Game a Month #1 Begins

Alright, the time has finally come. I am all out of excuses--I've moved into my new place, I have internet access, I've figured out how to turn on the heat to protect myself from the frigid Michigan elements. I am ready. By this time on September 29th, Knife That Guy HD 3D Deluxe will be unleashed upon the world. I'm going to try to update at least once a week about the development process. The goal for this first week is to have all the planning done as well as having the base game managers and a rough prototype of all of the mechanics in the game. 

The clock starts...now.

Introducing Game a Month #1: Knife That Guy

Hey, everybody. So the process of finding and then relocating to a new living place is taking me longer than I had anticipated, so the Game a Month is being delayed till sometime next week. I felt like updating anyway to let you know what the first Game a Month is going to be. 

The first game project that I designed as part of my college education was called Knife That Guy. It tasked you as “This Guy,” wielder of a large triangular knife, who was destined to knife “That Guy,” who happened to be any randomly selected person in a crowd of wandering people. I made it in the course of a week with my (at the time) minimal coding skill and my (still) less than minimal art skills. The final release build had a bug that caused the game to have a 25% chance to crash whenever you knifed that guy, which meant that only the debug build was actually playable. 

Say hello to This Guy. And his knife.

I was stupidly proud of my stupid first effort, but I felt there was more that I could do with it. So for my first Game a Month, I am going to make an improved version of Knife That Guy. I know, I’m setting the bar pretty high. But I figure by shooting low for the first effort I’ll have the time to write all of the managers and boring framework stuff that I can use for later GaM’s. It will also be good practice expanding and refining a simple idea with whatever time I can scrape together, which is something I’m going to try to do for all of the GaM’s.

The clock will officially start running for Knife That Guy HD 3D Deluxe by this time next week at the latest. And if you're worried that I may get some kind of advantage in this self imposed challenge by having come up with the concept weeks in advance, I promise to inflict just enough cranial trauma on myself to cancel out whatever head start it's given me.

If you're interested, here is the original working debug version of Knife That Guy.

Hello World.

Hey Internet audience, I'm Steven Zavala and I'm a game developer. Well, I'm lots of other things too but in keeping with the old school tradition of being defined by what you do for a living, that is how I would introduce myself: Steven Zavala, Video Game Developer. The thing is I haven't really done that much game development. I've worked on a few games you've never played and I'm currently working on some more games you will never play but I haven't really created much of anything. After doing some thinking on it, I've decided that that is really lame. It feels like the equivalent of someone churning out a few commercial jingles and then claiming the title of songwriter—while it's technically accurate, it just doesn't feel right. So I've decided to do something about that. Taking some inspiration from Jonathan Coulton and his Thing a Week songwriting project I am going to challenge myself to make a Game a Month for as long as I am willing/able

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The concept is pretty much self explanatory based on the name, but to satisfy my habit of over-elaborating I'm going to break it down a little. Every month I will design and develop a new original game that I will then release to the cruel unfeeling Internet. I may use some code and art assets that I can legally acquire, but I will do all of the gameplay programming (and likely much of the art) myself. Games can be a lot of work and a month is not a lot of time, so this means the games will not be the most sophisticated works of design and technology the world has ever known. They will be simple, potentially bordering on crude, and buggy, potentially bordering on broken, but that's not the point. The point is that they will be complete in their own special participation-prize way and that they will be something that I can actually claim responsibility for and maybe even be proud of. Along the way, I will update this blog with information about the design and development process of the current Game a Month as well as my disorganized rants about games and anything else that drifts through my head.

I'm not starting the clock for the first Game a Month just yet, as I am in the process of moving and such, but I'll update as soon as it begins.

Preemptive FAQ! or Me Talking to Myself!

Q: If you really wanted to make a game, why limit yourself to a month? Wouldn't more time be helpful?

A: Time is nice, yeah. But I have a habit of wasting it. Whenever I try to tackle something big, I always lose interest or come up with a new idea or decide that the idea just isn't as good as it should be. By only taking a month per game, I can work within my limited attention span and cover more creative ground. There is now no idea that is too stupid!

Q: What tools are you going to use for development?

A: Most (more likely all) of the games are going to be developed in the Unity engine as it is great for quick development and it is the engine I have the most experience with. For art, I will likely be using GIMP for 2D stuff since it is free and Maya or 3ds Max for 3D since I should have a student copy floating around here somewhere.

Q: You said you would use some assets that you can find. So does that mean I can contribute?

A: Of course you can, hypothetical helpful question asker! If you feel like you have some audio or visual assets that would fit the theme/setting of the current Game a Month, let me know. Help with music would be most appreciated as that is the one thing that I really cannot fake.

                                                                       

Q: What happens at the end of the month if the game isn't done?

A: I suppose I’ll have to choose to strip the game down to whatever can be considered “done”, release it as is, or flee from the Internet in shame. Or give myself more time. The cool thing about creating a challenge for yourself is you can change the rules whenever you like. And I likely will. Often.