The Constant Factor: Yourself

Hey everyone,

So this week I will be speaking at a local Youthspeak Forum event - organised by AISEC Malta. I will be speaking about entrepreneurship - however I chose to focus on what often is under looked at when talking about the topic. That is the entrepreneur themselves. 

I think most of us heard the term that investing in yourself is possibly the best investment you could possibly make. That argument holds ground due to the one simple fact - that no matter where you are in life, at any point; what is common from your past to your future - is that you yourself are there. This means your skills, ideas, personality, abilities, weaknesses - all these things are there. More importantly - your mindset is there. 

The implication of this is a bit stronger than a lot of people seem to care to believe. Focusing a lot on qualifications within many educational systems tend to reinforce this - but often what differentiates the entrepreneurs is their mind-set tends to be very different than that of others. I speak for myself - switching mind-sets is difficult, but not impossible. In my case - I did it over a course of a few months, always building and improving myself in the ways I believed would be beneficial. However when we talk about mind-set it goes a little bit deeper than that.

Mind-set in terms of - in your every day choices, do you pick the easy way out even if it's not great? Are you willing to push through the hard obstacles presented to you - even if you have no support? Are you willing to not let anything push you down - even when it seems like nothing can possibly pick you up? The answers to these questions seem obvious - though in the day to day life, they can be as little and as large as we can image. Simple things like - going to the gym or exercising over sitting down and doing nothing. To large things like - pushing my dream and vision over following a plot that was readily paved for an easier time but a career I did not actually want. 

In a fair amount of countries - European at the very least, there has been a large emphasis on supporting start-ups. More than that - the environment of the market as is rewards it to a certain extent. E-commerce in many ways created a vast open market that many enterprising individuals can benefit from. Moreover, certain industries (we talk about game development often here) have had the tools required become fair more accessible and fair cheaper. You can go online today - download a number of game development tools and get to it. So why is entrepreneurship still seems like it needs a boost?

Well - the way I see it, as someone pursuing it personally, as well as having studied and read on other entrepreneurial individuals. The opportunities definitely help - but the ultimate basis is the individual. The individual is the entrepreneur - and whilst providing opportunities will help - I think the truly determining factor of entrepreneurship comes from the individual themselves. Which can be taken in two ways. 

One, the opportunities and support given are valueless (which is not true) or two - which is how I see it: that the individual is empowered to forge their own path. Empowering the individual is key to entrepreneurship. So my advice to those pursuing entrepreneurial dreams - make sure you do not neglect yourself. It may seem like funding, ideas, support, opportunities and so on are the essential aspects; but you yourself, are the essential aspect. Your mind-set and perspective is extremely important; as well as your skills and abilities.

Until next time,

Dylan

Game Maker Progress 2: Platformer

Hello everyone,

So this month I decided to refocus my attention onto the Game Maker Engine. Whilst the engine does not use Java for coding - I had gained some insight into how to better organise my code and felt like it was a good time to apply it to Game Maker's own coding language. I had already learned and practiced Game Maker; as those of you who read my blog know with the asteroids-type game ICON. So this time around, I'm working on a small platformer. 

To do this; I am following the udemy course of Hearthbeast Studio's Benjamin Anderson. Since I had previous experience with the engine - the first part of the course is mostly a refresher for me before I get into the new stuff. After the course - I will simply go ahead and re-build the game itself with my own touch. I'll work with making new levels, adding new assets and so on. This way I can gain knowledge by both practice and the tutor's own guidelines. I do encourage you to do the same - it is quite invigorating adding and changing your creation's aspects from your own personal touches. 

Much of what ICON includes is elements that I myself added - that includes the art, the health and difficulty features as well as the different types of weapons and ammo counts for them. Whilst small - I made those by my own capabilities and that helped me and motivated me to go for bigger achievements during my own practice and experimentations. Benjamin Anderson has a youtube channel, a book on GML coding as well as two courses at the time of writing this article on Udemy which I definitely recommend checking out. If your getting into Game Maker - it is a very good place to start off. 

I will post images of my progress later on! If you saw my previous pixel art update - the tiles I posted were ones I was thinking of using for the platformer once I get into re-hauling the artwork. Coupled to that I still need to add more tiles to add variety, and a character. Moving from there - I will work on enemies and on improving the interface. Bit by bit, element by element - I will be adding to create something that is personal to me - just as ICON became after I modified and added all the features it has today.

Until next time,

Dylan

Pixel Art 5: Character States and Tiles

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I posted something about pixel art so I decided to do so this week. I have done little in the way of pixel art in the past 1 month since my focus was on HTML and Java; however I did make two items I wanted to show.

The first is a character I used to experiment and try to practice a little bit of states. I.e. Idle, Walking, Jumping and finally Crouching - or more like hitting the ground again after a jump.

The character is simplistic - I tried to not overcomplicate him since I was still going to decide how I would do the various states. For a first attempt - I am fairly satisfied. There are a number of obvious improvements of course - firstly being that the head remains consistently the same throughout.

I also worked on a few more tiles. I think if you haven't realised by now; tiles are quickly becoming a favourite of mine. I do need to start adding some complexity however - such as structures. The pillars came out fairly nicely - I hope to eventually add a type of ancient Greek structure and see how that comes out. I'll be sure to post it here when I do!

Until next time,

Dylan

Pareto's Principle and it's Application

Hello everyone,

So today I wanted to talk about Pareto's Principle or the 20/80 rule as it is known often as. This is a concept that can help guide your work - be it in game development or any other area. It was developed by Vilfredo Pareto - an economist, but it's application goes further than just economics. Look at it as - a concentrated approach to 20% key elements will yield 80% of the results; and vice versa, 80% of the elements will yield a measly 20% of the results. 

You can apply it in various forms. 20% of customers yield 80% of your revenue. 20% of bugs in your software cause 80% of the crashes and frustrations. 20% of the content in your game will yield 80% of the enjoyment customers will likely talk about and love. Now this isn't to say it's completely accurate and you should ignore 80% of the rest of whatever your doing, but making sure you focus on the more prioritised 20% can mean the difference when you are limited by time, budget and energy. 

A couple of weeks ago we spoke on the concept of concentrating your focus - this builds upon that. Instead of focusing on the 80% of things that will likely achieve very little in your goals - it is better to focus more intently on the 20% of things that will likely achieve the majority of your goals. I'm sure there are ways to determine what you could quantitatively say what 20% refers to in actual metrics but I think the true value to gain from this is more about understanding that some things need higher precedence over others.

I'm sure you can apply this to most if not all situations given enough understanding of it - even in your personal life. I find that 20% of my day often yields 80% of the results I wanted to achieve on that day - in like studying, practicing, thinking and so on. At university - after 3 years, a portion of the things I am taught are infinitely more valuable to me personally than the other majority. This isn't because what they teach us isn't useful or valuable - but I can apply this principle and understand what elements are extremely useful to me and which aren't. 

I think this principle can be very useful - especially when things seem to be overwhelming. You can use this to try to nail down to the real priorities and relax a bit. You can concentrate your effort, time and money into the work that can yield the highest possible outcome. Needless to say - identifying what is the 20% and what is the 80% takes practice - but with time and patience, it's not impossible to grasp. If you think this doesn't work very well for you - than you can simply try something else. After all the beautiful part of experimentation in these areas is seeing what works wonders for you and what doesn't - so you can more effectively achieve what you want to achieve!

Until next time,

Dylan

A Pen and Paper Adventure

Hey everyone,

So as you may know from my previous post, this month I've been working on my programming. I am on track with that - on the side however, I also began scribbling and thinking of a new idea for a side project. It is a board game that takes inspiration from games such as Dungeons and Dragons - however it takes a more simple approach to it's game play. I began doodling ideas and scribbling notes whilst I was playing, reading and looking at videos - what started off as a small little sketch or doodle grew into a small project. I wanted the adventure you would find in an RPG - in board game form to play with a few friends of mine when they are over. At the same time I wanted a competitive element - inspired by a few of our magic the gathering games.

I wanted to keep it simple - so that way we can jump in and have a fun time. At the same time I wanted to make sure that if we wanted to get someone new to join in - they don't have to go through learning a large amount of material only to discover the game isn't for them. I wanted it to be simple, fun and offer an RPG-like experience that can be as short - or as long as the players playing want it to be. With that in mind - I continued doodling and coming up with ways to do this. I am well on the way to testing out the first iteration of the game I nicknamed Project Blade for the sake of me just saying "my board game project" - very original right?

Doodle Page

So what I did to decide on how simple or complicated the game should be - I tried to make sure that everything about the game has to fit on a single page. At the very least for the major components of the game. This seemed to work out well - on paper. Scribbling and such helped me visualise how the game might tie together and how the various mechanics would interact. I have a number of other sheets that describe the actual content of the game; creatures, abilities, weapons and so on. I will describe the game later on once I have gone through a few iteration cycles to see what works, what doesn't, what needs to be adjusted and what seems to work very well.

I look forward to bringing you more on this down the line!

Until then,

Dylan

Concentrating your Focus

Hey guys,

So this topic may sound familiar to those of you who already know a fair amount of business elements - whether from studying or so on. Those of you studying Game Design likely have heard something similar as well - it is part of the reason as to why many indie developers succeed now a days. This goes by many names, be it segmentation for business or in game design it often involves picking a mechanic - and doing it very well. In essence - both these boil down to your focus.

Aside from ensuring that your game [or product] is something you not only believe in and are passionate about - you should ensure you focus your attention carefully. In game development - there is always the issue of balance between performance, art, and many other aspects that are all interlinked and depend on each other. Next generation graphics? Slow or weaker game play. Amazing gameplay? Often graphics need to sacrifice some ground. This isn't because of talent (All be it optimisation is a skill in itself) but at some point you need to realise that hardware up to now can handle so much. This is more particular if you aim to gather a larger audience.

This applies to a general business side - think less resource based [Although resources play a huge part as to why you want to focus your product's specifications to a particular market's needs] and notice that you cannot - or should not attempt to please everyone. Same applies to game development - a strategy game is not the same as a FPS game. Moreover, an RTS game is not the same as a Turn-based strategy game. This is because the game play is different and more often than not the audiences that play these games play them for different reasons. The game play experience is not the same - and this counts for all the elements of the game such as art and story. You might say then what should I be focusing on if everything counts towards this idea of targeting a 'niche' [A niche is a small segment of a market that share a number of characteristics that are relevant to your product]?

Well that's completely up to you. Games are an art form -  you have music, sounds, visual and literature and finally interaction which helps define games for me. Interaction being the element that defines games over other art forms for me. Many triple A publishers prefer to keep towards what they know works, games like Call of Duty and Fifa don't change much because the goal of the publisher isn't to innovate. Money is all well and good - but you as a designer, more so as an entrepreneur likely seek more than just money, I would hope at any rate. Don't be discouraged just because a large chunk of people don't want to play your game or buy your product; take any construct criticism but remember you need to keep in mind what your trying to achieve. Otherwise your just trying to please everyone. You can apply this to practically any product or element in your life - be it music, game design, business, painting and so on. Focusing allows you to as the term says it, funnel your effort and resources towards whatever vision you have in mind, it also helps to keep you on track when criticism comes in. 

I hope this gave you an idea of what focusing your attention towards a particular direction can help you achieve. It is all well and good if you want to create a large project that tries to capture a lot of mechanics and themes - but are you sure it's what you want to do ? Keep in mind the workload and resources - and ultimately if your planning on making the product for a market, what the market requires and wants. Steve Jobs said it best - people don't know what they want until you show it to them. But I hope you played enough games to realise when too much is too much - and this goes to everything, be it complexity, flashy effects and just general precision. Understand what your trying to achieve and push for that - if your game is meant to be complex, go for it just make sure you believe in it and are ready to work to get it done. 

Until next time,

Dylan

Back to Schedule

Hello everyone,

I hope you've had a great first month of 2016, examinations are finally over and I can now return to the normal post schedule on Tuesdays!

I've decided to try out a new approach towards my planning of the year. Each month I will be allocating 5 items to complete by the end of the month. The items will be set in priority - so the first must be complete, once done I will move on to the second and so on. For February I will be focusing more on coding. In particular - Java coding and possibly try a hand at HTML5 coding at some points.

In the mean time - I will be continuing to practice pixel art and such so you can expect some progress posts on those areas. I have also bought a fair amount of books during Christmas which I look forward to reading through during the year and I will be sure to give you my views on them as I get through them - so you can see whether they are something that may or may not interest you!

That will be all for today - I will see you all next week!
Until then,
Dylan