418 I'm a coder

It is time to start a new project. Not only so I have something to work on, but with another semester comes another project. This one is quite different though. Not only is it a group project, it is also a lot more free, but also professional than the previous one.  Not only are we required to have at least one meeting a week, but we also have free choice over game engine, genre, theme, you get the idea. The only thing we are required to include is some connection to the number ten. This project only started this week, so there isn't that much to talk about yet, but I'll explain what we've got so far. The group My group (which was assigned to me) consists of four people. We have been grouped up to fill out each others weaknesses, and so everyone can do what they are good at and what they enjoy. For example, coding is my specialty, so I am the main (or rather only) software engineer in my group. This means that I get free choice over the game engine and some other software.

It has been quite a while since I last wrote a blog post, but it is finally time for me to get back to the keyboard and start typing those fancy colorful lines of code. And I have a (in my opinion) huge announcement to make. I finally released my very first video game. Project Dementia has been in the works on and off for the last 3 months, and now it is finally time (link to download the game is at the bottom of this post).  So what is Project Dementia? Well I'm glad you asked. It is a small platformer game I made during my first semester at Edinburgh College. It isn't anything revolutionary, but it isn't half bad either if you ask me. You won't exactly have an award winning experience playing, but it definitively is one of the games ever. Is it good? You decide (and please leave a comment for what can be improved, I might make a full version if some people are interested). Generally, not much has changed since the announcment post. No new mechanics, just more environm

Once again I am struggeling to find something to write about. The past days have been very boring for me. Writing essays, fixing bugs, and rewriting code is all I have been doing in the time since the last post.  I did get some stuff done, but sadly nothing that is really interesting at all. I wrote two essays about video games and game consoles, and added an explosion "effect" to AbDUCKtion. Here is what that looks like: The small red flower is supposed to be an explosion particle. In game, this actually looks quite good.  Apart from this minor change, I fixed a memory leak in Monogame, fixed the splitting of the swans to actually work as it is supposed to, and reworked the memory management. Overall, very boring week. I hope that I will have more to write about soon, but right now, this is it.

No update on my Semester one project I'm afraid. But I do have something else to show. As an introduction into state machines we are currently making a bad clone of the classic Asteroids. Using pictures we took, we are supposed to make a small Asteroids game. You can shoot and ... Well that's it. You can shoot, the rocks explode and there you have your game. So here is what I made First of all, I worked on this project as much as I had to and not a single bit more. So don't expect a good game.  I mentioned that we had to use images we took ourselves. Well among other things, I took pictures of a swan, some tires, and a van. So I thought about it for a while and I now present to you:       The players ship has been replaced by a van, the rocks have been replaced by a swan, and the projectiles are tires. The name (as you can tell) is a truly terrible pun. Not only aren't there any ducks in the game (only swans), but the van is brutally shooting the poor animals into piece

In the last post I talked about the idea behind this game of mine. But it is hard to imagine what a game looks like just from words. So let me explain a few things about the gameplay. As I already said, the game will only have 5 very short levels. Level design is hard and I am terrible at it, so focusing on few but good levels seems like the obvious choice for me. Anyways, let's get to the gameplay Gameplay The player doesn't have a lot of abilities. At the moment, you can walk, jump and walljump. I am thinking about adding a sideways dash, which would also allow me to make more levels, but that is a lot further down the line. Here is a very short demo of what the jumping looks like: The player can also interact with dialogue objects. Dialogue is the main way the story is going to be explained. This is what the dialogue looks like right now: And the last, but probably most interesting feature my game supports: Dark and light mode. Depending on the kind of person you are, you ca

You might be wondering "What the hell did I just stumble upon?" And rightfully so.  So let me explain what this blog is.  I am a coder from Germany, who is currently attending the NC Games Development Course at Edinburgh College. In this blog, I will post updates on my college life and coding projects. Right now, I am working on my video game for the first semester at college. I have been programming for a few years now, and the development on the game is going smoothly. However, I have yet to decide what the game is going to be called. The game ...is a 2D platformer, with focus on... existing? It is my very first time making a game, so just producing something fun and engaging is the main goal of the game. The idea The player is a dementia patient, struggeling with their mental illness. Having become unaware of their surroundings, they travel through an empty world, running from their illness chasing after them. As you progress through the levels (There are only 5 planned as