So I completed the little scenario game idea I was making and dubbed it: Trial by knight. It is a mission to collect 10 treasure piles while avoiding or dealing with the armies of enemy knights and traps in the dungeon. Minor bugs remain at this time, but I found the game breaking one that was crashing the game (massive memory leak due to my sloppy programming lol). Still I learned a lot about what certain code does in GML. Also I do appreciate the internet, because someone out there somewhere knows how to make the engine do what I need it to do. Wonder if anyone will ever invent a sort of language to code translator, that would be nice hah. In the meantime I guess we all have to learn a little coding ourselves on independent projects.

And here is the video overview of progress from last week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmIhDjdr45I&feature=youtu.be

lots of progress over the last week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MjPA03F3E8&feature=youtu.be

The video pretty much speaks for itself where I am headed with this project. I figured I would make a quick mini-game out of what I have atm, then continue creating what I really set out to do (make a sort of dungeon crawler rpg). There aren't a lot of games that focus on their dungeons, in fact most dungeons, while they do provide interesting boss fights etc, seem a very small part of games. Most of the grand quests talk about the world and maybe send players into a dungeon to get some item but rarely is a game built around dungeons. The best example is probably the Diablo or Torchlight style. That is what I love, those games where you go in a dungeon and see how far you can go. What mysteries wait in the depths of some cave or ruin? What monsters lurk in those shadows? Why do they exist, whats the history of the place? And of course, what sort of treasure can be found?

 However, I dislike the level of power characters can get in a game like Torchlight. I mean, yeah there is the more difficult extra dungeon, but I like each mob to be somewhat challenging. To the point where taking more than four is usually suicidal unless one can find an interesting strategy. The hordes of zerglings melting under siege tank fire never really appealed, which is how some dungeons work in games.

Anyways, enough of my rambling. See you next week with more progress!

While working on that project for Infinite Death I mentioned I also wanted to spend some time looking at coding and making a quick game of my own. 4 hours later I have something like this:

Which basically sets up the character so that it moves via WASD (which is how I usually prefer to move in games). It is using an animation from an old unfinished game for now, and when it stops an idle animation faces whichever direction it stopped at.

I suppose I am getting ahead of myself though. The game concept is basically dungeon crawler, and I am just looking to demo some levels to see how it would play. Eventually I would love to see it develop into some sort of MMO, but one step at a time.

I have found quite a few game maker tutorials to be quite helpful, and coding is a lot more flexible than drag and drop; though I am sure my code will be messy and inefficient for a first try haha!

Been quite awhile.

I admit I have gotten distracted and side tracked but currently back into creating and honing my skills. Working with https://www.facebook.com/infinitedeathdevelopment and modeling stuff for a game they are creating.

In the meantime I learned a bit of zbrush!

Just got back from SoE live, had a blast. I think I will rest a couple days then start looking into the item forge stuff, seems like a good way to get my name out a bit and get experience at the same time! It was highly recommended by the devs I met at the fan faire. I also did my first EQ tournament while I was there, we had a good shot at third place but unfortunately did not kill quite fast enough (the tie breakers were determined by kill speed). Not a bad showing for a first try, and a pick up group at that! I would also like to give a shout out to Josh Augustine, one of the newer employees running the EQ tournament. He helped our group get rolling and made sure everyone had a fair shot when it came to the tournament event we attended. So great job setting that up Josh, and I will be writing a letter of thanks first thing in the morning to you and SoE for the great time I had.

My friend came into town and we discussed some game ideas a bit. Something involving a werewolf hero etc. Perhaps we might work on a game in our spare time sometime soon, but he gets so wrapped up in life sometimes. Still I will wait and hope for the day we get the chance to create a game together, I am sure we would have a blast. I will keep trying to update this as I can, but material is sparse right now. I guess I am kind of taking a break and practicing up for the SOE live tournament.

Well programmer problems yet again *sigh. My partners seem to never fully commit to their projects. I think I will finish up those characters at some point though. A blast from the past for you: I am playing Everquest again, looking to enter some of those SoE Live events and practicing up. I think I want to take a serious look at competitive gaming, though I will still keep my art skills polished up just in case! As always I will try to post something here when I can. It is kind of turning into more of a traditional blog than a game development journal, but that is life for ya.