Note: I am writing this in early January 2005, which is a while after Air Hare was completed in early November 2004. I had wanted to write a postmortem of the project since before it was even complete, but I was incredibly busy with school when I completed the game. I figure this is better late than never, and I hope I don't leave anything out.

Background

Air Hare is a 2D action/platform game that I began working on in June 2004. I had the concept for the game months earlier and the motivation to make it was that…

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Both the Nintendo DS and the PSP promise to bring you a better portable gaming experience. However, games for both of these systems have design features that make them more attuned to a console game than a portable one. First of all, there are some key differences between portable gaming and console gaming. The most obvious difference is that portable games are not as technologically advanced as consoles are in terms of graphics and sound. While that is the most obvious difference, I would argue the biggest difference is the amount of time you have to play. People playing console…

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What Went Right

1. Good Coding Session

   The actual coding went by as quickly as it could have. I think that this happened for a couple of reasons. For one, although this is my first "finished" 2-D game - it's not my first attempt. I'm getting to be quite familiar with SDL and game coding in general. This definitely helped how fast I coded at least a working template. In addition, the environment I was in helped tremendously. Just being in a computer lab with a bunch of other people making games made my time…

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What makes a game good? Depending on who you ask that question to, you could get very different responses. A business executive could have one idea of what a good game is. A person that lives and breathes games could have a completely different idea of what makes a good game. A person that plays games casually could have still another idea. This article is an attempt to document the different viewpoints of what makes a "good" game.

The first type is the Well-Marketed game. The standard of success for these games is the number of sales, and is about…

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Abstract

Before any software product can be released to the general public, it must be thoroughly tested to ensure that it functions as originally intended.  For a piece of software that will be used in medicine, for example, testing a product thoroughly can mean the difference between a patient's life and death.  Testing is just as important in the gaming industry.  Although it might not be a matter of life and death, the shipping of a faulty product can hurt a company's sales and even tarnish the company's image.  Delivering a game that is both playable and…

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What was Cineme 2004: Video Game Development Summit like you ask? Well, here is a quick summary of my experience, and view on Cineme 2004. The key parts I comment on are the: Ambience, People, Classes, Activities, Small Advertisement, and Speakers.

Ambience - The overall feel of Cineme: VGDS was nice. It seemed to be quite well organized, with everything east to get. The classes/lectures ran smoothly, and everything was well planned. The only thing that should have been different was there should have been more activities, and it should have been bigger.

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A post-mortem of Wolverine Soft for '03/'04

[Alex K. -- Originally, Ed just sent this to me for comment, but, after discussing it at length, we decided to it would be worthwhile to incorporate my thoughts into it as well and offer it up to the dev/announce list as a positive step (and helpful Guide) towards making WSoft fucking rock!] (Ed B. -- Anything without Alex K. in front of it is me, and, well, I threw in the "fucking" for good measure (the rest of his comments are un-edited) I realize this email is huge, so it will…

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Background

"Wsoft Bomberman" (wbomb) was a simple 2D clone of the Super Bomberman games on SNES. The goals behind this game was to create a solid game engine that could be used for other 2D tile based games, and to help game development beginners to get a handle for things. We would then add network support and possibly AI controlled bombermen.

The games final build is available here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dratti/WBombFinal.zip

If you decide to muck around with the source code, or are interested in seeing how objects are handled, a small tutorial is available here: Continue reading