As you can tell, I haven’t posted anything over here in a while. I’ve decided to continue blogging, but over on my new blog, lizgw. If you want to read more of my posts, that’s where I’ll be! This blog won’t be deleted, it just won’t be updated anymore. I hope you have a great day! ♥
SpeedTile and the Approaching Camping Trip
We’re leaving for our trip on Saturday! We’re going to spend two weeks camping, and then we’ll get back the day before my audition. I’m hoping to have a lot of fun and take a lot of pictures!
You know that game I was talking about a week or so ago? Well, I finished it! It’s called SpeedTile and you can play it here. I made it with pure JavaScript: no jQuery, no Phaser, nothing! It works on mobile and internet explorer as well, which is something I haven’t done before. I’m pretty proud of it. It’s short and simple, but I’m happy with the way that it turned out.
If there was one thing that I would make better, it would have to be the reaction time on mobile. If you play the game with a touchscreen, whether on your phone or tablet or whatever, sometimes nothing happens when you click a tile fast enough. This is super annoying, and has to do with how mobile browsers are built. There’s a 300 millisecond delay between your tap and any events firing to allow time for double tapping. It’s nice when you’re on a regular website, but when you’re playing a game that involves speed it’s pretty annoying.
I did my best to disable it, but it’s still kind of weird. The script I used to counter it is way over my head, and I’m just going to leave it. If I ever think of a better way to fix that 300ms delay, you bet I’ll fix it.
The other day I got The Martian from the library and read it all in one night! I think it’s probably one of my favorite books,now. I’m excited for the movie in November!
Well, that’s all I have to talk about for now, so I’ll see you next time!
Another Game, Auditions, and Fireworks
Hi! I know I haven’t posted in almost two weeks (yikes), but not much has happened. I do have some stuff to talk about now though, so here’s an unorganized and ramble-y update!
I’ve finally started working on a new game, and I’m excited about this one because I decided not to use any sort of game engine or library. It’s just pure javascript. I’m doing it this way because while working on other projects I felt too dependent on my library and like I wasn’t actually learning anything. Not using a library on this project might make the going slower, but I’ve already learned so much that it’s worth it. Of course, there’s nothing bad about using a library. If it speeds up your work or helps you in any way, go for it. I just wanted to see what I could do without one, especially since I’m a beginner.
I also scheduled my audition for the summer show and it seems like all my worries and nervousness about it just kind of disappeared. The director was super nice and enthusiastic, and I’m really looking forward to auditioning. I can’t wait!
We’re also leaving for our trip in less than two weeks, and I’m looking forward to that as well. It’ll be nice to just get away from everything and spend some time camping and in the mountains. We’re going to see a lot of family too, so that will be good.
And I know it’s late, but happy Fourth of July! We watched the fireworks last night and I even got to watch the beginning of the first Captain America movie, so I would say I had a good day! Did you do anything fun, if you celebrated? I hope you enjoyed these words from a nerd, and I’ll see you next time!
Weekly Jams #5 (6/22/15)
- 2 Years by Breton
- Red Eyes by The War on Drugs
- Plane vs. Tank vs. Submarine by Tigers Jaw
- Seasons (Waiting on You) by Future Islands
- Dontcha by The Internet
Projects, Lessons, and Things to Do
So I haven’t posted in a few days, but I think I like it this way. I’ll only post when I have something to write about.
I think I’m going to start another project goal soon. The past week of doing nothing has been nice, but I miss having a goal to work towards. I feel like I’m wasting my time when I do nothing, even though I’m really not. I just get really antsy when I’m not creating anything, so I’m going to start that up again.
Yesterday I finished an online course that I was taking about how to get started in game development. I found it really useful. Most of the content was really applicable to me (the stuff that wasn’t was about budgeting and working with teams and stuff) and the stuff that wasn’t might be in the future. I feel like this course has prepared me and the next time I start a project I’ll be a lot more organized because of it. Earlier I would just decide that I wanted to make a game and then start making it, but now I have a guide for a process and I would actually have a plan.
I also started two other online courses. One is about how to make web pages and I’m afraid that I know all the information in the course (the instructor spent 5 pages teaching you how to make a folder on your desktop 
). I could have dropped it, but I think since I’m self-taught in code it would be nice to have an actual instructor in case I missed an important basic skill or something.
The second course that I’m taking is an introduction to JavaScript. I think that this course is going to be easy at times, but there is a lot of information that I don’t know and we’ve only had two lessons! The thing I like about this course is that it gets right into practical use. Most other courses that I’ve taken spend a long time on basic things that aren’t as useful right away. We were learning event handlers and functions on the second day, which can get you started pretty quickly.
Father’s Day is coming up soon, as well. I still need to make a gift of some sort. I’m pretty horrible with gift giving. I can never think of anything that the person would like, even if I’ve known them forever. I always end up procrastinating until the last minute, as well. I think I’m going to make a gift today, so I can finally stop stressing out about it.
Another thing that I need to do eventually is organize my Spanish notes. I took a Spanish course this year and I’m taking another one next year, and I don’t want to forget anything over the summer. I also want to have an organized reference for next year, in case I forget any of the basic stuff that we already learned. My binder is already pretty organized, but it could be a lot neater. And besides, I love rewriting notes in prettier handwriting. I think I’m going to be doing a lot of that next year.
I could also start a list of things that I need to pack for our trip, but there are still four weeks until we leave so that could probably wait a while. I think what I’m going to do today is work on that father’s day gift and then try to build on the game idea that I have. I might work on organizing those notes if I still feel up to it. I think I’m going to start that right now! I hope you enjoyed these words from a nerd, and I’ll see you next time!
A Ramble-y Update
I haven’t really been feeling up to writing blog posts lately. I’ve just kind of run out of inspiration and things that I can talk about for a whole post. So to get writing again, I’m just going to ramble on about a bunch of different things to get ideas and kind of update on where I am.
I have an idea for a game that I want to make. I came up with it a few months ago and it’s been stuck in the back of my head, refusing to disappear. It’s not fully formed yet, just kind of floating around in bits and pieces, but I have a general idea of what the game will be. It’s way above my level, though, so there are a lot of technical things that I need to learn before I start to develop it. I’ve worked a lot with the Phaser engine, but I don’t think I’m using it to its full extent yet. I still have a lot to learn about it.
One of my next goals is to make a platformer with Phaser and Tiled. I have the basics of working with Tiled down and I can make a simple map, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t know how to export it and use the JSON in a game or how to make an object layer and whatnot. Tiled seems like a useful tool that saves a lot of time, I just need to learn the more complex stuff that it can do.
Another possible thing that I might look into is RPG Maker. I saw the other day that you can buy it through Steam at a lower cost than I thought it was, so I may have to look into that. I already have the Lite version of VX Ace on my computer, so I’ll have to play around with that more. I want to see if I can work with the limitations or if I need to buy the full version. I know many people have made full games with only the lite version, so it’s not impossible. I just need to work with it.
Camp NaNo is also coming up, and I have no idea what I’ll be writing yet. Usually I end up planning a month or more in advance, but there are only a few weeks left and I have nothing. This isn’t a bad thing, though. It just means I’ll have less time to get bored with my idea, which usually happens. Less planning time might me better for me. I’m still on the fence of whether I’ll do it or not, though. For the last 2 weeks of July, I’ll be on a camping trip with a bunch of family and I won’t have much time to write. I might just wait until November to do another NaNo event.
My school is holding auditions for parts in the summer show. This time they’re doing Almost, Maine and I’m going to audition for it. I still have to read more about the play, but I’ve been working on the monologue that I have to give. This morning I went and cut out some lines so that it would fit in the time limit, but I made sure that it still flowed well. The bad thing is that auditions are on the day that we get back from our big camping trip, and I’ll be pretty exhausted. I’ll just have to make sure that when I sign up for my audition time that I pick a later time slot.
I think I’m also going to start working on a short story. I really want to write one, I’m just not sure what to write about yet. I’m sure I’ll come up with something, though. That’ll be one of my project goals this summer, I think. I’m already working on making a habit of writing at least fifteen minutes each day. I just set the timer and write, not worrying about quality that much.
I’ve also kind of abandoned working with Unreal. I don’t have the patience or skill set to make a full-fledged game in that yet, but it is kind of fun to poke around and see what I can do. I may just mess around in it and not actually make anything. I think if I try to do much of anything fancy, my computer might melt. I’ve abandoned my work in Blender as well, but that doesn’t bother me. I’m more focused on doing things with Phaser.
Even though I love Phaser, I think I’m going to research other game engines, just to see what’s out there. It’s nice to be well-versed in all kinds of different things, and who knows! Maybe I’ll find an engine that works for me even better than Phaser does.
I’ve also re-installed Steam and I finally got around to buying Portal. I’ve heard a bunch of good things about it but somehow never played it. I love it so far. I also bought a game called Don’t Starve, and it’s awesome as well. It’s a perma-death survival game that has lots of cool fantasy elements, and it somehow manages to be 2D and 3D at the same time. I think you should check it out.
So there we go! I feel a lot better about writing posts now. I feel more inspired and creative already, which is good. I don’t think I’m going to be as strict on the “one post every day” thing as much anymore. I don’t want to strain to write a post and end up writing something that’s horrible. So I’ll post when I feel like it or have something to talk about, which will still be pretty often. I hope you enjoyed these words from a nerd, and I’ll see you next time!
Weekly Jams #4 (6/15/15)
- Gun Has No Trigger by Dirty Projecters
- Fitzpleasure by alt-J
- Depreston by Courtney Barnett
- Bright Whites by Kishi Bashi
- Gotta Get Away by The Black Keys
And why was there no post yesterday, you ask? Well…
(But in reality, I was out for most of the day and then I bought a new game, and it just kind of goes downhill from there… ) 🙂
I hope you enjoyed these words from a nerd, and I’ll see you next time!
The Walking Lady is Finished!
My first video game is finally finished! And on time, too! The Walking Lady is live on my website here!
I published it last night and completely revamped my website today, so everything looks prettier. It took a lot of hard work and I’m super proud of it. I learned a lot while making it too, and I’m going to keep these lessons in mind when I make my next games.
Lesson 1: Plan First, Code Second
This seems like a given, but I started this game way back in the middle of May and then didn’t work on it for a few weeks. I spent a lot of time this week reworking old code and adding new features on top of each other. It felt like the improving would never end. For my next project, I’m going to plan out every single thing that’s going to happen in the game and then work from there.
Lesson 2: Deadlines!
My goal was to finish by yesterday, and I did! Without that deadline, I probably would’ve just stopped working on it after a day or two. Fighting the clock makes it easier for me to focus and not get sidetracked (as much).
Lesson 3: Working with Other People
For this project, my friend Simon made a lot of the graphics for the game. I learned a lot about working with people and how to do it even better next time. The biggest problem came from the fact that I had a specific vision in my head of what I wanted the game to look like, but I was really bad at communicating it. We both ended up remaking graphics (even though we did mockups), but we didn’t lose too much time. Working with others has its advantages and disadvantages, and I just need to figure out how to work with that.
Lesson 4: Be Organized
I’m already pretty organized, and for this project I had countless checklists and other things to stay on track. I ended up making a super detailed spreadsheet that Simon and I could both look at to keep track of who needed to do which graphics, and what they looked like. It was a huge help.
Lesson 5: Test Super Often
I always have a live preview open while I’m working, so I usually catch most bugs right after I write screwy code. I had my brother and other people come in and playtest it, and I managed to find and smash a bunch of bugs that way. Another thing that I never really thought about before this project was cross-browser stuff. It’s always sat at the back of my mind. I had to test it in Internet Explorer (ew, I know) to see if a certain problem was a browser issue and my game didn’t even load. At all. Apparently IE has weird sound support that keeps my audio from loading, so the game never leaves the preloader. I tried to fix it and nothing worked, so I just had to put in a message on the website telling people to upgrade their browsers if they were using IE. It’s not a great solution, but in the future I’m going to have to figure that out if I want people to play my games.
Lesson 6: Schedule and Process
Working on this project, I spent a lot of time backtracking and switching between code and graphics and sound and it felt like I was never getting anything done. Next time I think I would benefit from planning out everything that I need to do and then allot certain days to work on different aspects. That way I would completely finish one thing and not have to worry about it anymore.
Overall, I really enjoyed making The Waking Lady. It was a great learning experience, and I’m excited to start working on my next game. I hope you enjoyed these words from a nerd, and I’ll see you next time!
Why I Love NaNoWriMo
There’s no better time to write than in November. Why? Because that’s when NaNoWriMo is happening! Writers from all over the world gather at one website to take on the task of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. National Novel Writing Month is one of my favorite times of the year.
I participated for the first time in November 2014 and had a lot of fun. At first, I doubted my ability to do it. Writing 50k in a month while balancing school, life, and the holidays? Impossible! But I soon discovered that the challenge wasn’t as daunting as I originally thought. At the end of November, I ended up with a monster of a 70k manuscript.
Of course, that manuscript was complete garbage.
The point of NaNo is to get those words out and not be nitpicky over the quality. As Ray Bradbury said, “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.” My story was filled with plot holes and characterization issues and an ungodly amount of spelling errors (Pro tip: go back and fix your spelling errors when you make them. You’ll thank yourself later). I remember writing a scene that involved space ninjas (totally unrelated to a murder-mystery) breaking into my protagonist’s home just because I had no motivation and needed to boost my word count.
I think that the point of that November was to prove to myself that I actually could write that many words. I was capable of finishing something, no matter how terribly written it may be.
The same people who run November’s event also hold Camp NaNoWriMo in April and July. It’s more relaxed, and you can set your own word count goal from 10k to a million, I believe. I took part this past April and set my goal at 60k. April was much harder for me, word count-wise. The story itself was much better, but after the (first? second?) week, I was pretty much drained. (I’ll never try to write 8k in one day ever again!) I’m much prouder of the story I wrote in April, as this one has potential to be revised into something good.
I actually had intentions of revising it, but then I realized that my main character didn’t actually do anything, and I was going to have to rewrite everything from another character’s POV. I just kind of gave up, which sucks, but hopefully one day I’ll go back and revise (although I’m not counting on it).
NaNo is really good for discovering things about yourself, I think. In November I found that I could actually write that many words, and in April I discovered my love for writing scripts and shorter pieces. I think if I do NaNo in July I’ll focus on something shorter, like a short film script or a few short stories.
But one of the greatest things about NaNo (besides actually writing) is the community. The forums are bursting with creative people from everywhere, ready to encourage you. The amount of conversation that goes on there is incredible. It’s beautiful, really. There are always people eager to help you or just talk. And they’re open year round as well, so people can talk about writing even when there isn’t a NaNo event happening. There are soooo many helpful resources in the forums. Without them, NaNoWriMo wouldn’t be as near as fun as it is.
And it is fun. Sure, there’s some frustration involved, but it’s writing! There’s nothing like that feeling of finally verifying and seeing that little bar turn purple and say WINNER! in big white letters. If you don’t usually have the motivation to write, try NaNo! It’s seriously one of the best decisions I’ve made.
The next NaNo event starts July 1st, so if you want to write with us you should sign up! This July I’ll be writing a short story (or two, or three…). NaNoWriMo’s main website is here, and Camp NaNoWriMo is here. If you want to be writing buddies, you can find me here. I hope you enjoyed these words from a nerd, and I’ll see you next time!
The Walking Lady Update #2
It’s been a few days since my last update on The Walking Lady, and I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress. The finishing goal is tomorrow, and I’m not sure if we’ll make it, but I should probably update you on what we’ve been doing.
First of all, one of my friends is now helping me make the graphics! We were talking about stuff and the game came up and he was eager to help. He’s been really helpful with more than just art, though. It’s nice having someone else look at the game to give you suggestions on it. Without him, the game would probably still be really boring.
I spent a good portion of yesterday drawing pixel art buttons for the main menus. I think they look pretty cool! And now I actually have a sort of theme: an old-timey-ish bakery! I think that this is going to look really cool when it’s done.
Here’s the super-awesome play button that I drew.
I’ve also been working a lot with the code. There are some new features, as well as some bug fixes and tweaks that I’ve implemented. You now have 3 lives before the game is over, there are powerups and items that make you slow down, and there are more sound effects. The game feels more complete, now. There are still a lot of things that I need to add, though. I still haven’t figured out the pause function, and the visual display for the 3 lives isn’t working right now.
On top of all that, I was trying to check something and ran the game in internet explorer (yikes) and it didn’t work. At all. I opened the console and apparently internet explorer doesn’t take .m4a files or .ogg files. So my game was stuck on the preloader because it doesn’t go to the main menu until the audio loads, and there was no audio that it could load. So now I’m going to have to convert everything to mp3s and provide fallback formats. Not difficult, just tedious.
And aren’t you supposed to stay away from mp3s in games? This forum post has details about the copyright stuff and fines that could possibly find you if you use those in an html game. I’ll probably try to find another format that works and stay away from mp3, but I’ll use it if I have to. (Although someone on that forum says that MPEG-4 should work on internet explorer. Maybe that’s wrong, or maybe I just didn’t specify the fallback correctly. I’ll have to check that out.)
It feels like my to-do list for this game just keeps getting longer. I’m not sure if we’ll finish by tomorrow, but if not, I can easily push back the goal. It’s not like I have anything else to do. It is nice having a goal, though. If this were just another random project that I took up without a goal, I would have abandoned it a long time ago.
But enough here! I’ve got programming to do! I’m off to smash some bugs. I hope you enjoyed these words from a nerd, and I’ll see you next time!
gh0staria 