Thanksgiving – day 1 of creating a computer game in 4 days
After discussing the idea of creating a game together over a long weekend for many months, David was inspired by my Halloween sketches as a good starting point for a game.
Today we started out having a lively discussion over breakfast about proportions and screen sizes. David went to work, prepping our ‘war room’, while Claudia prepped the turkey.
Before (David’s work station was in the room to the right; not pictured = far, far away)
After (now we can truly work – together, side by side – should we so wish)
Guess where we are sitting now, writing this post? Extra bonus points!
David had primarily worked with smaller screens and with the main character being 32×32 px, he wanted to experiment going slightly larger, possibly even 64x64px. Then – his wife entered the scene and insisted that the main character could be nothing less than 96x96px. So, that’s where we are. 96x96px it is. For the character. The screen/window thus is going to be 1280x768px.
Oh, and by the way it is going to be sort of a side scroller game (which David had never done before. Claudia neither – obviously).
The first screenshot shows our experiments with proportions of the screen size, the GUI, the main character and various objects, plus a bit of David’s coding (Claudia had not yet added her artistic touch to the process).
A little later in the afternoon David had developed a working prototype, which allowed the main character to fly around the screen. Claudia had drawn the main character (line drawing + in the game/screenshot circled below), scanned and colored it, added a first tree and flower and both of us were satisfied with the proportions.
The last stage of today’s progress involved different kind of trees and a more robust motion system, which allows the witch to transition between flying and walking modes… including gravity and wind drag effects…
David is such a geek. And lovable, too.
Tomorrow we’re looking to give the witch something interesting to do… perhaps collecting ingredients for a magic potion, and, for sure, more refined art from Claudia.
But for now – nighty night, we are in turkey coma.
But, we will keep you updated and write a post each day for the rest of this week.
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done.
Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it.
While they are deciding, make even more art.”
Why don’t you join me along my journey and follow me on 
Drop me a comment and you’ll make me smile!
