Have you heard of NaNoWriMo? Perhaps Script Frenzy? They're interesting events - (hundreds of) thousands of people all over the globe dedicate one month to churning out a work of art, just to prove they can. The goal is to churn out, respectively, a very rough first draft of a novel or play, to just do the work, and in doing so overcome the large obstacle to doing it that thinking about doing it can be. The trick is to write every day, nonstop, for 30 days.
On the game side of things, "Game Jams" are becoming pretty popular, despite the reservations some may have. The idea is similar, but more extreme - get together in small groups (or by yourself) and sit down and churn out a game in some small number of days. I haven't participated myself, but I get the idea that you're generally building on a specific framework and it's less a technical exercise and more of a creative one.
Back to the WriMo thing - a few friends and I have participated in NaNos and Script Frenzies past. They like it so much, (and it works better for their schedules), that they like to also attempt one for July (we call this JulNoWriMo). So while my wife and friend's are digging their teeth into their stories, writing about whatever else they're doing, I've decided that I would write a game. I want this to be a technical exercise as much as a creative one, so I'm not going to try to pace myself to a certain amount of content. It seems like it would be a bad idea to try to churn out 1,000 lines of code a night. Thus: JulNoGaMo is born - spend an hour and a half minimum each day on writing a game. (Honestly, I'm weaseling out here. I had always told myself "one to two hours," but I just spent the last 30 minutes browsing the web and writing this up; so we'll say a solid 1.5. No hard feelings?)
Anyway, the game is an homage; something I've been thinking about making for quite some time. In fact, I've been thinking about making lots of games for a while, so I'm glad to have the motivation to actually do some of this "hobbyist programming" I've always thought about. Go me. I'll be blogging daily about what I've done, and some details will slowly creep out about what's going on.
So, here's the setup so far: The goal here is to compile it to initial targets of Android, iOS, and at least one other portable device. It'll be mostly C++, with Java (and Obj-C?) wrappers as needed. For now, I'll probably stick to just Android development, because I have a Windows machine, their documentation is pretty slick, and it's free. Using the emulator for now, but maybe I'll get an Incredible when they get restocked.
So, what have I accomplished today? Well, I wrote some typedefs, set up some really basic high-level engine stuff (Game Objects are composed of... etc.), created an Android NDK project, and sketched out a few classes. Nothing to show yet, but really, I hope you weren't expecting anything for starting from scratch?
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