Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Making a Game – On Fast Forward

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 30, 2010

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could make a game this fast?

But no – this is a time-lapse look at Markus “Minecraft” Persson’s Ludum Dare 18 entry – a “game in a weekend” competition. As with many of the competitors, it’s dang impressive what was accomplished in only 48 hours of development time.

The cool thing about this video, though, is the insight it can give new developers into the process of developing the game. I haven’t really dissected the video in detail, but you can see the stages that take place from the early conceptual prototype with squares of color to the final game. Persson knows what he’s doing – probably better than I do.

You can play the final game here:

Metagun

I’m pretty impressed with the game. It’s — well, not exactly a shooter. More of a puzzle game. Involving shooting.

Have fun!

(Hat tip to gamr src for the link!)


Filed Under: Free Games, Game Development - Comments: 3 Comments to Read



  • Calibrator said,

    Armchair Arcade had a link to this last week, I think.
    Mightily impressive and I watched it longer than I originally intended (= to the end)…
    Persson clearly knows what he is doing as he still experiments with settings and isn’t strictly typing in but editing and changing stuff to suit his ideas.
    I especially like how he progresses from coarse graphics to more detailed ones. Of course a time-lapse movie like this always ends with finished part/product (a good looking sprite for example) but it all seems to be very organic: Write some code, adding some sprites/tiles, writing some more code, painting some levels, adding some more tiles etc.
    BTW: Drawing levels directly with a paint program isn’t a bad idea for a simple map-based game either…

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    Is that what he was using?

    Yeah, easier than making a level-editor. Clever.

    I’m impressed. And I feel like such a lazy wannabe now.

  • Bryan said,

    My masterpiece in game programming was for an online chess server, I programmed an interface that connected and had tons of features people had been requesting. My interface never went public as I was too busy with other endeavors. But it was a big step forward for me.

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