bluescrn.net

So I want to start another decent spare-time coding project.

And then every time I attempt to start something, I just get bogged down in trying to ‘do things right’. Too many years of working on large teams have had quite an effect on me - it used to be purely about ‘making a game’,  it didn’t matter if the code was ugly, non-reusable, and completelylimited to a single platform. The game was all that mattered.

These days, it’s all about the software engineering. reusability, cross-platform-everything, documentation, coding standards, design patterns…  And yes, for large teams they’re fairly essential. But it’s rubbed off on me too much - when I want to do a little project on my own, I can’t just hack things together like I used to.  Too much time spent thinking about doing things the ‘proper’ way. too much time trying to design a reusable and potentially-cross-platform ‘engine, when all I really want is to get some fairly simple 3D models on screen with a shader or two…   End result, I get nothing worthwhile done, and have a D:\Projects directory filled with abandoned projects…

The only times I seem to get something finished (or even playable) these days is the Ludum Dare 48hr compos… And once I get in ‘the zone’, hacking away at some code, seeing immediate results on screen, it’s great fun… I need to do that more often…

Well, there’s another LD48 approaching, and it looks like I’m free that weekend…

I think I’ll have a go with C#/XNA this time, if I’ve had a chance to learn a bit more about XNA by then

For now, I’ve updated my LD48 page, with some screenshots and info on all my previous LD48 games, including my last one, ‘0xF0′:

Hmm… haven’t posted anything here for almost a year…

Mostly a fairly dull year dominated by work and WoW (after giving up completely for a short period, I started playing again… still playing it a bit, but much more casually now)

For a while I’d been working on a physics-based platform game - concentrating more on the tool/tech side of things than the game - I had a quite advanced C# level editing tool, shader effects (bloom, ‘2D lighting’, water, etc), was using the Chipmunk physics engine, and it was going really quite nicely.  But I made the mistake of taking it into work during the ‘downtime’ between finishing one project and waiting for another to get started - and thinking maybe we could get them interested in making a 2D XBLA/WiiWare game.

But the next project never came,  and our team was made redundant shortly afterwards, leaving me without a job, and the project, which was written maybe least mostly in my spare time, owned by my previous employer…  Which sucks. Anyway, being made redundant turned out to be a fairly good thing, as I quickly found a new job working on an exciting project - and working on the ‘big consoles’ again after a year or so of DS work. No spare time projects on the go yet - been reading up on XNA and on iPhone development, but I’ve been too busy to get motivated….  And there’s Street Fighter IV to be played

Time to clean the cobwebs off the old OpenGL+SDL base code, so I’m not wasting valuable time setting up lib/include paths, and fighting with MSVC’s desire to inflict Unicode pain on anything you try to build…

Here’s what I’m planning to use, should be acceptable under the ‘custom libraries’ rule (except for the font texture, which will have to be replaced during the 48hrs)

http://www.bluescrn.net/LD48/LD48Base.zip

Contains OpenGL+SDL init code (now featuring resolution switching), Texture loading, simple 2D blitting, and some pretty incomplete/untested vector maths code. Linked with FMOD and Chipmunk in case I get a chance to put some audio in, or want to use physics…  And of course a very quick test of getting some stuff on screen: