We usually speak about new features available in BennuGD or (to a lesser extent, sorry for that) about user created projects. This time I’d like to talk about the inspiration behind your projects, and how to actually make them come true. As BennuGD is mainly a language aimed at indie game development, we’ll focus on that segment.
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The first link was brought to our attention by user gukan in the forums (here, link in Spanish). It’s a post in English by Tony Downey, a game designer that looks into most of the issues a developer will face when creating an indie game to a great level of detail. He doesn’t give definitive answers, but instead he points to the issues, analyses them and then he gives some examples of how others have solved them.
It’s certainly a post that’s worth reading. Just be sure to have a cup of good coffee handy and some free time, as it’s a lengthy post.
The other source of information I’m going to suggest is Wolfire’s blog. These guys created a very cool third person fighting game a few years ago, when the author was in high school (!) called Lugaru. Not too long ago they updated the game to include higher-res textures. Even if the graphics are not great for today’s standards, the fluid gameplay certainly doesmake it a very fun game to play, plus it’s available for all major OSes and source code is available under the GPL, so you can always take the game to new platforms. Here’s a video of the game in action:
Their blog is a very interesting read, as they’ve set up two very interesting promo campaigns called «Humble Indie Bundle» (1 & 2) where you’d get a set of games by paying as much as you wanted. Even if it seemed a crazy idea at that time, they raised $1,273,613 in the first bundle and $1,825,499 in the second one.
Going back to the topic, these guys are creating a sequel for their first Lugaru game called Overgrowth, and they’re documenting all the process of the making, their thought, the trouble they face, the conventions they go to…. plus they post weekly status updates with video. The cool thing is that if you can actually download those weekly alphas and play with them if you preorder their game, plus you’ll be supporting indie game development. Not only that, but some people have already started modding the alphas to a great success.
Here you can see their latest weekly alpha video, as of today:
Their blog makes a very interesting read, as you can actually see how the game evolves and they sometimes write very interesting posts about conceptual game design much in the line of Tony’s blog.
So that’s all for today, hope you find the links useful!
Happy coding!