Monday, December 10, 2012

Coming Out

It feels so good to be out of the closet.  Here is my big admission!

I am a wannabe indie game hacker!!!
The crowd shuffles nervously.  Is she for real?  Wow - brave to come out like that, but geez those folks who think they can be indie game coders - soooo llaaaaaammmme.
Well if I ever worried what people thought I would never do anything.  :-)

Here's a screenshot of very early days game screens, just to show that I'm not completely delusional.

Ethex Screenshot (C) Sarah Smith 2012

What's it all about?  What kind of a game is it?  What's the tech stack, platform, genre?  How did you create that artwork?  Well - keep posted, subscribe to the blog and all will be (incrementally) revealed.

So this blog post marks the beginning of a few things for me:
  • I am officially taking my indie game coding efforts seriously
  • This right here is going to be my development blog
    • updates on progress
    • screenshots
    • insights on the game design process
    • sez-cam: developer eye view of game dev in the raw
  • I will also post random tutorials, learnings and snippets
  • Commit to posting here at least a couple of times a week
And, when my game gets to the point I can publish, you'll know it right here, first thing.

Why would I do all this?  Haven't I got a game to write?  Well, yeah - but its hard hacking away by yourself in a room.  This blog is my way of letting you all in to shine a little light, keep me sane, and maybe lend some encouragement on the way.

In return I hope there's some useful stuff, some entertainment and a few lessons.

Oh, and quick note to the "borrowers" looking for free game art and resources - my definition of success here is that my game makes money.  I don't want to give away my art for free.  I want to make a living out of making games so I can keep doing it.  So this is not a site full of free stuff: if I post some images here or any other game resources, unless I say otherwise they're not for folks to dump into some knock-off game and call it their own work.  Didn't I use Free technologies, and other free stuff from kind people?  Yes!  Doesn't that mean I should in turn give away what I do?  No!  Hey, I hope that is obvious.  Any questions about this contact me in the comments.

Code is an exception mostly: in general in code I post here will have a notice on it that you can use it for whatever you like.  The full source code for the game is not going to be open-sourced, but I have a plan to make as much of the framework of it as I can open-source eventually.  That is I want to split out the artwork and content from the machinery - but that has to be a secondary goal to making a real working game.

So welcome.  And please keep up the commentary - here or on my Google plus account, check the side bar for details of that.

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