12 Games in 12 weeks…
A common goal amongst gamedevs who want to learn to sprint/finish games/jam hard.
Talked about here:
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/RamiIsmail/20140226/211807/Game_A_Week_Getting_Experienced_At_Failure.php
and here:
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/ThomasPalef/20140225/211663/
I started working on 1 game a day, before entering the #BaconGameJam. (I got 7th place btw)
But that’s a bit too hard of a workload, and I can’t be that consistent. Some games need more than a day, that’s obvious.
What I’ve done so far
So here I am, with a few games that are in various states of completion. The idea of 12 games in 12 weeks is to get out of your comfort zone, and make some games that you probably wouldn’t usually make. If you make nothing but platformers, making 12 more won’t be impressive or really helpful.
As I haven’t really made/completed/released anything, I figure anything I come up with and complete in the week-long time restraint would be beneficial no matter what.
Already I can see myself leaning towards platformers and topdown shooters. Puzzle games and more casual stuff really doesn’t interest me, but I’ll give it a shot just to prove to myself that I can do it.
I have 3 games that need to be released, as they have basic UI finished, and are playable. I’m packaging them up now for Window, Mac, Linux, and web players. Packaging has been quite a hurdle, as I learned with my BaconGameJam entry. Uploading to Kong, GameJolt, itch, and other places is a headache. I also added on to the description as I uploaded to each site, so some sites have clearer instructions than others, and I need to clean that up and provide some consistency. I think it would be wise to dedicate the last day of the jam week to packaging, and not development. It’s surprisingly difficult, especially with my slow internet upload speeds.
Proper Screenshots
Getting proper screenshots is also sort of a pain, but Andrew Sandifer of 2DHeroes described a great way to take screenshots. First, film the gameplay, and then pause the video and take screens from there. That way, you don’t have to printscreen in the middle of a firefight!
/r/gameaweek
I’ve also come across /r/gameaweek on reddit. A lot of developers with a similar mindset are there, and some of their week-long game projects look pretty good! It’s inspiring, so check it out!
Streaming
I tried to stream some of my game development on Twitch. My bandwidth is pretty poor, so the resolution and framerate aren’t great. That being said, I enjoyed streaming and talked to a few viewers during the creation of my #BaconGameJam entry. The Game Development channel on twitch seems to be getting more popular lately, and I want to become more active there, as its a really nice bunch of devs.
October Challenge
The October challenge is simply a goal to get a game to market, and earn $1 from sales. As I’m starting things a bit late, I don’t figure I’ll meat the goal. Earnings from Kong, GameJolt, and itch have been below a dime, and Youtube results are better, but not by much. If anything, I’ve earned more from let’s plays of random games than I have from development this month. Weird world right? Who knows though! I have 2 games I’m packing right now that haven’t had a chance to make any money yet. I also feel like setting up Android ports would be a good idea, but that complicates things because I’d need to add onscreen controls, and a “rule” in 12 games in 12 weeks, is that you don’t revisit old games until the sprint is over.
But I’ve never really felt like rules apply to me anyway. Screw em.
Vlogs
I love making these videos. My upload speed is bad for streaming daily, but I can make some progress, and cut a video together for Youtube in a matter of hours. They’re really fun to make and compress any of my woes or accomplishments into a 10-20 minute segment. Why 20 minutes? Because I apparently cant shut the hell up, or perhaps I don’t talk fast enough. I only intended them to be 5 minutes or so, but I always go a bit too indepth on things. Hopefully someone appreciates me being verbose. I’ll continue to make these semi-weekly. I can’t say my schedule has normalized yet to something predictable, but I’m trying.
Conclusion
I’ll be updating my site with all of my jam/sprint games. I’m tired of saying I haven’t released anything. Even if they’re small and dumb, my games need to get off my harddrive and into the cloud. I’ve been doing this since 2010 for god’s sake. I’ve erased more projects than I’ve uploaded. That’s insane.
Also, at some point, I need to ask people if the video format, or a typical text-y blog format is better. I feel like vlogs are easier to make, and probably perform better, but I personally prefer reading blogs myself. Got an opinion on it? Tell me!
