11.5.2009

When I was little, a wee child, I continuously drew game layouts—mostly just mazes with monsters and traps drawn along the paths—and sketched out concepts for games often having to do with space or ground combat. I always had an interest in creating games, but I didn't know of a good way to go about doing it, and the idea of learning to code or program something from scratch was intimidating, since it was quite mysterious and complicated to me.

I never found an easy-to-learn vehicle to help me design a game until many years later when I discovered Starcraft's Map Editor: which I enjoyed and explored thoroughly, but found it rather limited in many respects. It was only designed to create campaign levels, and I was using it to create RPGs. I got pretty far, but later gave up on it (You can only stretch the imagination so far with the units they provide you. After calling a Terran Siege Tank a Red Dragon, I questioned the viability of my projects with the Map Editor). Since then, I haven't tried creating games until now.

Just a few days ago, I drew/wrote up a rough outline of a game idea on paper, and soon after, began reading a beginner's guide to creating Flash games online. To my surprise, it wasn't as difficult to understand as I thought it would be. The moment I completed my first lesson, I was thrilled to see the effects of coding work in Flash. I had no idea how much fun I'd have learning to use ActionScript (one of Flash's programming languages) in Flash for the purpose of creating a game.

And since then, I haven't stopped thinking of and working on developing my game further.

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Anyway, the game is set in space, and I plan to have it be a medley of what I enjoyed most in a handful of older sci-fi games which I've played in the past: Starflight, Master of Orion, Escape Velocity, and Hardwar. As of now, I plan to make it an RPG mixed with adventure and strategy.

This is a HUGE project idea, probably one of the largest project ideas I've had so far, however, as opposed to the other projects I've worked on, this has been the most rewarding and instantly-gratifying (It's so awesome to program functions into a picture — more specifically a frame in Flash — and make it do exactly what you want it to do!)

Anyway, if you guys and gals are interested in hearing about my story ideas and game concepts, and are willing to listen to me asking for game-related advice, I'll continue to post updates about it. If not, I'll just keep my journals art-related : )

Either way, expect a good amount of game-related concept art to begin appearing in my scraps, once I get over my initial learning curve for coding.

PS - If any of you know of good resources about creating games in Flash, or if are good at creating Flash games yourself, please let me know.