To start with the answer to the last question first, I’ve been sick. Nothing big deal, but enough of an illness to take the wind out of my sails when it comes to game development, let alone blog posting. As for Stencyl, it’s a game creation program that looks like it has a lot of potential that RMVX just doesn’t offer. That said, Stencyl isn’t out yet, and it doesn’t come pre-loaded with graphics and sound like RMVX does. This has made me take a step back and look at my overall process for game design.

First, when I started working with RMVX, I realized that I really enjoy the game development process. The biggest problem with game development is that it requires a huge number of skills, and that I have a long way to go to develop those skills.

I’m not a programmer, I’m a writer and a storyteller more than anything else. Now that there are a number of game development tools, like RMVX, and Stencyl (which is supposed to be out sometime in 2008, but who knows really) programming isn’t as necessary a skill as it once was. At least not for the kinds of games I plan to make. I’m not particularly interested in the latest, greatest cutting-edge game with the most realistic physics system ever and nearly lifelike graphics. Those games are for companies with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars and huge staffs. I’m just one guy, and I don’t plan on competing with those companies. So, what’s going to make this process easier? RMVX is one example of a powerful program that you can customize almost everything about. Still, it seems limited. Right now I’m waiting on a program called Stencyl.

Stencyl, from what I can tell, is a pretty cool little program that allows users to build games. I’m too out of it to explain how Stencyl works at the moment, so I suggest that if you’re interested, you visit the site. It also looks like the creators of Stencyl are really interested in building a great community of game designers, as well as having an area for royalty-free graphics and sound for newbie designers, such as myself. Right now the Stencyl community is pretty small, primarily because the program isn’t out yet, but it does look like word is spreading. 

So, with engines out there that handle the programming side of things, that still leaves graphics and sound. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about sound yet. I have a couple of free audio programs that allow me to monkey around with sound effects and music loops, but I suspect I’ll have to do a lot more research into this arena before I figure out a solution to the lack of sound assets out there.

As for graphics, that’s an interesting challenge. An ”open graphics” project is a great idea, and I know others have floated it before, but I can’t put all my trust in others’ artistic abilities and goodwill. I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to create my games, and I’m really a control freak about my creative works, so it looks like I need to learn how to create 2D video game art myself.

I’m not a terrible artist – I can do better than stick figures – but I also realized that I’ve ignored developing any artistic skills I possess since I was in high school. For about the last two weeks or so, I’ve been working with a few different art programs to create basic tilesets for use with programs like RMVX or Stencyl (or any kind of game engine that supports tilesets). I’ve also been practicing my spriting skills. I’ve probably got about another two or three months of practice ahead of me before I can start tackling stuff like sprite animation. I’ve been able to make a few crappy looking sprites so far, and I’ve only been learning this stuff for little while now, so I figure I’ll be able to get some basic sprite animation done soon enough.

The tileset creation process is going much faster, and I already have a few tiles (that actually “tile” well) done and pasted onto my very first tileset. I didn’t think I’d get as far as I did with the tileset, actually, so I have some hope that I may become a decent-enough digital artist that I can make some okay-looking 2D games.

So where does this leave Borealis? Well, I’m still working on it. I plan to post some design stuff about the game once I get it figured out, but at the moment I’m working on building up my basic skills that will allow me, in the long run, to develop just about any kind of game I want rather than only RPGs that use a single style of art and sound.

Stay tuned.