Console games: how love in video games has grown into an interesting game dev

    Hello, Habr!
    Today we decided to share a somewhat informal story for our blog. It will be about one developer, whose love for console video games in childhood served as an impetus for creating a rather unusual game project.



    Christer Kaitila or McFunkypants, as his friends like to call him, grew up when Atari and Tron consoles dominated. And, of course, the craze for video games did not bypass his side. However, while for the majority the 8-bit battles left only pleasant memories, for Chris they predetermine his career development.



    Now, as an experienced developer of games, he decided to pay tribute to the good old video games and the gamedev community ... Not so long ago, Chris introduced open-source tools for creating tower defense games. In addition, he is the creator of the annual Charity Game Jam development initiative, which encourages developers to create games with the possibility of donating to charitable children's funds through in-game purchases.

    A dream comes true


    Someone like that, but I always dreamed of creating video games. This desire came to me from the time of the Atari 2600 era. The era in which I was fortunate enough to be a child. And in general, to grow at the same time as the games grow and develop - well, it's just wonderful, you can only dream about it. And it only kindled my passion for gamedev more strongly, ”says Chris.

    His first development experience was the “snake”, inspired by motorcycles from the first movie “Tron” for the TRS-80 Coco set-top box.

    This was a time when there were no custom hard drives yet, and I was recording source files on audio tapes! ".

    Watching how much money teenagers spend on video games, Chris began to realize that a good career could be made on that.

    And that became his main goal.

    The beginning of his self-development as a developer was laid back in elementary school, along with game projects that he was engaged in freelance. Diving deeper into the game dev, he went through learning new programming languages, many festivals and hackathons, and dozens of applications. However, as Chris himself observes, it took 10 years to create his portfolio of games for third-party companies to start hiring him as a developer.

    Tower Game Starter Kit


    At the end of last year, Chris opened a new page in his biography of the developer. Working with Woot Studio, he released a rather non-standard project - Tower Game Starter Kit . It is a free cross-platform open source developer toolkit for creating your own tower defense games for Windows Phone, Windows 8 and HTML5-enabled browsers.



    We wanted to create something simple that could work equally well on both tablets and smartphones, and most importantly, that it does not require high performance for rendering. That’s how this developer kit came about , says Chris. “ We wanted developers with any background to learn how to develop HTML5 games for Windows Phone .”

    "When creating the Tower Game Starter Kit, together with Woot Studio we agreed that it would be nice to include a “sample project”, that is, MVP (a product with minimal functionality) which is a fully functioning and certified project for Visual Studio ready for compilation and posting in the App Store.



    Using this toolkit, anyone, even someone who does not have special programming skills, can start developing games.

    Everyone with a brush can start drawing. Also with the Tower Game Starter Kit: everyone can create games, even a beginner. Naturally, the more skills you have in creating applications, the easier it will be for you to create a game and the clearer everything will happen to you, ”Chris notes.

    In fact, you can change and create new levels, add new graphics and textures, edit the soundtrack without even touching the code ,” he adds.


    Tower Game Starter Kit Toolkit Overview

    So why is this project free?

    The main goal of this project is to attract as many people as possible to create games for Windows Phone using HTML5, ” explains Christer. “ Moreover, despite all the capabilities of the Tower Game Starter Kit, this is still more of a training project and a kind of“ probe ”for most game developers .”



    Before you start working with the toolkit, Chris recommends familiarizing yourself with dozens of games created using the Tower Game Starter Kit. For example, Tiny Tidal Tower Defense for Windows 8.

    Competition "One month, one game"


    It would seem that Chris already has something to do in life, but his tireless craving for everything related to games led him to create another project - the competition " One Month, One Game ". This is an interesting activity motivating developers to create, or rather compete in the creation of games twelve times a year.

    Currently, the project site has about 8,000 profiles of game developers. At the same time, registering on the site is quite simple: all you need is a Twitter account.

    This competition is more a competition with oneself than a competition for the best game, so I did not limit the participants to any rules, ” Chris says. -The key idea of ​​the project is to motivate developers to create their applications, thereby improving their skills, just like regular exercise in the morning makes you stronger . ”

    Of course, not everyone will be able to cope with the challenge of creating one game per month, but Chris believes that in any case, it is worth taking part in the program. “ Even if you create one game, participation in the competition will still make sense. There is only one way to succeed in your business - to practice. That’s the whole point of “One month, one game.

    Returning Community Credit


    I am one of those few happy people who have the opportunity to return something to the community in gratitude for what it has done for me. Consider it my hobby, says Chris. “ For me, being a game developer is like being a rock star.” I live a dream. And you can too - become one of those developers whose ideas help people . ”

    As we mentioned at the very beginning, Chris created the annual Charity Game Jam initiative , which encourages developers to add donate buttons and other mechanics to their applications to help raise funds for children's charities.

    The next time the event will be held in November this year. You can find out all the information already closer to the event from itsTwitter account .

    In addition, all the projects of Chris can be found on his personal website .

    By the way, if you are interested in the Tower Game Starter Kit, you can take part in one of the competitions and earn extra points in our DVLUP project .

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