Game creation tools. New domain, same conversation.

Some gaming on the side.....

Yeap.  For the 2E and Plexers out there I am afraid I am between opportunities at the moment so am not using the tools on a daily basis.  In the meantime I have turned my hand to a second love of mine.

Making computer games.  

Some of you may know that I have written games in the past.  I remember demonstrating/hassling my colleagues at the time as I added to the game.  6 months of sweat later...... I published a shoot em up in 1999 for my cousin who was 13 and totally chuffed when he realised that he could blow up his parents on Level 5 (Phase III).

I am pleased to say that some years later he turned out to be of sound character so killing his virtual parents never crossed contaminated his real word views.

At the time I used a tool called "The Games Factory".  This was a IDE and engine rolled into one and it allowed you to create a game (at that time it targeted windows).  This tool has had a second version and updates ever since and has also been superseded by a tool called "Multimedia Fusion 2".

Nowadays, this tool can create games for Web, Android, iOS (iPad and iPhone) as well as XNA for windows devices.

I decide to blog a little about this as the concept of these types of tools is not too far removed from the ideals behind the 2E and Plex tools (technology insulation, templates, productivity) to name a few of the key features over raw coding.  I am currently using two additional tools from www.gamesalad.com and www.stencyl.com.  Both tools are aimed for lowering the threshold to get into games creation for your favourite devices.

The irony for me is the forums I take part in have the same debates that defenders of 2E and Plex have endured over the years.  i.e. 3GL coding versus 4GL code generation.  Numerous times I have had to draw the comparisons for this generation Y or whatever we are calling youth now.

In one camp is the (take Apple) XCode only guys and had crafted every element of the game engine and experience and on the other side are Stencylites or Saladers who believe in gameplay and quality graphics etc etc.

As always it depends on the project, timescale. developer capability and no one solution to fit all, they all have there limits, learning curves and price point.

The grand daddy of 3d games in this space is Unity but that also comes with a price tag to match.  Still all of these are cheaper than licensing a 3rd party engine like Unreal.

On the gaming side of my life at the moment I hit issues with game performance that require tuning, features that are not yet in the tools but on the roadmap and eagerly awaiting updates, 3GL vs 4GL debates within forums etc etc.    In a way a parallel universe.

If any of you 2E and Plex guru's out there fancy doing something a little different you'd not do much better than the tools I have mentioned.  Unless you are a coder coder and therefore you can utilise some of the SDK's and chose you relevant physics engine for example :-)

Now I just need an excuse to integrate a Plex or 2E server application within a game and be the first person to integrate these technologies......

When the game I am building hits the stores I'll be sure to let you know.

Thanks for reading.
Lee.

Job Opportunities

Local or Remote.

Casual or Contract.

No harm getting in touch.

You may also be interested in other areas of skill and expertise so take a look at the LinkedIn profile (in the links section on the right ------>).


My new company (launching in June 2012) will be specialising in custom software development for:-


Business Applications
Web & Cloud Solutions
Mobile Apps
Games


For more information message me at the above email address.


Thanks for reading.
Lee.

You either read my blog because you are a CA Plex and/or CA 2E programmer and you are keen for a different perspective or you may have googled Plex and landed on my site instead of the other technology out there called Plex and not CA Plex.

Anyhow, a few things have happened in the CA Plex and CA 2E marketplace in recent weeks so I though a quick round up would be in order.

1. Plex 7.0 has been released with the new .NET Client generator option.
2. 2E version 8.6 has been released with the marquee feature of passing arrays as parameters and therefore ability to easily deal with result sets.   For both of these look at the CA website for details on how to download etc as well as accompanying web casts and PowerPoint presentations.
3. Is a nice article about Plex.  http://www.mcpressonline.com/dev-tools/ca-plex-could-be-the-best-development-tool-of-all-reader-says.html   There may well be more to come with this.
4. Is that Websydian are launching the latest version of their patterns (version 6.5), that webcast is tonight my time here in New Zealand.
5. The Plex-XML guys are quite busy working in the background as this framework begins to make strong traction in the CA Plex community.

Thanks for reading.
Lee.