Program With Dave

I’ve started a new blog (hosted by WordPress) which will chronicle my game development ventures. I am going to cross-post every post from that blog onto this site.

Here is the first post! (from http://davesgamedev.wordpress.com/)

This is a blog I decided to create to chronicle my development of iPhone/iPod games. The first game I released, Smiled Out, has been received “…okay…” by the market and I think that what it is missing is exposure. Therefore, this blog will chronicle my efforts at game development in order to attempt to build some kind of excitement about my games.

I will post code, plans, screenshots, etc.

First, my plan for my next iPhone/iPod Touch game.

1. Stop watching so much television.
2. Quit getting distracted reading news sites or Wikipedia.
3. Write a design document. (I have this already in the form of notes and a few drawings..)
4. Write a technical design doc. For my next game, I will be using Cocos2D and Chipmunk, along with a version of an old engine of mine called Dusty Engine that I have ported to Objective-C.
5. Don’t focus on graphics to begin with, make the game WORK and then make it pretty.
6. Don’t ignore my wife.

I work full time as a business software developer so #1 and #2 are very important, as it gets easy to be distracted and burned out when writing my own code. Adhering very closely to #6 will also make the development process go much smoother.

My next game will be an Asteroids clone. Before you click away, I have a very good idea for controlling the ship, and with Chipmunk physics I think it will blow away the competition. I was going to call it “StarRoids” until I found out that an old Mac game from the 1980s had that exact name and I don’t want those kinds of problems. Part of the failure of Smiled Out is that I am afraid to mention “Lights Out” anywhere official with it since Lights Out is trademarked.

So I haven’t yet named my project. Let’s just call it “Unnamed Asteroids Clone” as a working title.

Check back regularly for updates.