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Post mortem of my one game a month

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Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#41

Post by thirdtruck »

reidrac wrote: post #26
solaris999 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially considering it was done alongside a job. I wonder how much time he actually had per month to work on it

OP here! I can't really tell, but I had to be very effective using my free time. Sometimes is 30-45 minutes before going to bed, sometimes is waking up early on weekends. I don't watch TV, I read only a couple of books this year, etc; always keeping in mind that there's some free time that must be dedicated to your family no matter what. EDIT: I could check the repositories to get an idea, although that doesn't repre…

It reminds me of how I write and continue to edit my first full-length novel: two hours a day of drafting, for three months, and an hour a day of editing since. It's a small amount, but it's really added up.

Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#42

Post by radicaledward »

reidrac wrote: post #33
untothebreach wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what tools do you use to make the artwork for your games? Anything outside of the standard linux image applications (gimp, inkscape) ? I've always been curious about making my own game, but when I sit down to work on the art assets, I end up getting very frustrated and tend to put those projects aside.

I use Gimp mostly, once I learnt how to tweak it for pixel art it is quite good. For me all starts with the right palette. It really helps to get what you're looking for. I usually work with 64 colors (unless there's any special restriction, of course).

Did you use any guides or anything specific to get started on pixel art in gimp? If not, any advice?

Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#44

Post by k-mcgrady »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #28
mmahemoff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it literally means "after death" and stems from the name for the study of dead bodies, so it seems odd to name any post-facto report a post-mortem and the Wiki article may apply to gaming industry but it's not really common industry usage. Normally in tech, a post-mortem is a particular kind of analysis, backtracking from an incident to figure out what caused it, with the aim of preventing it happening again…

Someone can die, but not have been a failure in life. I've always taken post-mortem blogs to mean "We're not working on this anymore. Here's what we learned during the time we did." The reason for a project ending is often failure, but it doesn't have to be. I've seen several post-mortems about successful projects, they're just not nearly as common as the failures.

>> "Someone can die, but not have been a failure in life."

I think it's referencing the fact their body has 'failed' i.e. died. Not that they were a failure in life. A post mortem is usually carried out to figure out why the person died i.e. what part(s) of their body failed.

Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#45

Post by fit2rule »

paines wrote: post #18
fit2rule wrote: post #6

I very much enjoyed this report, and especially the fact of a significant target of your attention being the ZX Spectrum - this is a true and honest approach to the programming art! :) Its definitely true that even learning older architectures can sharpen your focus and skill, general platform dexterity. You may not use a lot of the Z80 assembly skills elsewhere (but then again; you might), but for sure the bounds of…

Well spoken! In regards to the Speccy: there is still a nice community around it, developing even new hardware for it: e.g. you can easily attach SD cards or newer hard disks to it, and boot speccy games in a second, there is networking etc.... go to worldofspectrum!

Actually .. I'm an Oric-1/Atmos fan, and have also recently been able to give my old 8-bit collection a revival courtesy of disk-emulators being released for the old hardware .. it has re-opened the old world to me again and again, and I have the privilege of watching my kids get into it now, too .. nothing quite like the sanctity and peace of mind of having the kids use a computer that has very little chance of running a web browser, though. That's something the speccy users have got up on us Oric people, heh heh .. ;)

Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#46

Post by reidrac »

radicaledward wrote: post #42
reidrac wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Gimp mostly, once I learnt how to tweak it for pixel art it is quite good. For me all starts with the right palette. It really helps to get what you're looking for. I usually work with 64 colors (unless there's any special restriction, of course).

Did you use any guides or anything specific to get started on pixel art in gimp? If not, any advice?

There are some pixel art tutorials: http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-pixel-art-tut...

For me it really helped to configure Gimp for pixel art: set the pen to 1 pixel, save some palettes, set the grid to 8x8 when doing Spectrum graphics, a keyboard shortcut to show/hide the grid, etc. Gimp defaults are not good for pixel art.

Other than that, jut zoom as needed. I usually scale the games x3 when trying a retro style, but in Gimp I draw mostly at x8.

Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#47

Post by rbl »

namuol wrote: post #22

Huge props for diving in to a mostly-extinct platform! I've always wondered what the process was for game programmers on the early PCs and consoles. Are there any books or documentaries that go into depth about the development process of, for instance, Super Mario Bros? I've only seen stuff targeting "mainstream" audiences that glosses over anything technical.

Let's see...

"The birth of a Paradroid" - Paradroid development journal for the C64 by Andrew Braybrook: http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap3/para_birth01.html

"Mental Procreation" - Morpheus development journal for the C64 by Andrew Braybrook: http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap23/mental1.html

"It's behind you" - R-Type Arcade conversion for the ZX Spectrum, free e-book by Bob Pape: http://bizzley.com/

Free sample pages of the development journals for Prince of Persia and Karateka by Jordan Mechner: http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/

Prince of Persia code analysis after it got open-sourced in 2012; by Fabien Sanglard: http://fabiensanglard.net/prince_of_persia/

Analysis of Pacman; long after the fact: http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html

Any other? I'm sure there must be many nowadays...

Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#48

Post by radicaledward »

reidrac wrote: post #46
radicaledward wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you use any guides or anything specific to get started on pixel art in gimp? If not, any advice?

There are some pixel art tutorials: http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-pixel-art-tut... For me it really helped to configure Gimp for pixel art: set the pen to 1 pixel, save some palettes, set the grid to 8x8 when doing Spectrum graphics, a keyboard shortcut to show/hide the grid, etc. Gimp defaults are not good for pixel art. Other than that, jut zoom as needed. I usually scale the games x3 when trying a…

Thanks! I will give it a try!

Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#49

Post by dminor »

mmahemoff wrote: post #17
a3_nm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem to imply that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation

I mean, it literally means "after death" and stems from the name for the study of dead bodies, so it seems odd to name any post-facto report a post-mortem and the Wiki article may apply to gaming industry but it's not really common industry usage. Normally in tech, a post-mortem is a particular kind of analysis, backtracking from an incident to figure out what caused it, with the aim of preventing it happening again…

Merriam Webster provides a second definition: "following the event".

Post-mortem is widely used to refer to analysis of a completed project, failed or otherwise.

Re: Post mortem of my one game a month

#50

Post by fit2rule »

reidrac wrote: post #25
fit2rule wrote: post #6

I very much enjoyed this report, and especially the fact of a significant target of your attention being the ZX Spectrum - this is a true and honest approach to the programming art! :) Its definitely true that even learning older architectures can sharpen your focus and skill, general platform dexterity. You may not use a lot of the Z80 assembly skills elsewhere (but then again; you might), but for sure the bounds of…

OP here! I found Z80 assembler quite interesting (I had previous experience with Intel 16 and 32 bit), and Z88DK supports inline asm so it wasn't too bad if you can restrict the assembler code to small routines and still do the main bits in C.

I've had the Oric-1 OSDK (http://osdk.defence-force.org/), which offers the same universe, in my hack/inbox for a while now .. its an amazing thing to return to these old architectures and realize just how much we take things for granted today, and yet - in spite of the limitations - the things are still just as useful and interesting as they ever were. 'tis a delight to witness a 7-year old and a 5-year old pillaging through an ancient (30+ years) collection of floppies and tapes, and .. gradually over a few months .. accruing their list of favorites on the 'bookmark disk' from the collection, such that it is (* -). An 8-bit machine with 8 gigabytes of storage available is a truly profound and superlative new realm for exploration. I'm glad I'm doing it vicariously!

(* - http://www.oric.org/software/)

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