Blogs - Zombie_James

While I love Game Maker and will no doubt continue to use it in the future, I figured I should take some time to get some skills under my belt. Right now I have decided to start learning Python, and that has turned out to be exceptionally easy. Considering the Hello World program most tutorials on coding get you to do, in Python it is so simple that the program itself amounts to one whole line of code. Fucking amazing.

If you're eager to learn how to code for games, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Inventwithpython.com.

Of course, that tutorial only teaches you the basics to get you going, and won't have you making great games. However, it seems to only be a short stepping stone from there to making games with it, so I'm happy.

Making a game where you view your character from an isometric view has presented me with the problem of choosing the type of movement to use.
See, the game I'm making will employ sprites of a "retro" influence. But I'm stuck with whether to utilize traditional up down left right movement, or 8 directional.

Eight directions feels more free and seems more fluid. It was what I was going for originally. However, now I'm not so sure if that's the best choice. I'm starting to wonder if 4 directions would feel better to play with. While not as freeing when it comes to movement, it does feel more reminiscent of older games.

If you were playing a game from that point of view, what you prefer movement wise? Could you cope with or prefer a simple four direction movement scheme, or would a more free range of movement prove more fun to use?

Man I wish I could put polls on these blogs...or that people read/commented on them.

Dead.

Meaning not only will games like Team Fortress 2 play like a dream for me, but I'll be able to play newer games with ease. Hello to a better experience playing Monday Night Combat, and double hello to installing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. That will be epic.

Hell to the YES, good sir. Hell. To. The. Yes.

You have the gems like Left 4 Dead, and the Resident Evil series is one of the greats.

However, it seems like so many indie games I have seen are zombie themed. Whether it's because there's a connection between gaming and zombie fanatics, or whether it's a common excuse to avoid programming AI, do you feel there are just too many games clustered around this one idea?

I really want to hear your thoughts on this.

As I said in my last post, I'm working on creating a game in Game Maker. What I have in my head is a rather firm idea of what I want my end product to be, and in front of me is the product as is in a really early stage. While I have a definite point A, and a point B mapped out, I don't have any idea how to get there. I have so many things I *want* to implement, but no idea which I should do first, which is more important, etc. I've never been able to enter anything like this with a plan, and it always ends up backfiring in my face.

It's difficult, but I think I might look at making an inventory system. Get the bare bones of that up and running.

Dead.

I've been working on a game in Game Maker for the past few weeks, and figure this is the best place to talk to myself about it and make myself some outlines, since not many people will read this blog compared to the other sites I tend to write on.

This is my first foray into making a full fledged game, and it's proving to be a chore. Right now I'm still working on basics like room to room travel, ammo and the like. It's getting tedious making something, testing it to find out it's wrong in some slight way, trying a fix or a workaround, testing again, and repeating that entire process until I go insane.

The game is going to be a top down adventure of sorts, but there won't be any real substance of a game for a little while. I've only just got the player moving back and forth between rooms, and I'm still learning tricks and the like concerning the drag and drop features and scripting. It's interesting learning all the ways to make things happen, and to think I haven't even gotten to making non-player characters x_x

Dead.

Well I've experience my first problem with Desura itself. While on my Netbook it runs perfectly, on my main computer on which I play all my real games, it won't even start.
When I run the program, it brings up the little update box to update to the most recent version, and sits on 0% for a minute or two, before giving me the error that it cannot connect to the host at app.desura.com to download the update. Hitting OK exits, then I get the VISTA NEEDS YOUR AUTHORISATION popup to allow Desura to do things, and the whole thing repeats again.

Bleh. Not sure what's going on, but this doesn't help my gaming. Googling turns up nothing.

Edit: Well it seems the problem solved itself. After some heavy TF2 playing (VS Saxton Hale mode is so much fun), I tried again and it immediately downloaded. I can only assume it was a problem with the download servers themselves rather than anything this end.

Oh good, another blog to maintain on an occassional basis. Just what I need.

I like this place though. The linking to ModDB and IndieDB which I swore I would use to a greater capacity than what I currently do (not at all), as well as access to indie titles (hopefully more in the future) and easily organized mods (I'm not sure whether they really are. Guess I'll find that out when I install them) makes for a nice combination.
I'm an avid Steam fanatic, what with my Fallout: New Vegas and my Half Lives, but I can see myself using both harmoneously. Maybe.

As for this blog, I believe I'll probably use this now and again to bitch about my woes with the system, or to report on a game I'm making if I ever get past the "for my eyes only" stage.

Big whoop.