03 3 / 2012
Technology and Game Style
I know what you are thinking - it takes dozens of people many months of hard work to design and implement a game. I’m going to talk about a few of the ideas I have in mind for making this process easier for myself.
I have some experience with implementing games using Flash, however for this project I want to explore new technologies like HTML5’s canvas and also use this as an excuse to become more competent in Javascript. However, I am a designer first and a novice programmer at best so I will enlist the help of a Javascript game engine such as Crafty, which is open source. It uses a component based system, and for someone like me that’s very familiar with JQuery, this could be the go. There are lots of other useful resources for HTML5 game development as I am discovering such as this simple polygon tool which could be used for mapping out a scene.
As for the game style, I want to avoid characteristics that might involve a massive learning curve for me (such as anything physics-based), and am leaning towards a point-and-click adventure game like one of my favourite games of all time Day of the Tentacle, a style which is also alive and well today as evidenced by popularity of this kickstarter project. This style of game lends itself well to exploring and engaging in a story. The player will have a range of actions available (eg talk to, pick up, look at, walk to) to interact with scenes, other characters and items. Therefore one of the main functional requirements will be an inventory system. I am hoping to use Crafty to get a simple demo of an inventory system up in the next week or two.
Meanwhile, I am working on the content and the story, which with this simpler style of gameplay will be essential to convey the message of the game. Stay tuned, as story and content will be the subject of my next post!
