Bedroom Coder Rebooted

What I’ve Been Up To

So, yeah, I’ve not posted anything on here for a while.

Firstly: Onward My Zombie Horde is on an indefinite hiatus. Apologies to the one guy who got excited about it - it’s something I’ll come back to at some point, but I realise now that I was trying to take on too much, too soon.

On the plus side, hitting a roadblock with the AI for OMZH spurred me into a pretty major rethink of my options as a beginner indie dev, which has led to a few changed priorities.

So what have I been up to? Well:

1. For a number of reasons I’ve decided to ditch SFML in favour of something more beginner-friendly and with better options for distributing any finished games. After weighing up my options I went with Microsoft’s XNA Framework, which gives me the potential to create games for Windows, XBLIG and Windows Phone using the same code base. While I was impressed wtih SFML in some ways, it seemed a bit of a cul-de-sac where distribution is concerned.

2. Unfortunately, this choice required that I learned C#. Not an easy thing to commit to having just spent a couple of months getting to grips with C++, but with the help of online tutorials from csharp-station.com it was reasonably painless. For me, it makes more sense as a language than C++ and I like how it’s object-oriented from the ground up.

3. Then I needed to learn the basics of XNA. I’m now just at the stage where I’ve done enough with the tutorials to be able to start working on my own ideas, but rather than start a game straight away I’m trying to put together a few methods for things like sprite animation and 2D tiled maps that I can re-use between projects, making my life a bit easier.

So far I feel like I’ve made the right decision. I’m finding C#/XNA *much* easier to work with, and I’ve also had lots more game ideas that I want to try out.

I’m not sure if I will ever get back to updating this blog as often as I did in the early days, but do I plan to keep it going (perhaps with separate dev blogs for major projects as and when they warrant it).

Three things I’ve learned this weekend

1. Pixel art is difficult.

2. I need to learn to draw.

3. In the meantime, I need to do another game that doesn’t involve fancy graphics.

Dreams versus reality

I woke up today with a great idea for a game. It just popped into my head fully formed. I know what the main characters look like, how the control scheme will work, how the levels will progress as you get further into it, what the sounds will sound like, even some of the music. This game, I thought, is going be brilliant.

Thus inspired, and this being a weekend, I promptly sat down in front of my laptop, loaded up Codeblocks and got cracking apace with the C++ tutorial I downloaded earlier in the week.

This brought me back down to earth with a thud.

It’s a bit like dreaming you’re winning the Monaco Grand Prix, then waking up and having to take your first driving lesson.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m gradually getting to grips with it. But my great game idea is going to have to stay on the back burner for a while. After a full day of following the tutorial and bashing out code, I’m still wrestling with the basic nuts and bolts of C++. The most interactive program I’ve written so far asks you to type in a series of numbers, then parrots them back on the screen.

It’s going to be a long slog before my game idea sees the light of day. But at least I now have something to aim towards.