Going through my folder of projects from last year, I came to a realization…

That realization being that I've done very little in the way of game development, when compared to, say, 2012, 2011… Even 2010.

I blame the fact that I'm getting fussier about my projects, and I don't like releasing WIPs anymore.

Well, without further ado, lets dive in.

Contrast

Apparently I made this around February 2013, though I didn't do anything with it. So it's just a few tiles thrown together with a box character.

Hunter

This still makes me rage. What was I thinking? Curse you slipstreamed Win 7 install disc… Curse you…

Usually I hate my animations and sprites to a certain degree. With Hunter, I spent time ogling them because somehow I had just 'nailed' the animation.

Specifically, the rats:

The animation on the rats was so good, I went and redesigned the player from scratch just because the old one didn't fit the animation quality.

Not really planning on continuing this; I'll be working on fresh games this year.

BitForce original

Around January last year I had a vague idea of creating a shmup. Something similar to Star Soldier/Star Force, with shiny bullets, boss patterns and a few other ideas I probably have written down somewhere.

It was looking pretty good:

Lost the original GMK/GM81 in the wipe. Started remaking it using the sprites I managed to salvage/rip from screenshots:

Started work on it again yesterday. That's my new logo, the name I'm developing under, and a fancy spawn animation I spent too much time trying to get 'right'.

Heist

So, for once I finished a Ludum Dare project. And for my first submission, it finished pretty strong. 30th overall, 10th for something else.

Might revisit the project and add more levels to it one day.

Rocket Runner

Didn't do nearly as well as Heist did, but it still ended up doing quite well in the following Ludum Dare.

Sometime around somewhere here the wipe happened

I lost some things. Hunter being the worst. Also a lot of gameplay changes to Exile, new art and thing like that.

It was extremely discouraging, and I nearly threw in the towel… again…

Emul8

After the wipe, I started a few projects I felt like tackling; specifically ones that had very little to do with game development directly.

The first one was a CHIP-8 emulator.

CHIP-8 was essentially a VM designed for a certain range of computers in the 70s and 80s that allowed for simple games to be written that didn't have to be ported between hardware (Only the VM runner had to be ported).

Anyway, wrote an emulator in about two days:

That's one of the original ROMs designed for it. Played it for a few minutes.

Wrote my own assembler for this too; writing assemblers is pretty fun.

Unnamed RPG

Since I had RPG Maker VX, I decided to try making a completely custom RPG with it. Here are a few screenshots you may remember:

Not working on it. Because laziness and RPGs are big…

Unnamed FPS

At some point I started tinkering with Exile's engine again and managed to get the multi-layered maps to work again.

Started working on a simple thing where I could shoot things.

Added in gamepad control to this.

And thus started the first in a long series of changes and additions to the engine I created for Exile…

Abyss

I decided to join 7DFPS for once. Started with the bare bones of the engine I had left over from Exile (New branch, not the one I was using for the above project) and began a frantic seven days of trying to make it into something.

This marked the first time I'd ever used shaders in my games for lighting. The lighting used here is basic hemispheric lighting, and yes. It's horrible. I know.

The 'game' itself wasn't what I spent those seven days working hardest one though. My little GM made editor for Exile was really getting on my nerves. So one night after much caffeine during the jam, I started making an editor in the engine.

Then I integrated the editor into Abyss, since heck, why keep it separate?

Its a quirky editor, the 3D detection for raising/lowering ceilings is fudged and FUBAR'd like you wouldn't believe… but it's so much nicer than the damned one I made for Exile.

Highlights include being able to quickly switch into 3D mode to test changes (With or without shaders enabled so lighting can be tested too).

And then Lightbound

S4D. Started two games, submitted one.

Again I was using the engine from Exile which needs a better name (It's actually called Spectrum internally), and started working on general improvements to the Abyss branch.

Nailed the lighting:

Textures were mostly 'borrowed' from various free texture sites while I was testing. The lighting system supports bump-mapping, dynamic lighting, and takes specular/diffuse/ambient components into consideration for objects (So I can have glowy objects, shiny metallic objects, dull objects, etc).

Kinda felt I went too far with this. The lighting practically demands high detail models. And I suck at making high detail models.

Fortunately, shaders. I'll can modify them :P

This is my current go-to engine for my major projects. I still work a lot with GM though; it's just nice to be able to forget about the background details and just focus on the game logic.

Darkness/DarkNES

This is what I actually submitted to S4D.

Sans the test level, anyways. I was really pleased with the way I scripted the boss in this. First time I've made such a colossal boss, and the first time I've used separate sprites for an enemy/boss.

I have been working on this slowly. Have a whole long design doc written on a stack of papers somewhere in my room…

Oh, and let us not forget my NES experiment:

Cancelled F4D project - Winter's Grasp

Not much to say. I'm just really feeling burnt out for some reason.

Forgotten project: Marine

Started this before I started Darkness. Kinda like a Contra clone.

Have the usual running-around-the-level mechanic working, as well as aiming in eight directions. Don't think I'll be doing too much work on it this year.

The End

It was a relatively productive year I guess. I made major improvements to the Spectrum engine, at the very least.

And at the same time, I've come up with some new ideas. And those will be what I am going to focus on this year.

What I'm not going to do this year is post any screenshots, videos, blogs or any related content that involves my new projects. At this point, I don't think that critique during development is going to help me; lets leave that until after I release something.

On that note, if I do release something this year that I feel is a good play, I'm gonna try to get it published on GOG. Because I can. :P