I guess programming's for me

What to try some rough as hell jam games? I made 2 this weekend:

https://dgalga.itch.io/confettiman-tries-to-fight-guns

https://dgalga.itch.io/growth

"Growth" was submitted to Trijam 121, which had the theme "Exploring spacetime". I (and most of the jam participants) could only initially think of games focusing on vehicles in space, but I rejected this as too obvious. I've spent the past 6 months learning C++ and not finishing games, so I wanted to do something more personally interesting. I decided on doing a multi-part, artsy, exploration-of-the-short-life-of-an-alien-parasite thing. I didn't get in everything I wanted with a 3 hour deadline, but I got all of the key points in and I'm happy with the result.

"Confettiman tries to fight guns" took me 10 hours out of a special 20 hour Bean Jam #20. The jam was held in a far off time zone, and I started late, but I'm still happy with the result. It's super basic, and I don't actually think it fits the theme very well, which is "World's worst superhero". 

 

I made Confettiman far too powerful. His jump allow you to completely dodge bullets! However, this also marks the first game I've ever made that somewhat fits the beat-em-up perspective, and it's this I'm proud of.

Now, I was originally planning to take part in 2 more jams before my classes resume next week. However, I had to drop out of one when I realized it was all getting me very stressed before what looks to be a very stressful and compact summer semester. Shortly afterwards, I decided to drop the second when I realized something odd: I miss working with C++.

C++ is hard. However, I can see a future in it. I can even see myself making games using it with more practice, and I credit my experiences of this past semester with improvements in my game design and workflow. I don't see a future in Godot, or tinkering with Unity. Tinkering and hobbyist projects won't teach me the concepts I need to build better projects.

I need a future of the kind I see in programming. I plan to do a few game jams between semesters, and I plan to keep this blog for that. However, I can't pretend anymore that the tinkering way I was for 2018, 2019, and much of 2020 will ever get me where I want.

See you in around 2 months probably.

Experimenting some more, expect sporadic updates

My current game experiment is this:

It's challenging, as you can probably tell, and I'm enjoying it. The project is inspired by an old Sega game called Gain Ground. 

 

Gain Ground is a top-down 2D ancestor of the twin-stick shooter. The player progresses from the bottom of the screen to either an exit at the top or towards a boss somewhere in the level, all the while shooting at enemies and rescuing characters for use in later levels. There are a number of features I enjoy, such as the rescuing of new characters and how the entire level is always shown to the player. 

 

However, there are a number of rough edges I'm hoping to remove in my new game. For example, there are a number of almost useless characters and abilities that only ever get used when you have no choice, and game progression is a mess.

I like how much my project has progressed, but I can't keep it up.

 

At my job, as I've mentioned before, there's more pressure to conform to goals that benefit the company rather than myself. This takes up more of the free time I get for studying C++ during the week. On the school side, I've found myself in a situation where I need to read 3 textbook chapters and get ready for a new test I wasn't expecting before next week. 

I've decided to stop working on my own games completely until I either get more free time or the current school semester ends. I already feel like I'm starting to burn out on C++, and creative side projects aren't helping. That said, I may still post random blog entries in the coming months.

I've started working through Love2D tutorials. 

 

I've always wanted to understand and use the Love2D game engine. The biggest barrier for past-me in regards to this goal was simply my limited understanding of coding concepts. The Lua language, which forms the backbone of Love2D, retains many complexities for a newcomer despite the extreme simplicity of the language. After 9 months of learning C++ and Rust, however, Lua is starting to feel like child's play.

I'm going to continue tinkering with Lua and Love2D in whatever downtime I have, and I'll make another post if I find or make anything interesting enough to share.