Hi, my name is Jay and I work at Mochi Media. Islands of the Empire was the first (and only) game I have made. So one day I was messing around with Flash and built this really cool map engine using Pixel Bender and was like, “Damn, I’m gonna build a game.”
URL: http://armorgames.com/play/10238/islands-of-empire
Source: http://github.com/jaybaird/Islands-of-Empire
Total Time: 18 months. :(
Step 1: Tech Demo != Game
July, 2009
My game, as it started out, was nothing but a tech demo. I wanted to see the interactions of Pixel Bender with different settings and filters to see if I could output little blobs of terrain on the screen. When I fired it up and out came the pretty pictures, I was sold. I was going to make this game.
A quick aside: I’ve been wanting to make games since, oh, about forever ago.
So where do we go from here? I’ve got islands. Do I make a game like Civilization? Risk? A long time ago I had aspirations to build something like Black & White and visions of awesome A-Life simulations and magic spells and wars and ships. Oh! Ships. I’ve got islands, let’s go nautical! What kind of boat games are there? I was drawn to Uncharted Waters and other games of the genre, even going so far back to Seven Cities of Gold. Then, over beers one night I was talking to Bob (yes, that Bob when I realized I wanted to see a nautical themed Galcon clone. That was it I decided. Galcon it is.
Step 2: Making Games is Fucking Hard
September 2009 – April 2010
Don’t worry too much about the language, cause for reals, this shit is hard. You guys impress the hell out of me day after day with what you’re able to do. So I had a map engine, I had a game design idea. Now it’s time to take the ball and run in for a touchdown, right?
No. Turns out I can make pretty graphics programmatically, but I suck at art. Ok, easy fix. I work with some of the most talented people ever so how do we solve this problem? We bribe Mr. Shen! Shen did an amazing job on all the in-game assets and I’m over the moon with the final look and feel. Shen. Is. Awesome. But you guys all know this.
So, once the art is out of the way, I start coding like mad in my spare time. I’m going crazy with Galcon style setups and balancing and grouping ships and having ships shoot at one another. That’s when the first bog hit. This game isn’t fun. It’s hard to control. The premise is shaky and I’m a terrible story teller, so I can’t talk my way out of this one. What to do. Hmm, I know! I’ll make an RTS! I’ve always wanted to write a pathfinder!
So I go down some awesome AI rabbit holes, I implement pathfinding, formations, blackboards and all sorts of fun stuff but never actually work on a game. This sinks in slowly. Co-worker and friend Bryon begins to only refer to the game as “the Tech Demo.”
Step 3: There’s a Light On…
April 2010 – August 2010
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