Biography and Autobiography

Diary of a would-be indie dev - Part 3

This is part of an continued series of articles originally written for the TIGSource forums

From the first Posted: October 07, 2007

Part 3 - “Design and distillation.”

So affecting on from my previous posts which were more instructive, I’m starting to find myself in unused to territory.  While firmly entrenched in the slogging of basic C++ tutorials, ‘if’ this and ‘while’ that etc, I find my resolved wanders to more conceptual subjects of design and form and I start to think about my game and how exactly it’ll m.

From my observations, the Indie gaming scene encompasses a to the utmost range of setups from the original bedroom coder to the teams of ex-professionals who are magnificent out for themselves, and  well, Popcap et al.  Its a remarkably diverse community but most situation falls into the category of the bedroom coder and as such, all things considered the programmer wears a few hats, one of which is design.

Before becoming a programmer, I was a web artist.  Back in the days of the dotcom bubble at the fabricate of the century, artistic skill wasn’t a necessity of web design, and thank god because I’m crap at art, but I was effective of making technically balanced and attractively laid out pages through an theatrical (to me,) process of protracted planning and thought.

I’m currently in the balance of my proficiency for game design, its not drawn art -Sometimes non-standard due to god, but I suspect good game design is an art.  So like my inner web deviser, I’m going back to basics and starting at the commencement.

“I’ve decided.” I said, “I’m prevalent to learn C++ and make games.”  Conquering in my decision, the next thought I had was, “So… what stratagem shall I make?”

Well when it comes to game pattern, the first thing you need to decide is what genre you require to make your first game.  There are some interesting arguments for what you should try to block and tackle first, certainly your limited by capability, but assuming you were the worlds first-class programmer, there’s a level of complexity in some genres that constitute them poor choices.  My first though as a gamer of a infallible age, was to remake some classic 8-bit game from my misty-eyed retro fan boy days.  Certainly I’d LOVE to remake Wizball, Dynamite Dan or Nebulus -and the industrial limitations of the 8-bit machines meant the games were comparatively simplistic, certainly conceivable to attempt as a first project, but for whatever reason, I decided I would prosper an adventure RPG.

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