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What is this?
Hello TeamLiquid! Long time lurker, not very often poster here.
Welcome to the first in a series of weekly blog posts that are going to cover development of The Adventures of Sam the Pirate. Sam the Pirate is a 2D platformer, inspired by the likes of Super Mario, Super Meat Boy, and the more recent Rayman Legends, you can read more about the game here. Two months of pre-production recently finished up, and have left me with a pretty clear idea of what the game is, and how I am going to make it.
Who am I?
So, who am I? My name is Ash Crockett, and I'm a student at Media Design School in Auckland, New Zealand. I'm in the 3rd and final year of my Bachelor of Software Engineering degree, creating Sam the Pirate as my final project before graduating in May 2014. I'm also acting as the sole programmer and game designer, so the entire project is going to be a challenge, but I'm pretty confident I can pull it off!
What are my goals?
My goals for this project are as follows:
- Have a commercially ready game by the end of May 2014
- Release the game via Steam Greenlight
- Use the game as a platform to start a game studio after I graduate
These goals are a big part of the reason for deciding to make a platformer for my final project, despite the number of indie platformers that are already out there. As I have an extremely limited time frame, still have some other projects to do in order to graduate, and am doing this by myself, it made sense to pick something with relatively simple game play. It also allows me to spend more time on level design, and ensuring that the game is fun to play.
What's next?
Over the coming months, I'll be putting up new blogs posts every Friday NZT(UTC +12), so Thursdays if you're in the US. Several of the early posts will likely be more technical focused, while I work on a lot of the initial programming, but as new art comes in, and the game starts to take shape, look to see more screenshots, game play videos, and discussions on the actual game design. I might even look at streaming some playtesting!
Keep up to date!
Be sure to check out some of the early concept art over on the Concepts page.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter, and like the Facebook page to stay up to date on future content and blog posts when they happen. You can also find these blogs, and more, over on my website.
If there's anything in particular you want to know about the project, don't hesitate to ask. I'll answer here and possibly work it into a future blog post.
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So it's just you? Are you using an existing engine/environment, such as Unity to make this?
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i thought the title was a reference to blizzcon
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Best of luck, though I echo gowerly's concerns. Unless you want to make your own engine, are you going to use an open engine? It's kind of a tall task to make a completely new engine all on your own and a game in 1 year unless you plan on working around the clock for 365 days.
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It's 6 months.
In the UK we have something called Dare To Be Digital. Check it out here.
This is a competition where you have 10 weeks for your team of 5 to make a prototype of a game.
This is 50 man weeks for a prototype and you do it full time.
So more time, full time to do less that what you're considering doing.
I acted as a programming mentor for it in 2007. I entered it in 2005.
One of the most important things I learned is that things take at least 4 times as long as you think they should. No exceptions.
So, personally, I think you'll be lucky to have much more than a vertical slice of the game by the end of May.
If you want to show it as a prototype to people, I suggest doing the following:
Take all the ideas that are in your game, everything, from the characters, to how things interact with each other, to special snazzy effects, all of it.
Split them up into 3 categories:
a) Must have
b) Should have
c) Would be nice to have
Remove EVERYTHING in b and c
Repeat this with what you have left.
So you have Must Must have, Must Should have and Must Would be nice to have. The last one doesn't make sense, but just go with it.
Do the things for your game in that order.
This usually then forces you to do the things that aren't that exciting to you (user interaction is usually way less exciting than making fun particle effects), but it means that it gets done.
Doing this should mean that you have something playable at the earliest possible point and you can start working more on it from there. It is also more likely to show you, from an earlier point, HOW things are going. How the game is playing, how it feels to run around, all that kind of stuff.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.
About me: I did a masters degree in Computer Games Technology in 2005 and I have since spent 7 years working in the games industry. Take from what I've said what you will. Good luck.
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I'm writing it in C++ and using SDL as a base. SDL is really easy to work with, rendering is already done, I've played around a little during pre-production and followed a couple tutorials, so I already know how to handle sprites and spritesheets. I've already made a platformer while I was studying here, during my 1st year (did it in 2 weeks), so I have some idea already on the physics and collision detection, I just have more, better knowledge and skills than then and can make it more awesome.
As for your post Gowerly, while your advice is appreciated, our entire degree is focused on making games, everything you said has been covered and drilled into us multiple times, and I'm way ahead of you.  I've already planned out a list like you said(both for game play mechanics and art), set myself various milestones, with a set of time at the end to use for testing and iterating over the level designs, which I can work into if needed. I'm pretty confident I'll have, at minimum, an animated sprite jumping around on some platforms by christmas.
My project is likely the only one in my class that will be completed to the state I'm planning, and this is something classmates have said to me, not just my own thoughts.  I'm going into this with full knowledge that I'll likely need to work some weekends and evenings to get it done, and prepared to do exactly that.
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Cool! Good luck!
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EPT
