Week One: Parallax

Obstacles & death make their debut on the stage, bringing this from a basics physics test to (a little bit) more of an actual game.

Again, placeholder textures etc. etc. I hard-coded some multiple-convex-polygon collision boxes for each different building, so that the collisions were actually correct- really need to think of a smarter way to do that... maybe edge detection is the answer...

I've been experimenting with physics a lot recently- fixing 'bugs' (making it more realistic), tweaking the weight, wind resistance, gravity, terminal velocity calculations... it's quite fun, actually! Not that the quality of this .gif gives it any justice, but the fact that I can sit down & be amused by it for any period of time is a good sign.

I've also been feeling like I'm not making as much progress as I'd like (I wanted to have this week's summary at least out by Monday...)- which is a good thing, it's definitely helping me concentrate a bit harder!

Week Zero

So, I've officially been unemployed for one week now. Self-employed? I don't even know how to explain myself yet. Any rate, I do feel like I've caught up on years of sleep, and my creative juices are flowing like they haven't in years!

It's mostly been a week of re-developing my routine, exercise & other habits (Youtube, Minecraft, Youtube videos of Minecraft...) in a way that should help me to be far more productive with my own time than I ever was with my University summer breaks- but it hasn't been all fun and games! Well, I guess it kinda has actually, because I've literally been working on a game. I did have to re-learn basic trigonometry though, it's been about a decade since I've last had to use those brain cells.
(I've also been working on a custom Minecraft modpack I plan to release eventually, as something that I've just kinda wanted to do for awhile- so that's taking some of my time, too... I've been productive, mum, promise!)

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So it's really not much to show off yet, but the start is often the hardest part for me- and settling on a toolkit, planning everything out on paper & coming up with a general code structure has really set the wheels in motion. So far, all I've got is this simple physics test (disclaimer, graphics are just temporary placeholders):

And, without bounding boxes (.gifs sure don't perform well with thin lines, huh):

Hopefully I'll have a few more mechanics & maybe even a proper backdrop by next week :)

- Ligands

What?

"What type of game are you making?"

It's one of the more common questions I've been asked in the past month, and it might seem simple enough, but it's been the hardest for me to answer. Largely because I don't like talking about my ideas, until I've decided they're actually not terrible... but there's more to it than that. I've never really had a 'type' of game that I'm most interested in making; it's always just been whatever suits me at the time, whatever will entertain me. Sure, I've got favourite genres to play- RPG & survival, primarily- but making your own is a whole different story. I want to make things that I'd actually play, of course, but I also want to keep it simple enough to be feasibly completed on my own (for now, anyway!).

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With that said, my latest idea has been brewing for a few months now & I haven't abandoned it yet, so I'm happy to tease some details to any who might potentially be interested!

My first project will be a fairly simplistic 'infinite-scroller'-type game for Android, but with a few quirks & a (hopefully) rather unique style. The idea involves controlling your 'player' indirectly- rather than simply moving from left to right, or flapping your wings- you are the wind. The aim, as per the 'infinite-scroller' classification, is to travel as far as you can, as well as staying aloft as long as you can, while avoiding obstacles. While there won't necessarily be an 'upper' limit to the field, your 'wind power' is limited & recharged with pickups, so will need to be used wisely in order to get the most distance.

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I can't tease much about the style at this stage, but here's some images I've borrowed (these are not mine!) that have provided inspiration while designing & developing the idea:

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If you're interested at all, please watch this space! I will catalogue my progress here over the next few months & hope to get my first release onto the Play store as soon as possible :)

Test Post Please Ignore

Hello world!

I'm Ligands, and this is my first (real) attempt at blogging.

I'm no writer, so forgive me in advance if this blog reads like a young child's diary. I'm mostly doing this for public exposure, because there's nothing more encouraging to not be lazy than social pressure!

Currently, I'm a professional software engineer. One month from now however, I'll be taking a break from the world of enterprise software, and spending my time & money on my personal passion- game development. I have a general plan, a fallback plan, the support of friends & well, ...some family, thousands of terrible ideas (and hopefully a few good ones), the desire to implement these ideas, as well as the savings to make it a reality... yet I'm quite nervous about turning this page in my life!

Very few independent game developers make it far enough to become successful; and it's a lot of hard work to reach that stage. Even still, I feel like this is a step that I need to take, if nothing else, for my own sanity- spending >4 years as a Support Engineer will simply do your head in. (Supporting unsupportable legacy software... cleaning up the stupid mistakes of other developers who are more senior & better paid than yourself... providing 24/7 support for completely undocumented applications, originally written by the cheapest possible outsourced developers, while faking it to clients that you're the expert in things you've never even touched before...)


Even if nobody reads this, I hope that it helps give me the motivation to attempt to chase my ambitions to make a game or two that I can be proud of, and that will bring joy to other people, of all ages, around the world.