I'm at an semi-interesting point in my project right now where I have working tech to build a game and I have a basic game idea. That means trying to do some prototyping to see if there's any actual fun hidden in my ideas. Ideas are cheap and easy to put down on paper but actually implementing something and trying to make it fun is the hard part. I don't claim to be an expert at this so I don't necessarily plan to succeed but learning is the goal. Before you can make good games you need to make shitty ones.

So the basic idea is that I want to make a two stick shooter that uses elements from some classic arcade games. The first classic that I want to steal from is Dig Dug. There are a million two stick shooters out there where you shoot a bunch of things coming at you so I wanted to get rid of the shooting part and put something like the DigDug pump where you have to inflate and pop the bad guys. That's the entire starting point. We'll see where it goes.

Try 1: Get a good guy moving and inflating a bad guy.

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Try 2: Tweak player movement to have a basic acceleration curve starting and stopping so movement isn't so jerky. Also allow for fast and slow movement based on how hard you push the gamepad stick. Get bad guys parameterized so they can be popped quicker/slower, bigger/smaller. Actually implement popping.

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Try 3: Make the bad guys have a basic chase AI.

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So things are starting to look almost game like but it's far from fun. It's way too easy to run around and get bad guys bunched together to kill them all at once. In classic arcade parlance this is called grouping which is actually a good thing generally since it allows some emergent strategies of how to get bad guys to move together. The current problem is that it's just too easy to do it. I plan to see if having some different AI routines running on different bad guys mixes things up as a next step.

One important thing to note is that I'm completely ignoring aesthetics. All place holder graphics, no fancy particle effects on popping on animations. That's all useless if you can't find fun first. The videos themselves are pretty crappy since it seems screen capturing on Linux is a black art. Fraps for Linux where are you!!??

BTW: As a complete aside from this project at my real job we are currently looking to hire people. If you're looking for an awesome gig working at an awesome company then this job is for you if you've got the skills. We have a job posting here at gamedev.net (http://www.gamedev.n...e-manager-r2423) If you think you have the skills and experience feel free to drop me a PM with any questions about the job.