Well if you could make an actual game with your demo would indeed push the limit…
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@drummyfish That fractal game (in production) is stunning 
but it does rather look like a demoscene production to me (with a fps element added!)
I love the light sourcing and the weird environments It’s just missing a thumping soundtrack hehe 
I had a feeling something like this would happen.
This is one of the reasons I don’t like to publish when I’m working on something,
you get caught up in the hype of showing off images and then when it gets to creating the actual substance you suddenly get hit with the realisation that the fun bit is over and next you have to do the actual legwork.
Instead of going for one of your ideas, just make a generic wolfenstein-like (but a little bit more child friendly if possible),
that will stop you getting too attached to it so you won’t start fighting yourself over which of your ideas is better.
Raycasting is new enough.
You’ve made it to the moon, but mars can wait - you need to establish your moon colony first.
I know what you’re doing (or at least I think I do).
You find the technical challenges more fun than the actual game creation,
so you’re trying to find ways to keep yourself interested and avoid the boring repetative parts.
It might be boring or painful, but I’d say stop right there and just make something.
If you give in and try to find something else to do, you’ll just be putting the less fun part off until another day,
and when that’s done you’ll try to find another technical challenge to do,
and so on until a month has gone by and you still don’t have a game.
This issue plagues a lot of programmers (myself included).
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Not this one. The name became quite popular, I need to dig out some pictures and upload them.
Well I tried (not very hard, lol!) 
Don’t worry guys, I’m not having a crisis (that happens too, but luckily not now). I’ll try to summarize the situation:
(a person talking about themselves – boring, booo 
)
Summary
- I work like this:
- a few weeks to months of intense programming
- a few weeks of mostly art work on something else. (during this though I’m in my head planning my next programming phase so that I’m ready to jump right in)
- Repeat until death.
- Since I know this, I split my work into chunks that I can finish within one phase. The motivation is this:
- finishing the small “subproject” is satisfying and I need that and also unfinished work means unbearable stress
- if it’s a more or less finished piece of work, someone else can pick up or fork it it and continue while I’m taking my little vacation, and I love seeing that
- So basically I need to build a little base on the Moon and wait there for a while before going for Mars. But if someone else can get there before me, I’ll be more than happy. My goal is not to be the first person to Mars, my goal is that we all get to the Mars.
Now I’m not really sure my programming phase is ending right now, but there are clues. I have started and art side project recently. On the other hand I’m thinking a lot about creating a complete game, but none has stood out as the absolute winner of my attention, so I simply need to wait. Meanwhile I’m having a lot of hypothetical thoughts, such as the fractals.
Either way, I’d be very glad if people could take my raycasting engine and create a game, whether I myself will be currently working on one or not – I have created it with the intent that ideally many people will use it, and I tried to design it in that way. I hate when an engine ends up only used for one game.
As I said, I’ll be releasing it soon – I’m waiting for a very specific planet alignment, but it should be soon. It’s already public and very ready, but I’d advise to wait for the official release, I may be doing some small changes still.
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A kids wolfenstein would be cool my little monster would definitely thank you
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I would love to make this game, but I fail to think of how to make it kid friendly without looking extremely forced to be non-violent. I can’t imagine a non-ridiculous shooter without guns. It ends up like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_3D_Noah’s_Ark.
However there doesn’t have to be shooting. One of my ideas was expanding on the Minecraft demo – I’d use a different map generation approach that would allow almost arbitrarily complex terrain generation and increased performance, I’d add sprites, world persistence, sound and so on. The world editing can’t be the same as in Minecraft, there are no voxels, only floor and possibly a ceiling. But the fun could be in other aspect. Let me try to think of some fun activities:
- exploration
- interaction with sprites (animals, collecting flowers, …)
- crafting items (e.g. potions)
- special abilities like flying or high speed, invoked by potions
- water, swimming, diving
- day/night cycle (maybe some doors would only open at night etc.)
- animated terrain
- possibly there could be multiple planets (levels/worlds) to progress to, as a motivation to keep playing
Any additional ideas?
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I understand your situation. Making the game logic, planning the game fields, making the game UI etc. is very different from making an engine. In addition, when certain goals have been achieved, one tend to lose interest and there is always more interesting projects in the horizon. As a hobby, it should be always fun and interesting.
How about giving small monetary contribution, if @drummyfish will make this a game? I see there is a Patreon and other payment links in the home page: http://www.tastyfish.cz . How people and @drummyfish are feeling about this suggestion? What would be the suitable amount of money contributed? I am not suggesting to make a living of this, but more like a small “thanks” for that he uses his free time with this instead of other projects.
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@Hanski thanks so much for the suggestion, I appreciate this so much, but I don’t think I could accept this. Let me explain: this is what I do really just for the fun of it and I couldn’t do it under the pressure of something like a “contract”, even unwritten. The donation pages I have set up so that people can “buy me a coffee”, and to explore the possibility of partially supporting myself this way, but I never planned to make a deal for a bigger amount of money. I really don’t think I could make a good game in this way.
But the Minecraft idea now has a lot of my attention. I’ve long wanted to make a game based on exploration, and this could be it. I’d probably make it run on both Pokitto and PC, which would motivate me because I could reach more people. And I’m already thinking about technical implementation of the water etc. I could really end up doing this.
Feel free to iterate with me on that idea (Or suggest any other ideas you have, it’s all open.)
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It is true that when people pay you for a certain feature, you cannot just stop doing it when the fun ends. I have made a couple of mobile games and it is very difficult to keep the motivation up when the project just goes on and on, and there is nothing fun to do anymore. Luckily, Pokitto games are usually smaller projects as you do not have to do things like Ad integration, In-app-purchase etc .
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Yeah, I have very big issues with working under even small pressure, otherwise I wouldn’t be refusing such generous offers – it’s just me though, I can’t even work with computers IRL, I’m a super weirdo kind of 
I’m sooo glad Pokitto doesn’t have Internet connection, some folks would definitely start pushing ads.
I have the same problem. I was studying CS major, dropped out.
Edit: those courses really sucked the fun out of computers. Took me 10 years to start coding again
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I am all for that one. If you need some help for the textures or any graphics I can always help.
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@drummyfish Amazed by what you do with this little thing!
RE: first person game engine, there are other ways you could go with first person games:
- Puzzle game
- Room escape - see above! Can the walls move to crush you for instance?
- Chase game - either being chased or chasing a mob for instance
- Maze game / Minotoaur type of thing.
Can the layouts be procedural? (apologies if I miss missed this if it is a thing posted above) to expand the scope of the play area?
It doesn’t have to be pew pew
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Double respect for what you’re doing with Pokitto right now
Yes, unlike in Doom engine, the world can easily be manipulated in real time!
Which makes me wants you to really pursue your idea with demo 3.
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the three demos you have posted are all great, I like the sci fi one but that one with the black sky is really good looking, I eagerly await anything you make.
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Wizards firing spells at dragons with their hands. Problem solved.
Killing dragons and monsters as a wizard is typically classed as ‘cartoon violence’ so it’s still non-violent enough to be classed as ‘kid-friendly’.
The game that would eventually become Super 3D Noah’s Ark was originally conceived as a licensed game based on the movie Hellraiser
Well… that’s an unexpected twist. Biggest 180 in video game history?
(Disclaimer: do not look that film up unless you value your sanity and/or your lunch.)
This is sort of what I meant by:
Some problems are inherantly more interesting than others.
Many aspects of making a game are just a boring slog.
The fun part is almost always solving the difficult problems,
and once you’ve done that it starts to become more mundane and less interesting.
This is one of the reasons I stopped studying before I got a degree.
I have absolutely no doubt I could have gone on to get a degree, but I was having so much more fun studying material in my own time that everything we did in class seemed trivial and mundane by comparison.
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