The making of the game - Launch Post

Hello everybody!

This is a very cool project I'm launching now.

As you may see in my itch.io page, I released a Pong (almost) close a while back.

The idea behind that project was to get better at programming with no game engines and share that with the world (making the source code available.

This time around, the challenge was three fold:

1- Making a robust game in terms of programming

2- Making game design twists

3- Making everything by myself

Making a robust game with no engines

Some of the challenges I tacked (and completed) this time around was: implementing music and audio, and making it run on another thread; packing all the data into a single file and embedding it in the .exe; making the software renderer faster and more robust, making a lot of gameplay mode, making a menu.  Everything in the C programming language! Most of the programming knowledge I acquired to do this came from Handmade Hero (highly recommended, though not for the faint of heart).

Making game design twists

It was very important to me to make the game unique; even though the starting point is very well established. Once I had the "you control the two paddles" ideas, I knew the challenge was making interesting game modes to challenge you to do something that would otherwise be trivial - not scoring a goal. So the gameplay screws you in different ways, and you must learn the subtleties of each mode. When the changing game modes became a thing, I remembered one of Jonathan Blow's old prototypes,  Rasberry. It was a design attempt to make the rhythm between rule changes evoke meaning in the game. Although my game relied more on non-gameplay elements (like music and color), I think it was a similar exploration, and in my case, I believe the modes did evoke very different feels, even though the rules changes are not too drastic.

Another interesting point was the game feel. If you play my old Pong game and contrast it with this one, you will feel the difference screaming. Some of the elements used: sound (and sound changes based one user input - like making the player sound louder and with higher pitch the faster you go); squash and stretching in the animation; color changes based on hit, speed and other elements. 

Making everything by myself

The last challenge I imposed myself this time around was making EVERYTHING in the game myself. I had previously made both the art and the programming (albeit very simple art) in games before, but music was new for me. I had a ton of fun and definitely want to do this more times (to get better, if for nothing else). Games made my a single dev with no engines do have a different soul, in my opinion. Learning to make this soul appear is definitely something worth getting better at.

This is it!

This is my first fully-feature "blog" post. Let me know if you liked it and want to see more! :)

I hope you enjoyed it.

See you in the next game. ;)

Dan Zaidan