Big projects, with small ones when ideas come up to prevent becoming bored of the big project.

That ended up working for me. In the spring I was working on a major project, then it started to get boring, and buggy, so I made some small games, originally intending to abandon the big project completely. Late last month, I was finally able to take it up again--I even trashed 200+ classes and started from scratch. Using my improved programming knowledge, I've now gone far past where I was when I abandoned the game, and I'm not going to stop anytime soon. :

Buildism is a 2D game creation tool, written in Java (you need Java Web Start). It's designed to be easy enough for most people to use, but it is based on Lua so advanced programmers should have no trouble making complex games.

Unfortunately it is still in alpha so nobody has made a fancy demo for me to show off, but here is a techdemo of the tools I made earlier today: http://buildism.net/game.php?id=28

If you're interested, here is the editor (Java Web Start link.) It should be mostly bug-free, but it's pretty complicated so you never know.

I haven't written the scripting documentation yet (you can learn a lot from my posts on the forum), but here are some very simple examples:


Fly tool:

Code:

tool = script.Parent
player = tool.Parent.Parent
if player:isA("Player") then
    controller = player.Character.Body.Controller

link(script.Parent.MouseDown, function(button, point)
    controller.Velocity = Vec2D(controller.Velocity.x, 5)
end)

link(script.Parent.MouseUp, function(button)
    controller.Velocity = Vec2D(controller.Velocity.x, 0)
end)

end

Music player:

Code:

link(script.Parent.Clicked, function()
    if script.Parent.Playing.Value then
        script.Parent.Sound:stop()
        script.Parent.Playing.Value = false
    else
        script.Parent.Sound:play()
        script.Parent.Playing.Value = true
    end
end)

Teleport tool:

Code:

tool = script.Parent
player = tool.Parent.Parent
if player:isA("Player") then
    body = player.Character.Body
    link(script.Parent.MouseDown, function(button, point)
        body.Position = point
    end)
end

What do you work on most often--simple games or complex ones? Right now I'm trying to build a portfolio to establish myself as a game developer, but at the same time I like the personal enjoyment that comes from creating, testing, and releasing a multi-month undertaking.

this will get you sued by that sad old crackpot what'sname, rousing furious indignation amongst indies and catapulting your project to fame...clever

will you post a demo anyway? People around here are pretty good at having fun with not-fun things. Personally I've cultivated so strong a taste for incomplete work that I am no longer able to play finished games.

That article is hilarious, if that guy really wants to sue me to defend a common word I'm not even using commercially I'd love to see the reaction

And I'm feeling nice, so here is the demo: http://1scripts.net/EDGE.zip

Entity commands:
add [box name localX localY w h|weld name part1 part2 anchorX anchorY|hinge name part1 part2 anchorX anchorY]
setcolor r g b
setbehavior behaviorClassName
setmainpart mainPartName
setfixedrotation [true|false]
setfixed [true|false]
setcollidable [true|false]
merge part1 part2

Map commands:
mapdata w h gravity
setspawn x y
entity type posX posY
box posX posY sizeX sizeY
setfixed [true|false[
setcolor r g b
settexture textureName tileX tileY
setlayer [0,1,2]

Use A, D, W, to move. The map test.edgemap is loaded when you start the demo. When you click the entity in the file crate.ent is added wherever you clicked the mouse. The laser gun in your hand currently does nothing.

[Plot]

Plot: Several decades in the future, a huge social and environmental crisis envelopes the world. NASA sends a mission called The Mobius Project to another galaxy to look for a planet to escape to, but things go horribly wrong and the aliens on that planet take over Earth and kidnap everyone there, taking the people to their home planet. You are a robot that lives on a robot planet in the Milky Way, and someone claiming to be one of the few humans left on Earth contacts you and asks for your assistance. After ridding several locations of aliens, you discover that who you thought was a refugee is actually an alien conducting an experiment. He takes you back to the planet where the other humans are and starts to isolate you in a small cell, but you escape. From there you figure out that all the Earth aliens are multiple personalities of one computer stored on the planet, which you destroy. You free all of the humans, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I'm trying to decide between The Mobius Project and 2097. The first one would be confusing since you don't know the name of the mission initially, and the second sounds like a 1960s sci fi movie.

A Falling Sand Game clone. Although my code was horrible (1 file of C with no classes, eww) it taught me a lot about using loops and arrays (and the importance of writing readable code  ).

I once dreamed about being by the coast in a large city, when huge meteorites started falling out of the sky. Some fell in the ocean making large splashes; others hit buildings and flattened them. If a building got clipped by a meteor but not totally destroyed, a crane-like mecha thing made of out yellow metal beams would take care of it. I listened to the radio, and the same thing was happening all across the country.

It was awesome, does it give anyone a game idea?

It took me a couple of days and a lot of head beating and swearing to stop my character model from either falling apart or being joined together in weird ways in between the server and the client. Latency, Lua, Box2D, and multithreaded IO don't like each other.

And back when I distributed free PHP scripts, it took me a long time to fix my site after someone exploited a "bug" and deleted every file on the server using a proxy. I did learn my lesson though, make sure that you take the PHP editor out of your script before posting a demo of it on your site...

My next project is going to be pretty big (might take a year, who knows) so I'm working on a good base for it first. The name stands for Extendable 2D Game Engine, Easy 2D Game Engine, or nothing at all, pick whichever you prefer It's designed for side scrolling games, primarily shooters but you could make just about anything.

My plan is to finish the engine, then make a game with it, then possibly release the code for the engine if anyone's interested.

Current features:
-The system is based on maps and entities. Maps and entities made of primitives are saved as text files and can be created without coding; entities can be made dynamic using an EntityBehavior class.
-Embedded physics using JBox2D - boxes and joints are currently implemented
-Textures on objects, can be stretched or tiled
-You can have a unit represent whatever number of pixels you want. However, if you have entities with custom rendering code (like the example player) you'll probably want to choose one and stick with it to avoid performing lots of expensive coordinate transformations every frame.
-Input system - key codes can be binded to actions using a text file, or you can subclass InputProcessor, or access the InputState directly in your game loop
-Very basic GUI, currently movable frames, labels, and buttons only.

Planned stuff:
-Weapons (this is what I'm currently working on, the laser gun in his hand does nothing right now)
-Finish the map editor
-Applet support (I would like to have the same .jar be usable as either an app or an applet)
-Sound (I was hoping to avoid using native libraries if possible, but if the Java sound system isn't adequate I might have to use FMod or OpenAL)
-Graphics effects (lighting, tint, fog, screen shake, etc)
-Particle systems
-Multiplayer

I don't want to post a demo yet since it's not any fun, but here's some screenshots for now.


And for those who like to measure programming progress by amount of code written:


I'll try to keep this thread updated!

I watched part of the live stream of the test, just wanted to say, awesome work. :D

If you don't mind me asking, what GPU do you two have in your computers? Also, if you have older drivers you may be lacking the features of OpenGL that I am using in the game.

EDIT: http://www.mediafire.com/?rr2qehnekkkljyg new build (first post updated)

Try this one out if you want, and let me know if you get the same or different result.

The new build has the same issue. I have a Nvidia GeForce 9600GT, I'll update my drivers and try it again.

Is there an objective I'm supposed to achieve? I couldn't find any instructions.

Might want to add a way to sting the enemies for defense.

Also, you will usually get more feedback if you introduce yourself.

I'm getting the black screen bug too on Win XP, 32 bit:

Here is the console output:

Code:

Tue Jul 20 22:50:16 EDT 2010 INFO:Slick Build #274
Tue Jul 20 22:50:16 EDT 2010 INFO:LWJGL Version: 2.4.2
Tue Jul 20 22:50:16 EDT 2010 INFO:OriginalDisplayMode: 1680 x 1050 x 32 @60Hz
Tue Jul 20 22:50:16 EDT 2010 INFO:TargetDisplayMode: 1024 x 768 x 0 @0Hz
Tue Jul 20 22:50:17 EDT 2010 INFO:Starting display 1024x768
Tue Jul 20 22:50:17 EDT 2010 INFO:Use Java PNG Loader = true
Loading: net.java.games.input.DirectAndRawInputEnvironmentPlugin
Tue Jul 20 22:50:17 EDT 2010 INFO:Found 2 controllers
Tue Jul 20 22:50:17 EDT 2010 INFO:0 : Microsoft« Digital Media oard 300
Tue Jul 20 22:50:17 EDT 2010 INFO:1 : Microsoft« Digital Media oard 300
Tue Jul 20 22:50:17 EDT 2010 INFO:Initialising sounds..
Tue Jul 20 22:50:17 EDT 2010 INFO:- Sound works

The game crashes when I try to open it.
Windows XP, 32 bit

I thought DevLogs was for progress updates on games without a playable build yet? The rules for this section seem to encourage posting new versions here...

Small update is out: http://1scripts.net/cubic/game.php

I fixed some more bugs and added new sounds. (The grass walking sounds really needs some more work, I'm terrible at audio stuff!)

Also, if the game crashes it will now tell you what the error was, in case you want to tell me.

I started working on realistic lighting, but it's still buggy so I disabled it for now. It's definitely better than the irremovable shadows you see underground currently.

By the way, this doesn't suck like the last game I posted The few people that have tried it said they liked it, and most built some cool stuff in multiplayer.

I do have a personal Twitter, but it's a few years old, mostly unused and contains a lot of stuff from when I was younger and stupider

I heard about a new site called Posterous a little while ago, so I might test that out.

Today I added custom character skins, also fixed a few bugs in the server software.

I added custom character appearances to my game today. But, there was a small mistake in the error checking... the first person to make a skin made a typo in the URL. Every time he joined the game, everyone's client disconnected from the server. After some facepalming I fixed it and uploaded the new version, trying not to laugh the whole time. 

The server software is now public, see the website to download it.

I also started 2 new servers with different maps.