Any CAGs out there who make games?

Hydro2Oxide

Hydro2Oxide

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So we all of course play the games but is there anyone out there who makes them? I do a little work with Game Maker, started working with flash and I dabbled with a LUA mod called LOVE. Anyway, I want to hear about you guys and maybe you can whore yourself out a little in this thread. I'd also like to hear about some WIP's, maybe get a little look on the planning process for making games as I usually just get at it with little/no planning.
 
I had an interview with Big Fish Games but didn't get the job :(

I've made a couple little games on my own, really basic stuff like whack-a-mole clones, a puzzle game, etc.. not for distribution, just for my own programming experience. Nothing fancy.
 
[quote name='Koggit']I had an interview with Big Fish Games but didn't get the job :([/QUOTE]
Me too. High five!

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Concerning making your own games, you usually start out with a high concept document. Its sort of like your initial pitch to the publisher.

Sample:
http://www.csc.kth.se/utbildning/kth/kurser/DH2640/grip08/HighConceptTemplate-Inl4.pdf

After that, when you get together with a few other people defining more specific elements of how the entire game is going to play out and everything associated with it, you create the game treatment document.
Link

As far as planning goes you'll also do story boards, come up with art assets, and anything else you think will help give a potential publisher/team members a better idea of how your game is going to go.

I am currently working on a game of my own, albeit very slowly. I'm basically learning the programming language as I go, and get easily side tracked with the more "fun" elements such as the audio production and artwork. I mainly use it as a source to pull portfolio pieces from.

Just a little look at the concept and implementation:
Comparison.png

Full Res
bodystart.png

No expert by any means, but its fun and I will hopefully get to give it the attention it deserves at a later point in my life after I have established myself somewhere.

Made a couple of "trailers" for when I was presenting it just to try to set the mood.
This one isn't much to look at, but I was very happy with how that particular track turned out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JkKdnFqK-I



I know SneakyPenguin is tn;td when it comes to making games, dude wrote his own game engine (I think). Theres also ReRo, though I'm not sure if he makes games so much as he makes interactive art installations.
 
Some interesting and helpful ideas there ck.

Have an idea for a game , have never made one. As much as I would love to do something with the idea that I have , I really have little to no actual technical expertise or ability to do so (though I'd be willing to learn :)).

Not to mention that the idea that I had is on probably too grand of a scale for myself even if I had some skill. I had given the though about parring it down more simply , and making it work as a 2D sidescroller , something akin to a megaman game.

Then again they always say its easy to have an idea or a vision , its much harder to make it reality.
 
I've made a game or two. Nothing that ever went commercial, just misc. projects.

Roommate and I ended up programming a "Trumpet Hero" type game. Used phidgets and a cardboard tube for the controller, and stuck a microphone inside the tube so the user could blow, as one would with a trumpet, in order to make notes register. Wasn't all too complex, and the only songs programmed in were Hava Nagila and Little Spanish Flea.

Junior year in college I worked on a rather ambitious project that can best be described as an old Zelda game with the sanity effects from Eternal Darkness. Both the player and "Link" could get struck down with various diseases affecting gameplay. So, Link could become blind and start running into things, or the user could become blind, and the screen would slowly fade to black. Similarly, Link could become jsut colorblind, and lose the ability to tell the red key apart from the blue key, and so on. Of course, the project ended up being to ambitious, and never really got finished.

One semester later, I revisted the project for another course, patched up all the holes, removed the gameplay elements that weren't working, and changed the control scheme so that it was no longer controlled by keyboard and mouse, but rather by infra-red imaging of the brain. In other words, a game controlled completely by a specific part of the brain. If you've ever seen the episode of House that had Mos Def as a completely paralyzed patient, i used similar tech as they used. I ended up building a scheme for controlling two dimensional movement using only a single on/off signal.


And CK's definitely right about a concept document. Especially when working with teams, its necessary to make sure everyone's on the same line of thought. They also act as a living document, one that can be changed and edited as the project changes. No matter how much planning you do, you can find that you'll need an addional art asset, or song, or level designed, or something, or perhaps there's just something wrong with gameplay that needs changed (and every change should be documented).
 
When I was younger I did some "game programming". Mostly primitive point-and-click games not unlike MYST. I made a graphing calculator game once too, once again another weak P&C.

I've kind of wanted to get back into game making with a program like game-maker but I find myself sidetracked by other things. At one point I was screwing around with M.U.G.E.N to sketch a sort of "parody" of Marvel vs. Capcom hyper-fighting games starring Adult Swim characters. I thought it might have some appeal to Cartoon Network as a XBLA/PSN game but I got too sidetracked. It still sounds like a fun idea to me though.

I did try out for an entry level assistant job at Bethesda Softworks. I'm a big fan of their games, and I thought it might be a good way to decide if this was something I wanted to pursue, but I didn't get the job.

On a side note, if you guys want a really good look at indie game development, go to wolfire.com. These guys made a really great hidden gem of a game called "Lugaru", and they're currently working on the sequel, which despite the 5 or so people working on it, looks AMAZING. They update their blog everyday discussing the finer details of indie development.
 
I can model and animated if needed, but now I'm working at Activision devouring the souls of young children.
 
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I've never made a game completely by myself, although I'd like to make a simple iPhone game someday. I mainly make art for games, just a few of the things I need to do include things like modeling, texturing, lighting, and high level scripting... For example, the most recent thing I worked on are some of the costumes for Playstation Home, as well as an upcoming military-themed (hint hint) game space, which may or may not have been released already. Needless to say, I've worked on Home content for so long that I am utterly sick of it!

I'm currently trying to get into Blizzard, God knows how long that'll take though =/
 
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