Inauguration

Scroll at the end for a tl;dr.

This is the beginning of my first blog ever. I will mostly talk about game dev, but there will also be stuff about music, thoughts on random stuff and whatever you want to find on a blog.

My name is Fred, I'm 25 years old and I've been programming since I was 15. I spent much time using Game Maker, but eventually learned C++, C#/XNA and Java. I never tried to make a game to distribute, but this time I've got a great idea and spent a lot of time on the design part of it.

To start on a good foot, here's the progress so far, in regards for my first big project.

It all started with me wanting to make a zombie game. Yeah I know, cliché, overused, boring most of the time. While I agree that most zombie games are fallouts of how easy it is to start making games with XNA, Unity, Game Maker and stuff, I plan on adding valuable gameplay elements to the genre.

It is a zombie game, top down view, open endless world, randomly generated, where all tap water and natural water has been infected and transforms people into zombies. The game becomes a survival challenge where you must find water and food, mostly bottled and canned. You'll need a knife to open cans (Or a can opener to do it faster) and water can be used as a currency. There will be weapons, mostly realistic (Or at least explainable), cars with a trunk to store things (Unlike other open world games with cars, if you leave a car in the middle of nowhere, it will stay there forever). Zombies have a chance to be slightly intelligent and form packs, using simple weapons / tools. There will be living opponents too (You are totally alone in this) that barricade and defend spots that are rich in supplies (Groceries stores, for example) which make obvious objectives for the player. Many more features are planned, but this should give you an idea of what kind of game it's going to be.

I was using GM8.1 since it's so easy but soon realised that it was way slower than Java. I moved to GM:Studio. 100$ well spent, even though buying this program 3 times now is kinda frustrating. I plan on buying the HTML5 module and making my games available in a browser.

I made a prototype already (Which I will publish with a new blog post, Windows only, done using GM8.1) but hit a bottleneck with graphics that was impossible to solve without changing software. I tried XNA but realised it would have a framework dependency, but with the good side of being able to publish on XBL indie or even XBLA. I tried Java but again, what if I hit the same bottleneck again? I thought about C++ but I'm not experienced enough with DirectX/OpenGL/AL, cross platform ... Forget it! GM:Studio happened to be the best solution for my current knowledge.

I started developement last week using GM:Studio and it's looking good so far. I already made car physics (On a realistic scale too) and I will make a blog post about it (Providing a demo) and maybe a little tutorial for fellow GM:S users.

tl;dr: I'm Fred, 25yo, used Game Maker for 10 years, gonna make a zombie game that stands out, GM8.1 is too slow (Will blog about + demo), GM:S is the best option, started with car physics (Will blog about + demo), looking good so far.