I had planned to make a sort of “It’s been exactly a year since I started making my first video game!” update post on the anniversary of the release of Unity 4.3, also known as the day I got into video game development. But I guess I managed to miss that anniversary (November 12th.) Close enough.
First things first time has, of course, gone by very, very quickly. But that doesn’t surprise me. In fact, it is one of the (many?) themes of my game. I’ve tried to stay on top of things despite this being a pretty intense year that included two moves and two new jobs (which puts me at three part-time jobs that add up to a bit more than one full-time job currently.) Also my computer died and it took me a good 1-2 months to get a new one and get everything up and running again. Still, I think I have made a fair amount of progress, especially since I honestly had no idea what to expect when getting into this. A big part of me thought I would try it out, find out it was way too difficult, and walk away. But nah. It’s not that bad. Not that there haven’t been plenty of nights staying up until 5 in the morning trying to figure out what the F was wrong with my code…
So where am I at with this runner which is definitely not an endless runner even though everyone keeps referring to it as one? It’s really tough to say. But I think it is at the point where a lot of the basic controls and mechanics are, if not quite done, close enough that I can put them in the “mostly done” category and move on. Which means focusing on content. I probably bit off more than I should have for a n00b developer in the sense that my design calls for something like 20-30 different types of platforms and 50+ enemies / hazards / etc., not to mention a lot of stage unique stuff, but I’m getting there. I have maybe 10-15 platform types done and about the same amount of enemies / hazards done. I have around 1 1/2 “demo” stages finished. This might not seem like a lot, but I actually knock this stuff out pretty quickly when I get to focus on it… it’s a lot of the behind the scenes basic structuring of the controls, game mechanics, basic tools I use to build things, etc. that has taken up most of my time.
The soundtrack, which I am doing myself because honestly half of why I decided to make a game was to have a place to put my music, has around 15 songs planned and I have around 12 finished (another reason my game isn’t further along is I took a month or so off from it to focus almost exclusively on the soundtrack.) I was listening to the Xenoblade soundtrack the other day, which is around 5 hours long, and it sort of cracked me up that the soundtrack for my game which will probably take about an hour to finish (maybe a few hours if you keep DYING a lot) is 1/5 the size of the Xenoblade soundtrack, a MASSIVE game which took me over 120 hours to finish.
I’m using “done” / “finished” loosely here, of course. There is still a LOT of polish that will have to be added to pretty much everything I have worked on for me to be happy.
I still have a longggggggggggg ways to go, so no rest for the weary. I do hope to have a playable demo ready soon, in fact I basically have one almost ready right now, just a few little tweaks I need to make (including fixing one very nasty bug) and some art that needs to be made (by someone who is not me and has a lot of other commitments so I can’t reasonably rush him) and then you will be able to get your hands on this sucker. I guess I should probably come up with some kind of name for it huh?
I project this thing will take another 2 years at least. Maybe more. And after that… I’m making a smaller game next! Or so I say. Anyway, here is a character design / animation that the artist has put together. Expect to see a demo stage soon.