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3:30am - Wow, it's hard to believe I've been out of bed for three hours now and I'm already at the McDonald's. It feels like I only just rolled out of bed!
Tonight's a busy night here at the McDonalds so there's lots of distractions. Fortunately the folks who were packed into my usual space left about the time I showed up, but there's lots of interesting and usually drunken party people waiting for their food.
As for me, I've upgraded to the latest version of Unity and downloaded my base code from the last Ludum Dare I did. Now the real question is, what do I actually want to do?
I've got a lot of options available to me. I'm not even going to list them. I'm practically in an infinite possibility space, but I'm limiting myself to things I want to do and have the skills to do. As a help, I brought my copy of Game Engine Architecture with me, in case I need some help with big ideas.
3:55am - I just spent some time looking for other local groups I might not know about. Didn't have much luck, but I did find one group that's local and interesting. They don't have any job ads on their site, though. They'll be at the Forest City Comic Con later this month so I'll try and ask them about their company then.
4:05am - I found another one with a different search, but it's just two guys and they don't seem like a pair open to a new member.
I think that's enough looking for locals. I think I'll be on my own for a while. Well, unless I take the initiative and start my own group, and look for members instead of a group to join. Ah, but I don't think so. Not now.
For now, I think I'm going to mess around with Unity and my platformer basecode and see what improvements I can make.
4:11am - Yikes. My old stuff is surprisingly intimidating on a glance. Maybe I'm not as ready as I thought I was.
4:33am - Looked around Reddit for something to inspire me. Ended up looking up London, Ontario stuff. Nothing big, though. I also found out that /r/gamedev has a new Discord. I thought the Game Dev League discord was theirs, but apparently not. Now I'm on two gamedev discords, so yay?
4:35am - Thinking about what to work on some more. Not really sure. It's been a while since I dropped World of Thardomhainn as a project, but I still think about it sometimes. It's not a bad idea, I've thought about just changing the design. But I still don't want to make an RPG, particularly. I probably want to make an RPG more than I did when I dropped WoT though.
On the other hand, let's think about other game types. I came out here to mess around with my platformer stuff, but do I really want to make 2D platformers any more than I want to make an RPG? Probably not. I think I made Smol Mouse Thief because I wanted to prove I could, and I did that. I was also thinking about making a 2D character controller script for the Unity Asset Store but I'm not sure I have the confidence for that. There's already a couple of free ones on there I downloaded back before I made Smol Mouse Thief, and though I didn't use either of them, they're not bad.
I've thought about making a Space Game but I've never been able to design one without going crazy with hard scifi limitations.
I've always been into simulations but I'm dripping in sims already. I just played Oxygen Not Included to the limits of the current game level yesterday, and I've gotten a bit bored with Prison Architect. I tend to get things relatively stable in games like these and then lose interest. I'm not sure what I'm really looking for anymore.
I thought about making a frontier settlement sim but I'm not sure what I really want to make there. I had hemmed and hawed about the theme until friends told me I should not worry about the theme until I had the mechanics working, and that was good advice, but I wasn't even sure what mechanics to include.
One crazy thing I've been thinking about isn't even a game programming project but an art project, making myself a 3D mascot type thing. I generally like 3D mascot platformers like Mario, Spyro, etc... and I could put whatever sort of elements I want into a game like that. But it doesn't seem like a good idea.
I'm just not sure what to do with myself at this point. What should I make?
I recently found out about an Erogame in development, a roguelike with fun bad ends. I offered to help, but the fella who's making it had worked with someone before and had a bad experience, so he didn't want to work with me. It probably wouldn't have worked out anyways but that thought's what's got me looking for other game developers. I feel like I'm ready to work on someone else's project for a while. But, it has to be something I'm still interested in.
I wish I could help out with Kynseed, but that's far too far away, and I can't imagine they're hiring. That's a game I'm really into. It's similar enough to what I want to make as a sim to be really interesting, but also it's not everything I would want, I think. I'm not sure what I want right this moment, but this moment will surely pass.
Another game I'd like to help with is Chucklefish's unnamed magic school game. Again, that's too far away and I can't imagine they're hiring. But it's the sort of game project I could really sink my teeth into.
Maybe it's time I finally make that experimental game where you find yourself working with or against a system of order. It's a chaos/order thing, where you start off in this area filled with machines that are doing whatever, and you can break them or mess them up. If you do, little guys come out to fix the machine. If you make enough trouble, they try to fix you too. If you don't do anything for long enough, or let the system repair itself and run clean for a while, baddies show up to break the machine, and you can help the system repair itself or you can help the baddies or whatever you want.
I'm not sure if it would be fun or not, it would mostly be an art piece. Sort of like Yume Nikki I guess.
I remember when I originally designed it, I also considered having two different systems, or even more, interacting with eachother like a game of DOTA with no players. Just the little guys coming out of their bases and attacking eachother in the middleground. Then there's one player, and you can do whatever you want. Help either side, or take advantage of their conflict in some way.
In any of those cases I'd need to make a top-down character controller and some basic elements that would be the same, so maybe I should do that? I'm more into top-down adventure games like Zelda than 2D games like Metroid anyways.
5:47am - I might regret it in four hours but I'm going to get myself a McBreakfast and eat while I think about how I want to design my little top-down game.
6:31am - Alright, so I've had my breakky and I made a new Unity project for my Topdown 2D Basecode. I'm not sure what I should do for my player though. Maybe just a triangle? I'm not sure if I should design it so that I can put animated sprites in later, or just do a triangle that gets rotated.
For now I've been here three hours. I'm going to take a game break and come back to this in a bit.
7:24am - Alright, back to work. I'm still in a bit of a problem though with how I want to set up my character controller. Do I want to set it up as if I was using animated directional sprites, or do I want to have my triangle sprite simply turn to point in the direction it should be going in.
Well, I want to do the first one, because I'll probably put sprites in eventually. But thinking from a standpoint of making something generalized, I could seperate the animation from the movement entirely. Have seperate scripts controlling what it animates based on its movement, and the movement itself.
8:01am - Oh ho ho ho ho I forgot about Unity's built in animation system, it already does seperate controls for animation based on physics and things if you want it to. Well I found it again after a little research and so I now know what to do with my Top-Down 2D character.
8:15am - A little later I'm disengaging from the distraction of Reddit and getting back to work. XD
So, to start with I'm going to make a little area for my 2D character to explore, then I'll start writing the Top-down 2D character controller.
9:52am - It took a while but I made an animated character. I also put a simple 2D character controller from the Unity tutorials on it so it can move around, but I don't like the way it moves using just the basic Unity physics. I can put a drag on it, which brings it to a stop like friction, but it also reduces the speed. Increasing the speed increases the stop distance. I want my character to gradually move up to full speed, and stop or change direction more quickly.
10:42am - Well, I'm getting tired and having trouble thinking and focusing, so I think it's time to call it a wrap for today. I'm having trouble figuring out how to handle the inputs and translating them into the appropriate motions. It'll take some serious work to figure that out and I don't think I'm capable of it at the moment. Well, that's tomorrow's thing I guess, or the next day I work.
Tonight's a busy night here at the McDonalds so there's lots of distractions. Fortunately the folks who were packed into my usual space left about the time I showed up, but there's lots of interesting and usually drunken party people waiting for their food.
As for me, I've upgraded to the latest version of Unity and downloaded my base code from the last Ludum Dare I did. Now the real question is, what do I actually want to do?
I've got a lot of options available to me. I'm not even going to list them. I'm practically in an infinite possibility space, but I'm limiting myself to things I want to do and have the skills to do. As a help, I brought my copy of Game Engine Architecture with me, in case I need some help with big ideas.
3:55am - I just spent some time looking for other local groups I might not know about. Didn't have much luck, but I did find one group that's local and interesting. They don't have any job ads on their site, though. They'll be at the Forest City Comic Con later this month so I'll try and ask them about their company then.
4:05am - I found another one with a different search, but it's just two guys and they don't seem like a pair open to a new member.
I think that's enough looking for locals. I think I'll be on my own for a while. Well, unless I take the initiative and start my own group, and look for members instead of a group to join. Ah, but I don't think so. Not now.
For now, I think I'm going to mess around with Unity and my platformer basecode and see what improvements I can make.
4:11am - Yikes. My old stuff is surprisingly intimidating on a glance. Maybe I'm not as ready as I thought I was.
4:33am - Looked around Reddit for something to inspire me. Ended up looking up London, Ontario stuff. Nothing big, though. I also found out that /r/gamedev has a new Discord. I thought the Game Dev League discord was theirs, but apparently not. Now I'm on two gamedev discords, so yay?
4:35am - Thinking about what to work on some more. Not really sure. It's been a while since I dropped World of Thardomhainn as a project, but I still think about it sometimes. It's not a bad idea, I've thought about just changing the design. But I still don't want to make an RPG, particularly. I probably want to make an RPG more than I did when I dropped WoT though.
On the other hand, let's think about other game types. I came out here to mess around with my platformer stuff, but do I really want to make 2D platformers any more than I want to make an RPG? Probably not. I think I made Smol Mouse Thief because I wanted to prove I could, and I did that. I was also thinking about making a 2D character controller script for the Unity Asset Store but I'm not sure I have the confidence for that. There's already a couple of free ones on there I downloaded back before I made Smol Mouse Thief, and though I didn't use either of them, they're not bad.
I've thought about making a Space Game but I've never been able to design one without going crazy with hard scifi limitations.
I've always been into simulations but I'm dripping in sims already. I just played Oxygen Not Included to the limits of the current game level yesterday, and I've gotten a bit bored with Prison Architect. I tend to get things relatively stable in games like these and then lose interest. I'm not sure what I'm really looking for anymore.
I thought about making a frontier settlement sim but I'm not sure what I really want to make there. I had hemmed and hawed about the theme until friends told me I should not worry about the theme until I had the mechanics working, and that was good advice, but I wasn't even sure what mechanics to include.
One crazy thing I've been thinking about isn't even a game programming project but an art project, making myself a 3D mascot type thing. I generally like 3D mascot platformers like Mario, Spyro, etc... and I could put whatever sort of elements I want into a game like that. But it doesn't seem like a good idea.
I'm just not sure what to do with myself at this point. What should I make?
I recently found out about an Erogame in development, a roguelike with fun bad ends. I offered to help, but the fella who's making it had worked with someone before and had a bad experience, so he didn't want to work with me. It probably wouldn't have worked out anyways but that thought's what's got me looking for other game developers. I feel like I'm ready to work on someone else's project for a while. But, it has to be something I'm still interested in.
I wish I could help out with Kynseed, but that's far too far away, and I can't imagine they're hiring. That's a game I'm really into. It's similar enough to what I want to make as a sim to be really interesting, but also it's not everything I would want, I think. I'm not sure what I want right this moment, but this moment will surely pass.
Another game I'd like to help with is Chucklefish's unnamed magic school game. Again, that's too far away and I can't imagine they're hiring. But it's the sort of game project I could really sink my teeth into.
Maybe it's time I finally make that experimental game where you find yourself working with or against a system of order. It's a chaos/order thing, where you start off in this area filled with machines that are doing whatever, and you can break them or mess them up. If you do, little guys come out to fix the machine. If you make enough trouble, they try to fix you too. If you don't do anything for long enough, or let the system repair itself and run clean for a while, baddies show up to break the machine, and you can help the system repair itself or you can help the baddies or whatever you want.
I'm not sure if it would be fun or not, it would mostly be an art piece. Sort of like Yume Nikki I guess.
I remember when I originally designed it, I also considered having two different systems, or even more, interacting with eachother like a game of DOTA with no players. Just the little guys coming out of their bases and attacking eachother in the middleground. Then there's one player, and you can do whatever you want. Help either side, or take advantage of their conflict in some way.
In any of those cases I'd need to make a top-down character controller and some basic elements that would be the same, so maybe I should do that? I'm more into top-down adventure games like Zelda than 2D games like Metroid anyways.
5:47am - I might regret it in four hours but I'm going to get myself a McBreakfast and eat while I think about how I want to design my little top-down game.
6:31am - Alright, so I've had my breakky and I made a new Unity project for my Topdown 2D Basecode. I'm not sure what I should do for my player though. Maybe just a triangle? I'm not sure if I should design it so that I can put animated sprites in later, or just do a triangle that gets rotated.
For now I've been here three hours. I'm going to take a game break and come back to this in a bit.
7:24am - Alright, back to work. I'm still in a bit of a problem though with how I want to set up my character controller. Do I want to set it up as if I was using animated directional sprites, or do I want to have my triangle sprite simply turn to point in the direction it should be going in.
Well, I want to do the first one, because I'll probably put sprites in eventually. But thinking from a standpoint of making something generalized, I could seperate the animation from the movement entirely. Have seperate scripts controlling what it animates based on its movement, and the movement itself.
8:01am - Oh ho ho ho ho I forgot about Unity's built in animation system, it already does seperate controls for animation based on physics and things if you want it to. Well I found it again after a little research and so I now know what to do with my Top-Down 2D character.
8:15am - A little later I'm disengaging from the distraction of Reddit and getting back to work. XD
So, to start with I'm going to make a little area for my 2D character to explore, then I'll start writing the Top-down 2D character controller.
9:52am - It took a while but I made an animated character. I also put a simple 2D character controller from the Unity tutorials on it so it can move around, but I don't like the way it moves using just the basic Unity physics. I can put a drag on it, which brings it to a stop like friction, but it also reduces the speed. Increasing the speed increases the stop distance. I want my character to gradually move up to full speed, and stop or change direction more quickly.
10:42am - Well, I'm getting tired and having trouble thinking and focusing, so I think it's time to call it a wrap for today. I'm having trouble figuring out how to handle the inputs and translating them into the appropriate motions. It'll take some serious work to figure that out and I don't think I'm capable of it at the moment. Well, that's tomorrow's thing I guess, or the next day I work.
