Gushing About: Spider-Man 2

     Everybody liked the Spider-Man 2 game right? One of the greatest licensed movie games ever right? But people only remember the most fun parts. The free roaming around New York and stopping crimes. Do you think a game with only that in it, fleshed out of course, would stand on its own?

     With the new Spider-Man movie coming out I got to thinking about how an HD game with just the free roaming of Spider-Man 2 would be. There is something that feels great about that game that I wish was expanded upon. This could work with Superman too even. Maybe I should make a 3D open world super hero game someday. Then of course there's Sony's inFamous which I think handles the idea really well already.

     What are your thoughts on Spider-Man 2 and super hero games in general? Talk with me in the comments below.

Lessons Learned From Feed The Plant

     Taking the detour of quickly making my spin on Flappy Bird was a very refreshing and fun experience. It's rewarding having a fun and simple game out there. It's a favorite among the people who normally playtest my games. I've proven to myself that if I were to make another arcade style game, simplification is the way to go. Feed The Plant was my chance to limit myself to a small game with no progression features or plug-in integration I wasn't comfortable with.

      It's pick-up and play nature has given me further insight into the bite-sized nature I have in mind for my future RPGs. Alongside that I learned a thing or two about shrinking my game file sizes, I practiced spriting to the point were I feel like I can draw anything, and I figured out an interesting bit about making app icons.

Have a postmortem-ish breakdown below.

PCT Open House - Spring 2014 (Gaming & Simulation)

     My college's open house happened on Saturday and some students and I volunteered to help with the Gaming and Simulation presentations and represent what BGS majors are capable of. I had a lot of fun and got everything I wanted and more out of the experience. Get the details of that experience below.

Making My First Debug Menu

      I never needed to use a built-in debug to make a game before because my previous titles were all small and arcade oriented. Making changes for testing was just a matter of changing a bit of code and running the game again. A complex RPG has a lot of things to manage and balance and the quickest way to test everything would be to sidestep rebuilding the game.

      Having a menu to change variables around will make it so that I don't have to change tons of code and keep track of what I'm messing with. Because of so much save data being involved, being able to mess with it all this way is the safest option. I don't want to risk messing up a system so fragile.

     I'll have a video of the debug tool in action once there's more to show. Right now there are just buttons with empty methods and changeable text.