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2010/12/03 (Villainmad): Game Making
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Those of you who are following me on Twitter may have noticed that I was making a game. I wanted to make a danmaku game using Game Maker, because hey, you can't program games in PHP, and game-making software handles a bazillion different things which I'd have to deal with on my own if I was programming it from scratch. This was as test to see how well it could handle hundreds of objects at once (before I tried to plunge into the raw mess of 3D graphics in Game Maker), and this was what I made after that, once I implemented dying and making enemies die instead (the controls are the same as Touhou, bar weird keyboard shit). I used assets from a "how to make a shmup" tutorial which was mostly a "how to make a 1945 clone" tutorial given the assets it came with. The real game is to be called Villainmad, and H.C. Staff is kind enough to help with art assets for the two heroines, Lexy Striker (the Marisa-looking biker) and Hiyasu Ikoma (the Rei-esque android).
Now. Ever since I publicly expressed my intentions of making this game, I've more or less continuously receiving the message, from all sorts of different directions, that relying on Game Maker is not a valid long-term strategy, or even a good short-term one, for making Real Games.™ Especially if I wanted to sell them, or translate them into languages with symbols that aren't on an American keyboard (the concept of unicode does not exist in Game Maker's alphabet). So I decided, screw that.
New plan: I am going to learn C# and make games with XNA. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of things I could be doing which are supposedly easier, or which have a quicker path to "just making the game," but at the top of the list is going right back to Game Maker. In compiling this proverbial list, I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to make Real Games,™ I was going to have to figure out programming-from-scratch (or not-quite-scratch) sooner or later, so I might as well get it done now. Yeah, the project is going to be a whole lot harder and longer than it was when I was just using Game Maker, but the bigger they are, the more satisfying the crash when they hit the ground. I'm going to view the problems and obstacles ahead of me as challenges, not objections.
Next: 2010/12/11 (Villainmad): She may not look like much, kid, but she's got it where it counts.
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14 Comments (auto-closed) 
Player Three
Does that mean Marisa looking at the Touhouverse's dizzy.pestermom.com would be quite prophetic?
Ah well. I shall look forward to seeing how this develops. And if you need beta testers...well, there's the sorry lot of us.
-ED
Neat! I know you don't accept donations, but would it be possible to gift you a programming book or something?
Dizzy H. Slightly Voided
My main plan is to google for C# tutorials, thus saving both of us money.
And the main reason I don't accpet donations is that my desire for more money is way less than my laziness re: actually setting stuff up.
-ED
So much for my dastardly plan to guilt-trip you into taking on and finishing a huge project because "some guy on the internet gave me a free book and I'd feel bad for not having something to show for it". :)
I'll get you next time, Muffin. Nexxxxxxxt tiiiiiiime!
sRc
actually I found a pretty decent book for starting C# recently that is genuinely free, while looking for a good resource for a friend of mine to learn C#: The C# Yellow Book.
I'd suggest taking a look through that at some point, there were several things I learned while reading through it to evaluate it that I never knew about the language
Copycat Zero
Good luck with that (said sincerely, not sarcastically). I've learned Java and C++ at various points (and then promptly forgot most of them a semester or two later), and it's not all that hard to pick up the programming itself, so much as it is figuring out how the components work together, what the optimal configuration for the code should be, and (more importantly) where you lost that damn semicolon that's keeping your program from compiling.
Kaiser
Muffin... lazy enough to not accept donations but not lazy enough to create a video game from basically scratch.
Good luck with that project Muffin. Make sure you update us on how well it is going(or more likely informing us what not working correctly). I'm sure that some of us want to know how well it is doing and maybe we can help you somehow, though I will admit I'm probably not much help.
linkhyrule5
Good luck! I've been thinking about doing something similar but I have way too little time on my hands.
But, does this mean the Nekokayou hiatus is extended? :(
Wymar
Card games Danmaku on motorcycles! *shot*
Jokes aside, will the game have any special features?
Houraiguy
Oh ma gurd this can either be epic or suckage.
I'll take imaginary bets on which it is with imaginary interweb cookies.
I'm leaning toward epic for the moment, but that's mostly because I haven't actually tried to look up what the hell Villainmad is.
Dizzy H. Slightly Voided
@Wymar: I didn't have anything hugely weird or idiosyncratic in mind, unless you count having both lives and health; I'm going to be controlling the density/speed/etc. of the bullet-patterns with a couple of different variables which can be changed on the options menu, offering more control over the difficulty. (But still with "Easy"/"Normal" etc. as "presets.")
@Houraiguy: Villainmad is my own creation, which I created myself. You are unlikely to find anything if you tried to look him up. :3c
xbolt
The easiest way is not always the best way. ;)
Good luck, Muffin!