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[BrixxieBee]

You're pretty.

[poorwill]

Hi, my name is poorwill, aka Nick, and I'm making a game.  I have a bunch of good ideas that have really just been sitting around doing nothing, so I took some time off work with my new tablet and am currenty in the process of creating some art assets.  I'll put up some mockups in the designated thread when I've got something worth presenting, hopefully in a couple of weeks.  It's pretty stupidly ambitious for a first effort - in a sense it's a life's work - so I may churn out a few smaller games while its in production, possibly using art assets from the main piece ( also to test out gameplay mechanics etc.).
I've done some animation before, mostly stop motion and some 3D stuff in a 2D paper cutout sort of style (My last, now abandoned, project I did with a friend:

- mostly just a sorta-animated storyboard, skip to 6:14 to see the only completed scene pls watch in HQ thx) but what I've always wanted to do was make games. 

MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE GAMES ARE:

Wizkid: The Story of Wizball 2
Nethack
Kirby's Dreamland 3
Gunstar Heroes
Super Monkey Ball
La Mulana
Sexy Parodius
Gradius Gaiden
Below the Root
An Untitled Story
Super Metroid
Mutant Night
Grim Fandango
Quest for Glory
Act-Fancer Cyberkinetick Hyperer Warrior
Shadow of the Beast 3
Link's Awakening
Majora's Mask
Bangai-O
Toki
Sonic 2
Sonic 3 & Sonic and Knuckles
Cave Story
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
Joust
Yoshi's Island
Unreal Tournament
Mario 64
Spelunky
Star Control 2
Pu Li Ru La
Paper Mario
Resident Evil Outbreak File #2
Resident Evil 4
Dungeons and Dragons - Shadow over Mystara
Katamari Damacy
Violent Storm
Donkey Kong Jungle Beat
X'ainD SleenA
Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter
Resident Evil 2
Ninja Baseball Batman
Moonwalker (arcade)
Dragon Breed on weekdays
Saint Dragon on weekends 
Knuckle Bash
Bubble Symphony
Rainbow Islands
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Karnov
Bal Cube
Ultima IV
Chimera Beast
Cadash
Mr Do vs Unicorn
Civilization 4
Hard Head 2
Warioland 4
Wonderboy in Monster Land
Grand Theft Auto 3
Black Heart
Kabuki-Z
Chiller
and Miss Bubble 2

I'm sure I am missing a bunch.

The worst game I have ever played is God of War.

Thanks for having me and see you folks around.

EDIT:  Added a few more personal history details.  It seemed like the thing to do.

[BrixxieBee]

Sounds like a great plan, what will your Forum title be so I know where to look?

[Inane]

THERE ARE NO LIMITS ON INTRODUCTION LENGTH.

Welcome, Adam and Nick.

[poorwill]

Sounds like a great plan, what will your Forum title be so I know where to look?

I guess I'll post it in this thread:

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=7091.0

There is some pretty rad stuff in there so I better make it sparkle.

[knucracker]

Also, out of curiosity, hoping not to be killed like the cat, but do you apply a scientific approach to game software? I'm currently studying CS, and I find that our assignments and tings we do in school often have "standard" solution. Certain data structures are often used  for a certain type of problem. Hashmaps for O(1) lookup, etc. This is IMO often quite narrow and easy to solve.

When doing hobbyist programming, I often tend to want to figure out a nice solution by myself, kind of thinking outside the box. It doesn't necessarily make me write bad software, instead of solving a standard problem, I often make it so that it problem itself doesn't even exist.

Just wondering if you feel that you use a different approach to writing game software.

Again, welcome to the forum!

Well yes and no.  I'd say that good business app development and good game development both share one thing in common;  good development practices.  If you are a strong and experienced developer, those skills will be your bread and butter for game development.

How does game development differ (for me anyway)?  Games often require a wider skill set and knowledge base.  Say you are writing a physics game (or what people generally refer to as physics games   You can know everything in the world about hashmaps, or sockets, or databases, etc.  But at the end of the day you better have paid attention in your high school physics class.  Even some things as mundane as some visual effects really can only be understood if you paid attention in your discrete math class, or your calc or diffeq classes.  Do you have to know all of these things all of the time to write cool and fun games... no of course not.  But if you do know them your arsenal is that much stronger.

Scientific process wise... well it is true that good developers (games or otherwise) often apply a loose version of the scientific method in their daily problems solving.  They might not think of it this way, but any good game developer is often faced with a wade array of "unknowns" at the beginning of a process.  Having a system and structure to guide your way through experimentation to arrive at the knowledge you need is very beneficial.  Guessing at things and not exploring solution avenues in a structured way can be very frustrating and non productive.  Most devs learn this through experience and by being mentored.

Anyway, I've probably bored everyone to tears.  I came hear to learn mostly and to share my experiences for anyone who cares to listen.  I've only got a few publicly available games under my belt at this point, so when it comes to the indie game business I've still got much I'd like to learn.

[Erik Schröder]

Helloes.

I'm Erik and I'm a composer. Been composing for almost 3½ years now. I've scored a few games, though all of them were made by friends or people I know.

Um, don't know much more to tell you. I like making games more than playing them. Oh! I'm not only a composer, I also come up with game ideas, storylines, characters and other stuff.

Well, I guess that's it....

[Tinyboss]

I'm one of the old dudes who remembers playing Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt when it was brand new (and actually, Intellivision for a few years before that!)  My two biggest interests are math and games, so that puts me firmly in the nerd camp.

I'm starting a PhD mathematics program in the fall, but I hope to carve out a few hours a week for a couple of Python/Pyglet projects I have going.  


A couple of my more successful games:

• Squarez, a Windows puzzle game done in Game Maker
  
• Drifter, a tunnel-racing game (yeah, I know, those suck...but this one is different) for the TI-89 calculator, programmed in C.

.

Games that influenced me:
Utopia (Intellivision)

I don't know how many hours I spent fishing, harvesting crops, avoiding hurricanes, sinking my friend's fishing boats, fomenting insurrection on my neighbor's isle.  

Super Mario Bros. (NES)
'Nuff said.

Wasteland (PC)

Simply the best RPG of its time.  Fantastic storyline, great graphics for its day, interesting enemies, plenty of equipment, and lots of different skills, all of which were useful.  

Larn

The first Roguelike I ever played, in all its monochrome glory.  Other, better ones came later, but I had more pure fun with Larn than anything since.

Dwarf Fortress

SimCity and The Sims, on crack, minus the graphics, plus lots of beer.  

Spelunky

The most recent game to really have an influence on me, and the reason I found and registered with this site.  Really well done on all fronts.

[Sabotender]

where to start... ooh i love wizards: 

ok now that is over with...

im the youngest oldschool gamer i know of... only 24 years, yet i grew up playing Hungry Horace on the Spectrum, then moving over to the Amiga (still the best games ever)

Anyway... favourite game of all time? Magic Carpet 2
second favourite? i would have to say the Legacy of Kain series.

My whole life me and my best friend have been modding an making games. We started simply drawing our own levels and characters, then moved over to Click&Play and TheGamesfactory.

First game i ever modded was OMF:2097 (One Must Fall) creating custom textures.
My career is 3D modeling, i started by making a Pencil in Milkshape, then stepped things up a little and made Blastoise(the pokemon) as a player model for Half-Life 1.
Why a pokemon? because their fun to shoot at. Ive been modeling 3D ever since.

I was one of the founding members of Dark Codex(demoscene group) and we have been rather successful at The Gathering in Norway. Though we have primarily just made techdemos, we all dream of making games. Sadly, we havent released any yet, though Grill Simulator 360 is now under review at Microsoft :D



The last 3 years of my life ive been studying 3D Modeling and Game Design in Hamar, Noway.
Now im working on 4 secret projects, one of which i can reveal in a couple of weeks.


"B" party (everyone dresses as something that begins with "B")
I went as a Big Daddy


Halloween.. me as a Splicer from Bioshock


me at an Anime convention


70s Party



PS. No i dont have any normal pictures of me
im a master of disguises

PPS. a flash game i made 2 years ago:
http://beagle.hihm.no/101920/flash/final.html

[Lemming]

Anyway, I've probably bored everyone to tears.

Nah, thanks for replying.

Good software's still good software of course. For some reason I've gotten the the impression that scientific software pretty much often only pays attention for O(x) growth rate, and not really about any constant slowdown/speedup of a program. The "just add more hardware" solution, since the problem doesn't really grow out of hand.

I do of course still pay attention to O(n²) loops etc. and avoid them when possible..

[havchr]

Awesome Sabotender, and welcome!
Hope to see even more people from the Hamar gamedev community join.

You make for a good ninja, but how is your rolling skills (which is all ninjas really do)?

[Sabotender]

I would say my rolling skills are above average. 

[AG]

Hey everyone.

A bit of my background: I originally got into game making when I found RPG Maker 2000 and put together some really horrendous games using the default graphics package. In looking for some resources and tutorials I became an active member of Gaming World where I would spend most of my time from 2002-2004 (my username was AnonymousGuy, for anyone who goes/used to go there). Eventually I would become the game adder for the site, which meant going through tons of horrible RM2K submissions and then just looking around other indie game sites like the Daily Click for some good games to add. After seeing some great games out there I was quickly losing interest in RPG making and the community would invariably prefer crappy Final Fantasy fangames over great games like Jumper 2 . I reached the position of site admin, where I would only stay for a few months. After some drama I won't get into all the site admins jumped ship and I have been fairly out of the loop in indie game making since.

As far as finished products go, well...I don't have any! In my time there I became proficient with Game Maker but never made anything substantial, just some systems and small games here and there. I've never lost the desire to make a game though, and I always have some ideas bouncing around in my head. I've been learning Adventure Game Studio and I hope going here can jumpstart me into finally getting something done!

There are a wide variety of mainstream games I like, but a few favorites off the top of my head are SMW2: Yoshi's Island, Pikmin 1 and 2, Dungeon Keeper 2, Wario Land 3, and Doom. I'm not really well-versed on indie games yet but my hands-down favorite is An Untitled Story and I'm also a fan of the Chzo Mythos.

[Lunoe]

Hey, name's Lunoe. I'm an aspiring game developer with some rudimentary programming expiriance, and a knack for literary endeavors.

Starting work on my first game project, hoping to make a demo soon to test the basic concept, which is why I came here to learn what I could about the art, and maybe pick up some friends along the way.

[EmThree]

Hi, you can call me EmThree. I'm your new best friend.

I can do graphics, but I can't program, hint hint.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/17074.htm

[CrushBR]

Hi !
My name's Victor, 21 years, I'm from São Paulo, Brazil (so don't mind some grammar mistakes  ).
I'm a design student and I love games.
I've been close to the indie games community and all that happens but I've never showed the things that I make, so I think this is the time and Tigsource is a great place for it.
Hope this will be a great place to chat about games and make some nice friends.

[zacaj]

Hi, im zacaj.  Ive been developing simple games for a few years using C++ and openGL, right now im focusing on iPhone, where Ive already released a simple arcade game named Frik, and Im almost done with a short puzzle/platformer.  Besides from that, my shmup for the SDL tutorials contest is almost done...  And then hopefully ill have another game done in time for the igf.


(its momE,not momF, but I dont want to have to redo that pic)

The first non-tutorial level

the second to last level

[KittenEater]

Hi everybody. I'm a bit new to the indie gaming community, and I'm still learning how to make good games. I decided to come here after lurking a little bit, as from what I've seen these forums are much better (as in more intelligent) than the official GameMaker forums. Anyway, if anyone wants to contact me quickly, they can do so through a private message here, but commenting on my Deviantart page would be faster. One more thing I should make clear: I am currently stuck with dial-up, and sometimes it's a bit hard to download things. Please be nice.

I hope to make a new friend or two while I'm here, and possibly gain more knowledge in the way of indie gaming and game making.

[Adam94]

Hi.

I'm Adam. About to start my last year in high school in the UK and my first gaming experience (and also one of my earliest memories) was sonic the hedgehog on sega megadrive. I wish I knew about mario.

I'm new to the whole indie games thing. I read an article in pc gamer and decided I should see what's out there.

Over the last week, I've been playing world of goo, spelunky and the awesome games on this site

I'm looking forward to finding loads of the awesome games out there

Also... I want to learn how to draw well, do decent pixel art and make games. That's the reason I've been coming to this site. I've started learning how to use game maker using this tutorial and I've been learning to do the pixelly stuff using this tutorial. Any other suggestions for things to do to help me learn would be very welcome reply/pm me or whatever.

And I have a question that's been bugging me:

Is it possible/achievable to get good at art without studying it at school/college whatever?

Cos I wanna get good and I'm willing to put many hours into this.

[KittenEater]

I do believe there is a way to get better at art without schooling, Adam. There are books you can buy to help, of course, but there's a different approach I know some people take and that is to watch anime and animated shows and read good comics and things to get a better idea of how something should look. However, I know that influences people's art styles so there are a bunch of people who try to draw anime style all the time, so maybe that's no your thing. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that you can self teach yourself. I know I did.