Leading Zeroes

I've always loved video games, or “computer games”, which I think is a British-ism although I'm not sure if it's still in use. My family had a PC in our house from the early 90s, and before that a BBC Micro. There's a photograph somewhere of me as a toddler sitting at the Micro with my Dad crouched behind me.

The point is that I have a long history playing video games. A big one was the original Half-Life, from 1998. It was the first game that I understood could be modded with user contributions. I swapped the crowbar for a light sabre. I added Trinity from The Matrix as a playable skin in multiplayer. Opponents in online matches couldn't see these customisations, that functionality didn't exist, but it was still fun.

The big thing I did was download and play custom maps. The quality was all over the place, but there were some real gems. I remember one in particular that was a series of connected rooms and corridors that you had to clear of soldiers, and each time you played their placement was randomised. To control this, the player spawned in a small chamber that contained a mounted machine gun pointing at a blank wall several feet away. The wall had several invisible buttons on it, each of which would spawn some soldiers in the main level when hit with a bullet. Because the bullets fired in a random spread pattern, you'd get a different set of spawns each time. Even better, the longer you fired the gun for before leaving, the harder the level would be. Genius!

Half-Life shipped with a level editor, which was called WorldCraft at the time. I spent many hours building my own little levels, learning about its capabilities and limitations. I built everything in the editor, I don't know if importing meshes was even a thing back then. Whenever I've looked at 3D game engines more recently, I'm daunted by the prospect of so much work being done to build meshes in external programs and then bringing them in.

I never published any of my work, and I have to imagine that the hard drives they were on are long gone. Making my own games has always remained a “one day” thing at the back of my head. I've learned how to program and made it my career in the 25+ years since I last touched a Half-Life level. Several times I've thought “Now's the time” but each time I've opened up Unreal Engine (or other 3D engines) I've been scared away by the complexity.

There's a mantra in film-making that I learned recently, which goes “Only write what you can shoot”. This makes sense, and made me realise that I should apply the same idea to my own attempts to make video games. For me, this means ditching the third dimension and looking at 2D games. In fact, the real-time aspect can probably go too. I'm a big problem solver, so maybe some kind of puzzle or mystery aspect? Games like the Golden Idol series, The Roottrees are Dead, and Type Help are some of my favourites that don't have complex technical systems behind them (not to diminish the work that went into them, of course. Just that the kind of work is more up my street).

Spoilers: Yes. That's the kind of game I'm exploring. I'm slowly picking up the Godot engine, which has robust 2D capabilities. I hope to write more about that in the future through the lens of the game idea(s) I'm exploring.