Gamedev Lounge 0010

[Phaze]

Programming always intruiged me, but I think my main drive for getting into game development is my attachment to creativity, I have aspergers syndrome and while growing up it showed the most, not many friends and issues with day to say life I got angry a lot, but my escape from anger was in drawing and playing pretend, always thinking up characters, worlds, laws for those worlds, hierarchies of gods, kings, species and their relationships with each other, when I realised games were designed and programmed, it became a fixation of mine to see some my worlds and characters come to life. Stories wouldn't do, I'm not a strong reader and couldn't make it through a book reading, let alone writing, movies wouldn't do, it'd require expensive equipment and assistance from people playing parts of the characters, so games were the best bet.

in terms of college I've heard good things about game design courses, according to a friend of mine their first year was planning and concepts, most days they'd have chats about what does well in what games while playing on handhelds, I'd say it seems layed back but when you think of it its still covering game design, so I was considering taking the course and I'd have the time to make a game (which would coincide with my grade as I could make the project the course project) but I'd have to wait until july to even think of signing up, it being halfway through the school year at the moment.

in terms of "buffer time" I'd say plan a small simple game, make it (regardless of efficiency, concentrate workflow on getting the game working) if its a simple enough game you'll have it done fairly quick, this will atleast make a good starting point, its my current premise with the P2P Arcade, a small platformer game, then expanded into a platformer and TDS then platformer, TDS and vertical scrolling shooter. I may go further with the project, but its likely by time I have them done I'll have started moving onto bigger projects.

I've always had the same kind of daydream-type stuff. It lead me to eventually create this world that I plan to base my action-RPG around, though I still have a lot of work to do with regards to fleshing out places and characters. To think it all started with a single character! I have the major stuff in mind and a couple of disjointed things as-is.
Though I only intend to make 1 game (initially), I do actually have 5 separate parts of an entire timeline that could be games in their own right with their own stories at the least if it ever seems like a good idea to continue, i.e me and my friends can make a living with it. I'd start with the 2nd though, it seems like a good middle ground to me (namely in terms of party diversity... it'd take too long to explain)!

Eugh, game design courses seem like a terrible idea. It's overspecialization to the point of being crippling. I personally think a Comp. Sci course would be much better as your skillset would be more applicable in a general sense (even if the GD course gives you these skills, the employer(s) may not see this ). Maybe GD courses have gotten better, but they always seemed like a terrible idea to me; something to attract the idealist who isn't quite aware of the greater ramifications.

I've done a few 'simple' games but they were extremely barebones. The first real project I worked on is a TCG game of a friends' design. It's maybe half done (base game is practically there, but it's text-based singleplayer only. I need to separate the client/server and then create a GUI) but I might take a small deviation to work on some C++ stuff. I'll end up cannibalizing part of the friend's fangame engine for my own project as it'd essentially be like the overworld, just with the battle features integrated as there'd be no actual battle screen.