Elcoino

So ever since february I am highly working on gamedevchallenge.org, which by the way has already gone private alpha.

That’s why I write actually. As the private alpha of the site already started, I got some good learnings in these early stages of that site. It might be obvious to some developers, maybe it should have been even obvious to myself, but somehow it wasn’t, so I learned this the hard, but good way.

Gamedev != Web app dev

Imagine that. For over a year now I am doing game development. Indie game development that is. As I do see a difference in approaching these developments to AAA titles.

So as an Indie game developer you usually just start with a prototype, at least that’s what I am doing. Mostly you already have something from the last game jam like Ludum Dare, or other jams, so you already jumped right into the whole experience of the game.

From then on you tweak and develop the hell out of the prototype until you got something you start to believe in. When you reach that point you polish even more, like crazy, until you get your game.

So the main approach just is to dive right in the work and let the things figure themselves out on the way. You don’t design too much, prepare architecture and map out every detail of functionality of your game before you even started to code one line.

Yeah, maybe a lot of people maybe do have this kind of approach, but it did not seem to work for me. I like to dive right in for games and just build things. As gamedev is mostly creative work, this seems to be a good approach actually.

Now web app dev on the other side, is a different approach. I should have known better actually, as I am a professional developer for a huge web application. I know the drill actually. But ever since having started out gamedev I saw a huge spike in productivity the indie gamedev way of programming. So I figured, why not try to go this same way for web applications?

Thus came gamedevchallenge.org

Yep, you know my project by now. This project just started. I read that indie gamedev bucket list by @clkwrk, had that idea and just dove into coding.

This went through for 3 months up to today where that private alpha just started and revealed a lot of problems in my design decissions.

Apparently without a major concept, a highly worked out design, a straight goal, your site is bound to become more or less a mess.

Things are not clear with the site, the design is too cluttered and complicated, and you just can’t see what’s going on in there. Also it is lacking so much features that it has become hard to even point out missing parts and just add on it.

So I have to restart the whole process, take two steps back and start planning and designing the application.

Why did it not work out? Because web applications just aren’t games. They follow their own rules, have totally different designs and need different skills to be done.

That’s why mostly you need different skills as a developer for web apps than as a developer for games. The former needs analytical knowledge and professional skills in software architecture, the latter needs a lot of maths and creative skills.

So is this thing burnt down now?

No way at all. I had a huge learning experience already with the project. Also I sure believe in that site. It does have potential to motivate a lot of people in fulfilling their goals. And that’s what I wanna do. Motivate and help people reach their dream goals.

I just have to take two steps back, rethink the whole design and work on that. And that’s what I will do. It just takes a while I’m afraid. That’s the downside to web app development I guess.

So I’ve been neglecting this blog for quite a while already. You know the drill, but I’m not gonna excuse myself, as I have been hugely busy with work for the last weeks.

Gamedevchallenge

First thing was definitely gamedevchallenge.org. I work on it every day, and I have had huge progress in the last month for it. It is thriving to become a nice site that will keep you motivated on your quests in life.

Do I have to add anything more right now? Well, I have huge plans, and I am so close to a private alpha that I can already taste it. Still, polishing takes up a huge slot in a project, we all know that.

And I haven’t even thought about marketing yet. I have no idea how to promote the site, and what the main concept could be like. So there’s a lot of work to do around the private alpha still.

Cracked, a LD23 game

Yep, Ludum Dare 23 is behind us, and I participated again, as this is my regular event. This time though I collaborated with another person, and we made a really awesome game. Check it out here. I made the asset part, all the graphics, the music, the sounds, and most of the levels. The other guy, BlackBird made the programming. He is an awesome dude and we clicked immediately with this project.

That’s also why we decided to go on with the game and make it a full fledged game. As this project does have potential.

And a third secret project

What aspiring indie game developer does not have a secret project he can’t talk about? Yep, that’s why I had one too. And this time I really want to find some people to help me with the work. It sure is kinda ambitious, but I believe in this idea, and so do the other people who would join me on that one.

But first I gotta do a prototype and pitch the final idea to the guys, so there is still this big hurdle. All this work, so ambitious, and I have to find the time to not neglect either of these.

So that was my quick update. At least I don’t have that much readers over here that I can offend by my neglect.

What a wonderfully busy february that was.

I just wanted to post a quick update here first, as I don’t wanna let this blog die out completely. So I have been working my butt of for gamedevchallenge.org. I worked day and night, through all of my commute time, which already is 1h30m for one way. Also my full evenings late into the nights and every free second I could grab at weekends.

Being a family man weekends are not as productive as you’d wish they be. But that’s fine.

So as the site is slowly building up into something wonderful, it’s still a long way though. I want to add some more features to round up the experience for the private beta. Also I want to create a consistent user interface and design. Especially the design part is quite hard for me, as I am a design monkey.

Also I am slowly figuring out all the EnyoJS and Bootstrap stuff while working on it. I also added a nice little knowledge about vagrant, at least enough to have been able to set it all up on my netbook and have a fully functional development environment for work while commutecoding.

Bear some more with me. I will post some tutorials as soon as I find the time apart from coding. Right now I am totally in the zone with this project, so I don’t wanna jinx it by doing something else. Developers know what I’m talking about.

Now let’s get back to the code cave /o/

Around 2 weeks ago a list has making its rounds across the internets with a bucket list of 101 goals for an indie game dev.
Immediately as I read it I was more than inspired and motivated to go for it. As I am an aspiring indie game developer myself, not very successfull yet, but that is another story. So as an indie game developer these goals are so awesome that it make me think.

So immediately I took action and ever since am working on a site for these goals. This sites goal is to promote the goals, to help indie game developers keep track of their goals, to let themselves get inspired by other people, and to measure themselves on their path to being a successfull indie game developer.

There will be a lot of features, as I am constantly working on a state to open up for closed beta. Here is a small list of already planned features:

• A global public goal list
• A leader board to track achievements over all users
• Personal goals to keep track for
• Statistics about all included goals
• Suggestions for new goals for the main goal list, to keep the leaderboard fresh
• Achievement tracking

This is by far not the final feature list, it’s just an excerpt of the big picture.

So check out the site so far at http://www.gamedevchallenge.org. You already can keep track of your goals (based on cookies, that means your browser). There will be a login area when it’s ready and past the closed beta. Right now it’s still in pre-alpha though, so please bear with me.

Oh one thing to add. The site is completely developed with EnyoJS, Bootstrap and PHP as the backend. I am planning to do a couple of tutorials as I am learning my way of integrating all these things together to the main site. As the internet is not full of tutorials for these things, and I had a hard time figuring out on the go, maybe this will help other developers on their way.

A full year of 2011 lies behind all of us, and it marks the very first full year of me doing game development.

Apparently now is the best time to take a quick look at what happened, and then to have an outlook for the next year 2012 for us game developers.

2011 – A year in some sentences

Somewhere I read that as a game developer you have to put down some crappy games in order to hit that one hit of yours. So to become a great gamedev just takes a lot of effort and games under your hood. Complete as fast as you can, get the numbers down, until you reach that one hit.

If it were not to Ludum Dare, I’d have no real finished game by now. But thanks to that, I finished 3 games, with one of them completed after the challenge for the market. As this one is still ongoing, I have now 5 games on my hood that I call finished. That’s okay for me by now.

I learned a lot. Mostly that I am capable to make decent graphics when I put the time and effort into it, and that I even am able to make some decent music. I’m getting better game by game.

Lesson learned: Do as many game jams you possibly can. It helps you amazingly much.

2012 – Outlook for flash developers

Now the recent historical changes in flash has cast a shadow upon us flash game devs. With flash development being completely canceled for the mobile OSes and with a long term regard of diminishing at desktops the developers are a bit fuzzy on their next steps.

But I for my part am still very calm about this. First, flash is not dead yet. Far from it. As I target my games to desktop flash mostly anyways, I still don’t have any downsides.

Also all this nonsense with the “kill flash” occupy guys. Keep calm I say. They don’t know anything anyways.

Now third and most important: Adobe will take care of everything. As a big fella stated a couple of years ago Developers are the most important asset for a tech company. Microsoft knows it, Facebook knows it, Apple mostly seems to know it, and Google too. Now especially Adobe knows it. With their main market being media stuff with their products and all the developers using it, they most likely do NOT want to lose all their developer base.

So as we flash developers just can breath and continue our development in flash, Adobe is definitely already working on a solution to port us developers nicely to a new future-driven product out there.

And in the unlikely case that they will NOT do that, there will be another company emerging from the shadows and trying to help all of us developers. As we are the main source for their income anyways.

2012 – A personal outlook

So for me personally the upcoming year will mean a definite release of a game completely outside the Ludum Dare competitions. As I am already in deep works for my Schoolface project, this will hopefully be released sometime next year. Totally dunno about a real release date yet. It’ll be ready when it’s ready.

But it WILL be ready and it WILL be crowdsourced game design.

All the graphics, sounds, music, assets and code and whatnot will be done by me personally. Although, depending on the outcome, maybe I’ll contact a music guy to spice things up. But this will be all decided throughout the upcoming year.

Still I will participate in the Ludum Dare competitions, as they are awesome experiences and produce more games on my “crappy game list on the way to awesomehood” ™

Okay, enough wibble wobble, let’s all have an awesome entry into the new year and party till we drop. Then more work. Happy new year!