Look Out! He's At It Again!

It's been a while, hasn't it? A while since I decided to curse myself and my efforts by taking to the airwaves to promote my Space Where I Hope A Project Will Be Someday?

Truth be told, I really didn't want to get back to working on game development. Last time I'd made this journey I got pretty far -- further in a prototype than I'd ever gotten in the past -- but when I looked up and realized that despite my progress, the mountain of work rose ever higher, I grew dispondent. I would never have the skills I'd need to make the game I wanted to make. I'd never have the cash I'd need to hire the people who did have the skills I'd need to make the game I wanted to make. Whether I continued to toil without end, or just ended, the result would be the same.

There's something about the Fall/Winter season that always brings me back around, though. Maybe it's the impending New Year and the practice of making resolutions for positive changes when everything (on paper) seems possible. Why not continue to make a go of it? If I'm not trying, then I'm certainly not succeeding, but if I actually give it another go, then I'll always be making progress even if the destination is so far on the horizon that I can never be sure if it's there at all.

This time, I've decided to aim lower. Not pre-packaged starter kit lower, and not recreating classic Atari games lower. Whereas I'd wanted to make an ambitious game filled with striking visuals and a lot of moving parts (both functional and animation-wise), I've opted to work on something that's a little closer to my day-job experience writing business applications. The premise is still the same: you have a starship, and you need to make a fortune buying low and selling high, but this time the bulk of the flash is being replaced by closer-to-the-metal presentations. More menus, more quick decisions, more feedback, and less tedium, less dead-space, less maths, within reason for an economic simulation.

Since I'm starting over, that means a new home for keeping track of things. Blogging about the process serves two purposes. The first is to record progress so when I forget what I did or why I did it, I have a plain-text document that explains it to me -- if I can explain it to you, then I should be able to understand it (again) myself. Second is, of course, promotional. As I am a developer by trade but a game developer by ambition, there's a lot I don't know. By putting my progress out there I hope to garner support of the instructional and emotional kind. I've learned that keeping projects like these under wraps is great if you've got an internal support group who are all working on the same thing, but when it's one developer/artist/designer/audio specialist, the silence can be deafening.

That's about all I have to say in this inagural post. I hope you'll add this community to your roster. If you know nothing about game development, then welcome to the club! We can learn together about the undiscovered reality behind this ambitous hobby both with and without code experience. If you're an established or up and coming game developer, then thank you for your interest! I'm hoping to hear from you on your experiences with patterns and practices, what to aim for and what to avoid.