Thursday, July 23, 2009

Kind of how it begins.

Sometimes you just need to start over, and with the seeming loss of my once frequented website (64digits.com) I have decided to move elsewere to drop my blurbs of game developement. So I shall start from the begining. The very begining.

I've largely studied game design on my own since I was about 12 or so. Starting with the very basics...basic the language in its line based form. Although I can program, I'm just not that in depth into languages like C++ and the various other forms.

My focus has been more on the visual, the play and the excecution instead of the bare bones engine. Maybe one reason I decided against going too deep into programing had more to do with wanting to create the actual content. Of course in the early 90's I was pretty much forced to work with quickbasic as the only avaible programing code I could get into. There was a variety of little game creations I made with it, mostly all unfinished and lost in the dust of time forgotten and hard drive failures, diskette decay, whatever you have it has happened. A sad tale that has followed many of my other creations. Always backup if you can.

Of course with the dawn of the internet, other chances to create a game came up with various programmers generously creating engines in hopes that aspiring minds can create greatness which even so few large developers seem to accomplish despites legions of employees and millions of dollars.

In the late 90's I had begun using Visual Basic, but not too much came of that except for some simple mouse based games. One project I fondly recall was somewhat inspired by a browser based game called 'Dragon Court'. It featured click able mini locations, in mine I made the background window display the room you were in. Was a simply RPG like game, you created a character whose stats were both randomly generated and affected by choices like what race, sex and class you chose. Additionally although a turn based game it featured body-part based life instead of traditional hit points. Certain attributes of the character also affected how some things were presented, like a low intelligence would get a brief and sometimes obvious description of room or object. Refered to as DOTD, it was later re-visioned several times in new layouts and styles, using POV-Ray for scene creation. Tons of written and sketch resources are stowed away on this one as I tended to be overly ambitious.

One of the first engines I started to use was VERGE created by Vecna. It was a fairly decent program, using a c similar scripting for basic functions and in-game interaction, map creator with multiple layers and option of animated tiles and sprite creator. I used the default sprite to design a bunch of different characters and sometimes made my own.

I designed several projects with VERGE and VERGE 2.0, finished one. Several concepts were created, one was supposed to be a side scroller game(similar to a game available now called 'The Spirit Engine'), which I think I called 'City of Filth'. I had a couple of maps, interface, characters and a complete original tile set created. Unfortunately it never advanced from the basics and was shelved/lost.

Another concept that didn't fly beyond some tiles, main character art and sketches, I called 'Ryo Devil'. I was really into Anime back then and it has left an impression on my art style and presentation. Based in the underworld, you played a soldier who must stop the overworld invasion. Essentially a demons vs. angels with a role reverse. The main character had to die to be reborn in the midworld(earth type realm) and find the entry point that some rogue angels were using for their assault on the underworld.

Venturing between Visual Basic and VERGE I also attempted a fake 3d game, much like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore. Those didn't pan out to well do to graphical limitations on both. I would later be more successful using Game Maker which I find out about in '05 or so.

I did complete one game for VERGE, during a 10-days-of-verge contest I managed to complete an entire rpg with all original graphics in that time span. Although having plot holes and some bugs, it was nice to complete it. Called 7th Ring of the 7th Star, it was about an alien bounty hunter who's people are being assaulted by sand people and demons from another world. It contained 6 different endings that were dependant on a few optional quests, like bombing the sand people's home with water or saving a girl you meet later on.

I also played around with RPG Maker some, both windows and emulated Super Nintendo versions. Don't recall much of those...

Once I got a hold of Game Maker, versions 5 and 6. I tried at recreating some of my old ideas. Specifically a shooter game I had made in QuickBasic called 'Rick Jason'. Its a space shooters as they come, but I decided to create a swanky set of new graphics. Its still incomplete to this day but did look rather nice. As the years have passed I've had less and less time to work on my projects. But the flame hasn't died out.

Next was creating the fake 3d game, which was a pretty successful attempt. Unfortunately also lost to hard drive death. Sad too as I had gotten so far in it. It was like a super version of those old school first person rpgs, it had multiple floors visible. Originally it had some hi-resolution pre-rendered scene graphics, but later was reduced to conserve memory and boost speed. As I look back on it, if I had not of lost all the content I would have been able to make it run faster. But alas it is gone. I had called it 'The Crawl', a name I still uses with new incarnations now leaning towards actual 3d engines. In fact it has become more of a 3d dungeon maker rpg project.

And that's the first part to a undetermined length of blogs.

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