01-20-2020, 05:50 AM
This is going to get pretty introspective, and I would love some advice on this.
Way back in 1994 we got a Mac computer, and one day we found a disc of shareware, which we copied a bunch of games to disks to play them.
Shadowman gave me an emulator for classic Mac some years ago, and it has a bunch of games included, 95% are ones he and I had played way before. They range from the most involved CD games to basic and rudimentary. People would ask you to register your copy for a small price, and they would mail you their own copy of the full game.
I feel like if I weren't 10 and knew anything whatsoever about programming, I could have easily seen myself with that group of people making games for a hobby and make some money off it.
In 2002 or 2003 we got The Games Factory. And it was good at what it does.
You wanted to make a basic game, even a basic Mario game, you have the tools. It taught me much about game programming rules. If Mario touches this, his movement stops. If he touches this, he gets hurt, minus one to HP bar. It was good.
But it didn't seem enough.
I had real good ideas. Most prominent was a Mega Man X fangame with bosses of my own design. It never happened.
You were confined to what the program could do. You couldn't really make an engine that was just like the X SNES games.
People started making "static engines", where the character's movement was much more detailed and ignored the in-game platforming system. It was complicated though.
It seemed I had hit a wall. These things were too high of a rung on the ladder for what I could do.
Sometimes I would try to program something just for the heck of it. There were two game shows, Family Game Night, and Monopoly Millionaire's Club, which had games in it I was sure I could program and re-create. I was going to call it Super Mario's High Rollers. But it was essentially Parakarry's Programming Practice.
The first game I wanted to try was one which had ten cards, two 1s, two 2s, two 3s, two 4s, and two bad cards. You had to draw cards to move 10 spaces. The first bad card sent you bcak to start. The second one loses the game.
Seemed simple enough. First you have to randomize which cards go to which spots so the player can pick.
...I couldn't do it. Another idea shelved.
My "master" work is a silly game called Don't Find Pineapple. This was made for a collection caled Glorious Trainwrecks, where quality doesn't have to be a barrier.
https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/3141
There are six doors. The pineapple is behind one of them. You have to click all the doors that are NOT the pineapple.
This game I DID manage to make. Games Factory has a command where you can assign a quality to a random item in a group. Take all the doors, assign one the pineapple, play from there. When I tried to do multiple quantities for the
card game, I tried things, but hit a wall.
I started to wonder if maybe Games Factory was too limitting. Maybe I need something that lets me be more flexible. To go outside the predetermind commands. Then I would see things like Mario's Time Battle and New and Tasty which were made with MMF, and I honestly get somewhat jealous...
I never thought much about game making for some years after that. Until the first real time I got an idea...
I'll keep the explanation short, but what happened was I had a joke RPG idea for the characters of the Littlest Pet Shop cartoon, which slowly started to be something I was thinking more about and possibly wanted to create. Eventually I learned how Freedom Planet started out as a Sonic fangame, but became its own thing, and was inspired by this. I took this idea but made my own animal characters, and with it making more possibliites. This would become an idea I've thought LOTS about, how it would happen, how the story would go. But only in theory.
If I were to make this game, I surely couldn't do it with the skill I have right now. But suddenly with the possibility of making a legit game? That I could SELL maybe? It's something I could really see myself doing.
But first I want to be able to make simpler games as a proof of concept. At least something like High Rollers, which is just a collection of guessing games. Lots of people could make something like that.
But what program do I use? Which would be best? There are so many questions, which I'm deciding to throw to you to ask about.
Way back in 1994 we got a Mac computer, and one day we found a disc of shareware, which we copied a bunch of games to disks to play them.
Shadowman gave me an emulator for classic Mac some years ago, and it has a bunch of games included, 95% are ones he and I had played way before. They range from the most involved CD games to basic and rudimentary. People would ask you to register your copy for a small price, and they would mail you their own copy of the full game.
I feel like if I weren't 10 and knew anything whatsoever about programming, I could have easily seen myself with that group of people making games for a hobby and make some money off it.
In 2002 or 2003 we got The Games Factory. And it was good at what it does.
You wanted to make a basic game, even a basic Mario game, you have the tools. It taught me much about game programming rules. If Mario touches this, his movement stops. If he touches this, he gets hurt, minus one to HP bar. It was good.
But it didn't seem enough.
I had real good ideas. Most prominent was a Mega Man X fangame with bosses of my own design. It never happened.
You were confined to what the program could do. You couldn't really make an engine that was just like the X SNES games.
People started making "static engines", where the character's movement was much more detailed and ignored the in-game platforming system. It was complicated though.
It seemed I had hit a wall. These things were too high of a rung on the ladder for what I could do.
Sometimes I would try to program something just for the heck of it. There were two game shows, Family Game Night, and Monopoly Millionaire's Club, which had games in it I was sure I could program and re-create. I was going to call it Super Mario's High Rollers. But it was essentially Parakarry's Programming Practice.
The first game I wanted to try was one which had ten cards, two 1s, two 2s, two 3s, two 4s, and two bad cards. You had to draw cards to move 10 spaces. The first bad card sent you bcak to start. The second one loses the game.
Seemed simple enough. First you have to randomize which cards go to which spots so the player can pick.
...I couldn't do it. Another idea shelved.
My "master" work is a silly game called Don't Find Pineapple. This was made for a collection caled Glorious Trainwrecks, where quality doesn't have to be a barrier.
https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/3141
There are six doors. The pineapple is behind one of them. You have to click all the doors that are NOT the pineapple.
This game I DID manage to make. Games Factory has a command where you can assign a quality to a random item in a group. Take all the doors, assign one the pineapple, play from there. When I tried to do multiple quantities for the
card game, I tried things, but hit a wall.
I started to wonder if maybe Games Factory was too limitting. Maybe I need something that lets me be more flexible. To go outside the predetermind commands. Then I would see things like Mario's Time Battle and New and Tasty which were made with MMF, and I honestly get somewhat jealous...
I never thought much about game making for some years after that. Until the first real time I got an idea...
I'll keep the explanation short, but what happened was I had a joke RPG idea for the characters of the Littlest Pet Shop cartoon, which slowly started to be something I was thinking more about and possibly wanted to create. Eventually I learned how Freedom Planet started out as a Sonic fangame, but became its own thing, and was inspired by this. I took this idea but made my own animal characters, and with it making more possibliites. This would become an idea I've thought LOTS about, how it would happen, how the story would go. But only in theory.
If I were to make this game, I surely couldn't do it with the skill I have right now. But suddenly with the possibility of making a legit game? That I could SELL maybe? It's something I could really see myself doing.
But first I want to be able to make simpler games as a proof of concept. At least something like High Rollers, which is just a collection of guessing games. Lots of people could make something like that.
But what program do I use? Which would be best? There are so many questions, which I'm deciding to throw to you to ask about.