An Introduction to Old Man Game Development

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Mit
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An Introduction to Old Man Game Development

Post by Mit » Thu Sep 08, 2016 12:32 pm

Hello. Welcome.

Here you will find notes and discussions concerning the game projects I work on in my spare time. Many of these games are barely more than ideas, many of the ideas are barely games. Um. Some have been worked on for months, some for minutes. Rarely do any of the games approach being 'complete'. Many aren't even vaguely playable and most don't look very good.

Being an Old Man, I easily lose track of things. Sometimes I wake in a morning with a burning desire to make something about something, convinced its one of the best ideas ever, which obviously it isn't. Usually I've forgotten all about it by teatime.

Sometimes I will work on these games intensely for days, sometimes I will do nothing constructive for months. (Though I'm pretty much always doing something occasionally, quietly, in the background). Often I have to work, or look after the family, or potter about the garden, and so frequently I don't have time to make things as good as they should be, or fix things that should really be fixed.

Being an Old Man, I don't like Fancy New Technology (FNT). The games here are built using my own, antiquated C/C++ game engine, built slowly over many years, occasionally making use of open-source technology when it doesn't seem too scary. Don't expect anything that looks very modern or runs efficiently. I don't do it this way because its the best approach to making games, I do it because I'm an Old Man and I like doing things my way.

Along similar lines, I look at all the stuff that we have to do these days in the name of game development and mass media culture and I hark back to simpler, not-at-all-realistic days when a small group of people could get together across the globe and play a few random games without fear of abuse or prejudice, without requiring a statistical analysis of motivational requirements, without a carefully planned series of carrots and sticks. That's because I'm an Old Man, you see, in practical terms a dinosaur.

Many things here have been made with the help of other Old Men, most notably 'Fooli' who, amongst other things, is a Grade 3 Amateur 3d Modeller. There's a big list of others 'without whom none of this would have been possible' which I really need to write up one day, and to top that 'The Universal...' is the work of many hands. We're always in need of more.

So that's the basis. If you happen to like any of these games enough to play them for a while, or better still, give me some money for 'em, or buy membership, then we're all happy bunnies living in a field of perpetually fresh grass.

mitch

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