For those who have found their way to this ridiculous site… welcome.
Here I will catalog the trials and tribulations of an independent game developer as beginnings and further progress get underway. I may also pop on to rant about this or that topic if I’m bored (technology), drunk (religion), or both (politics). For now this page’ll house news about the development of a game called “Blobyrinth”. This cute little sokoban title has already undergone about three months of development, but progress is extremely slow due to my day job and other obligations. Part of why I’m starting up this blog is to help motivate me to complete the project — and intentions publicly declared always push a bit harder than those just considered, methinks.
Well. Let’s begin with a screenshot of what we’ve got so far:
We’ve got a nice little blob, some slime… some red enemy blobs that don’t do anything… some bricks that you can push around, coins and gems to pick up, and a single door that opens and closes (with the right magic words). Not much going on here other than Torque 2D working its magic. The blob proper and his slime are particle effects created and handled in the engine’s rather capable editor, and everything else so far is pretty much stock T2D. I’ve done some light tweaking of the engine, but I’ll save those details for another day.
Next up on the list is updating to T2D 1.1 alpha. It may seem a bit drastic to pull an alpha code release down on top of myself, but it has some handy new things, and I don’t think the port will be too difficult. Plus, the naming conventions are going to stay the same from here on in, so future updates will be more easily integrated; I might as well get it over with before I modify anything further.
The game, when fin, should feature:
1.) some odd 50 or 60 levels of sokoban madness
2.) color-changing blobs, lots of stuff to collect, enemy blobs to avoid/absorb, mind-bending puzzles to keep you up late, etc.
3.) amusing/amazing musical stylings
4.) online high-scores
5.) multiple mini-games to keep you amused and distracted
Now some publicly declared intentions:
Blobyrinth will be commercially available by March 1.
Many thanks for visiting and I hope you visit occasionally to watch the madness unfold…
-Tim