Gushing About: SPORE

     This game... Is a lot of things. From what I hear most often it was mostly a disappointment. Spore was hyped up for years and it became my first PC game. That was when I found out it didn't quite live up to the spectacular industry changer I thought it would be. It released in 2008 (geez that feels like an eon ago) at a time where I wasn't allowed to  play video games on school nights (parents, right?). I was allowed to play this because I convinced my parents that it was educational and tied into evolution and space exploration which were two things I was studying in science class.

     Because of all the hype and my video game starvation I was able to make the most out of this game. It wasn't perfect but I didn't care because like all the people who remember having an NES and a library of 6 games, it was all I had. My old computer was slow and clunky even on the lowest settings, but the game still looked beautiful because it wasn't a sheet of paper or news program. I liken this feeling to how hungry I get at a cross-country meet. After you run the fastest 5K in your life you dive for any kind of nourishment you can get. I used to hate gingersnaps until I finished a race and end up wolfing down an entire box of those rock-hard cookies on the way home. When you're starving for a game it tastes that much better and that's what Spore is to me.

     With Spore being my only weekday video game I was able to make the most out of what it did have to offer. A fun creature creator, an amusing cell stage hunting game, and a gigantic galactic conquest system. Even now I can play Spore for those reasons and still have a blast for a short while. Skip over the features I didn't like and dive right into the good stuff. Spore actually has a nostalgic value for me now because of this history I have with it. I wonder if anyone else has a game they forced themselves to love forever?

Using New Tile Map Skills

     Shortly after starting to place dungeon tiles the old fashioned way I realized that it would take forever. Why not use tile mapping to save the background image as a prefab then place non-tile objects over that? It'll even save total memory in the final executable. So now I'm using the tilemap strategy I learned last week to make all the levels. It should be done by tomorrow. Then placing everything (besides enemies) should take another day.

    I thought using this tile map editor would be amazing and dear lord is it a dream. What once took hours can be done in minutes. Tons of boredom and hand cramps resolved with a simple drag & drop interface. 2D Toolkit is beautiful and it continues to make my job way easier.

Found Extra App Stores

     Gamasutra always has something new to show me and my latest discovery is this handy list of other appstores I can put my games on. I've only used Samsung, Amazon, Google Play, and iTunes so far. If my experience on Samsung proves anything, getting featured on a less crowded appstore can go really well. Even if only 15K people use a particular store, that's 15K people who didn't know about my games.

   I'll wait until Unicorn Training is done and in that break time between school semesters I can put all my other apps everywhere at once. Just in time for the holidays. I don't really feel like spending a whole day preparing for these markets just yet. I'd feel better if my first RPG went up when I join this new network. I'm not expecting any revenue from the things I have so far anyway.

Some Unicorn Training Tiles

     Yesterday I made a bunch of tiles for the dungeons and today I'm going to start making template items to make the map making more efficient. Things like bundles of trees, spike pit patterns, and common wall shapes to plant on tileland maps like I did for the forest. Those stones in the top left are switches and vanishing walls which make up a lot of the dungeon room puzzles. The colorful ball on a pedestal will be animated to flash through those colors. Players will use it to select a dungeon or boss to fight.

    (Also I updated the games page with some pictures to make the side projects section more lively.)