Pickles!

Most recently I've been tinkering out with the idea of doing a few 8-bit-ish games. I took a while to look around for 2D engine to use for such a project, but I did not find one that I particularly liked. The XNA Game Studio is fantastic, but sadly it's limited to Microsoft platforms, and I would really like a cross-platform engine. More specifically I'd like a C/C++ cross-platform 2D engine, as those are my languages of choice.

Instead of settling for something I would not be happy with I opted out for designing my own engine. The engine is currently in a good shape, and performs quite well. I continue to develop it, as I play around with game ideas and discover requirements for my engine.

More after the break...

Sketchy Tower Defense

I've bought an XBox360 about 2 years ago, with the intention of trying some indie game development on it. At the time I was into tower defense type of games, and from this idea Sketchy Tower Defense was born. I've worked on it from time to time, putting perhaps around 60 hours into it. The game has been sitting in a nearly complete state for a while now, I just need to find some time to tie up loose ends... and the will to do so. Finishing off a project is always the hardest part isn't it?

Pixel Troll arcade

Late last year (2009) I got my hands on the Mame emulator, I was hoping to see what kind of scanline emulation it uses for the old timey 8-bit CRT effect. I ended up running into a webpage describing an arcade machine built from scratch. The obsession hit immediately, it took me a while but by mid 2010 I have finished building my own arcade machine. I started with an old gutted machine I found at a local shop. I don't play it as often as I expected to, the fun was in the building itself, but it's great at parties!

For anyone interested in making their own http://forum.arcadecontrols.com is a fantastic resource.

More photos after the jump...

Title design

I needed a nice title/logo design for this blog. Sadly I'm about as artistically handicapped as it gets, but fortunately my wife is on the other end of the artistic spectrum. She painted this troll for me, and I spent the next 2 hours or so fiddling in Paint.NET trying to turn it into small pixel art. I started by simply resizing the image to the final size, and then cleaning up the pixels one by one. I'm happy with the results, have a look.

Enter Pixel Troll blog

I've decided to finally start a blog to document my adventures in indie game development. I hope to keep this blog up to date with my latest developments.