And then you realize that you're using this incredible and very temporary opportunity to sit in a chair for most of your waking hours, for decades in a row.
"All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone." --Blaise Pascal
Thanks :-) Some of the best fun I had was just coming up with funny level names. It became a bit of a challenge for family and friends to come up with better puns!
Some highlights (none of them mine!) include "Kellraiser", "Jingle Kells", "Skellington", "Two kellholes are better than one", "For whom the Kells toll" and last but not least, "Kell Block H"!
I don't agree that GML is designed for people who are not programmers though. I actually grew rather fond of GML (The language in Game Maker Studio) over the 2 years I learned to work with it (and that's coming from an experienced Software Engineer (TypeScript, Go, Clojure, Java, C/C++)). It's not perfect by any means, but it's very easy to get started with, has lots of features designed specifically for 2d gamedev, is actively improved by YoYo Games and getting better all the time. And it allows for rapid experimentation which was a huge benefit during development on Kells, given how many ideas where repeatedly thrown away.
Thanks :-) It's always been a challenge to explain how the gravity works so in the end I kind of played on that fact in the game. Most players initially think of the "gravity tiles" as essentially directional arrows. So if you want to make the Kells go up, you place an "UP" tile. But what that really does is make the Kells essentially "fall upwards". I hope this realisation gradually builds up over the first 10 or so levels (which are designed to be tutorial levels), until a brilliant "AHA" moment! But I've seen friends reach level 50 still using the "directional arrow" tactic :-)
OP here. It's not new as in "under development" new. It's newly released on Switch, but I've been working on it for over 2 years now on and off and it was released on Steam last year for PC/Windows.
This project was never intended to be a full time job (or even lead to one) and it was never about making money, either. If that were the goal I would have probably ended up with a very different game in order to appeal to the mainstream and give me more chance of (monetary) success.
For me this game was more about the process of creating something that is 100% an expression of me (and my son). I created it for the sake of creating it, nothing more. And I enjoyed every second of the process to the point where it's kind of sad it's over now. That's not to say it was always easy mind - it was painfully difficult sometimes and I almost give up in frustration and disillusionment many times.
Thank you for reading it and I'm so happy to here it inspired you to fire up GMS2 again. Your game looks awesome! That's exactly how I worked on Kells - I just chipped away at it now and then for no other reason than because it was fun! Good times!
OP here. I seriously thought about giving up on the gravity implementation many times, but not because the coding logic was difficult. I was more concerned that the player wouldn't find it compelling as I had early feedback it was way too confusing from player's perspective and I was too close to the game to notice it.
In the end, as it turned out, it wasn't the gravity mechanic that was too confusing, it was how haphazardly I initially implemented it. After months of playtesting and tweaking the difficulty curve in the early levels, I finally hit the sweet spot (which was measured based on feedback from play testers - mainly family, friends and a few colleagues).
Thank you :-) It's difficult to remember to be honest because he was involved from very early on, when the game was barely playable. I remember showing him early prototypes and he used to give me "sympathy nods" because he didn't want to upset me, haha! It took (what felt like) months before the game was playable enough for him to enjoy it and by then he had already come up with many of the ideas and level designs himself.
I have no clue about the science but I like to think of time as an illusion, just for the fun of it. It appears to me to be our way of making sense of reality based on our limited senses of what's really going on. There is only "now" in reality - and we can't begin to imagine what that is like - so our minds layer up moment after moment to create the illusion of time. Previous moments are our memories, right now is reality and future moments are our imagination.
If we didn't have the ability to "layer up" moments in our minds, we probably wouldn't be able to make sense of music or speech for example.
Reminds me of my favourite film Memento. If the protagonist forgot everything every nanosecond instead of every 10-30 minutes or so, he would probably be completely in touch with reality and have no concept (or illusion) of time. If you put two Leonard Shelby's in a room and lock the door and observe what happens, they will eventually bump into each other but only from the observer's perspective (his mind observing the layering of moments). Neither Shelby will be aware of how many times they have bumped into each other or what "bumping into someone" is like (because even something as small as bumping into another person is hundreds of little moments layered together in the mind).
You have something younger people can only dream of - experience. It sounds like you've got some incredible stories to tell and plenty of advice to dish out.
My advice would be to simply switch your focus from you to others. What can you do with all that experience to help others? I think people often misinterpret this kind of advice to mean the only way forward is to drop everything and go volunteer in a soup kitchen or start doing charity work. While there is nothing wrong with those things of course - it's important to pick something you genuinely care about. Otherwise it's your ego making the decision for you. If you don't genuinely love and care about how you help others, it won't work out.
Start by figuring out what your message is then decide on a medium to express it. Many people start by trying to write - maybe it's the start of a book, or a blog post or even just a private journal. I recommend writing as it's extremely easy to get started and the quickest route to realising what you don't know about what you don't know. So then - temporarily at least - the game turns into a quest for knowledge. Once you've plugged all the gaps, maybe you'll continue to write to get your message across. Or maybe you'll choose to express it through music or painting or a video game or a YouTube channel or blogging or giving a talk or starting a new business, or something else altogether? Pick whatever medium you love working with the most.
If you can avoid the trap of letting your ego take over and stay disciplined enough to do the hard work necessary to get your message out there for the purpose of helping others, it should make you feel better over time. If you slip into doing it for the success or the money or to show off around your friends, then you'll probably continue to feel the way you do now.
During the early days of the pandemic I started working on a videogame with lots of help from my son and we both loved working on it for the last two years. It's available on Steam for a fiver (with free demo) but it was never about the money or attention. We just loved the process of working on it a little bit every day, coming up with new game mechanics and levels. It got to the point where all I was doing was focusing on making levels that my son would find challenging (not easy as he knew the game mechanics better than me by that point!).
I've found it's true that the point/meaning of life is to find happiness. The trouble is, most of us (including me up until recently) seem to have the wrong idea of what happiness truly is. I've learned (the hard way) that, for me at least, it's less about chasing material success or desires that I can never fully satisfy and more about taking the time to understand all the stuff going on inside my head and figuring out how to wake up every day with peace of mind and giving myself permission to focus on the things I love doing.
One of the things I love doing is making video games (with a lot of help from my son!). But my goal when deciding what game to make isn't to be "successful" by making a lot of money or using it as a springboard to start a business or whatever. If that were the goal I would end up with a completely different game that I probably wouldn’t enjoy making as I would always be consumed by the fear of making something that appeals to as many people as possible in order to maximise profit. It's not about making something I can sell. It's about sharing something I loved making.
I've recently just finished my first original game and it genuinely won't matter to me one bit if no one plays it except me and my son (and hopefully the rest of my family!). I had so much fun making it that I’m actually a bit sad that it’s over! That is the definition of success for me - finding a project that I truly enjoyed working on every day for a year and a half for no other reason that I wanted (needed?) it to exist. That doesn't mean I don't want to make money from the game though if possible! That would be great! But the happiness I get from trying to sell it is completely different from the happiness I got from making it. I'm in the process of trying to market the game now and trying to dive deep into it, looking for ways to enjoy each part of the process. But if I try for a while and can’t find a way to enjoy it, I will just stop and move onto the next game.
So in a nutshell, if I genuinely try to focus on doing the things I love every day (and I have many, many things to choose from - video games is just one example), then I am happy and if indeed there is a point to life, I think being happy every day (in the true sense of the word) is it.
"All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone." --Blaise Pascal