Making Already Defined Games

11/13/14

I have been thinking about making games that have already been well-defined and/or established for the purposes of practicing game programming separate from practicing design.

I've already decided not to do this.

I've decided based on my positive experiences with Game Jam.

Though, the idea behind it I appreciate and will attempt to execute in a different way. Which is to actually separate game programming and design in the making of any game or just coding project I work on.

For example: I have been toying with a wuxia-inspired game for a pretty long time. I made a toy in python working towards it, and have played with C++ working towards it.

I have never gotten very far.

I think this time, with HTML5 and crafty.js, and my experiences fresh out of game jam, I can work towards the idea here on my website.

The General Plan

I am going to write out what I want to accomplish in the game before I attempt to touch any javascript putting it into action. Only after breaking down my thinking into individual bits of functionality will I begin to code proper. Coding will consist of prototyping towards functionality, and refactoring towards it playing nice with all other code.

Any individual functionality with get a "test", by which I mean a tech demo illustrating some functionality and which points at the same code that will be used by the game. This is actually something I thought up when I noticed my Game Jam tech demo broke.

Idea thought up while elaborating on test construction in paragraph above: regression testing via tech demos that show two functionalities working in tandem. It's good to know when individual functionality changes when new code is added. This change won't always be apparent in individual tech demo tests, because sometimes it'll only show up when new code is actually used. It'll be good to see old functionality change when attempting to run it alongside new functionality. Doing this with every combination seems like overkill, though, so it'll only happen when things noticeably break and the bug is tracked down. The regression test/tech demo will verify that bug doesn't return.

What I Have So Far

Very little.

Yesterday, I wrote down in-depth what I want my start menu to look like. Why? Because I think the controls for this game will be unlike most any other game, which means people won't have any experience on how to play the game at all going in. Personally, I dislike text or tutorials that tell a player how to play in words, and greatly like a game that tricks the player into learning the mechanics. A start menu is where the player first gets control in a game. I must take advantage of things they will try to do naturally to teach them a bare-minimum to get started.

I'll talk about that, and more, in a later post.

I need to get some work done.