle on your surroundings.
And since I decided to do a tile-based grid, it seems like a good opportunity to do line-of-sight fog of war.
I like the idea that the player can see his/her immediate surroundings but needs to explore to see more. I like the idea of multiple levels of fog. One tile away is visible. Two tiles away is a little foggy. Three tiles away is more foggy. Four tiles is opaque.
Below is a mock-up demonstrating experiments with some fog made in the GIMP to see how it might look with different levels.
I’m not sure I’m happy with it, as I want it to be more difficult to see what’s behind the fog. Maybe I can experiment with different ways to render or create fog. We’ll see.
I also have to think about explored areas vs areas the player is immediately able to see. I’m reminded of Fate of the Dragon‘s fog of war, which returned to opaque if you weren’t in an area after a period of time. I think I’ll follow the normal RTS convention of graying out explored areas you can’t currently see.
Perhaps I’ll use Zelda-like controls. I was thinking about using the mouse and doing click-to-move/interact for simplicity, but I wonder if there might be some advantages to using the keyboard in terms of how expressive the player can choose to be. Maybe there are good reasons to crawl, sit, rest, walk, run (which takes a lot of precious energy), swim, jump, climb, open inventory, use items.
But then again, I can probably do all of the above with the mouse as well as the keyboard. Spacebar can be used to toggle sitting/standing, CTRL+click could be used to crawl, while Shift+click could be used to run.
Either way, I’ll probably find that I won’t add all of this due to only having the rest of June to finish this game. B-)
It’s June, but I want to talk about New Year’s Day. Specifically, I want to focus on goals, such as New Year’s resolutions.
New Years Resolutions In June?
Some people hate the idea of resolutions, but resolutions are just goals, and who hates goals? You can make them any time of the year. The end of one year and the beginning of the next is simply a good point in time to look back on your recent accomplishments and failures, look forward to possibilities, and set some goals for the next year.
What people really hate about resolutions is that they are not really goals. They tend to be more like wishes. “I’d like to lose 50 lbs in 2013” is a wish. So is “I’d like to travel more.” These aren’t goals, but most people don’t realize it because most people suck at setting and achieving goals. The problem is that goals become forgotten if you don’t keep them in front of you all the time.
I’ve been guilty of it myself. Horribly, horribly guilty of it. For years, I’ve blogged about how I wanted to dedicate more time to game development, and then I’ve blogged about kicking myself for not doing a better job. And then I would write a post about being resolute about improvement, only to find that I write about the same problems a year later. It was ridiculous. It’s also painful to go back and read those old posts, thinking to myself, “Self, how can you not see this cycle?”
You can come up with the most detailed and straightforward plan, a beautiful and inspiring list of goals, or a thorough checklist for your day, but if you stick them in a drawer and never look at them, they can quickly become forgotten. And if you don’t have any of those things, it’s even easier to forget what you supposedly decided you were going to do.
I realized that I needed to change something, but what?
How to Remember Your Goals
Like many people, I created a list of goals for 2013. These were things I wanted to accomplish before the end of the year. I used to try to make comprehensive lists of everything I want to ever do or accomplish, but I realized that shorter lists allow me to provide much more focus, as this 2010 post about achieving your goals more easily explains.
On my list are goals related to getting back into shape, creating one game a month, reading at least one marketing book a month, creating a passive income stream, and learning to play a song on my guitar.
Ok, so I have a list of goals. But I’ve had goal lists before. What did I do differently this year?
I put them someplace I knew I would always see them.
I could have printed them out and put them up on my wall across from my desk, but I was worried that I’d eventually forget about them. Instead, I put them at the top of a Google Docs document that I look at daily, my Workday Now lists. If you use GTD or Workday Now, you probably have a similar set of lists that you live and work from.
Everyday, I look at this document to see what’s urgent and important, and so I simply added a section at the top that shows my goals for 2013. As you can see, at least one of them follows the “make those goals vivid” advice, but not all of them do. Some are quite plain. But the important thing is that I see them each and every day.
Essentially, I remind myself of the goals I have constantly. Michael Linenberger calls it “spinning your goals” in Master Your Wokday Now!. Some people suggest writing out your goals every day or reading them from a pack of index cards twice a day or creating a vision board. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, so long as you keep yourself focused on your goals daily and keep yourself accountable. Whatever works.
Creating Habits, Checklists, and Plans
Of course, having goals and keeping them in front of you is not enough. It’s the doing, the accomplishment of those goals, that matters. Otherwise, you’re just constantly reminding yourself that your current life isn’t as great as the life you’d like and hoping that something will change on its own.
But knowing you have to take action is different from taking action. You can’t sporadically exercise and eat a salad once in a while and hope to “feel energetic, sexy, and free”. You need to make it habit.
In January, I published a card game called Walls and Armies that I had been working on for a couple of months, as part of the One Game a Month challenge. I had a video game in mind to work on, but as the end of the month drew near, I realized I hadn’t been good about making time for its creation. Luckily, I had a card game that I could submit at the last minute, but it wasn’t my original goal.
It wasn’t a good start to my year. It was crunch at the day job, so I had less time than normal. I had a long list of various responsibilities, but I didn’t have a good idea of priorities yet nor how to give attention to multiple of these obligations at once.
That month I realized I needed a workable schedule if I wanted to get sufficient game development time in. In fact, I needed a workable schedule if I wanted to accomplish any of my 2013 goals.
I also realized that I needed more than a plan. I needed reminders that I had a plan to work on in the first place. I know that some days it’s possible to feel less motivated to work on something than on other days. I also know that if I allow myself to take a break by giving myself a much-needed day off, I’d lose momentum, and I needed something to help me get back once the break was over.
Since then, I had created a daily checklist on the whiteboard on the wall across from my desk, which I see everyday. I originally had six items on that daily checklist, and it is now down to three as I noticed what was working, not working, or not important.
For example, I used to practice on my new guitar at least 15 minutes a day because I had a goal of learning to play a song on it, but then I realized that I was dedicating more time to a hobby than I was to my business, so I stopped making guitar-playing a priority. Unfortunately, it means I haven’t played guitar in months, but as sad as it is, I have higher priority things to do taking my time, and I would be sadder if one of those took a backseat out of some obligation to learn a new instrument.
Besides, I accomplished my goal of learning to play a song on my guitar long before March. “I Saw Her Standing There” by The Beatles never sounded so good.
I also eventually created a weekly checklist. Each day has a focus, and I want to make sure that I accomplish the focus of that day. Two of those days are game development days. If I don’t get anything else accomplished, I should have time dedicated to game development on those days. One my writing days, it’s possible I don’t get game development done because I spent my precious time writing, and that’s fine.
Assessing How Well It Works
Ideally, I’d be focused on a single project at a time, so that all of my working time outside of the day job is dedicated to one task or project until it is finished.
Unfortunately, my multiple responsibilities means that some things can’t be “finished”, but I still want to make sure I dedicate time to them all. For instance, being President of the Association of Software Professionals isn’t a job that can be finished if I work a lot of hours all at once. If anything, it will finish me. B-)
I sometimes wish I could focus all of my energy on a single project for weeks or months, ignoring everything else. I might experiment with it to see how things go.
Still, having days dedicated to certain types of tasks has its benefits. If I work on game development to the exclusion of all else on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I don’t need to feel stressed that something is falling through the cracks. Anything that needs attention will get attention on its own day. I also can’t get bored, as I never spend too long on any one type of task.
But I’ve been using my current system for a few months now. As of this writing, I’ve been able to finish four games in the last four months, including Electromagnetic Play, The New Worlds, Toytles Colors, and Hungry Frogs. I’ve read or listened to five marketing books and 23 books total so far this year. I learned how to play a song on my guitar.
I’ve also written multiple articles and newsletters for the ASP, written a few blog posts, and up until recently have done a great job of creating daily updates for the Stop That Hero! Facebook page.
I have yet to lose weight or make traction on creating a passive income stream. In both cases, I think I need a plan that can translate into daily habits. My daily checklist has “Do stretches” on it, and while it is good for maintenance, it’s not enough to help me get in shape. I need to do more, such as getting back into running.
Still, I think that 2013 has been a good year so far in terms of finally keeping myself accountable to my goals. On some goals, I’m on track. In others, I’m not. But unlike past years, even my lack of progress is something I am fully conscious and aware of on a daily basis. They aren’t forgotten, and I am continually reminded that I’m not spending time in these important areas of my life. It’s more about treating them with the priority I originally assigned them.
How are you doing with your New Year’s Resolutions or other long-term goals? How do you keep them in front of you, and how are you ensuring that you are making progress on them?
The updates have been coming in quickly towards the end of the month, but my May project for One Game a Month is finished.
Download Hungry Frogs for Linux 64-bit (352 kb tar.gz file)
Rather, it is finished enough. You can control the frog by jumping and turning around. If you fall in the water, the frog slowly swims back to the nearest lily pad. Flies will move across the screen in a straight line from left to right, and you need to jump to eat them. If you miss half of them in a given round, the game is over. Otherwise, the flies move faster each round, making it more difficult to catch them.
I didn’t take many screenshots as I thought the rectangles made for an uninteresting still shot, but I did make videos to demonstrate progress of the game’s development.
First, getting the jumping physics to work:
Then, landing on lily pads and swimming when you fall in the water:
Then, some game play, with edible flies:
And the final version, with faster flies each round and a game over screen if you miss too many:
I moved the frog’s tongue down as I realized it looked strange at the top of the head and I wasn’t going to have time to replace the white rectangle with a nice animated frog image. I would have liked to have flies moving in fly-like ways instead of straight lines. I really appreciate how the developers of Frogs and Flies nailed it in the constraints of an Atari 2600’s memory and processing power.
I’m not sure I’m happy with how easy it is now. Originally it was difficult to catch flies, so I expanded the tongue’s collision detection to include the frog’s body as well as a space around the tongue. Now it might be too forgiving, although there’s a gap if the frog is moving fast enough that from one frame to the next the collision box goes around the fly’s location. I’d fix that next if I had more time.
I’ve never made a platformer before, and this project was a good start. I am pleased with the jumping physics, although I need to figure out a better way to determine the maximum heights of jumps.
All in all, it was a fun project to make, even if it is once again another project with scope cut drastically to make the deadline.