I know this is belated, but thank you guys so much for your kind words and support. You’ve really made this easier.
First, I’d like to talk about Derek Yu. Derek’s a cool and froody dude in the world of independent game development, having designed and done artwork for both Aquaria and Spelunky (which will soon get an Xbox Live incarnation).
Well, Derek’s written a rather excellent article about how to finish making a game.
His advice is excellent.
Here’s why I’m not going to take (most) of it.
It’s because I have…a strategy.
THE STRATEGY (TM) (R) (C) (PG-13) is to finally, finally, finally listen to that voice that’s been telling me “go indie!” for years.
Now, this doesn’t mean I’m not looking for a full-time job. I certainly am, and once I find one I will devote all my working energy to doing it as well as I possibly can.
But if you’ll recall, I originally purchased this web space to sell the awesome games I was going to create in my spare time…back in the year 2000.
This web space will finally be put to its original purpose. Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to finish Planitia and charge for it. I said it’d be free, and it will be. But I’m also going to be working on a new game.
And in complete contrariness to Derek’s advice, I’ll be using my own engine (unless one of you knows of a 2D/3D codebase that is absolutely free and cross-compatible between PC, Mac and iPhone/iPad). I won’t be completely rewriting the engine, but these changes will take a good bit of time. (And again, if anyone out there knows a good “convert your Direct3D renderer to OpenGL” tutorial, I’d be grateful.)
I’ll also be scaling up rather than down.
But I don’t want to reveal what my first commercial project is going to be just yet 🙂 Hopefully I’ll have some screenshots for you very soon!
Welcome to Viridian Games.
The games are about to begin.
Good on ya! I can’t wait to hear what sort of game you are thinking about.
Can I guess? Knowing you… A party-based, openworldish, Ultima(7)-esq RPG.
Yeah, I guess I’m kind of psychic. And awesome.
Finally! ^_^
My guess would be platformer with rpg elements, but that’s just a guess :3
Anthony, all I can say is, “Well done.” I know how much work lies ahead of you, but I’m very glad to see you rebound, and to see that your spirit rises above circumstance.
Been following your blog for a couple of years, and wanted to take the chance to both encourage you during this transitional hiccup, and to say “Thank you for blogging.”
It’s been an inspiration to me to lurk here, as I’ve struggled onwards with writing my quasi-textbook on the philosophy and mindset required for proper embedded programming and embedded system design. (I use a couple of games as programming examples, simply because games require squeezing out performance in real-time, just like in embedded devices.)
Cheers and salutations good sir, I wish you all the luck in the world.
-S
Good luck… and don’t forget you can (still) ask others for help in whatever you’re doing.
Are we guessing the type of game he is going to make? ’cause there is a serious shortage of post-zombiepocalypse RPGs that needs to be adressed…
Zombies are soooo overdone anymore. All the cool has been reamed out of them.
If you really need an interesting zombiepocalypse rpg, the excellent Ska Studios (the goto guys for making awesome zombie games with funky Eurotrash punk soundtracks) made one a couple of years back called Survival Crisis Z. I also recommend checking out their Double Dragon (the good NES version, not the mediocre arcade game) style zombie games.
Good luck Viridian!
I had the same conclusion from the Derek piece that was sent to me by a friend.
Hi Viridian! I’m from Argentina, I’ve been reading the articles in this site for a long time now, never wrote a reply here before. Today I decided to visit the blog again, haven’t done it for a little while, I found out about you being laid off of Stardock, saw the video too…And I’ ve read the last article, I must say CONGRATULATIONS!!! on keeping the good mood, in keeping the will to go on, and I think you’re doing the right thing…Go indie!!! it’s the smartest decision, you’ll get the chance to show your true colours! Good luck!!
I mean it 😉
Oh and I forgot but I’d like you to come by this site :
http://forum.bennugd.org/index.php
The guys there are working on a tool, a free tool for gaming development, I think you could try it, and maybe join us there! Let me know what think, I personally think it’s the opporetunity for a lot of people to at least, make a try in the indie game development area, cheers!
Best of Luck. I think your focus is a good one.
With respect to expanding your engine for Win32 / OSX / iOS – I haven’t done it myself, but know people who have. A couple things I had picked up were 1) Abstracting the renderer out between DX and OGL via an interface class. 2) Shader compatibility (author once, works right on both) is a problem, but I am guessing you don’t need a lot in that area. 3) Minimize the use of objective C (I still haven’t wrapped my head around its syntax) to deal with OSX / IOS via wrappers and keep as much as you can in C++
Take all that with a grain of salt, and keep pushing forward.