Mutants Remade

Mutants-Logo-SmallMUTANTS 2014

So this game was my choice for doing a game remixed. It’s not exactly my first attempt at programming after a decade (or two) in hiatus.  I did do a new C64 music driver but I don’t count that as 6510 assembly and the SID chip is something I have ingrained into my memory. SO, that doesn’t count.

The other thing I attempted to program was a remake of a Nokia N-Gage game called “Reset Generation“. This was my first attempt using a high-level modern language and utilising OpenGL 3D graphics and the like. Quite frankly, I bit off more than I could chew. Reset Generation had an advanced turn-based artificial intelligence and was by nature multi-player. For someone struggling to come to terms with game development all those years later, I didn’t have the capacity to execute it.

Mutants is a little different but still with some big challenges. A straight-forward shoot ’em up (“SHMUP”) for a single player is certainly more my gear. It’s still got a lot of game theory challenges but I think this will be more controllable as a single person game development effort.

Here’s some screenshots of my work to date:

Screenshot from 2014-03-07 08:00:25

Game House spash screen. It has a howl from the Futurama version of Richard Nixon.

Screenshot of the title screen and menu.

Screenshot of the title screen and menu.
The action happens inside the zones.

The action happens inside the zones.

Screenshot from 2014-03-07 08:01:43

Screenshot of the player getting swarmed by the mutants

Disclaimer

It has become personally obvious that indie game development is a full-time job in itself. My trying to keep on top of a normal job while also having some semblance of a life outside of game development will be an endurance race. I am unsure if I have the stamina.

That being said, I want to now share some of what I have been working on. I’ve been working on this game for about five weeks now. My work on it has been in “fits & spurts” over that time. The usual stopping to think how to execute an idea (“fit”) and then a few days turning the idea into code (“spurt”). Of course, then it’s a few days fitting and spurting out fixes to the logic and/or bugs in the code.

I think I now have done enough of the game to get a sense that I might be able to complete this project. (I say with a big, fat disclaimer above). But of course, all this work is already wearing me down. I’m hoping that I’ve got enough done that by blogging about it will be my guarantee to completion. After all, if I stop now, others will know about it.

Every so often, I’ll write a post about the game development process and how it has been for me. I’ll even spend a bit of time back-filling the past few weeks when a lot of the framework (that every game needs) was built.

You can read my posts about the game’s development here: http://www.gavingraham.com/tag/mutants/

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