Gibbage is a potentially-great little 2D platformer/shooter by Dan Marshall. Gibbage is simple and fun to play (except that the double-jump is too hard to do, in my opinion, and…I can’t seem to beat the computer).
But as I read through Dan’s blog about the development of Gibbage, I couldn’t help but notice his attitude throughout the project. Yes, there were lots of coding books hurled at poor, defenseless walls as he learned, but for the most part his posts are things like, “I’ve got a little guy! Whee!”, “I can run him around! Awesome!”, “Now there are two of them, yipee!”, “Now they can shoot each other! Brilliant!”
Basically…well, he seemed to have more fun developing Gibbage than I did writing Inaria…and a lot more than I’m having writing Star Revolution. Star Revolution in particular is turning into a real slog. I’ve got procedural textures, procedural planets, procedural cities on the planets, aliens, ground combat, space combat, trading, mining, talking and questing in this game. It is possible that I, flush with the moderate success of Inaria, bit off more than I can chew.
Now, I can see flashes of fun in the future for Star Revolution. In particular, when a friend at work pointed me at this site and I saw these pics of the starship interior molds they sell, I thought, “Wow, that’s exactly how I want SR to look!” And I can foresee putting that together inside the computer as being really fun.
But the amount of infrastructure I have to put together before I get there is just huge, and trying to get it all together is just grinding me down.
Plus I just got a really good book on DirectX and now I’m thinking about moving the whole project off of SDL and OpenGL and onto DirectX and Direct3D…
I find Dan to be a bit annoying with his “all games but Gibbage SUCK” mentality. I mean, I understand the desire to promote his own game but the bottom line is that each type of game has it’s own audience. He should just calm down a bit.
I think all developers go through low points and slogging throughout all stages of their projects. The best of us simply plow through them and force ourselves to finish (I don’t count myself in this elite group, since I haven’t finished squat).
The author of the book that you picked up, Frank Luna, is an excellent instructor. He teaches a few of the courses over at the Game Institute — http://www.gameinstitute.com
I can speak from experience that he knows what he is talking about and is able to explain things in a clear and concise manner. I am currently enrolled in a few courses there and I’ve learned more in the past several months than I’ve learned in the last 5 years on my own.
I’ve been there where Dan is where I get excited at each little progression. But mostly that’s when I go through dark periods where I don’t think I’ll get there. If I get into a corner and get frustrated and things that should work but for whatever reason that isn’t clear, it doesn’t, then when I come out of it, I’m all “Hooray! The guy moves like he’s supposed to.” Otherwise, an experienced programmer or developer in any medium just can’t get too excited about each minute step. They tend to blend together.
I really do want to see Star Revolution. I’ve been wanting a game like this for a while now (since I started designing one in January).
And Hirst Arts is the site I point everyone to everytime when talking about environment art. It’s good stuff. But if you’re thinking about tiles, that site doesn’t do it. They make bricks that can be used to construct tiles, but they’re basically like lego pieces without the interlocking system. As a fan of things in miniature, I’ve always wanted a full set of them.
As far as something more tile-based, I’d check out http://www.dwarvenforge.com. Those are actually tile pieces that can be used as models for video game tiles. Also, I’d check out http://www.ainsty.co.uk/index.htm because they have some really great stuff that’s not typically fantasy based.
Thank you guys for your encouragement. I’m not giving up…yet 🙂