mduffor

As the end of my contract draws closer, I’m faced with some life-changing decisions on which direction my career should go from here.  Do I look for a position at another film company?  Do I return to game development at a large game company?  Do I go the indie route?  I’ve truly enjoyed all of the projects I’ve had the opportunity to work on up until now, and I’ve had the chance to work with a lot of really talented people.  At the same time, I’m really wanting to be a larger part of my next project, and be part of the driving force that brings it into existence.

So while my resume flies far and wide to see what opportunities are available, I’ve also been digging through some of my past projects to see what can be re-factored into any new projects.  That search unearthed the following gem from a deep, dark, dusty directory.

Looks like our hero just missed lunch

Barrels always open best when struck by heavy melee weapons

These screenshots are from a game I wrote back in 1999 when I was trying to get my own company Studio Blue off the ground.  It was a 2D RPG engine where you could walk around the world on an isometric Diablo-esque map and interact with various objects and NPCs.  The lighting was all dynamic, and this was back before 3D cards were as common as they are now, so everything had to be done with sprites and various illumination lookup tables.  It ran at a good clip back on the 200 Mhz machines of the time.  Alas, I had to abandon development after our initial round of funding ran out and we couldn’t find a publisher to pick it up in time.

Maybe I’ll try to port the engine to my more modern framework of code.  The libraries I use now evolved out of the original code for that game engine, so it isn’t entirely out of the question.  Plus, my experience with 3D programs has improved dramatically since those days of trying to rig characters in 3D Studio Max with the Bones Pro plugin.  Might be worth a look after I’ve finished some of the more immediate projects on my plate.

Off to poke at my code some more.

Cheers,

Michael

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This entry was posted by mduffor on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 at 6:17 am and is filed under Game Development, Indie Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.