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Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers!
So, with college being very hectic this year with constant projects and exams, I've had very little time for game dev work outside of continuing work on the long term project. While that's fun to work on, because it's a long term project, it's hard to get that sense of completion from making a game. So, I've decided to remedy that by using the extra time I'll have over the Christmas break to make a bunch of small games. I've been keeping a list of small projects I've wanted to make. I'll make them in a somewhat game jam style structure. I'm going to give myself two days per project but if one takes my interest, I may spend longer on that. The goal is to create a few small yet polished little games in a short period of time. It'll be a way of releasing some of the creative energy I've had to bottle up as of late with college work. Once, I have these games made, I'll more than likely put some if not all online for folks to play. I'll post more about that at the time. So, be prepared for a mini explosion of games from me after Christmas! Until next time! Hey there, Gamers and game Makers! Have you ever decided to start learning something new? It's great, right? You get so excited about it and you gather everything you need. But, have you ever noticed that excitement fade away quite quickly? In this week's blog, we're going to look at the three states of starting something new. #1 Buying/Getting ToolsStarting to learn something new is pretty exciting. You get excited about the tools/software you're going to need to get. You get excited about the possibilities of what you can do after you've learnt this tool or process. This stage of the process is the most exciting because it's basically the concept or planning phase. It's still new and captivating to you because you haven't actually done anything yet. It's all still possibilities.  #2 LearningThe learning stage starts off great. You're still excited and enthusiastic about this. However, this is where we tend to become less excited as we go. Sometimes the learning curve is that bit steeper than we first thought. It's when we hit this little bump in the road that we can become disheartened. Don't feel bad though. This happens to us all at some point. Keep in mind learning something new can take time. If it interests you, then keep at it and you'll start to get past that initial block.  #3 PracticeNow, here's the part where most people fall down. You've just spent a lot of time learning this new tool or skill.. But, if you don't keep practicing it, you'll very quickly lose all that progress you made learning it. To avoid that, it's simple enough. Practice. Yeah, it's a pretty cliché line, but, it's true, practice makes perfect. Or as near too as possible. So, I'm not saying spend hours and hours of each day practicing. You can but, you don't have too. Rather, simply spend a short amount of time often keeping basic skills sharp. Try to keep learning new elements of your tool or skill in order to expand. You'll find the more you enjoy this, the easier it is to practice.  Until next time!
Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog, I'm going to be talking about why I think everyone should build a robot. No, I'm not super lonely and need to build a friend.....maybe. I'm talking more so about why things like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi are so important. Before college, I was very much a software focused guy. I had basically no interaction with hardware beyond the basics of my PC. All that changed one fine day when my hardware lecturer introduced me to the Arduino.  So, for those who aren't familiar with what an Arduino is. It's a microcontroller which basically means it's a small computer on a single integrated circuit. The great thing about an Arduino is that you can build nearly anything with them. During my first year of college, I built things ranging from temperature sensors to rhythm pattern locks which was basically a lock that would not open unless a specific knock pattern was made. Taking the secret door knock to the next level! Outside of college, I ended up ordering both an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi along with a bunch of parts and sensors. I ended up using an Arduino to build a robot car that could find its way around the environment either by line tracking or using sonar sensors. The really cool thing about building these things is that you still need to code the logic for all this in an IDE for the Arduino. The great thing here is you're not only learning to code but you're seeing a physical real world result of your code. It's a pretty satisfying feeling seeing a bunch of parts and sensors come to life when you write good code behind it all.  The Raspberry Pi is much similar to that of the Arduino except it's more like a fully fledged computer. While not that powerful compared to a desktop, you can still do amizing things with a Pi and they're a great starting point if you want to get down and dirty with coding a computer or learning about Linux based systems. My advice would be, if you have an interest in code but also like the idea of building something. Try your hands at something like the Arduino and you'll be amazed at all the things you can make and that it'll actually make you a better programmer.
Until next time! Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! It's that time again when we dive into one of my past games and see what worked and what didn't work. This time we'll be looking at my most recent game, Hide The Body.  So, as you can probably guess, Hide The Body is a game about hiding bodies. Specifically about doing so in a short space of time before the cops kick in the door and pin the crime on you. Hide The Body was born from a similar concept I had already made. A stupid game I made in a short space of time called Hide The Porn. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what that was about. While Hide The Porn was very rough around the edges, it did have a solid gameplay loop. One that would fit very well with Hide The Body. Now, with Hide The Body, I wanted to create a game that implemented that core gameplay loop and improved upon the games mechanics. While the theme of Hide The Body is quite grim on the surface, it was important that the game not take itself seriously. The idea was the game been very difficult yet amusing and down right goofy. Visually, I went with a low poly style as it was the most disempowering to the grim theme. I gave it a noir black and white style. This served two purposes. One, it was visually a style I found very appealing and two, it acted as a game design element to keep visual gameplay uniform.  As for the gameplay loop itself, it was simple. Hide all traces of a crime within a short amount of time. The actual time duration from level to level was unknown to the player. The only cue was the rising tension in the audio. This served to stress the player even more. If you hid everything in time, you won. If you didn't, you lost and time was always very tight. Balancing this was very difficult as there is a fine line between hard yet fun and just purely frustrating. It was also important that replying a level was fast as if you were stuck on a hard level and you kept having to wait a minute to reply the same thirty seconds of gameplay, you'd soon become frustrated at the waiting.  So, let's look at what worked. The gameply loop was much tighter and refined from what it was in Hide The Porn. It felt a more polished game overall. The game struck the balance between difficult and fun very well providing that real sense of satisfaction upon beating a level. Visually the game felt like it was its own thing. It felt very cohesive and very much suited to the theme of the game itself. The game was also my first game to be published on the Steam store which in itself was a success to me. This brought a new market to the game along with new reviews and feedback I wouldn't have gotten elsewhere. The game had a successful launch and was met with largely positive reviews. While the game is quite niche, it found an audience that enjoyed it and provided feedback that led to patch updates that greatly improved the game.  So, what didn't work? Well, this is not so much something that didn't work as it's just a wish. I would have liked to have had more levels at launch but time simply didn't allow for that. But, given the difficulty of the game, having 20 levels at launch was still a good number. I would also have liked to have had more animations in the game but the drawback in that was being a game that focused on fast time sensitive gameplay, adding in animations for every action would have been counter intuitive to that process.
While the game had a decent market launch, it didn't break any sales records. On the upside, the analytics gained from the launch and maintenance of Hide The Body has provided fantastic information for future releases and marketing. Overall, this game is one I'm very proud of. It's a game that has a solid gameplay loop with good visuals that doesn't take itself seriously. It's a game that knows who it is and it's one I still enjoy playing. Until next time! Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog, I wanted to do something a little different. I enjoy reading a lot and I read various types of books from Science Fiction all the way to Physics and Cosmology books. Each book I read leaves some kind of impression on me that in turn influences what I make in some way. So, I thought it might be interesting if I started sharing some of the books I've been reading and the ones that stood out for me. #1 Hex: Thomas Olde Heuvelt Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt is probably my favorite book of the last year. It scratches that Stephen King itch while bringing a very new and fresh twist on the supernatural. I won't go into any spoilers or even detail for that matter as I think this is a fantastic book to go into blind and enjoy the ride it takes you on. It's a book that I couldn't put down and it's definitely influenced me. #2 Strange Weather: Joe Hill Strange Weather by Joe Hill is a collection of four short novels that I found to be very entertaining. Each one strikes that perfect balance between the strange and the unnerving of both the unknown and of human nature. With each novel providing a twist that packs a punch, it's the perfect book for firing up that imagination. #3 The Physics of Everyday Things: James Kakalios The Physics of Everyday Things by James Kakalios is the perfect book for those of us who want a better understanding of physics but don't want to get bogged down by a very theory heavy academic book. The book instead takes you on a journey through physics through the perspective of an average day in your life. Breaking down the physics of your everyday interactions in a way that not only makes sense but leaves you with a sense of not only a better understanding of physics but a practical and useful knowledge of the subject. I very much suggest reading this book if you're interested in physics but nervous about jumping in.
Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers!
This week, I want to talk a little bit about something I've noticed with my designs as of late. In the past, when I was working on a game, I viewed that game project very much as a product. Now, of course I still enjoyed working on my past games and I'm very proud of some of those ideas. Hide The Body being a prime example of a game which had such a goofy premise and yet was a great deal of fun to both make and play. Yet, I viewed it as a product. Since, I've been back in college for year 2 of my computer science degree course, I've had less time than last year for my game design work. Now this doesn't mean I haven't been working on games. I have one long term game project that I'm chipping away at. I also have several small game ideas on paper that I think I'll breath some life into in the coming Christmas break in the form of short jam style game projects. The thing about working on these games by chipping away at them in what little spare time I have is that they've become more of a hobby than a job. I feel as if I've gone back to making games purely for me as opposed to for a market audience. Having removed the very strict deadlines I used to work towards and making the long term project on a much more flexible timeline has taken away a lot of the pressure I once put on myself. The addition of making small random games in short spaces of time has become that creative outlet that I very much crave amongst the day to day work of my computer science studies. It provides me with a creative outlet that still requires a lot of the technical knowledge I need to keep sharp. Making these kind of short games also allows me to take risks with game ideas I normally wouldn't take. The great thing about this is while you may make a lot of stupid games, you might make one or two gems that hold potential for a more developed version. So, I guess what I would like for people to take away from this post is that it's ok to simply chip away at a game project for a longer period of time or just make short stupid little games. You'll enjoy it more and do better work as a result of not rushing your game. Have fun with it. Wasn't that why you started in the first place? Until next time! Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers!
So, over the last while I've started to pinpoint some aspects of my thought process towards my work and how I view my goals and achievements. I've always had this attitude of fobbing off my achievements as not being a big deal or even being a mistake. I often push myself to be a perfectionist in things I do. Sometimes to the point where I set myself a goal that I can't actually achieve within the constraints I've set. I'll push myself harder than I have to just because I feel I can't keep up if I don't. Turns out, a lot of this is a sign of Imposter Syndrome. Now, I'm not big on the whole self diagnosis thing. I believe doing that is unhealthy and can cause more problems. So, I'm not going to claim I actually have imposter syndrome but, rather I'm going to look at back at last year and how I put myself through a level of unnecessary stress that I think a lot of us do. During my first year of college, I started fairly nervous as anyone would on their first day. The thing is, I was going back to college as a mature student in his late twenties. Right off the bat, I felt I was competing with the younger students. There was this feeling that I didn't belong. That I was too old to be there. I also felt that being a mature student that there was an expectation that I should already know most of this stuff. When it came to exams and projects, I put myself under a lot of pressure to do well. It wasn't about wanting to do better than anyone else but more so a sense of if I don't do really well, people will think I don't belong in the course. I remember I got a 99% in an exam last year. Most people would be pretty damned thrilled with a 99% but I was actually really annoyed with myself. It was such an illogical reaction. It's very rare for anyone to get a 100% in any exam. So, to be so close should have made me very happy but all I saw was that 1% I failed to get. Here's the thing, I actually got 100% on two exams and scored in the high 80s and 90s for the others. The ones I did get 100% in I actually thought there must be a mistake and there was a period of time where I waited for an email to inform me my grade has been adjusted based on an error. Such an email never came. I finished the year with first class honours and even now starting into my second year, there's that niggling feeling of you're not good enough and you're not cut out for this. And this is despite the fact I'm doing really well. So, while this is not something I can just switch off, I have been trying some things that help. When ever I start to feel insecure about not knowing everything about a topic that I've never encountered before, I remember that that's actually how everyone else in the room is feeling right now. Whenever I feel anxious about a project and people are asking me questions about a lab or assignment, I remember that they're also feeling anxious about labs and projects. Hey, we're all in this together. The most important thing I'm doing that helps is that every now and then, I'll allow myself to feel like I belong there. Even if it's just for a few minutes, I try to remind myself that I got this far because of my own efforts. The efforts that were in fact more than good enough to get me here. I remind myself that my achievements to date in games and even this blog are a result of hard work I put in and not because of some mistake or fluke. I don't know if I have imposter syndrome and I don't think it matters. What matters is I've got this far not because of some mistake but because I put in the effort. So, remember to take a step back and allow yourself to feel like you belong because you do. Until next time! Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! Ok, I lied. I don't actually know your password. As part of my degree course, we have a secure systems module. Since I started this module, my eyes have been opened to just how lazy we tend to be when it comes to our own cyber security. When it comes to setting passwords for our devices and online accounts, we tend to pick something we can remember and thus something simple. I'm willing to bet a lot of you use a dictionary word followed by a series of numerical values and maybe a special character, right? Don't worry. That's actually a simple psychological pattern most people follow. This does however make it very easy for people to figure out your passwords. Most databases that store your passwords run them through a hash algorithm to encrypt them. Now, while most sites are going to add what's called a salt to your hashed password to further add a level of difficulty to cracking your password should the database be compromised, it's actually quite easy to reverse the hash if there is no salt. In our class, we tested each others passwords by giving each other the hash and trying to crack it. For a room full of future computer scientists, you'd be surprised at how many people had their passwords cracked.  The point I'm trying to make is that if your password is easy enough to remember, then it's actually not that secure at all. So if the most secure password I can have is one that I can't even remember, how the hell do I use that? Your first instinct might be to come up with a list of passwords that meet the requirement of what a secure password might be and store them in a text file on your computer. Well, that's pretty much the same as leaving your car keys in the ignition or locking your front door but putting a spare key under the doormat. Never store passwords in plan text. If I can get access to your files or if i can monitor your session, then I've got all your passwords. So, how do I store all my passwords? Tools like KeePass make storing passwords far more secure. KeePass acts as an encrypted database that allows you to generate passwords using various algorithms. To access the database you require a master key or you can specify a removable storage device such as a usb to act as your master key. The database itself can be stored off of the computer itself for added security. A KeePass database itself is highly encrypted and while not impossible to crack, the resources required to do so make it highly unlikely that anyone is going to go to such effort for your Facebook password.  What do I want you to take away from this? Simply, I just want us to all practice better cyber security. Change your passwords often (every three months is good) and make your passwords as secure as possible. Wikipedia gives a good summery of what makes a good password and can be seen as follows:
 Until next time! Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog, we're going to bust some of the myths of programming and look at the reality of what a programmer is. 1# Programmers don't know every language Some people have the idea that if you're a programmer, you automatically know every programming language and can simply code on anything. This is not the truth. While a programmer might know quite a lot of languages, they will not know them all. Most of the time programmers tend to focus on one area of programming. This may be for cloud computing, front end, web development, games programming and so on. Now, I'm not saying don't learn more languages. It's actually a benefit to know a range of languages. Just bare in mind, the more you learn the higher the chance of you becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none. 2# Programmers don't just know Another misconception is that programmers just sit down and know how to fix every issue. If this was the case, programs would be developed much faster. The reality is that programming is equal parts logic and frustration. You'll find yourself encountering code that will seem to challenge your logic. Thus the frustration kicks in and you go down that Stack Overflow rabbit hole. 3# We are not experts in all things computing Just because someone is a very good programmer, that doesn't mean they know all aspects of computing. For example, a programmer doesn't necessarily know the ins and outs of the computer hardware in detail. It is advisable to know as much as you can about a computer as it will ultimately help you as a developer. 4# You don't stop learning programming While the fundamentals of a programming language tend to remain the same, programming is constantly evolving. If you hope to compete in an area as fast paced as computer science then, you need to evolve with it. Keep up to date with developments in a language. Look at others code in order to learn how some things might be done better. If you're just starting out with programming, don't limit yourself to the basics. Once you're comfortable with something, move onto the next aspect of it that you find challenging.
Until next time! Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! So, I'm back in full swing between game dev and computer science and my days are pretty full. So much so that I thought it might be worth outlining what my typical day is like as it might help people see how I schedule and fit everything in. Ok, let's go! 6amI get up at 6am and hop in the shower, grab some breakfast and the usual human stuff. I also use this time to quickly catch up on some emails and even go over some design notes and tweak ideas from the day before. 7.30amI get the bus for college. Again I make use of this time by doing some design work on paper, emails and any work I can actually do that doesn't require a computer. 8.10amBy this point, I've arrived at the institute. I usually have about an hour free here where I can do some programming either on my laptop or on a PC in the library. Depending on my workload for that particular week, I usually use this hour for my own project still. 9amThis kicks off my day as a mature student and it's generally a full on day of lectures and lab work. Depending on what times I'm free for lunch on each day, I tend to grab a quick lunch and do some of my own design work. Some days, I'll just take the hour for my mind to actually recharge and play some pool with friends. 5.10pmI grab the bus home. Yup,you guessed it. I use this time to once again check emails and so on. 6pmI'm usually home around this time which I pretty much straight away jump on the treadmill for a run before having something to eat. 7pmFrom this point on, I'm pretty much in full game dev mode. Trying to get as much done on my game as I can before I need to sleep. I always have a task list set out of each little task I need to complete in that week. This way I can keep on track of knowing what needs to be done and seeing each task getting ticked off keeps me motivated. If I'm programming, I'll have music on in the background but if I'm doing something like level design or asset development, I'll tend to have a show TV show on in the background.Gotta keep up with my shows! 11pmPrecious sleep......Then, next thing you know it's 6am again! WeekendsMy weekends are more mixed. I spend a large portion of the weekend on game dev and college work but I also make it a point to spend a good amount of the weekend just relaxing and doing something fun. Otherwise I'd just burnout.
Until next time! |
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