I just made a little iOS game too! Actually this time I managed to stay on track and get everything done in about 1 month. I honestly don't know how I did it, but it's really fun to finish a project. http://boopsboopsswoops.com/
How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
41–49 of 49 posts
Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
#42"48 hours later my iPhone was displaying a black screen with a white triangle on it. Clearly my limits were being tested." That reminds me of http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=7745 : "In the main engineering room, there was a whoop and cry of success. Our company financial controller and acting HR lady, Jen, came in to see what incredible things the engineers and artists had come up with. Everyone was staring at a tele…
Do you remember the LHC inauguration? Just having two points appearing on an oscilloscope was cheered wordwide!
Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
#43Hi - author of the post here. Just a quick note - don't believe a word of this. I wrote it in 2013 and am now 3 years into the dev of the next game. It's lies, all lies :) actually it's probably solid advice - the hard bit turns out to be following it. The missing piece of advice turned out to be - "stay disciplined" ...
What's your next game about?
Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
#44Hi - author of the post here. Just a quick note - don't believe a word of this. I wrote it in 2013 and am now 3 years into the dev of the next game. It's lies, all lies :) actually it's probably solid advice - the hard bit turns out to be following it. The missing piece of advice turned out to be - "stay disciplined" ...
What's your next game about?
The next game is called Spooky Pooky and is a 2D metroidvania platformer. No, seriously.
"Horatio Bones is a curious lad.
Working late one night at the Nefarious Science Corporation he strays into a deserted sector and unwittingly triggers ... The Machine.
The Machine strips Horatio of his fluids and organs ~ he finds himself reduced to a living skeleton trapped in a specimen jar!
The horror!
Thus begins the longest night of Horatio's life as he travels through a dangerous and bizarre world in search of Restoration."
Like QB1-0 this is also being written in C + OpenGL, although because I'm now aiming at PC/Mac/Linux and iOS I'm using SFML to give me an OpenGL context and for Audio + controller input.
More info at http://fistfulofsquid.com and there's a devlog at https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=42130 with loads of techy details.
Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
#45I think to a good degree experience in the subject matter also comes into play with this. If your bread and butter expertise lies in a certain area and you were asked to write a small self-contained application in that area from scratch, you probably end up with something much closer to the goal than the white triangle on a black screen.
I found it very enlightening to sit through the almost full 48 hours of Notch programming some Ludum Dare entries which he streamed on twitch.tv. The end product is often very hackish, but that's exactly what this article argues could be a strategy to success. In any event, you can tell that he has programmed similar exercises many, many times in his life because certain things that would take me days to get right, he just writes down more or less without thinking.
Not writing your own engine is also a recommendation that can be seen from two sides. Of course, for a lot of us, it is tempting to go and try writing a re-usable, nicely abstracted and modular piece of software. But for a 48h jam, that can often be the wrong direction, because you get side-tracked writing your nice game engine and meanwhile forget to actually write the game.
However, at the same time, referring back to the aforementioned videos by Notch, he likes writing everything from scratch and not use a pre-existing engine because it can give you full control over what you can do and how, which for a 48-hour jam might be what you want.
(Notch and these videos have been the subject of discussion on HN many times before, so there's probably no point to going down that road here again. I personally find it sad that he doesn't seem to stream any more programming vids.)
Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
#46I recently released my first real attempt at a small game beyond the asteroids clone scopd. And what I feel like I could do in 2 weeks. Took a full about a year. Several month breaks and many things just being tremendously more time consuming than projected. Fully appreciate and understand this. Part time game making is difficult especially for new game devs.
It took me about a year to teach myself how to clone Space Invaders. Of course, on the way, I taught myself how to deal with spritesheets in SDL, move semantics in SDL objects, built a rudimentary entity-component framework, and basically had to learn how to do everything that SDL doesn't do for you. I'm still working on my January Game a Month project, and a lot of that time has been eaten up just getting the camera…
... and by "I've deleted more code than I've written" I meant the amount of code I've deleted and rewritten so far exceeds the amount of code I currently have.
Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
#47I assume my factor was if you happen to simply writing a game title completely from scratch (or from whichever position actually), make sure to withstand the need to over-generalise. Get products doing work for a specific reason relating to the sport you happen to be composing. http://www.crazysales.com.au/ It's a little bit like if you're preparing a websites then drive the car the requirements of your back-conclusion (or API or regardless of what) from definite use-instances, not from some mythical 'sense' of the things you will need.
Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
#48[deleted]
Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)
#49I've been developing my game for more than a year now and I still only have a placeholder sprite sheet walking around in a test room. I'm currently developing a modular ui system and will continue working on gameplay after that(except probably not).
Why is framework development so bloody fun?