http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWyX0wwu_lc

Corona version of LBDA

I had some success remaking my game “LBDA” in Corona and got a lot of the art in place. It was looking good, the menus were working, the sounds were working, but I just couldn’t get certain things to happen correctly. I ran into a lot of trouble just making a laser beam shoot and making enemies that moved. This stuff was really easy in Gamesalad, but as I said in my last post, Gamesalad updated their software and it fucking broke my game. And I was too pissed to try and fix it. I could make some parts of the game work in GS, and I could make other parts work in Corona, but neither one worked as a whole. Plus, thinking about my game, I realized I wasn’t making something I found interesting, at least not in a “fun-to-play” way.

So around early March I just stopped working on my game and focused on other things (like starting up a book trailer production business). But I kept the hope of making a game or app alive and rethought what kind of app or game I wanted to make. Plus, since I’d been learning some programming by using Corona, I figured I might as well take the horrible plunge of learning Objective-C 2.0, the programming language on which Mac OS X and iOS are based. Start from the ground up! By this point I’d gone back to my original idea of making an old-school text adventure. So most of the programming wouldn’t involve graphics or animation, just getting text on a screen, right?

I bought some Objective-C and iPhone programming books, and I also bought a video instruction series. A few weeks ago I started going through the video tutorials (a 15-hour set!) and quickly got confused as all hell. It soon dawned on me that I was in way over my head.

And that, dear reader, is when I went BACK to Gamesalad. I figured that by now they must have fixed what was broken. So I downloaded the newest version (I think they’re on 0.9.6; I left when they were on 0.9.1) and I tried making my text adventure. Well, turns out Gamesalad is not great for text. And all that broken shit I thought I’d left behind is still broken. I’m kind of amazed that it’s still busted after 5 months, but hey, they’ve got their own priorities, I guess.

Okay, so forget Gamesalad. AGAIN. Let’s try Corona. AGAIN. This time I knew exactly what I wanted to make Corona do. I just had to find samples of the basic code and make it all work together. And by god, last weekend I figured it out. Seriously, I cracked the code or broke the magic seal or something. I figured out how to display paragraphs of text and change screens based on the user’s selections. It might sound simple, but dammit, it was not easy decoding this shit (please remember I have no programming training or experience). So right now I’m fucking proud of myself for assembling a template that works. I say “assemble” because I’ve been pulling out code from free samples that other Corona users have made and I’m putting it all together to meet my needs, hopefully without breaking anything in the process. Anyway, go me!

Alright, now that I’ve got a working model all that’s left to do is write my damn story and put it all into Corona documents. This will take a while. At this point all I’ve written is Chapter 1 and it’s around 4000 words worth of content. This will definitely take a while. But, hey, at least it works!

Early progress of LBDA from the GameSalad version.

Since I last updated a lot has happened with my iPhone game (called “LBDA”). I made quite a bit of progress on it, up to the point where it was in a playable state and included sound, multiple menu screens and four game modes. At that point I started creating the artwork and adding it into the game.

Then, earlier this week, GameSalad (my development tool) updated their software to version 0.9.1 and my game immediately broke. Well, maybe the game itself still works, but there’s no way to know since all of GS’s preview functions are fucked. I was pissed. Really pissed. What’s even worse is that GameSalad doesn’t even publicly acknowledge there’s a problem. Their go-to line is “well, this software is still in beta and you can use it for free,” which is true. But if they’re trying to build user loyalty they should at least admit they broke something and give a timeframe for a fix.

So, rather than just focus on my game’s artwork and wait for GS to release another update, I decided to switch development kits. This lead me to Corona.

Corona seems cool, powerful and well-supported. Plus, it’s also supposed to be fairly simple to pick up. Simple, that is, if you have some basic programming experience. Which I don’t. But I decided to learn this thing anyway, dammit. Which is where I am now.

I’m slowly (very slowly) teaching myself to use Corona and to code in the Lua programming language. This is not a particularly easy task for someone whose sole coding experience was learning basic HTML back in 1999. But I am making tiny bits of progress every night, despite having to constantly pound my head on my desk just to understand Lua. Right now I’ve got a menu screen with some graphics and clickable buttons that make sounds. Oh boy! At some point I’ll actually have to figure out how to recreate the game part of LBDA in code. Yikes.

It’s pretty disheartening having come so close to completing a game and then having to rebuild the whole thing in a completely foreign environment. But then I remind myself that less than a month ago I didn’t even know how to make anything in GameSalad, and I ended up getting pretty comfortable there. Corona is a harder thing to learn but I think it will ultimately make my game better. Plus, now I feel like I’m really “building” a video game from the ground up, rather than “making” one with a simple toy. I love the idea of GameSalad, but its execution is really lacking. Hopefully one day it will end up being really great. Until then I’ll be over here forcing code into my head.

Last week I stumbled upon some software which claimed to make it “easy” to develop your own iPhone game without needing to know hard coding mumbo-jumbo. Sure, you’d have to learn the program’s language, come up with the game, design it, do the art, sound & music and somehow make it all work together yourself…but, hey, at least you don’t have to know how to code shit (whatever that means). So I decided to take the plunge into the world of game design. It was actually an inexpensive plunge, since the basic version of the software (which is called GameSalad) is free.

I spent several hours last weekend just reading about how GameSalad works and watching video tutorials. Somewhere in there I came up with my idea and started putting it together. I wasn’t exactly starting from scratch; there are a ton of free GS demos out there that you can learn from. Plus, every time I get stuck on a problem (which has happened a couple times this week) the people on the GS are pretty helpful.

So right now I’m jumping back and forth between two small games, and I might begin a third soon. I like this method because each game will have different challenges to overcome and learn from. So if I solve a problem in one, chances are that knowledge will come in handy with the other.

Once one game is completed I’m hoping to get it on the App Store for 99 cents per copy. I figure I should make a small game and sell it for cheap just to see what the experience is like. I’ll update more as I make progress building the games.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, one of my favorite authors, was born 120 years ago today. He died in March of 1937. For a xenophobic, kinda racist, sorta-asexual whitey from New England who died over 73 years ago, Lovecraft’s writing’s have been incredibly influential to countless writers, readers, artists and filmmakers. In celebration of this anniversary I’d like to take a moment to detail what his work means to me.

"It's me! H.P.!"

Lovecraft was a practitioner of what was then referred to as “weird fiction.” This was pretty much any type of writing that focused on horror, fantasy and science fiction, but was before those genre conventions had been established. Lovecraft’s work differed from that of other horror authors in that much of his work did not use elements of religion or the supernatural. The “horror” of his writings came from science, or ideas based in science. Instead of ghosts or demons the monsters in his stories were often aliens or other cosmic entities that existed just outside the realm of human understanding. The general premise of his work was that the Universe is a strange and terrifying place, and that the human mind will go mad from glimpsing only mere pieces of the truth. To me, that’s pretty bad-ass.

I love the idea that human life is inconsequential to the Universe at large. I like that we might be insignificant in the grand scheme of life. To me, thinking that anything you or I might do will be of no consequence to the cosmos is somewhat comforting. With this perspective, any problem that might arise is immediately made smaller. Sure, something might be a big deal from our human-to-human viewpoint, but if you take a step back and decide that nothing really matters, any issue becomes surmountable.

Hey, it's Cthulhu!

Another thing I like about Lovecraft’s work is the bizarreness of the creatures he created. Many of his monsters defy description (he often said so, which I’m sure made writing about them that much easier). Even the ones that are specifically described are so strange that artistic interpretation becomes a necessity. I love seeing different renderings of Cthulhu or Deep Ones. Some interpretations appeal to me and some don’t. I like that anyone can imagine what these creatures might look like and each person can still feel connected to the material. Your Yog-Sothoth might look one way and mine might look another, but together we have a shared understanding of what it is and what it means.

Something about Lovecraft’s writings bring people together in a way I haven’t experienced with any other author. It’s almost like there’s an unseen connection binding his admirers and when we meet we unconsciously give one another the secret wink and handshake. I don’t think many other pieces of genre fiction unite their fans in this way. In nerd terms, Star Trek fans can fight over Kirk vs. Picard and Star Wars fans can argue over the prequels, but Lovecraft’s work is Lovecraft’s work; his stories are finite and complete.

A Deep One

That’s not to say Lovecraft’s ideas are finished. To the contrary, even during his lifetime other writers were using his concepts and creations in their own works, with his encouragement. Lovecraft wanted others to expand on his ideas and to this day artists all over the world follow his wishes. As time goes on Lovecraft’s legacy continues to expand, and since his work is in the public domain (more or less), there’s no such thing as “unauthorized” derivatives. People can create what they want out of his ideas and fans can either accept or reject it. Lovecraft’s stories are a living thing, growing with every addition. His work is owned by everyone and we can all be a part of it. Lovecraft may not have seen meaning in life, but together you and I can make our own.

So here’s to the futility of life and the madness that comes with true knowledge. I say if we can’t possibly comprehend the truth at least we can be happy with what we have in our own shallow existence. Let’s celebrate the Old Gentleman from New England’s work, and pass it on to others, so that even more people can appreciate his writings for the next 120 years.