#pizzamakesgames

[oldpizzamakesgames]

Hello from Pizza & Accessibility of Games Today

Hey, having had 3 consecutive days of free time in a row has finally gotten me a little time to think about game development again. I started working full-time at the first of March, a bit over 2 month ago, and in the wake of that, apart from not having any time for anything anymore at all, I was finally able to afford some of those fancy gadgets everybody seems to be sporting these days - starting with a 3DS and Wii U, going all the way to a smart phone and even being able to try out different kinds of VR headsets. Now, all the little games I made last year were either flash or Unity based, and while there are downloadable versions of most of them around for various systems, you’re kinda gonna be having a hard time playing any of them if you’re just browsing game portals looking for something to click on and check out immediately. Flash isn’t supported by anything but desktop PCs anymore, the Unity Web Player has been unsupported and who’s gonna be downloading exe files at this point in time? So I’ve been thinking - how would you be able to support the most platforms, or rather, provide the fastest and best way of accessing a game on the broadest range of platforms, while still being able to work in a comfortable development environment? Say you got your desktop PC, your mobile phones, your handheld consoles and stationary consoles. You could see to publish your game as an executable to various game portals for desktop PCs, the google play store for android phones, iTunes for iPhones, and maybe something something eShop for Nintendo’s current consoles. You would have to tailor your game specifically to each of those platforms, design and code-wise. Sift through a heap of legal papers and regulations for each platform while still worrying about developing a good video game. To me, that sounds impossible to do on your own.

Instead, you could develop an HTML5 game. That would run on all of the above as far as I know. Though, you’d still have to worry about a lot of things like varying aspect ratio and or resolutions, means of control and whatnot. Instead of all of that, you develop a game specifically for a single platform. Undertale did that, Ketchapp is doing that, Nintendo is doing that, and I think it’s the answer.

What this means for the future of Pizzamakesgames is that I might pick platforms and target my efforts to a specific medium, trying out a little bit of this and that, throwing small games at the wall to see what sticks and keep going from there. Regarding Skullz ‘n’ Skeletonz, that might still mean nothing. Like, I might just continue developing it for desktop PCs and nothing but, or I might try and make little teasers of it for various platforms as an exercise, especially seeing that I didn’t have time to look at a single line of code in almost three months, I could see something like that leading to results a tad faster than trying to finish a fully featured game as my next immediate release. For now, I think I’ll try and organize my online presence to fit the current times of mobile devices a bit better. I honestly still have no idea how my tumblr looks on a smart phone, and I might let some media outlets fall off the wagon in favor of others in the near future. Maybe an own domain is in order. We’ll see. Thanks for reading, and feel free to engage. Conversation is a good thing.

[freeindiegame]

Indies VS Gamers 2084 by Pizza

A Robotron: 2084 homage. Loud, abrasive and frenetic. In a good way!

[freeindiegame]

The Third Kind by Pizza

A creepy text adventure presented in an excellent, unsettling manner.

[oldpizzamakesgames]

Game Design & Immortality

For the longest time I could not cope with the prospect of death. Recently I’ve come to realize that, without it, the experience of life wouldn’t be possible.

The dream of immortality in a nutshell means that you don’t want anything to change. That is a paradox in itself, as existing can’t come with not existing anymore in the way you existed just before at any given moment, and there can not be infinite moments. Let’s assume there can be infinite moments though. If you were to live forever, anything that would ever exist would cease to do so in the smallest fraction of what would be your existence, as it would have to last forever. As it is with memories, the more distant and plentiful they come, the less graspable they become. Eventually, there would have been nothing there ever was than nothing, as it would take up an ever bigger fraction of your overall existence. Moreover, you would essentially never know what it would have been like to live a life, as you would’ve been the only thing to not play by the rules.

Video games are existence in a nutshell. Let’s start at the end here and take World of Warcraft as an example. Let’s think of World of Warcraft as a vastly simplified version of our universe. Let’s say that when World of Warcraft is a million times simpler compared to our Universe, history also progresses a million times faster in it, as there are a million things less to do compared to our universe and the theoretical accomplishment of anything you could ever accomplish becomes a million times less time consuming to every individual inhabiting that universe of World of Warcraft.

Now, what do you see if you gaze upon the universe of World of Warcraft? Countless individuals at the end of the end of the line. Level 99 characters with all the gear, all the achievements, everything. Compared to our existence again, each of them would have died in one way or another along the way of accomplishing this, and the ones that would have gotten particularly close to accomplishing and experiencing everything there is would be of old age and soon make way for the next generation. What you can see here is a simulated world of immortal beings. Just like cheating, the peak of accomplishments, which may never be reached in reality, ultimately renders existing pointless. Sure, you can pop in some cheats and dick around with your friends for a while, but isn’t it funny how that will inevitably get boring faster than playing by the rules no matter what you do? That’s the peak of accomplishments at work. Everything we experience is in some kind of cycle. It begins, it exists, it ceases to. If we try to take that last part out, we screw up the cycle and nothing really works the way it was supposed to anymore. As a little additional piece. As a kid, I used to love the beginning parts of games. Building my town, buying those first upgrades in Warcraft or creating my hero in Baldur’s Gate. Once I got far enough to have to manage multiple things at once and keep track of where I was and what I had to do I got overwhelmed and felt like restarting again. Nowadays, I’ve grown to enjoy those overwhelming parts just as much as the beginning, as I’ve learned to like the long road you have to walk just as much as the first couple steps, where you’ve still got your fully packed lunchbox.

[oldpizzamakesgames]

Skullz - Developer's Diary

If you'd like to know a bit more about how Skullz came to be, this is the thing.

http://issuu.com/feliksbalzer/docs/skullz_developersdiary

[oldpizzamakesgames]

There's also shirts now!

[oldpizzamakesgames]

Password Screen, check. Rad Password Screen Theme, check.

[oldpizzamakesgames]

Skullz Recap Month #1 - Words

Here's just a bunch of thoughts about the project. How does this even work? How do you just make a game from nothing? You start by thinking. What is the game gonna be about? What is the art style gonna be like? What's the genre? Who would the main characters be, what would they look like, what would their personality be, and so on. I had a little black book and a pen with me at all times and would write and scribble down every single idea that I had. This first step can be the most fun because you're not limited by your level of skill, technical limitations of the medium, a deadline or anything, think away!

Meanwhile I would work on the exact opposite, I'd set up the development grounds. Decide on programs to use for the visuals, the audio, the code, the publishing, create folders, textfiles for quick notes, etc. From previous projects I knew, the more you organize yourself now the less you will get lost as you progress. You will still get lost though.

At this point I like to give myself little tasks as not to get too tangled up in all the things I could do. So I decided to focus on creating a logo for me as a game developer, because for one, that's the very first thing to appear when you start the game, and I also needed a profile picture for my publishing purposes, so it seemed logical to start with it.

Whenever I wanna do something from scratch, I start by looking at the pros, like Capcom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KixtoapKDVI) and analyse it. The picture flashes on screen, it's accompanied by a little jingle and usually animated in some way, then it fades out and the game proceeds. It might just be a little image and a couple seconds of a jingle, but all the more effort you have to put into it if you wanna make it worthwhile. The jingle for Capcom, as short as it may be, actually has a whole lot of notes being played. Like damn, try to copy that jingle, it's insane!

In the end this is what I came up with:

http://www.fastswf.com/Eus6khA

I liked it at the time but now I think it sucks, so yesterday I made another one, but I already think that one sucks, too. So I've scrapped it for now, but I got a logo out of it which is what I really needed at the time.

That's it for random thoughts.