Random thoughs..
I’m probably just writing this to procrastinate doing something else but anyway…
Today was another frustrating day with Japanese study. The last 3 days of homework have seemed almost impossible to figure out. I’m going to talk to the teacher tomorrow if I can and see what’s wrong. Maybe I can get some help.
But, seperate from that today I was really feeling like I’m totally wasting my time. Not studying Japanese but not doing something else like making a game or making a company or doing something. My thinking goes like this. I can probably hang out here without a job until at least December. That’s 7 months from now. Maybe until March. After that I have to get a job. Once I have a job I’m not likely to want to do anything productive outside the job. In other words I’ll be tired from working and I’ll just want to play (watch tv, watch a movie, play a game, eat out, etc.)
But, right now I arguably have lots of free time. I doesn’t feel that way since the way my schedule is arranged I’m busy the entire day 7am to 11pm, M, Tu, Wed, and Th. But, I could change my schudule. I could quit going to Digital Hollywood since I’m getting very little out of that. Friday from 1pm until Sunday night I’m completly free.
So, I guess the questions are, what should I do with that time? What can I do with that time. etc.. I’m talking about something money making or something that will put me in a good position when I’m finished with it. I was thinking about trying to do a Gameboy Advanced game on my own. I should be able to get something like that at least playable and with several levels using programmer art on my own time. I’ve done cartridges before so it’s not like that’s new for me. The only problem is it’s kind of … un-cool … to do Gameboy Advanced vs say something new and 3D. Of course new and 3D takes lots more time and people although maybe if I already had an engine I could just plug away and making random parts of a game using the engine.
Another way that I feel like I’m wasting time (again) is the whole girl and friend thing. It just occured to me today that I haven’t hung out with a friend 7 months. Seriously, I really have no real friends here. Sure I have a few aquaintences but nobody I would feel comfortable just calling up almost any time of the day just to see what’s up and if we could meet for lunch or dinner.
And, arguably, at least at the moment, there’s the whole English vs Japanese problem. I’m studying Japanese so having an English speaking friend is defeating the whole point of living in Japan but my Japanese although good enough mostly to talk to a friend in Japanese is not comfortable enough that it’s relaxing to speak Japanese all day like it is to have a conversation in English.
The ideal would be if I could find a friend that wanted to work on a project together. That would solve both problems. Lots of time with a friend, not having to split the time between seeing a friend and doing something constructive. Hmmm.
I remember seeinng post from guys/gals working on games in their spare time, colaborating and coordinating through the web (mostly Usenet). Maybe there are some Japanese groups like this?
Hmmm, don't know if that would take care of the social problem, though…
And it would be frustrating for you if they didn't structure the design or code the way you want…
GameBoy advanced is cool to me…isn't Voldie trying to get into the GBA market?
Just rambling when I should be working…
- blammo
I know what you mean. I think for a game to be 'just for fun' it would have to be relatively small like making a puzzle game or it would have to use an exsiting engine like making a quake kit.
What makes GBA not cool is that it's basically 12 year old hardware. It's a slightly soupped up SNES. That also probably makes it hard to find artists that want to do SNES type graphics with SNES type limits 'just for fun'. Most artists want to do Final Fantasy 10 type movies, not game art and especially not 16 bit tile based game art.
Of course the way around that is GBA makes money. 7 of the top 30 games in Japan are GBA this week. 7 are GB and only 4 are PS2. (Here's the rankings.) So, making a GBA game which one should be able to do with no more than 4-6 people in 6-9 months would easily make back it's money and then some.
I suppose I could try to design a PS2 game that required no resources like Fantavision for example.
Maybe your thing is 3d, but fun games are fun. Puzzle Fighter II for PSX is a damn fun game. So is Contra for NES. Not much to them but fun. For what it's worth, consider GBA game programming. This is coming from a guy who knows jack about programming, etc.
http://www.lik-sang.com/catalog/news.php?artc=76
We have two already and it makes for a VERY cheap devkit.
Someone even ported the upload tool to linux, what more can I ask for!!
)
Seriously, if you give it a try let me know…
-D
Since a GBA only requires 1 cartridge for a multi-player game that would suggest the cart is being downloaded to the other machines over the serial cable which would also suggest that somebody could just make a GBA to PC serial cable adaptor (or maybe GBA to USB) and then you could cross develop like that. Is anybody working on that?
This guy Jeff made one and apparently a company picked up the design and will build them soon.
The build in boot-rom will only download 256k so it's pretty limited but it works.
The cable is not too fast either.
Jeff is working on another design to allow you to plug the flash in the linker and the gba at the same time. He has it working at home apparently.
I'm really getting into gba stuff, it's a lot of fun.
-D