as most of you might know I have been around for some years now. I would like to take the time to recap what I did so far and then talk a bit about what is coming.
The first “game” I programmed was GameHero. Development happened over the course of one month. I had this idea of video-game themed music game and mainly focused on the music part. I still remember hearing the first 6 notes of the Mario underground for the first time played by my VirtualBoy. Even though people sometimes tell me they like GameHero and ask for the card release I usually feel embarrassed looking at it now. That’s the reason why there won’t be a card release. Not until it is way better.
After that I would often come back to my music engine and Midi Converter and optimize it. I think the current quality is acceptable but could be better. I just don’t feel like putting more effort into it right now as I’m not so much into music.
However, after GameHero I programmed Fishbone. VirtualBen approached me at the time. Within 3 month I did put it together using the sprites provided by Ben. It could have been way better but I was very burned out at the end. I almost dropped development because of many reasons. In the end I pushed myself through it and released a more or less complete game which actually got a card release. It is just a bit short.
After Fishbone I did my very first rom hack. In about 4 month I altered the Faceball Rom heavily to support more levels and to be closer to an actual game. Therefore I programmed a Level Editor which Benjamin Stevens and I used to design the new levels. Many others supported this game which I’m very thankful for.
After that I used my newly acquired rom hacking skills to translate the missing pieces in SpaceSquash. While this was only a minor contribution I really liked seeing another awesome game being released as repo card.
After that I would work on a tool called VirtualBox. The idea originated from the Fishbone development. Basically, I wanted a tool to put sprites, animations, objects and actions together more easily. As a result I created MarioCombat which was more or less a tech-demo. I submitted it as my coding competition entry but I think people misunderstood the purpose. I was actually more about showing the capabilities of my engine in combination with the tool. You can for example see sprites beaming, flickering, jumping and moving (all also in groups) while executing animations. All of that behavior was tool generated and didn’t need any programming experience. In the end it felt like bowser and the doom gun overshadowed that. I released the VirtualBox because I was asked to but pretty much stopped development after the coding competition…
… because some time after I would start on a new game. This time I would only occasionally work on it though. Especially in the beginning and when I switched jobs recently I took very long breaks. I did realize a couple of weeks ago that the game is now in development for almost one year. So I set myself a random deadline for a public release. I have a okish demo which has been tested by a handful of people and they seemed to like it. It is very different from everything I have done so far. If you happen to know/figure out what game I’m talking about please don’t spoil the surprise. However, I will release whatever is done when this timer runs out:
Good news, I have my demo done. I just gave it another complete playthrough and everything seems to be fine. There isn’t really a point in waiting another 3 days so the release will happen soonish in another thread.
