Well hello there!

I’m Richard, a 28 year old freelance developer currently living in Iisalmi, Finland. In my spare time I like to make music and have fantasised about making my own video games since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I’ve made a few attempts in the past, some more successful than others. I could count the number of false starts and weird game development  toolkits I’ve had on one hand, if that hand had far more than the regulation amount of digits – anybody remember DarkBasic?

I’ve recently found myself in possession of far more free time than at any point since I left university and, as one author put it, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of too much free time must be in want of a distraction”. I may be paraphrasing a bit, but the point is still valid. Some blokes are best not left to their own devices, but I decided upon a much safer path to ennui relief – I would make a game!

This is obviously not the first time I’ve decided on this course of action, but for the first time ever, I’m imposing rules upon myself! I must do at least one thing to my game every day, and try to also do one game-related thing that is not directly related to making the game. This blog counts as the latter, and I hope to have little updates every day or two documenting my progress, with screenshots and other links where possible.

I’ve been going for about 5 days now and have been a good little boy and made additions to the project every day since I started, here’s where we’re at as of this post:

• This is a 2d, top-down game built in Unity 3D
• The game will play somewhat like an Action RPG, you can run around and slap baddies in real time, no turn-based battles
• The goal of this particular project is to learn Unity and blow the cobwebs off my C# skills
• There will be something recognisable as a game at the end of it, although the goal is not to produce a commercially viable product; a proof of concept demo would be acceptable

Actual game development progress:

• Tile based map creation works, but with no collision on terrain yet (you can walk through solid objects)
• Basic player stats and associated systems: Health, level and xp
• Basic UI: Show player hp in top left corner as rows of full/empty hearts, pressing C will show ‘character stats’ (currently just their level and xp)
• Generic handler classes for characters (animation handler, a data handler and a controller to bridge those two with the overall game manager)
• Rudimentary AI (attack if player is close enough, react to damage taken)
• Basic combat system (press key to attack, if a monster is within your melee range they will take damage)
• Player death

It doesn’t sound like much but the majority of my work so far has been setting up the basic character handler system which will be the foundation of any and all player/non-player characters in the game and will make things much easier and quicker as the project progresses.

Game development is not an easy process and if you’d like to show your support and leave a few words of encouragement, please feel free to use the comment system on this blog or drop me an email at pixotic@pixotic.org – It really helps!

Peace out,

P