Want to work in the game industry?

I've had a few people telling me that they want to get into the game industry. Since I don't have a lot to say about DD2 right now (I was on vacation last week, studied alternative methods of storing game data the week before, and have mostly been looking for a new job this week) I thought I would go over the different positions in a game company.

Producer - These are the people that talk with the publishers and are basically the boss of a team. They make sure that everyone is working on the right thing and that everything will finish on time. Producers need good management skills and good writing and speaking skills.

Designer - Designers are the people that not only come up with ideas about games, but also the people that end up doing a lot of the grunt work on a game. For example, while making My Japanese Coach we would get a large sound file from a two hour recording session. A designer would then use a tool to cut the sound files, name them, and get me a list of sounds that had pops or clicks in the recording that needed to be redone.

Programmer - Programmers are the people that write the code that makes everything happen. For major games we usually use C/C++. Smaller games may be written in C# (such as Xbox live arcade games), Java, Flash Actionscript, and even PHP.

Artist - Artists are the guys that make all the action worth looking at. I'll let Peter go into more detail about the types of artists that work on games since he knows a lot more about it.

Tester - Yay! Play games all day long and get paid for it! Hehe, sorry. It sounds a heck of a lot better than it is. First off, the games that you are testing are not finished games up until the very end, so you'll be playing a broken game. Over and over and over again. Also, you don't get to just choose which games you'll be testing. After a few months of testing on Barbies Fabulous Pony Ride you might not be so excited ever the idea of being a game tester anymore.

Of course there are also the other jobs that will be in most companies, such as human resources and IT.

Is there a job you want to about in more detail? Any question? Leave a comment!

IGDA Night

I think I've mentioned that I'm a member of the local IGDA (Independent Game Designers Association). Every three months they have a big get-together where we can display the games that we're working on. Two bloggers mention what games where there, and of course they both mentioned us! Check out Rampant Games and Monkey-Time for more information. And as Jay at Rampant Games mentions, the game did crash a few times during the night. That'll teach me to try adding new features as I'm walking out the door to demo it. >_< I did get all the bugs fixed the day after.

Also, what most people got excited about was the game maker. So I took another look at it and ... didn't like what I saw. Sure, it's nice and easy to use in many instances, but it still has a few things in it that I think will be an inconvenience later on. So... I'm re-writing it. Not really from scratch, but I won't be finished this week. I'm also looking at saving the data differently, since the current method requires me to have all the game data loaded at the same time.

Lastly, when Peter and I were chatting we came up with a new game idea. By this time the response from us was just to write it down to look at it later. By the time we finish Darkened Dreams we will easily have more than 100 game ideas.

-Califer

P.S. Good to know we at least have one reader left.

Screenshot

Here's what it looks like. Our first "screenshot" with "final" art.

Feelin' RACEY

In the world of Darkened Dreams there are two different races. There are the humans, the normal inhabitants of the world, and there are the Heroes, the creatures summoned from a different planet to combat the encroaching darkness, kill annoying creatures, and in general be heroes. Since you can't play as a human, and can't get a human on your team (since they're all either too lazy or too weak) the difference in race isn't anything that I had to worry about code-wise.

The thing is, Darkened Dreams isn't the focus anymore. I'm sure that there will be people out there who want to have different races in the game, so they can have a group of a human, an elf, an orc, and a cute sidekick thing they make up just for their game. Because of this I've put some extra effort in to allowing players to make races and classes in the game maker.

Peter's been getting some work done on the UI, and it is looking NICE!! I'm not quite finished putting it all into the actual game yet though. I'm sure Peter will get a new screenie up when he's got it 100% ready.

-Califer

Darkened Dreams has lost the focus

That sounds kind of bad, leaving it just like that. The reality is that Darkened Dreams is no longer the main focus of our current project. What it is now is a RPG making tool. I was considering giving it a nice name since Darkened Dreams is going to be the name of the first mod that you can play with the maker. RPG Maker. That sounds good. Oh wait, that name is taken.

The question that should shoot up first is "Why are you making an RPG making program? Doesn't RPG maker already do that?" Yes, it does. There are a few problems with it, however. It can get pretty complex in trying to figure everything out, and it's pretty expensive. The DD2 maker will be more simplified, as well as being cheaper. You can even make games and post them on our site to sell them. Also, RPG Maker employs a traditional view, where DD2 maker has a new style of gameplay. Check the movies if you want to see what I'm talking about ;)

-Califer

What am I doing?

I've been building us a nifty website. It's going to be Flash based, so things will move in a fanciful way. Should be online in a week or two, I'm guessing.

Fight!

It's come to the time to put fighting into the game! There are a number of things that will be different about fighting this time around from the original game. For those just joining us, the original game can be found here. The fighting is now going to be time-based instead of input-based. If you haven't selected a special ability or item by the time you need to have an attack in you will simply attack with your weapon, so it shouldn't be too hard to use.

Another thing that will change from the original is the accuracy. Missing happened far too much at lower levels. You could get a whole page of "you missed the bunny." "The bunny missed you" before getting a hit when you were just starting. There will still be a chance of missing attacks, but it will be relatively rare (5-10%).

I hope to have all the timing set up correctly before going to bed tonight, but actually doing damage, showing the numbers, and showing the damage animations will have to wait until at least tomorrow.

-Califer

P.S. Peter's been getting stuff done too. He should probably post soon.