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Calling all Game Developers, or Global Game Jam 2011

Alex Schearer — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:00:29 +0000

Guys, it’s that time of the year again! The days are shorter, the air is colder, and we’re still getting back into the swing of things after the holidays. Of course, that can only mean it’s time for a game jam, and not just any jam but the Global Game Jam! If you’re unfamiliar with the Global Game Jam, it is a 48 hour event wherein game developers break into teams of four or five and try to whip together a working game. Even if you are an experienced game developer, I encourage you to join us; when else do you get to enter this type of high energy, passion fueled environment? To get a sense of what you can accomplish in a weekend check out The Cleaner, a game my team and I created for the last game jam.

If you’re in the Seattle area I hope to see you at the Art Institute of Seattle. Either way, I hope you’ll share what you’ve created! The jam is happening around the world on January 28-30, 2011.

It’s August, time for a new game

Alex Schearer — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 05:28:09 +0000

Hello everyone, I hope that things are going well. We’re well into August now and it’s high time I share a little bit about my current project.

Once again, I’m trying to complete a game in a month. In July I created Petunk. One goal with that project was simply to prove I could make something decent in the timeframe. This time around I have a couple goals in mind:

Explore a component model design
Create more tests for each component of the game

I’d like to tell you more about my progress towards each of those goals in future posts. First, let me tell you a little bit more about the game I’m working on. The game is tentatively titled Colorfull and it’s a game about mixing colors together. In fact it’s something of a puzzle game which revolves around combining colors in different ways. Check out a mock up screen shot:

Prototype interface for Colorfull

So far I’ve completed the core framework for the game and generated some ideas I think will lead to great levels. At this point I’m focusing on getting the level editor working. Once that’s finished I think I will be able to finish extending the gameplay and then turn to polishing the game.

So what do you think of the mock up? And what are you working on this month?

One more thing, this project is being written in C# and XNA for the Windows Phone. This might make it harder for some of you to play, but I hope you won’t mind. Additionally, a good friend from work, Matthias B., is joining me. So far he’s proven very useful :-)

Staying Motivated in Game Development

Alex Schearer — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:50:11 +0000

Scissors, construction paper, rulers, and more all go into making a new screen for Petunk.

I talked about this a little bit in an earlier post, I think that it’s easy to lose motivation especially for longer projects. I recently had a chance to think a little bit more about motivation and I thought I’d share the results. For me the start of a project is always the most fun — you’re exploring a new idea, you’re coding new code, things are taking shape really quickly. But at some point you hit a phase where progress slows down — the features are implemented and now you have to fix bugs, there’s only hard things left that you put off doing, etc — and at this point it’s easy to get distracted by a shiny new idea. Personally, I feel taking a game from the rough “prototype” phase to being a full, polished game is a ton of work, but in my opinion it’s also something that separates “serious” developers from less serious ones.

So with all that said here’s how I try to tackle the problem:

1. Maintain checklists

Checking things off makes it feel like I’m making progress which keeps me focused. It’s also a good way to gauge the progress I’m making on the project as a whole.

2. Sharing my progress when appropriate

Getting positive feedback can inspire me to keep going.

3. Adding artwork to the game

I usually wait a while to add any artwork but I find once I do I’m much more excited about the project

4. Write publicly about what I’m doing and my timeline

Putting my reputation on the line increases the stakes and can help me overcome spots where I might otherwise lose focus.

5. Avoid working on other ideas and other distractions

This seems obvious but during a particularly boring part of development it can be dangerous to switch to a new project or buy a new game to play. Of course great ideas or games come along when you’re in the middle of a project so you have to exercise some self-discipline.

6. Set a concrete deadline

Work seems to fill whatever time you assign for it without necessarily having more to show for the extra time. Having a concrete deadline gives me something to shoot for and helps organize my decisions.

7. Avoid scope creep

A lot of my ideas are ambitious — they might involve complicated AI or networking, etc — I’d like to pursue some these ideas in the future but the fact is I often find them to be a barrier to getting things done. With a tough idea I can quickly get mired down in the details of a large, intractable problem. Sticking to smaller ideas keeps me productive

There are probably other good tricks but that’s it for now. With Petunk I’ve tried to attack the problem of motivation by working in a really compressed schedule (I have to balance work and making the game in my free time). I’m finding this really helps me because:

I know when I will complete the game, so when I lose focus it reminds me I can’t afford the distraction
Since time is scarce I can’t waste it on crazy ideas or useless features, the schedule forces me to ask “Would the game be OK without it?” and when the answer is yes then the feature is usually cut

In the past I’ve found that working for contests has helped address many of the issues above, too. For instance, with Adlib I had a set deadline and a topic to work with. This let me focus on actually making a game instead of worrying about technology, etc. One final link with checking out is this post by Positech Games on the subject: Staying motivated while programming games. How do you stay motivated?

Hello, Petunk

Alex Schearer — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:00:15 +0000

Yesterday I announced my intention to produce one game each month during the summer. I thought I’d follow that up with some details on my first project. Since I’m still trying to find my pace I thought I’d start with a simpler idea, and what could be simpler than borrowing from a game with 375,000 licensed players? As I’m sure you’ve already guessed my first game is inspired by the ancient Gaulish game of pétanque.

I’m going to call the game “Petunk” which roughly translates to “a sound which is sorta like the word “pétanque”". Hopefully the rough sound of the word will evoke the game as well as highlight the fact that this is a physics based simulation. The gameplay is going to be something like the original pétanque except that there will be explosions, moving obstacles, and other doodads getting in your way. I’d also like to add some additional options so the player has choices beyond where to aim at the target.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to sharing more about Petunk with you. Check back soon, or better yet subscribe for updates!

Back from the dead

Alex Schearer — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:32:01 +0000

Long time no speak! Hopefully you guys have been doing well and making some cool stuff since GDC. I haven’t had a chance to really sit down and write more about game development — something I’d like to rectify. To kick things off, I’m revamping my website. It should still be familiar but I think it will put more focus on the content and hopefully provide a strong foundation for the future. Let me know what you think. I’d also like to share my plans to create a few games this summer. More on that below.

Since GDC I’ve been pretty busy. Still, I’ve found time to work on different experiements (for instance, ReadyMade). It’s always fun to work on random projects — you never hit the hard bug fixing phase, you can pick whatever technology you want, like Java, and you get to tackle engaging problems. The downside, though, is you don’t have anything concrete to show for your efforts.

Recently, I had an opportunity to reflect on game development and what I want to get out of it. I decided that I want to focus my energy. At least for a little while less shallow experimenting and more intentional game development. And because I find motivation can be a problem as a project carries on I’ve set a goal of completing one game a month over the course of the summer.

With such an aggressive schedule I will have no choice but to eliminate complicated, costly game ideas, and with only a month there won’t be much time to get bogged down in bugs or other chores. Finally, now that I’ve told all of you about my plans I really have no choice but to follow through! So, I’ll be posting some more soon about July’s game. If this sounds like a fun challenge why don’t you join me? What typs of game would you make if you could only spend a month on it?

Heading to San Francisco

Alex Schearer — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:36:34 +0000

It’s March and that means it’s time for GDC in San Francisco! I’ll be heading to town this weekend and staying through the week. Right now I’m planning on attending the Online & Social Gaming Summit and Indie Gaming Summit — if you’re attending either of those let’s meet up for lunch! In addition to the summits, I’ll be wandering around the booths and hitting up whatever events look interesting. Anyway, if you’re in the area and would like to get together let me know!

Starting a New Blog

Alex Schearer — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:00:50 +0000

I decided to start a new blog to complement this one. Here I’ve tried to keep things focused on game development and discussion. Believe it or not I am actually interested in some other topics though, so I thought it would be nice to have a place to write about various developments in technology, feature games that look neat, and generally be off topic. It’s also a great chance to try some new technology. Occasionally I will cross post between the two sites if it makes sense. So head on over to Crazier Things Have Happened and let me know what you think!

Switching to Disqus Comments

Alex Schearer — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:00:59 +0000

Just letting you know… I’m switching to Disqus comments or at least trying them out. I’m sure you’ve run into these fancy things elsewhere on the internet so I guess it won’t be a big deal for you. I was finally tempted by some of the neat features such as the ability to reply to comments and integrate with other web applications. Let me know if you think this is a bad idea!

Super Mario World AI

Alex Schearer — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:43:55 +0000

This is a little old but still really cool, so in case any of you haven’t seen or heard about the Super Mario AI contest let me get you up to speed. Basically, a few months ago IEEE held a contest to see who could create the best AI for Super Mario World. The rules were pretty simple. Levels would be programmatically created using a third party library. The program would poll the state of the game periodically and issue commands to Mario with the goal being to reach the end of the level. Recently the results came in, check out the winner’s bot:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pretty awesome video, huh? I’d love to see the algorithm and level generating software used to create a screensaver!

Mario A* in Action

What’s maybe most amazing is how simple the solution was to this problem. The winning algorithm was simply the A* algorithm! If you’re interested in reading more about it check out this interview with the author or click the above diagram for a more detailed picture.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I did!

Crash for Flash: A Physics Engine

Alex Schearer — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:31:36 +0000

Recently I started working on Null Op again. One of the new things I wanted to add to the game was steering behaviors for the viruses. In order to implement them, though, I need some way to find a virus’ neighbors, check for nearby obstacles, etc. To accomplish this I decided I’d use the Crash library I’d written for Java. Naturally this meant I needed to port it to Flash, and now that it’s done I thought I’d share it with you, too.

First off, here’s a couple test cases I’ve created to show off the library. Feel free to play around with them and see what it can do.

So what can you do with this library. Here are a few things I did with it (most recently in Fluster):

AABB collision detection
Scrolling with a viewport to determine what’s on-screen
Find nearby objects

Anyway, I hope you find the demo interesting and the library useful. Now it’s time to start implementing leader following. As always let me know if you have any questions, feature requests, or comments!

Download Crash source