The Lair of the Monkey

Well, it’s early in the morning (though it won’t be by the time this update goes up) and I’ve begun work on my Half Life 2 masterpiece.  Only it isn’t much of a masterpiece yet, as these things take time to learn.  However, I’m quite pleased with my progress so far.  I’ve made an empty room with a start point, various textures on the walls, and a barmy texture on the floor that does funny things to the eyes.  More importantly, it compiles without bugs and does nothing too weird - all of which I’m happy about. 

The next stage is to create some more entities in there, such as a couple of bad guys - standard drones really.  I’m going to try and create a slightly bigger map, and give it to a friend to play tommorow.  With the stuff I’ve learned tonight (yeah okay, the tutorial was aimed at developing CS maps) I think I should just about be able to scrape something together.  Part of the fun is the challenge, and seeing something come together that you’ve thought about is brilliant. 

I’m enjoying playing around with the console too.  I think the best thing about exploring what the Hammer editor can do is how much more you appreciate the work that’s gone into the game.  Yes, okay, so the story could have still done with work.  However, when you think that even every light source has been considered and had to be placed BY HAND it puts things a little in perspective.  Games are very much a work of art, and good games are the works of true craftsmen.  Valve, I salute you.  Well, until later this evening, I shall bid you adieu.  I’m off to try and make two rooms and an intersecting tunnel.  Not as easy as it sounds my dears!

N.B.  Just to give you some background, my eventual aim it to make a map/mission that is based around certain horror movie set pieces, though I’m not particularly interested in making it too similar to the Ravenholm section of HL2, even though that was very well done.  I want to try to have some trigger-events that really spook the player, something akin to the stuff seen in F.E.A.R., but we’ll see how it goes from here.  I’m quite happy so far though with my learning.

Choose Your Fighter

The problem with doing something so engraved in any gamers memory is that,
no matter how much or little you played Street Fighter, everyone has a
favourite Street Fighter. Obviously the main two characters had to be Ryu
and Ken, the characters most closely associated with Street Fighter,
included because they are so integral to the story and the mythos, but who
else?

Yes there are characters who have been in from the beginning, and characters who played vital parts in the ongoing story, and even characters who left the gaming screen to try their hand at the movie business (although why the British Cammy is played by an Australian and the American Guile is played by Jean Claude Van Dam is anybody’s guess) but with so many to choose from the choice quickly became a chore.

For the third character I decided that a woman was needed since Street
Fighter is quite male dominant, and as a Streets of Rage type game 3
characters to start with seemed like a sensible number. Once this decision
was made the choice of who would make the starting line up became a whole
lot easier. Street Fighter 2, despite its various incarnations only had
Cammy and Chun Li and not getting the chance to play the alpha games, hence
not knowing any others female characters apart from Sakura, and being too
much like Ken and Ryu she was instantly disqualified.

The final choice basically lay with whom I liked the most and not being one for Chun Li
(sadly despite my accumulated years of SF experience I could never use her
that well and this infuriated me in a deep profound way) the third character
in the starting line up became Cammy (it didn’t have anything to do with the outfit then? - ed).

Now this is by no means the end of the character debate, in fact it has only
just begun. As part of the grand scheme it has been decided that there must
be at least some unlockables, for what kind of games designer would I be
without rewarding the diligent and determined, in fact I’d be setting a poor
moral example for all, so it is safe to assume that at some point in the
development process I’ll be returning to this dilemma.

The main objective of this decision was to give me a list of characters I would be designing the game for, give some indication of how their story would play out and how
they would control and play in the foreign Streets of Rage combat system.
Mission accomplished, I can now get down to the really hard part, making the
game!

Development Diary - 10/06/2006
When I mentioned to Mr Butterscotch, the proud creator of this very site, that I was developing a complete game he suggested that I should keep a diary of my progress, my victories, my defeats and everything that lies between. As it happens I thought this was a very good idea, and upon seeing my interest offered to post the diary on The Lair of the Monkey.

I immediately jumped onboard, knowing fine well that I have a habit of starting so many things at once that I get swamped down and not finishing them for months, seeing the published diary as convenient tool to keep me focused and on track. Another benefit became apparent a couple of days later as coding began produce some results (just the basic underlying code of the game engine) and that was rather than take my usual cowboy approach of adding things as they come up I began to design and plan in more detail.

Maybe this is because other people will actually see my battle with addiction (yes, I know how much of a geek I am, but you can’t argue that I am not indeed L337) or perhaps I’m just growing as a developer, it being my job description nowadays, whatever the reason it can only aid the design and quality of the finished product. But what is the product you ask? Well the clever marketing answer would be, keep coming back to see how the product progesses over the coming weeks, but I never was one for the marketing side of things (leave that to me, we’ll make you rich yet - ed), leading nicely into… (more…)