It’s been a long time….

So, Arcade Badgers produced nothing throughout 2015, and there’s nothing left in the coffers to keep it running. I’ve already had a bit of a moan about 2015 on my own site, so there’s no need to repeat that here. Let’s be a bit more upbeat and forward thinking, instead.

What I’m deciding to do is put together what I’ll call “The Experiments” which will be small little game ideas done quickly. And I mean quickly. As in, a week at a time. If one doesn’t make the week, it gets shelved and put to the side and the next one started and hopefully will be able to go back to it later. Hopefully there wont be any slips, but… can never quite tell.

This will start as of next week, as it gives me time to get settled back into the day job after a month of flu-ridden nastiness. It’ll also let me sort out some sort of framework type thing to get things working in, as although I’ll be using GameMaker to do these in, you still need some sort of base to start with! I’m also going to have to be ruthlessly time efficient. I don’t generally get in from work till about 6-6.30pm so add some family time, eating and such like, it’ll be about 8pm before I can sit down. So at best, say, 8-11pm giving three hours, with an hour or so to wind down before bed to get back up again in the morning to do it all over again… weekends are likely just as bad so I can only really guarantee 3 hours a day. Giving myself the target of one game a week, we get 21 hours per game. That’s scary. But. Doable.

I’ve taken part in multiple Ludum Dares, where I’ve ended up having to throw something together over 48 hours and used to go for the “near enough scratch” approach. I’d use my own engine, but the code would near enough be all Lua with some C/C++ interfacing. I’d still need to do the graphics and audio myself too. Given that, I have the remainder of this week to get back up to speed and insure everything works My sprite tools work, my audio tools work, and GameMaker is behaving itself and setup correctly.

Twenty One hours per game is going to be tricky.

But lets give it a shot.

Nothing else left to lose!

Stuckie