Hey everyone! I just got curious as to what was your guy’s first game you ever made, whether individually or as a team, using any engine.
I’ll start with…well it’s not my first but my second (we don’t speak of my first one). It was a 2D shooter I made two years ago for a friend, and a few days ago I found it sitting in my computer, so I cleaned it up and made it public on Game Jolt! This was the game that my Dingo Engine was born from.
If enough people want, I’ll (very reluctantly) upload my first game, but I must warn you: I was a high school freshman when I made it.
My first “real” game (in the sense that you could play it and accumulate score) was a game called “Submarine Panic” that I wrote in the TI-99 4a when I was ~11 years old.
In this game, you controlled a submarine sprite with the joystick. There were constantly moving sea monsters (each constantly moving in a single direction that wrapped at the edge of the screen). Your goal was to avoid them for as long as possible… and the score ticked ever upward until you died.
The sequel to this game was called “Asteroid Panic” which may have been one of the world’s first “sequel that’s just a reskin”… but because it was exactly the same game only with a black instead of blue background… and instead of a submarine, you controlled a lunar module looking thing… and instead of sea monsters there were… wait for it… asteroids.
Naming my ES example “Asteroid Panic” was a subtle homage to that old game I wrote so long ago.
Both games were stored on a cassette tape (yes, that’s really how we stored data once)… that has since been lost to history.
I made a very simple, horrible programmed and looking 2D game, where you have to get to the portal. After you get there you spawn at the same position as before and have to get to the portal again and again … But every time you pass the portal and respawn the rectangle in the middle moves quickler, so it’s getting more difficult in time.
That’s an ugly page but still functional. It’s from an old host I used to have that supported server-side-includes.
The jar still seems to work. I probably should not have started a game.
Edit: fortunately I was able to solve that one in one pass and can stop now that I’ve heard my “win” music. I still remember composing that on the laptop while on vacation many many many many years ago.
sigh I might as well post a screenshot of my first game.
You (Mario) have to run from Freddy while collecting items so you can escape. The tables are obstacles. The map was randomly generated, and the sheer size of it made the game insanely difficult to play. It took me a couple days to finally beat it.
It’s a game where you crash land into a fictional island and their in a war with another fictional island and make you fight. It’s a shooting game and only has four missions, but it gets progressively harder with each mission and it has three difficulty levels you can pick.The plasma rifle is probably the most broken weapon in the game (reloading it increases your total ammo, not decrease it. INFINITE AMMO TIME!) It’s much better than my first one by a long shot.
Both of them are written in Java, the first one took me a couple weeks, the second one took three months. Most of the time was hand coding each individual block for the maps. I really need a map editor…
Back in 4th grade my dad signed me up for a summer computer course. We were handed floppy disks with some practice software, mostly typing games to improve speed and stuff. On that was a little sprite / tile engine with some pre-scripted functions you could use. I attempted to make a bullet hell kind of game, but ended up with a small level that would repeat indefinitely and when the enemies exploded the explosion never went away. That’s pretty much the first thing I think I can call a game that I made. I still have that floppy somewhere…
A snake moving around eating and growing but avoid to bite itself on a zx81 sinclaire with a 4KB RAM extension at age ~13, 33 years ago With double buffering for flicker free game experience. Actually looking back that’s amazing.
Stopped write games at age 20. Started again two years ago with JME.
I have to confess that creating a game for me was always mor fun than play games.
I made several calculator games for my TI 83, my first one being an opposite snake game where you avoid randomly spawning dots, then I made a card game where you have to get more matches than the other player, then I made a Tron game with real working but rather stupid AI, and then I made mini Five Nights at Freddy’s. My classes can get verrrrrrry boring.
It was a university project. Something like arkanoid but without blocks to be destroyed (not very funny indeed). Programmed in assembler for an x86 architecture (not very funny indeed…).
It’s much better than my first one by a long shot.
With double buffering for flicker free game experience. Actually looking back that’s amazing.
