The game still needs some work, though.
I mentioned here that I was making a game for the DOS operating system, and that I was going to stream the process. And I did it!
All the videos are available on this playlist on YouTube, a total of 20 videos where I build most of the game from scratch. I didn’t do pixel art, for the most part, and there were a couple of bits that I wrote off camera because it was about solving problems that I didn’t even know if there was a solution, and that type of troubleshooting on stream is very boring.
This is the test screen
The series had some interest, considering that I don’t have that many followers and not many people watch the sessions live –there seems to be more views when I upload the videos to YouTube–. I enjoyed the few occasions when there were people on the chat and we commented on the stuff I was coding, which is one of the big reasons to stream my sessions –the other one is basically sharing, so people can learn or perhaps get inspired–.
I have been consistent as well, streaming Tuesdays and Thursdays from 20:30 GMT for 1 to 2 hours. But I had to add some sessions in between, and that was the main problem with this project: the time was too short.
I have made games with similar scope before, and it took me from 3 to 4 months, so trying to squeeze the same in month and a half… it was probably too much. Besides, this is a new platform and I didn’t have an existing working codebase. That was specially problematic with the sound and the engine design –that at the end works perfectly on a 386DX 33MHz, but it was hard to get there–. In the 8-bit systems I make games for, I don’t start from scratch any more!
As consequence, I won’t be submitting the game to the Jam. Which was one of the possible outcomes.
The game is not finished, and over the next 2 to 4 weeks I will be working on the music and level design, and after that, Gold Mine Run! will be released. Watch this space.