2013 in Review (Part 1)
Another year gone by and time seems to be moving faster and faster. 2013 was definitely a different experience for me than my previous 3 or 4 years in the wild world of making video games. I dedicated a lot of this year to leveling myself up as a programmer and an overall developer, but I still feel like I wasn't as productive as I wanted to be. Let's take a look at what happened!
I tend to begin every year with the Global Game Jam. It takes place in January and it's the perfect way to burst into the new year with some rapid fire game development. The theme last year was the sound of a heart beat, and I made some sort of metroidvania using that theme. I made a sweet time lapse of the game's development, and some game play afterwards.
I started working on my heartbeat game for awhile as I was still using Flashpunk at the time. I was expanding my framework that I had built around Flashpunk while using it to create this game. I was adding all kinds of cool stuff like Bitmap Text, some support for constructing a metroidvania world out of a bunch of level data from Ogmo Editor, and platforming with slopes. It was a lot of fun working on features like the map rendering, and the platforming camera, and all of the different moves that the player could get.
I also released an asset generation tool for AS3 using Python since I was sick of adding every level to the game manually. As far as I know it still works, so you should give it a try if you're using AS3 and FlashDevelop for making games.
This was also the month that I decided to start posting on my blog a lot more. I aimed for 3 posts a week, with most months resulting in 12 to 15 posts of some kind. Since I spent so long in the shadows of working on Snapshot and Offspring Fling, I wanted to try being more open about what I'm doing. I started treating my blog more like a tumblr where I could just post one off short posts, doodles, or just some thoughts about stuff. Amazingly enough I managed to keep this up for the whole year.
I was also working on a little web application for a table top RPG that my friends and I were playing, and I also set the world record for the fastest Any% run of Lyle in Cube Sector!
I was pretty busy this month!
This month was a big deadline for me since it was almost a year since I pledged to release 5 games in one year. I had two games left to release before I went off to Game Developers Conference and I managed to release both Namiko and Super Ninja Slash just about a week before flying out to San Francisco. I had also released Snapshot, Offspring Fling, and Jottobots previously.
I also spent a lot of this month still working on my Heartbeat game, and adding more features to my AS3 framework with a nifty NineSlice class for Flashpunk. I actually did a lot of work on this game now that I look back at it... I had some really neat looking menus and stuff!
I ended the month with the Spring Sale on Steam with Offspring Fling being 50% off, and I flew out to San Francisco for a week of insanity with thousands of other game developers. I had a blast at Game Developers Conferecce, and spent a lot of it jamming (or at least attempting to, I was incredibly tired most of the time.)
Stay tuned for Part 2!
January
I tend to begin every year with the Global Game Jam. It takes place in January and it's the perfect way to burst into the new year with some rapid fire game development. The theme last year was the sound of a heart beat, and I made some sort of metroidvania using that theme. I made a sweet time lapse of the game's development, and some game play afterwards.
February
I started working on my heartbeat game for awhile as I was still using Flashpunk at the time. I was expanding my framework that I had built around Flashpunk while using it to create this game. I was adding all kinds of cool stuff like Bitmap Text, some support for constructing a metroidvania world out of a bunch of level data from Ogmo Editor, and platforming with slopes. It was a lot of fun working on features like the map rendering, and the platforming camera, and all of the different moves that the player could get.
I also released an asset generation tool for AS3 using Python since I was sick of adding every level to the game manually. As far as I know it still works, so you should give it a try if you're using AS3 and FlashDevelop for making games.
This was also the month that I decided to start posting on my blog a lot more. I aimed for 3 posts a week, with most months resulting in 12 to 15 posts of some kind. Since I spent so long in the shadows of working on Snapshot and Offspring Fling, I wanted to try being more open about what I'm doing. I started treating my blog more like a tumblr where I could just post one off short posts, doodles, or just some thoughts about stuff. Amazingly enough I managed to keep this up for the whole year.
I was also working on a little web application for a table top RPG that my friends and I were playing, and I also set the world record for the fastest Any% run of Lyle in Cube Sector!
I was pretty busy this month!
March
This month was a big deadline for me since it was almost a year since I pledged to release 5 games in one year. I had two games left to release before I went off to Game Developers Conference and I managed to release both Namiko and Super Ninja Slash just about a week before flying out to San Francisco. I had also released Snapshot, Offspring Fling, and Jottobots previously.
I also spent a lot of this month still working on my Heartbeat game, and adding more features to my AS3 framework with a nifty NineSlice class for Flashpunk. I actually did a lot of work on this game now that I look back at it... I had some really neat looking menus and stuff!
I ended the month with the Spring Sale on Steam with Offspring Fling being 50% off, and I flew out to San Francisco for a week of insanity with thousands of other game developers. I had a blast at Game Developers Conferecce, and spent a lot of it jamming (or at least attempting to, I was incredibly tired most of the time.)
Stay tuned for Part 2!
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