4 ms·

Building a Microgame (2020)

49 points by azhenley 4y ago

justinlloyd 4y ago
My first real programs were games. I cannot think of a single piece of code I wrote at that time that wasn't a part of a game. "Games! Day one!" to paraphrase David Warner from Time Bandits. I got in to the games industry at the time when a programmer, or a programmer and an artist would turn out a game in two to six months. I grew up, quite literally, in the games industry I spent a good 25+ years making games, and have dipped my toes back in once or twice in the last second or so. Having had that experience from "An army of one" making a game I wanted to make, to "a face in the crowd" of dozens to hundreds making a game that other people want, I bowed out of the industry and went on to other adventures - that usually paid more and came with far better WLB. For a while, I had a reasonably successful company where I hired old-timers of the industry to build games just like that. We didn't survive the 2008 recession unfortunately but we did have a lot of fun doing it for about six years. I've since, personally, returned to making those "army of one" games; code, design, art, music, sound. I'm not looking for commercial success anymore. I just have a really persistent itch. Last night was interesting, at dinner at the King's Head in Santa Monica, I got together with a few other veterans of the industry from SEGA, Activision, and so forth, all of us either retired or approaching that age when we see 10 or so years down the road to "it's all over." Our careers have all mostly moved on from the games industry because that industry does not favour wisdom, experience, miles on the clock or the desire to call it a day after putting in a 60 hour week. During the course of dinner the conversation turned to an interesting topic, we all felt we had five or so games still left inside of us. Not big games. Not AAA productions. Not games that required a team of hundreds working grueling hours with a marketing budget that dwarfs the GDP of a small country. A game that requires a few people to execute on, something small and easily grasped, polished to a standard that a lifetime of experience and craftsmanship brings with it. And that is what I have been doing for the past five or six years, making a few small games every year, taking a few weeks to scratch an itch, and publishing them here and there. And I also learned, that is what quite a few of my ex-colleagues have been doing too or are looking to do. Any time there is a tool like this comes along, I look and think "Wow! I can make a game and learn something new!" So... thankyou for introducing me to this.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Awesome! Can we see a game?
  - justinlloyd 4y ago
    https://justin-lloyd.com/ https://justin-lloyd.com/ Down and to the right. Not mobile friendly. I have others, but that is the easiest one to remember the URL too.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      That page is awesome. Haven't tried the game yet!
yawnxyz 4y ago
That's a cool game! I'm having trouble completing it because either I'm color blind or my monitor is acting up or something, because I can't seem to see the "escape" dot at all, even after I lost, so I'm just going blindly in circles. I can see the starting blue dot though!
- navane 4y ago
  I see a green and a blue dot. I am the green dot. The blue dot is the exit.
throwaway4aday 4y ago
The 24a2 engine seems like it adds unnecessary limitations. Just using something like Raylib https://www.raylib.com/ https://www.raylib.com/ would allow you to create the same simple game just as easily while also allowing you to continue learning and developing more complex games afterward.
- carl_dr 4y ago
  Having read https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/wiki https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/wiki, it seems entirely likely it will take longer to get the environment setup than OP spent on his game in total.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    Ok but where can the OP go from here with 24a2? They can make a few more dot games and maybe share them but they won't be able to improve upon the initial design much. Eventually they'll have to make the jump to something that can handle rendering images, sound, building an executable etc. I guess if your goal is to just make a game and then be done with it 24a2 is fine but if you wanted to progress further and make games that people will play you'd be stuck.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      I don't understand this line of reasoning. This wasn't a suitable technology to make this game in because it's only good for this game and a few others? So it was good for this game?
      - throwaway4aday 4y ago
        The point I was trying to make is that doing game development in a toy framework like this is only good for making trivial games like the one in the article. That may be fine in the author's case since he states that he doesn't have any interest in sound or graphics (or at least feels they are a hindrance to his purpose) and just wanted to try making a game. I didn't really mean to address my comment to the author, it was moreso speaking to the audience of the post and the hypothetical reader who may want to do more than what the author did. Basically I meant to say that using such a framework is a bad starting point for someone who wants to progress in game development. If the author doesn't want to do that, that's great, job done, story over, they can move on with their life.
karaterobot 4y ago
Very cool, I died and saw that the first fork in the road I made was the wrong one. Isn't that life? Or death, as the case may be. I like the author's personal website: more than a resume, less than a branding project. I wish these were more common.

49 points by azhenley 4y ago

My first real programs were games. I cannot think of a single piece of code I wrote at that time that wasn't a part of a game. "Games! Day one!" to paraphrase David Warner from Time Bandits. I got in to the games industry at the time when a programmer, or a programmer and an artist would turn out a game in two to six months. I grew up, quite literally, in the games industry I spent a good 25+ years making games, and have dipped my toes back in once or twice in the last second or so. Having had that experience from "An army of one" making a game I wanted to make, to "a face in the crowd" of dozens to hundreds making a game that other people want, I bowed out of the industry and went on to other adventures - that usually paid more and came with far better WLB. For a while, I had a reasonably successful company where I hired old-timers of the industry to build games just like that. We didn't survive the 2008 recession unfortunately but we did have a lot of fun doing it for about six years. I've since, personally, returned to making those "army of one" games; code, design, art, music, sound. I'm not looking for commercial success anymore. I just have a really persistent itch. Last night was interesting, at dinner at the King's Head in Santa Monica, I got together with a few other veterans of the industry from SEGA, Activision, and so forth, all of us either retired or approaching that age when we see 10 or so years down the road to "it's all over." Our careers have all mostly moved on from the games industry because that industry does not favour wisdom, experience, miles on the clock or the desire to call it a day after putting in a 60 hour week. During the course of dinner the conversation turned to an interesting topic, we all felt we had five or so games still left inside of us. Not big games. Not AAA productions. Not games that required a team of hundreds working grueling hours with a marketing budget that dwarfs the GDP of a small country. A game that requires a few people to execute on, something small and easily grasped, polished to a standard that a lifetime of experience and craftsmanship brings with it. And that is what I have been doing for the past five or six years, making a few small games every year, taking a few weeks to scratch an itch, and publishing them here and there. And I also learned, that is what quite a few of my ex-colleagues have been doing too or are looking to do. Any time there is a tool like this comes along, I look and think "Wow! I can make a game and learn something new!" So... thankyou for introducing me to this.

robertlagrant 4y ago
Awesome! Can we see a game?
- justinlloyd 4y ago
  https://justin-lloyd.com/ https://justin-lloyd.com/ Down and to the right. Not mobile friendly. I have others, but that is the easiest one to remember the URL too.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    That page is awesome. Haven't tried the game yet!

yawnxyz 4y ago

That's a cool game! I'm having trouble completing it because either I'm color blind or my monitor is acting up or something, because I can't seem to see the "escape" dot at all, even after I lost, so I'm just going blindly in circles. I can see the starting blue dot though!

navane 4y ago
I see a green and a blue dot. I am the green dot. The blue dot is the exit.

throwaway4aday 4y ago

The 24a2 engine seems like it adds unnecessary limitations. Just using something like Raylib https://www.raylib.com/ https://www.raylib.com/ would allow you to create the same simple game just as easily while also allowing you to continue learning and developing more complex games afterward.

carl_dr 4y ago
Having read https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/wiki https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/wiki, it seems entirely likely it will take longer to get the environment setup than OP spent on his game in total.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Ok but where can the OP go from here with 24a2? They can make a few more dot games and maybe share them but they won't be able to improve upon the initial design much. Eventually they'll have to make the jump to something that can handle rendering images, sound, building an executable etc. I guess if your goal is to just make a game and then be done with it 24a2 is fine but if you wanted to progress further and make games that people will play you'd be stuck.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    I don't understand this line of reasoning. This wasn't a suitable technology to make this game in because it's only good for this game and a few others? So it was good for this game?
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      The point I was trying to make is that doing game development in a toy framework like this is only good for making trivial games like the one in the article. That may be fine in the author's case since he states that he doesn't have any interest in sound or graphics (or at least feels they are a hindrance to his purpose) and just wanted to try making a game. I didn't really mean to address my comment to the author, it was moreso speaking to the audience of the post and the hypothetical reader who may want to do more than what the author did. Basically I meant to say that using such a framework is a bad starting point for someone who wants to progress in game development. If the author doesn't want to do that, that's great, job done, story over, they can move on with their life.

karaterobot 4y ago

Very cool, I died and saw that the first fork in the road I made was the wrong one. Isn't that life? Or death, as the case may be. I like the author's personal website: more than a resume, less than a branding project. I wish these were more common.