The Beginnings

It's been a long while since my last game dev update, because I had been juggling life, work, two kids, and wanting to play games instead of making them. It's been about two and a half years since Dungeons of Reminiscence released, and that was my first foray into truly developing something on my own. I was learning a new engine/language (MonoGame/C#), and I had NO clue what I was doing. I did know, however, that I wanted to build something that would let me understand the basics/foundation of game development, and I think that served its purpose.

Unfortunately, due to my time constraints and the other projects I was working on, I didn't have the time or the energy to sit down and keep learning/studying the way that I wanted to, so game development as a whole came to a grinding halt. Game development has always been something I've wanted to do full time, so even when I wasn't developing, I was researching constantly about all the different engines that existed to find out which one I would use when I came back. I ultimately decided on four that I really want to learn inside and out: GameMaker, Godot, MonoGame, and Construct. If I learn or use any others, bonus, but those were the big ones that I think I would enjoy. I've also played games on almost each and every one of these platforms (Forager/Undertale for GM, Kingdoms of the Dump for Godot, Stardew Valley for MG, and Iconoclasts for Construct). They're all games that speak to me in some way, or have roots in genres I know and love.

Now that I'm starting to get more time on my hands as my kids get older, I've found myself yearning to be back into it, and I had to decide on which engine to start with. I landed on Construct 3 for one big reason: it's portable. I can't always sit at my computer and develop the way that I want, and since spending over $3,000 on my desktop, I don't really have the budget to buy a laptop. Construct 3 was perfect for me: it's usable on almost every platform that has a browser, it is lightweight as far as applications go, it's high level enough to learn easily without needing to sink eight hours a day into learning, but deep enough that I can do the kinds of things I want to in my games, and it has support for exports out to a lot of the major platforms. It is, for me, at this time, the perfect engine.

My first thought was, okay, I've got an engine, now what should I do to learn with it? Well, the easiest thing to do is to recreate games that I know and love, so I can spend more time focusing on the development and learning aspect, and less time on the creation and development of the game itself (lore, history, story, mechanics, approach, etc.). So I decided to start my first project by trying to recreate the little t-rex runner game from the google chrome offline screen. I figured that would be simple enough.

Famous last words LOL.

I'm a little over two weeks in and I've finally got the core game together. It's not perfect and still has quite a few things I want to work out + additions I want to add in... but it's there. I laugh and say "famous last words" because I thought with the simplicity of it, I'd be done in a few days, but this project will likely take me a full month from the time I first picked it up to completion. The things I'm most proud about is that this was a game designed purely from my head -- I didn't follow a tutorial at all. I asked for help a few times in the forums but other than that, this was all me, and that is what makes Construct 3 the better choice for me. Easy to pick up and start, hard to master.

With that, a list of what's there:

• The core game is present, where you are a player who can jump and duck obstacles coming your way.
• Spawning trees along the ground to end your game.
• A night mode that takes over after you reach a certain score.
• A hard mode when you reach a second-tier score.
• Different spawns based on the current state of the game.
• Music (four tracks total).
• Sound effects.
• Custom font.

Current bugs are:

• Figuring out how to save and load high score so it persists locally.

Current upcoming developments are:

• Creating the start screen where the player can start the game, view unlocked achievements, view the credits, view their respective platform's leaderboards, and a shop.
• Adding in achievements.
• Adding in the credits/credit roll.
• Adding in the connectivity to Game Center/Google Play.
• Adding in the IAPs for support of the game/development.
• Connecting all of the screens (called Layouts in C3) together.
• Test, test, test (both internally and with a small group of friends who will give me honest feedback).

Why IAPs? Because I believe the world is riddled with crappy apps that shove ads in your face, and while monetarily, I'm sure they are incredibly lucrative, it's just not how I want to do business. As long as I make games, here's the general models I want to stick with (these are minimums, so there may be some mixing and matching here):

• No ads, ever.
• For games that are free, an IAP to "Support the Dev" and/or a link to my Ko-Fi for ongoing support.
• For games that are paid, only IAPs that are cosmetic in nature (in other words, unless it's a full expansion, you'll only pay for things to spruce up the game, not pay to play the rest of the game). For paid games, I will do what I can to always provide a free demo (or maybe do it as a "you can play an hour of the real game but after that you have to pay to experience the whole thing"). Either way, you're not paying more or less than the other person.
•  The ability to (as much as possible, and not counting online games themselves) play my games no matter what your network connection may be.

That's it. Short, sweet and simple. No ads to boost you around. No ads to get things done faster. No ads to earn in game currency of any kind. Aside from the fact that my games won't be built that way regardless, I just think it's disruptive and annoying. And it's even more annoying to pay to remove ads (can't tell you how many times I've done that). So yeah, no ads, and purchases will be meaningful and/or enhancements/full upgrades, never progression or gated in any way.

That's all I have for now. More to come as I develop more.