I got a new job this week. I now work for my school, Rollins College. What is my job you might ask? Well, I repair laptops and am part of a classroom technology team. The awsome thing is, we have so little work to do, that most of time is spent doing what ever we want at our designated office locations. And for me, that means doing my homework while getting paid. Or surfing the web. Or even just cruising around campus in our own personal golf carts, acting like we own to this school .

Seriously, this is how my first day started when I came to work and introduced myself.

Me: "...Nice to meet you. So, what do you want me work on?"
Mentor: "Your homework!"
Me: "...Heh? What?"
Mentor: "Well, we hardly have much work so do what you want."
Me: "YES SIR!"

So I walk back to my desk, and I figure I might aswell do my homework since I got nothing better to do. That's when a girl walks in who also works there like me. She walks in pretty quickly, doesn't even notices me, and goes straight to her desk. She then takes out her computer. It seemed like she was about to get busy doing some work. So I walk up to her to introduce myself.

Me: "Hi, I am new here. My name is Vahid."
Girl: "Hey, didn't even notice you, my name is Judy."
Me: "Nice to meet you. What work are you doing here?"
Judy: "Work? Oh, I am just starting up a movie to watch."
Me: "Well move over and let me watch too will ya...." (BTW, we were watching Bourne Ultimatum which is an awsome movie)

Yeah, I love my job But don't get me wrong. We still have to do work. Every now and then we have to install equipment in classrooms, go and obtain hardware from a place, or deliver hardware somewhere, help teachers who are having trouble with equipment in classrooms, and repair stuff. But like I said, there is so little work, that we just chill and do what ever we feel like it most of the time. And no one bothers us.

You know. I could get used to this really easily...

It's finally here. Some video footage and pictures of my first game EVER:

The Farthest Land Trailer

Four months of hard work and the concept version of my game is finally done. I honestly am more then happy with what I have developed for its a true joy to see the fruit of my labor. Game development is definetly something I want to do for the rest of my life.

Some of you may want to know how much effort it took me to develope this game, so in the fallowing I will be briefly discussing the number of different aspects of the game such gameplay, animation, music etc.

Gameplay

This is the aspect I spent most of time developing (about 3/4 of the time). As you can see, my goal was to integrate a targeting system to this 2D fighting game. I believe the aspect of targeting the player gives you a sense of 'touch' which further immerses you into the given battle. I think I have succeeded in integrating the targeting system in way that makes it challanging and fun.

Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to develope some complex combat moves for the game. As it is, the game consists of very simple moves of striking the player. On top of that, I was not able to add a jump move to the game because I couldn't get it feel right. And do to time constraints, I decided to remove the jumping aspect. Nevertheless, these aspects that I was not able to integrate into the gameplay is something I will be developing the months to come. So you can definetly expect a more diverse and interesting combat system in the final version of the game. But even as the game is right now I think it is extremelyfun to play, well for me at least.

Animation

This is the second thing I spent the most time on, and its definetly the most difficult one. I'll be honest, I have no animation experience whats so ever. So it was a real struggle to learn how to animate. I mean, I constantly had to redo a bunch of animation because I just am never satisfied with it. Even with animation as it isright now, and I think it looks great, but I plan to redo them all because I think I can do way better.Well that what Iget for being aperfectionist.

I would say that animation development is very very time consuming.One frame takes about 30 mintues to draw for me. So I couldn't develope as much of the animation as I wanted. Nevertheless, I believe that animation is a very important aspect for such a game as I am developing. So I plan to put a lot of focus and work into it.

Art Direction

Since I am making a 2D game, I wanted it to feel like the player is playing within a painting. Thus the reason the setting itself is painted. It was very difficult developing that setting because I rarely ever paint, so its something new to me, something that I find rather interesting. In fact, I will be taking painting courses next semester to further improve my painting skill.

This setting is actually my 3rd one. The first two that I developed I was just not happy with. As you can tell, I redo a lot of my work. I believe in this kind business, you have to redo a lot ofyour work for the betterif you want to succeed in developing something trully worthwhile.

Music

The song that is played through the game is called "A Knight's Promotion" by Justin R. Durban. The song is about 5 years old and I have managed to get permission from Mr. Durban to use the song in my game since the song is freeware. Justin R. Durban is a film composer and his latest work was next upcomming Harry Potter film. For more of his music, check out his site which is pretty awsome.

I really like this song and fits my game perfectly. If I ever get funding for my game I would love to hire Justin R. Durban to compose music for my game, even though his a film composer.

The Future

Ah, what am I planning for the future of my game? Well, I plan to continue making the game for at least 2 years more. And yes, my focus is still mostly on interactive storytelling even though it was not apparant in that trailer.

Also, I hope to release a demo of my game soon so everyone can play. Anyways, that's it for my blog. Please, let me know what you guys think of the game so far.

So, what is my game about? How far have I come with developing it? What hardships did I learn from and experience through this game development? And what are my plans for the future of this game? These are things I will be discussing in this blog, so if you are interesting, read on.

Description of my Game

The game is called The Farthest Land (working title) and the type of game I have decided to make is a 2D fighting game. However, my goal is to stray away from the rather traditional aspects of the genre and create a trully unique fighting game. That means, no more button smashing, no count downs to a fight, no health bars, and absolutely no more BAD storytelling.

My focus is on creating a fighting game that focuses on interactive storytelling. I don't want the player to fight another character just for the sake of fighting, I want there to be a reason for the player to fight another character. For example, one aspect of the game has you playing this female fighter who has just given birth to her child. However, her child has been taken from her, and now she is searching the woods at the middle of the night for this person who took her child. She finds this person (another female) who is planning on killing her child. Point being, you have to fight this woman for the sake of the child. If you loose, the child dies, and game over. If you win, the story progresses and you fall into the responsibility of having to protect that child. So I leaning towards making the fights trully envolved and rather personal and emotional.

An amazing film that draw a lot of inspiration from.

Now as for the fighting system, how the hell do you develope a fighting game that doesn't have you button smash your way through the fight. Simple, remove the aspects of fighting with a bunch buttons COMPLETELY. Instead of there bieng a bunch of attack buttons, in my game there will only be ONE attack button. How will this work? Well, with the implementation of a targeting system. Basically, you will have to aim at the character to attack him/her. It my sound crazy, but works so well that I can't believe that no one ever thought this before (please relize that I am referring the fighting genre and not to games in general). Just imagine, if you want hit the character on the head, you just aim for the head and hit. If you hit the character on the legs, you aim for the legs and hit. Basically, the focus of fighting a character will be to actually hit the character, instead of just comming near the character and pressing a series of buttons. This type of fighting system makes so much sense to me and it works so well. On top of that, I am really focusing on animation. I believe that animation is the key to any fighitng game (God of War is a good example of an action adventure fighting game).

Ok, that is just a small description regarding my game. There is so much more to it that I do not want the discuss right now, like the implementation of interactive music (similar to musical design of SotC), unique level design to cater to given fights (imagine fighting within environments that are constantly changing around you), and much more. But these are rather ambitious ideas that I have not worked on yet, thus the reason I do not wish to discuss them.

The Progress of the Development of my Game

At the moment being, I am not ready to reveal any images or clips of the game. I am still in the progress of the developing the combat system and the AI, though most of it is done. It's been tough and extremely slow. The project is rather ambitous considering the level of complexity of the combat system. But hey, you want to make it big, you have to think big. Still, my focus is on quality over quanity. Which kind of brings to points where I have to make tough decisions. Like for example, just the other week when I was developing the block system, I was think if I should keep the block system regular like in other games (where you hold just one button to block) or implement the aspect of blocking through the targeting system. I finally decided, for the mean time, that I will keep it regular and if I have time in the future I will improve upon.

Yet another amazing film that I draw inspiration from.

I would say, the toughest part of developing this kind of game is the collision detection and animation. You have to develope the animation and program it in such ways that makes two characters fighting each other look natural. You don't want them passing through each other or some wierd things like that.

Other then that, I have really really enjoyed making this game. I can't believe that game development is this much fun. Don't get me wrong, there were times where I just wanted to pull my hair out of frustration. But overall, I am really enjoying making games, but I am in the minority here, for I extremely enjoy content creating. So if you are planning on getting into the industry, make sure you know what you are getting yourself into for it is definetly not for everyone.

Future Plans

My plan so far is to have some pictures and a trailer of the game ready by June. I am hoping I can show off the game to everyone before June, but we'll see. There is still a lot of artwork to be developed, a whole lot, so that may slow me down.

Now, one thing I am hoping is to have a small part of the game finished by July so I can submit it for the Microsoft's XNA Dream. Build. Play. Contest. I have been working hard to meet that goal because the first place winner will get their game published on Xbox Live, and 19 second/third place winners get an Xbox 360, a brand new Alienware computer, and some extremely expensive development software like Maya. Do I think I can win first place? I don't know, but I do believe in myself that I will deliver a quality based fighting game that is fun and innovative. If not first place, I would be happy enough to be one the 19 second/third place winners.

Well that's it for my blog post. If you have any feedback, comments, suggesting regarding my game, please feel free to post them here.