Welcome to Underdev’d, where I talk about developing games when you don’t really know how to develop games. As Curtis the Inverted mentioned about a month ago, we’re getting band back together. We’ve been working on projects until now, but we haven’t been sharing anything. That needs to change.
A few months ago, I gave up on Chethmatch, the game idea I was working on for a while. You can see the first version on Itch. It’s striving to be mediocre, and fails badly, but with about 12 downloads to date, it’s probably our most popular title so far.
Chethmatch, as you probably don’t know, was basically a modern rip of Archon, but with a Street Fighter-esque combat system instead. The fighting system was completely physics based, and when two pieces came together to fight, as people mashed the controllers they would just kinda float around in circles chasing each other, never connecting. I decided to start over, which physics only for root motion and animation for all the moves. I worked on it for a few months, until I realized there was no way for me to get these systems to work together.
I mean these systems *can* work together, but there’s no way for *me* to get them to work together. At least not now.
So I gave up. I put the game down and just took a break for a while. This is what I learned.
- Admitting you can’t do something isn’t really a bad thing. It’s just being realistic. If you gave it the ol’ college try, and it doesn’t work, and you can’t find anyone to help you make it work, then just step back, and walk away.
- Giving up really gives you a good idea of how far your skills have progressed, and what you need to look into in the future. For me, I need to look into physics and animation more, but maybe not both at the same time, and maybe not as complicated of an implementation.
- You don’t have to give up forever. Maybe some day I’ll go back some day when I’ve learned more.
- It’s okay not to have a game after working on making games for the last four years, even if you want to submit to BIC fest and BitSummit, but can’t, and kinda look like a hanger-on-dork at Haeundae/Kamogawa every year. It’s okay. Kinda.
So yeah. Things are better. Working on a new game now. It’s more story based, and it builds on things I know a bit about, like linguistics, and hating. I hope to have something to show in a few months.
Until then, know that we’re just chugging along, making things. Curtis is streaming and reviewing games and working on stuff, and I’m just working on stuff. More soonish. 🙂