Motivations, Aspirations and Inspirations

I'm not sure if this sort of thing is ever really done on game development blogs, but my update today is going to be more of an informal rant than a proper progress report. I want to take a moment to talk about the other, more personal side of making a game; that is, why I'm doing it. I'd like to think this is a pretty large part of the design process, and so I thought I'd share it with you.

This past weekend has been a surprisingly important one I believe for my future progress on this project. This fact is somewhat odd because I spent the vast majority of the weekend elbow-deep in dirty sink water at the deli I work at to pay the bills, but never the less I ended the weekend far more motivated than I started it.

Motivations:

I've mentioned before that at the end of last year I graduated from a Games and Interactive Entertainment course at QUT. The final year of this course was concerned largely with the completion of our major project which, somewhat obviously, basically consisted of making a game from scratch in a small team, finishing with us publishing our efforts. In the past I had had some pretty bad experiences with group work (which eventually led to this solo effort), so I was determined to get in to a team with which I had no previous experience. I chose a group with none of my friends in it, and whose members I knew were good workers and clever guys. Unfortunately, another group ended up with not enough people, and I was shuffled over to keep things balanced. By the end of the year, we had produced a game titled The Elementalist which to be honest I sort of despise, but that is a story for another time.

This Sunday I was reading the newspaper and happened across an article that caught my eye. It told the story of a few lads from QUT and their game sp.A.I (really recommend checking it out). Turns out their game had become pretty popular and caught the attention of some of the fellows at Epic, who are now flying them overseas to have a meeting with them (and, I assume, hire them). You can probably guess that these guys are the group I originally put myself down for. I have no illusions that “it should have been me” or any of that nonsense, but I'll freely admit that I'm a little jealous. That said, these guys earned it. They worked damn hard and their game is impressive and I sure as hell wish them all the best.

Seeing that article was in some ways the best motivation I have gotten to make an awesome game. It made the possibility of actually being successful real. I know these guys, I talked to them, I studied the same things. Hell, I nearly was one of them. They did it, so I have absolutely no reason to think I can't do it either. So I'm getting serious, and I am going to make a good game whether it's this one or the next one or whatever.

I'm here to make games and chew gum. And I don't even like gum.

Aspirations:

My older brother is at GDC. This very weekend he was in San Francisco and in a matter of hours I imagine he'll be at the event itself. He's a freelance games writer: Brendan Keogh. Here's a link to his blog, although if you're reading this site at this early stage then chances are you're either related to us or he told you to come here anyway.

Anyway, I don't know if it's the same in USA or not, but here in Australia the idea of a week long event focused entirely on making games is almost a mystical thing us young and inexperienced gamers. GDC, E3, all the big conventions like that; they're almost like the final goal of some mighty pilgrimage or something. Of course I exaggerate a little for effect, but when the biggest dedicated gaming event you've been to is a self-organised 16-player Halo link-up, the conventions sound like kind of a big deal. I've never really been one for traveling, but going overseas to get to GDC is something I would definitely count as one of my goals. However I'd feel kind of silly if I did go to GDC without actually being able to call myself a professional in some area of gaming.

So next year, I'm going to GDC, and I'm going as a game developer.

Inspirations:

Alone amongst the recent events which have convinced me to step up my game, this one isn't really one that directly happened to myself or someone I know. It's also not really that big of an event. All that happened was that Minecraft updated. I'm going to assume that anybody reading a game development blog knows at least a bit about Minecraft, otherwise you should probably climb back in to your 2x1x1 hole under a perfectly cube-shaped rock. In any case, I've been playing Minecraft for a long time now and invested a lot of time in to it, but hadn't played it much in the past two months or so. But some of the new features caught my attention and before long I was punching trees once more.

Now Minecraft has a somewhat special place in my heart, and playing it again reminded me of this. The reason is that it was really this game that convinced me to try my hand at independent development rather than looking for work with an existing design studio. I saw a game which really took the gaming community by storm, devouring hours of our lives and spawning ridiculous creativity, all made by one guy. Here was proof that one person could create something massive and while I have never expected to hit the same level of success as Notch has, it sure as hell was an inspiration to try. Also I'd be lying if I said that financial possibilities didn't play some part in that excitement, because it made me realise that even a game selling for a couple of dollars could easily make its creator a tidy bundle when he didn't have a company taking the profits. Not that I'm expecting to get rich or anything, but it's something to hope for.

In any case, Minecraft finally convinced me that it really is possible to be an indie developer; that it's not just something I'd like to be but never end up doing. And playing it once more, especially after this past weekend, reminded me of that.

Well, there you have it; my personal little rant about why I'm doing what I'm doing and what I hope to achieve. It's also interesting to note that this weekend marks the end of the university holidays which, while no longer directly applying to me, was always to point when I told myself I would really buckle down and start treating this like the job I intend it to be. So if ever there was a better time for a load of inspiration to get the wheels turning, I'd like to see it.

Progress Update: 2/8/11

First of all, I want to apologise the lack of any updates in the last few weeks. Thanks to a combination of floods, power problems, moving, helping friends move and, if I'm being completely honest, more than a little procrastination, I have been neglecting this project. But things have settled down now and I should be able to get back on track.

What little progress I've made since my last post has been largely in the research area, particularly in the area of programming. In the vast majority of my past projects, I have been largely concerned with the design, planning and art side of development, while others have taken care of the programming. As such, the technical side of this project will be far more challenging to me than other aspects, and much of my time for the foreseeable future will be devoted to teaching myself how to program.

I've decided that the best way of ensuring I don't get too out of my depth will be to create an initial prototype of the game in Flash, as ActionScript seems to be a pretty easy language to learn. Depending on how the prototype goes, I will then decide whether to continue with the full game in Flash or to transfer it over to another language.

What with magnetism being a core gameplay mechanic, manipulating physics is going to be the most important thing to master. After a bit of searching around I've located a promising-looking physics engine called Box2D, or more specifically the Flash port of it Box2DFlash. I've been playing around with it a little and, while I have no idea how it works and don't expect to until I go back to the very basics and work my way up, it appears to be very slick and powerful and should be more than capable of helping me in this project. It's a free download, so I'd recommend it to anybody who happens to be interested in making a physics-based flash game themselves.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. This time I won't leave you hanging so long.

Concept Art

This is the first batch of concept art images I've put together for the game. The first image is intended to give a rough idea of the setting in which the game will take place, and was made awhile ago when I was first toying with the idea of Steel and Iron. The other pieces are character concept for the playable character (currently under the name of Pos). At the moment I'm trying to sort out the basic structure of the character and how he'll get around, so this first batch of images is concerned with tackling that issue.

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my blog. My name is Glynn Keogh, recently graduated from a Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment from Queensland University of Technology in Australia. I'm now trying my hand at developing an indie game or two, and this blog will serve as a means of keeping anybody who happens to be interested up-to-date with my progress. It'll also hopefully have the added bonus of encouraging me to keep a reasonably regular schedule, but we'll see about that.

My first project I shall be working on is currently under the working title "World of Steel and Iron". It will be a puzzle-platformer set in an entirely mechanical world, where the player takes on the role of a robot exiled for having the unfortunate defect of being magnetic. Puzzles and navigation revolve around coping with and making use of this ability.

At the moment, Steel and Iron is still in an early planning stage, but as I make progress I will endeavor to keep this blog updated with everything of note I achieve. I welcome feedback in all it's forms, so please feel free to comment on any aspect of the project you wish, and I look forward to taking feedback into account. With a little luck and a lot of work, Steel and Iron will be released and playable in no time!