Programming Included
It has been 2 years since I've posted! So many things have happened since then, things that I have thought of sharing but have not been around to do so. There are also more projects on the horizon. Hopefully I can spend a few weekends to recap some projects that have occurred since last year as well as some current projects.
Last year around this time, one of my friends brought up the idea of participating in Game Jame 2020 hosted on itch.io.
After some talk and discussion, our team was pieced together: three engineers working at decently sized companies, a market-designer working at a start-up, and a music engineer. We had roughly one month (the month of November). The first day of November we had received our theme: Moonshot
Us all having experience with tohou and/or sh'mups growing up, we slowly narrowed down to that idea. However instead of a generic 2d bullet shooter, we needed a novel concept that can be worth exploring. Eventually our team narrowed down to the following ideas (we ended up only doing the first two):
Given our time tables, our objectives were clear: get a game out in a some-what polished state; don't make it too ambituous. Despite the theme, our goal is to first create a game and release it. All of us had a part that we were still trying to learn. As an a programmer by trade, a large chunk of my time was spent on art work making rather than coding. Later onwards most of my time would be spent drawing then coding some parts of the code with more architectural discussions.
After many meetings, discussions, mood boards, and more designs we slowly honed in our game. Thus began our idea:
"Ex corruptione emerget lux aeterna." Out of corruption comes eternal light. In the edge of sector 4 lies Selene, the all-driver for space explorer SPECK. With Selene's great insight, using her last remaining life source, SPECK barely escapes the corrupt crystals of Karth. With its life force now fully depleted, SPECK floats lifeless in the orbit of Planet #1423. With the last remaining bioorganic crew disintegrated for the sake of maintaining the barely breathing all-driver, SPECK automated systems initiates its final emergency plan. Within a dark control room, on the dimly lit terminal: "Stations critical. Initiating Project Moonshot: LUNAR=N0X. Launching probes... Selene must survive."
Actually, our idea didn't start with that description. In fact, the description is incredibly last-minute addition. Rather, we started with basic ideas and a theme board for designing themes. We threw themes together that we thought were simlar to our ideas of the team.
Our music designer did an AMAZING jobs at the music. Trying to get into the music industry, he definitely knocked it out of the park. Our programmers did an excellent job in understanding implementing things in such a short notice. Especially during those last few days. Our graphics definitely gave the a game a very unique look!
One of the major things I've learned is how time consuming can be! It took me about 2 hours to draw a basic sprite based background for our single stable scroll. By the end of the jam, I was scrambling to push assets and reject certain animations.
Being a novice, I expected there to be a lot of slow downs. However, having to both code and draw was quite a challenge.
