Indie Game Dev Scene

If you want to start game development, you will be in need for a graphics library. A good choice might be raylib, which is available for free at https://www.raylib.com/ . It is written in plain C and uses OpenGL. Basically all platforms that work with OpenGL are supported. So you can compile games both for Windows desktop and for the Internet browser (HTML 5). Have you used raylib in your games and can you tell us about your experiences? Please contact me at cdvolko (at) gmail (dot) com. Adok

On the occasion of the 30-year anniversary of The Secret of Monkey Island, Daniele Spadoni released this fangame. You play either Guybrush or one of the Ghostbusters. The actual game is quite similar to the original game, except that the controls are different, and also features many graphics known from it or the sequel. The game was made with Adventure Game Studio, which is an easy way to create an adventure game. Personally, I'm amazed at how well the images of the Ghostbusters have been integrated in the game. Their style looks the same as the style in which Guybrush has been drawn. Check out a "let's play" video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpv4KveMrF0 Adok

An international team led by Vincenzo Mastrorosato is currently working on a remake of the SEGA classic Sonic 2 for PC. Two demos have been released so far. In the latest demo, you are able to play the Emerald Hills, Chemical Plant and Hill Top zones. What strikes most is that the game mechanics are a bit different from the original game. For instance, in the Chemical Plant zone you will not easily come through the obstacles with the same timing as in the original game. This may be a challenge for experienced players. The graphics are very polished, and the music is close to the original but remade. The background music of act one of each zone comes close to the original but the background music of act two varies a bit from it. In any case, you will get a great audiovisual and gameplay experience with Sonic 2 HD. The game is available for free here: https://sonic2hd.com/ Adok

Since this blog is called the "indie game dev scene" blog, it will also contain articles with tips for the development of games from time to time (i.e., dev-related articles). For now, I'd like to point your attention to an article in another blog I maintain, the Hugi Code blog. In this blog I posted an article about the development of a mesh voxelizer using C# a while ago. Here's the link: https://hugi-code.blogspot.com/2023/09/mesh-voxelizer-in-c.html This may be handy for some game developers too. Adok

The first game released by Tim Sweeney, the founder and CEO of Epic Games, was ZZT, an action adventure game for MS-DOS that ran in text-mode. What was interesting about this game was that it had a built-in programming language called ZZT OOP, which was not exactly an object-oriented language because it did not feature inheritance but it was at least somehow object-based. You were able to define the movement patterns of NPCs and enemies, it was possible to display text when you entered a room or unlocked a door, and so on. Because of this programming language, there are many custom games based on the ZZT engine available on the Internet. Many of these custom games are far better than the original game. What was the original game like? Well, you played a character who was able to move on a 2D board and shoot, provided he was in possession of ammunition. There were various enemies which you had to defeat, and there were keys that could be collected, to open doors that appeared in the gam

The computer art community also known as the demoscene regularly hosts events (parties) at which competitions take place. Sometimes there are also competitions for the best self-made game. Originally these gamedev compos had a size limit of 32 kb, later this was increased to 96 kb and now it is usually unlimited. The games entered to these competitions usually do not match commercial standards, but they are often based on interesting ideas. This especially gives newcomers and beginning coders a possibility to participate in demoparties and perhaps even achieve good scores. In the following article I am going to introduce some of the most popular games made by sceners according to pouet.net. Do it yourself demo This is an interactive demo made in 2008 by Limp Ninja Kids. It was released at the Outline party. First there is a loading bar. You have to keep hitting Space at a very fast rate to move the bar. Then comes the rotozoomer. You have to keep rotating the image with the mouse so th

After The Great Giana Worlds, Kojote, who had been responsible for the level design of that game, founded a group of coders, musicians and graphic artist who worked on yet another remake of the original Giana Sisters game. In 2009, Giana's Return was finally released to the public.  This game was primarily made for Windows, but from the official website numerous ports to other platforms can be downloaded, including Amiga OS 4, GameCube, Linux, Dreamcast and Wii. The game was coded in C and it uses the SDL graphics library, which is the reason why it was so easy to port it to other platforms. Giana's Return consists of 56 levels, which makes it considerably larger than the original Giana Sisters game (32 levels). After each eight levels, the player has to fight a boss. The boss fights are pretty difficult compared to the remaining game. What makes Giana's Return a bit easier than the original Giana Sisters game is that the player does not lose a life immediately upon hitting

Domination by yura.net is a game similar to the classical board game Risk. It was coded by Yura of yura.net in the programming language Java. It is actually not a new game, the first version was already released more than a decade ago. But it is constantly updated and only recently has music been added to the game. You can play against the computer or against other human players. Basically the objective of the game is, in its basic mode, the conquest of the world; in other modes, it may vary a bit. At first every player chooses a couple of countries that will belong to him from the beginning on. Then every player places several military units in his/her countries. The actual game is a turn-based strategy game. When it's the player's turn, he/she can attack other countries. The number of military units signifies the number of attempts the player has to defeat the other's army. Whether you win or lose is a pure matter of luck. Nevertheless the probability that you will win in

Who of the former C64 gamers among us has not loved The Great Giana Sisters? This Super Mario Bros. clone cast its spell on almost every kid that had a C64 in the middle of the eigthies. SID music by Chris Hülsbeck, 32 well designed levels and quite a few hidden items and warp zones were the main qualities of the best known platform game on c64. Giana Sisters was also available on Amiga with an even better quality of the music and graphics. Yet most people remember Giana Sisters from C64. With the nostalgic movement that started in 1996, also Giana Sisters experienced a comeback. With time, various remakes of it appeared on PC. One of them is Giana 32k by Myth, which was presented at Mekka & Symposium 1998 and was ranked 1st by the party audience. After several updates of Giana 32k with more levels and new features, this same Myth released a completely rewritten remake of Giana Sisters: The Great Giana Worlds. The Great Giana World is based on DirectX. Actually the game was never f