Small Galaxy: Greedy Station Windows, X360 game

0 comments by fidgetwidget on Dec 6th, 2011

It has been a long time since I have posted anything on here, life got in the way, as it tends to do. I worked on a cancelled iPad game, even did some web development, but I keep coming back to this project. 

So, I wanted to check in and let everyone who is still interested in this the 411 on what I have tried, what I learned, and where I plan on going with it.

1) Scrapping XNA
When I started this project, XNA and the XBLIG channel were still mostly new, and their future seemed positive and bright. That just hasn't been the case in the last year or more now, and because of that (combined with feeling a need to look at it with fresh eyes again) I figured it would be best to start on it from scratch with a new engine and the lessons I had learned through the process thus far.

The question of course was - do I work with a well established web platform, go where the new excitement is, or try out a solid game engine. Flash, HTML5, or Unity.

1) Unity
I had never used unity, but had heard so many good things about it that I figured it would be a good idea to at least familiarize myself with this heralded game engine.
I worked my way through a tutorial (that turns out was for an older version of unity), and started looking at some of the documents and resources. I recognize that there are some great 2D games that are made with Unity, but because it is a 3D engine, I figured I would put it aside for now, and try a different approach.

2) Flash
Web games tend to be smaller, more bite sized experiences, and the direction I wanted to take with the game seemed to fit that space perfectly, so what better place to start than the platform MOST web games are built on?
I am still not 100% sure I won't return to flash for this or a similar game, so I don't want to discount it too quickly. BUT, life at this time was leading me towards web development, and so knowing what HTML5 (or Javascript as that's really what its all about) is capable of fit better. I did get so far as to install FlashDevelop and Flixel, but I didn't get any further than hello world (those with some programming knowledge will get that).

3) HTML 5
This is where I am right now. I did some research and came out that either EaselJS or Crafty would make for the framework of my games engine. After a week of playing with both of them in my spare time, EaselJS came out on top, and I started to work on adding to it some of the features that were present in my Small Galaxy Engine, starting with grids and hex's.
 
Sadly, this is as far as I have come with it, but as I recently have been given a bunch of free time (though for how long isn't clear), I am going to be working in EaselJS to create something I can show you all... hopefully in the new year.

Once again, I am sorry for being so silent on all of this for so long, but as you can see, there really wasn't much to tell.

Thanks for your support
- fidgetwidget