The Hobbit Hole

I enjoyed Rampant Coyote’s blog entry about his Top 10 Most Important Games. Considering I personally know him, it was interesting to see. Most of them I would have gotten right, but there were some surprises on the list.

To join in the fun, I’ve decided to post my most important 10 games so far. I debated for a good while on these, and you might notice that I’m missing some that show on virtually every game developer’s list (such as Doom). I did play those games, and enjoyed them, but they weren’t the ones that influenced me the most.

10. Zork
This game showed me how deep a game could be. Later games from Infocom contained better literary elements, but this one got me into games and game programming. I spent hours learning how to parse text and coming up with my own homebrew adventures with full sentence parsing.

9. Wing Commander
Like Coyote, I spent way too much time on this game. By far my favorite “simulation” game.

8. Donkey Kong
There were only 4 level types on this game, but they were so good. Showed me that less is more.

7. Populous
The one that put Peter Molyneux on the map. I loved the little guys roaming my land, and the ability to cause earthquakes and convert other tribes via the priest made for maniacal fun.

6. Dragonriders of Pern
The first multi-genre game I played. It contained action, diplomacy, and economics when managing your Weyr and its relationship with the others. Each subgame wasn’t the greatest, but the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

5. Darkstone
The graphics sucked and it was an obvious Diablo rip-off, but the balance of action and puzzles was just right. Also, this is one of the few games I’ve played all the way through in mutliplayer, and it was well balanced in both single and multi player modes.

4. Neverwinter Nights
Like Coyote, I didn’t think the original game itself was spectacular, but some of the modules that players made were magnificent. While many people might have learned the value of modding from Doom or Half Life, this was the game that showed me what it meant.

3. Ultima IV
While I enjoyed most of the Ultima series, IV was the one that will forever live in my memory. From the opening where you create your character via moral decisions rather than a statistics screen, to the final (no spoilers here), it oozed atmosphere. Even today, it stands well.

2. Gauntlet
So, in high school, my friend Todd had a job and got his paycheck some Friday. He rounded up myself and a couple of other friends and we went to the local arcade where there was a new, 4 player game that had just come out: Gauntlet. We blew his entire paycheck on that game. It was my first multiplayer game and quite possibly the best.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
A masterpiece. It is the only game I’ve played through more than once. The game wasn’t necessarily innovative, but instead followed a simple formula and used a few, very polished mechanics that it executed flawlessly.

As Coyote did, I have many more games that almost made the list. I’ll make those the subject of a future post.

Gamemaker is a great little development tool for making 2d games.  There’s a free version, and the full featured registered version is at a great price, only $20.  My son has used it to make games for his friends’ amusement.

Gamemaker’s development seemed to languish though as version 6.1 came out a while ago (about 2 years ago by my reckoning).  I had considered purchasing it, but its lack of real extensibility had me hold off, and the free version did everything that my son wanted to do.

7.0 fixes those concerns.  While the extensibility isn’t fully documented (yet), it’s evident by the included extensions that the extensions have access to more than just strings and numbers.  I’m chomping at the bit to see what I can do with it.

In a couple of hours, I’ve managed to throw together a simple game proof of concept for an action rpg.  Look familiar?  Since I lack artistic skills, I decided to go with an extreme retro look.

Okay, this is a big deal for me.  I’ve decided to throw down the gauntlet and do the 40 hour game challenge with Gamemaker.  I’m going to do a simple action rpg with the following goals:

• 10 levels
• Upgradable weapons
• Multiplayer (2-4 players cooperative)
• 1 boss battle on the final level

I know on the surface that I’ve already violated principle 3, but if you figure that Gamemaker isn’t specialized towards action rpgs, then it is not much more than what you get using PyGame already.  True, it has sprite editors and other tools, but while handy, they’re not much more than MS Paint level
tools.  (Since you can download the free version, it doesn’t really violate principle 2).

So far, I’ve spent 2 hours messing around with this.  I have 38 to go.  I’ll keep the blog updated with my progress.  (Caveat: This will be 40 non consecutive hours.  I may only get 4-5 hours a week on it.)

This shouldn’t interrupt the original game’s progress, as I haven’t made much lately, with work being very busy and the softball season just starting practices.  I have made progress on that front, but mostly on the language design and extension, rather than the actual game.  (Sometimes I wonder if I enjoy language design more than game design ).