IGDA South Africa

In a vague attempt at reconciling a passion for both maths and music, I’m doing a full time PhD in the mathematics department at UJ and writing, directing and playing music for a KZN-based theatre company in between.

 

The short answer: Edward Dennekamp (Lighthouse Games Studio) and 2 years.

The longer version: About two years ago, my software developing sister told me that a colleague of hers (Ed) had quit his well-paying job at an awesome development company down in KZN to produce Xbox Live Indie Games full time. This really tickled me. He was super helpful in pointing me in the right direction and I downloaded all the XNA development tools as well as a few tutorials. I was hooked the moment I ran my first ever Cornflower Blue screen.

 

The Most Addicting Sheep Game 2: Sheep vs. Zombies. You can’t really go all that wrong with Zombies. 

 

But seriously, I think it’s very much a casual game and I’d love to expand to other platforms, particularly the iPhone/Android/Windows Phone markets. I’ve also got some ideas for a music generator which may or may not develop into something bigger.

 

Challenging. Exhilarating. Terrifying. Rewarding. In various combinations.

 

When I started out, I had no idea what I was getting into. (I still don’t fully.) I went through a couple of tutorials (the wealth of online support and documentation for XNA is overwhelming but completely accessible) and I was quickly able to modify some existing code to make an extremely simple single-screen single-goal game that really felt like it was my own. Then I started on an idea that I wanted to release on XBLIG. After two years, it’s still not finished, but I do wish to revisit it in the near future. Instead, I got distracted with Newton’s New Tones (my actual first release) and eventually submitted it for peer review. This is one of the more terrifying moments. It took me a while to realize that the XNA community really is just that, a community. And as with any community you need to give as well as take to really fit in. I’m still totally intimidated by the more experienced developers but love the fact that I have access to such talented and giving individuals. Once enough developers have given the thumbs up, it’s all-systems-go and the game hits the Xbox Live Indie Games dashboard. I really like this bit.

 

At the end of the day, I just love that I can work on a game and love the fact that it’s available on Xboxes across the globe.

 

Do it.

 

I’m pretty reluctant to put myself and my work out there before it is finished for fear of being perceived as some sort of game dev fraud. I’m not a professional developer. So for both my XBLIG releases I’ve been fairly inactive in the community until a month or so before the release. Nevertheless, regarding my growth as a developer, I owe all my knowledge to others. Without the community and other developers, there would be no online tutorials, no examples to learn from, no helpful forums to search through, and no initial inspiration. Also, my partner and sister are both full time developers, without whose help I would have been pretty lost.

 

Anything in the Guitar Hero series.

 

The next one. Whatever it is. Honestly, I really like the simplicity of what I’m doing right now. Although I could do with a graphic artist. If I was forced to head up a no-expense-spared team of highly skilled and motivated individuals, I think I’d like to try and somehow capture the excitement, intimacy and involvement of a live theatre performance in a computer game. But for now, I’m super happy and passionate about doing what I do when I do it.

 

I’m pretty proud of The Most Addicting Sheep Game right now. It’s generated some really positive feedback in the last couple of weeks, all of which does wonders for confidence and makes the whole thing seem worthwhile. The music has been described as ‘catchy’, the graphics ‘adorable’ and the gameplay ‘addictive’. And seeing my sheep bouncing around in other people’s youtube videos just makes me smile. In short, I’m pleased as punch!