I’m currently working on the 2D view and tools necessary for it.

I had a mostly finished 2D view going, but am currently destroying it and replacing a lot of code in it with rabbyt, an openGL sprite library that is FAST, and Lamina to get pygame blitting and drawing control back (FUCK writing openGL code). I’ve also been seeing a lot of talk about pyglet as well. It looks like this could be used to replace pygame – it appears to have everything pygame offers except a joystick interface and a draw method (have to do it in openGL). I’ll probably code something up in both pygame and pyglet and benchmark them. I expect pyglet will be much faster, so if any of you out there have some openGL XP and feel like wrapping up some basic draw functionality, let me know.

I’m also thinking about adding some sort of ‘view state’, which will really just be different views with their own sprite lists, guis, and user input behavior. Think things like the loading screen, the lobby, the main game screen, and the menu. Then I’ll add something that makes it extremely easy to switch the views around and manages all the sticky bits for you.

After all this I will have to re-do the pong demo, then write some expansions on it to emphasize the newly added features.

Also, someone remind me to get SVN set up again…

I’ve decided to finally make some serious progress on my desire to develop games as a hobby. I have a name and a plan and have begun working. Right now it is just me, and I expect it to stay that way until something tangible is available, but anyone with any interest at all is more than welcome.

The name I’ve come up with (with some help with a few others) is MUA or MUA Games. This stands for either MUA: Unknown Acronym or Made Up Acronym; I haven’t decided which yet. Maybe I never will. The plan for MUA is to create a game development framework that is actually worth using. It will be an infrastructure with pieces you pick and choose depending on your game ( 2D or 3D, networked or not, etc) that just work together without any bullshit. The intent is to make a powerful and adaptable foundation that provides all the base functionality required for most games so, as a developer, you can jump right in to coding the specific and unique parts that make your game, instead of wasting time learning and coding things like networking, graphics engines, physics, GUIs, etc and making them all work together. What will make the MUA Framework exceptional will be extensive documentation, tutorials, and examples, including step by step development of full games, start to finish. A deep set of well explained tutorials will make it easy for experienced game developers and brand new ones to use the framework. In my experience, getting started developing games is extremely difficult because of the sheer volume of information you have to learn before you can begin at all. This coupled with incorrect or incomplete examples and tutorials out there makes writing even a simple game a huge pain in the ass. The Framework, along with its docs, examples, and tutorials should attack the problem from two sides by 1) providing a solid, working foundation and 2) showing you how its done behind the scenes.

Development has already begun on the framework — I have most of the 2D engine and tools finished and a slice of networking complete. When it is functional, I/We will start developing very small games using it. This should highlight any weaknesses as well as provide useful tools that can be integrated in. These games will probably all be open sourced and included as well documented start-to-finish tutorials (lots of work!). Nothing is set in stone yet, but these are the ideas for these tiny games so far: pong (2 player, 2 player networked, 4 player networked), a puzzle game like tetris/dr mario/lumines etc, a scorched earth clone (2D trajectory shooter), and probably a game with rampart-like gameplay.

After the small games are finished and the framework has been perfected, MUA will shift gears from infrastructure and tools to full time game development. Work will still go into the framework, but most of the coding time will go to games. At this point I want to start bringing in committed team members (how we will find them, I don’t know) and designing and developing some medium size games. I also want to start participating actively in the game coding competitions out there like pyweek and ludum dare. Depending on how things are working out at that point it might be fun to organize our own competition — it would be nice to have them going on more than twice a year. This, however, is very dependent on our team size and composition. Still, its a goal for me.

That’s as far as I can reasonably plan for. If our medium size games turn out well and the team kicks ass, I want to kick it up a notch and attempt some professional quality games or an MMO (Sol!). However, there are plenty of steps in between that need to be taken care of first.

I’ve hacked up a partial version of a site for MUA — check it out at keeyai.com/mua. It mostly just says what you already read here, but you may want to check out my ‘list of ways you CAN help MUA’ on the team page. I’m planning on writing a simple javascript game for the front page — ideas would be appreciated. Also, since I think I’m the only person partial to black and white minimalistic color schemes and layouts, I’ll probably have to actually design a decent looking page. Again, ideas are welcome. If you’re interested in joining the club and being part of the vision, drop me an email or just comment here.