Game a Month Challenge

[Justin E]

I'm going to try to make one video game a month as part of the  One Game a Month Challenge (http://onegameamonth.com).

I'm almost done with my first game, an old school space invaders / pong mashup. I'll be posting links here each month as (if!) I finish them.

If anybody is interested in playing around with this here's some interesting toolsets for all different skill levels:

• Stencyl - http://stencyl.com, Cross Platform, scratch like interface, built on HAXE, free to use and publish to web - this is what I use
  
• Impact JS -  http://impactjs.com, HTML5/Canvas, fairly easy to use. Has a built in level editor.
  
• GameMaker - http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio - Cross Platform, scratch like interface - Windows and Mac although newest version is windows only
  
• PyGame - http://www.pygame.org/news.html - Python based game development - I have zero experience with this
  
• Gosu - http://www.libgosu.org, Ruby and C++ game dev library - Once again zero experience here
• Scratch - http://scratch.mit.edu - A visual programing language made at MIT, the inspiration for stencyl, Gamemaker, etc
• Corona - https://www.coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/ - Lua based framework for iOS and Android games and apps, free to use, but you have to buy it to publish - no web games
• Construct2 - http://www.scirra.com/construct2 - HTML5 drag and drop game tools - Windows Only, Free to Use 
• Game Salad - http://gamesalad.com - Cross Platform drag and drop game tool - WIndows and Mac
  
• Twine - http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/ - Used for making text based games (choose your own adventure style) Windows, Linux, and OSX

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/5/2920131/anna-anthropy-videogame-zinesters-expressive-games

[Joseph McCullough]

Cool, thanks for the links. I may check out PyGame sometime. 

--
Joseph McCullough
Vert Studios - Lead Developer
903 316 8096

http://www.vertstudios.com/

[Justin E]

First game is live: http://www.kongregate.com/games/igrowbeards/p-ng-invaders

Feedback would be very much appreciated :)

[Joseph McCullough]

Very fun! I'll be sure to beat the high score :P

So, first thing, if you start a life spamming the fire button, you get no bullets. Bullets don't seem to work until you do the shield first.

Gameplay wise, I'm not sure why you're rewarding time with score. Rewarding time with score punishes the player for beating the level as fast as they can, because the game gets harder sooner compared to someone who lets the last guy float around until they reach the bottom. 

Cool concept though, it's really fun. 

[Justin]

Thanks and I accept your challenge - you will never beat my high score!!! (unless you already have while i am typing this response up)

I reward time with score because the ball speeds up as you play. I personally die far more often from missing the ball than from the invaders even in the higher difficulties and since shooting invaders is worth more points than time is it's in your best interest to shoot as many as you can as fast as possible. However i may still have some balancing issues to do with regards to this. :)

Thanks for the info on the firing bug as well - i'll look into that and see if I can get it fixed

[Justin E]

My Feb game is up on Kongregate here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/igrowbeards/tiny-drillbot

I used a different framework this time, (haxeflixel.com) so I didn't get as much done as i was hoping since I spent a lot of time learning instead of doing.

Still check it out and let me know what you think if you get the chance.

On Friday, January 18, 2013 10:42:07 AM UTC-6, Justin E wrote

I'm going to try to make one video game a month as part of the  One Game a Month Challenge (http://onegameamonth.com).

[jeff....@allureretouching.com]

Thanks for making me even less productive this week haha