Jay Barnson, un desarrollador profesional de videojuegos que trabaja en la actualidad en Rampant Games, ha publicado un diario detallado del proceso de creación de un videojuego completo y funcional a partir de cero en sólo 40 horas. Por supuesto, este reto no es asequible a un profano, al menos en 40 horas (Barnson ya ganó con su primer videojuego independiente, Void War, el premio Independent Multiplayer Game of the Year 2004), pero demuestra hasta que punto ciertas barreras que consideramos insalvables se están convirtiendo en trivialidades.
El videojuego, Hackenslash, es simple en su funcionalidad y su estética (al estilo años 80), pero es totalmente jugable. El artículo ha sido publicado en GameDev.net con el elocuentetítulo de How To Build a Game In A Week From Scratch With No Budget.
En realidad todo surgió como una apuesta:
I did it because of a dare.
There are many great resources available to small, budget-conscious independent game developers today. On a public forum, in a counter-rant, I expressed this fact by bragging that if you gave me a week, a fresh install of Windows, and a good Internet connection, I could build a halfway decent game with no budget whatsoever. No, it wouldn't be able to compete with Halo 2 or anything (if I could create that kind of game in a week, I'd quit my day job), but it would be reasonably amusing and playable.
Tom Bampton, who runs the monthly Game-In-A-Day 'competition' (www.gameinaday.com ), said "You're on!" He then added an extra contingency – I had to do it without the benefit of one of the (free) game engines out there. I could only use a basic library / API.
At first, I dismissed the idea. I didn't have time to take a week off of work and my current game development project to do something like this. But then I thought: What is a week? Unless you work for EA, a work-week is 40 hours. How about taking 40 hours to create a game? I was intrigued – but I didn't want to just create a space-invaders clone. How about a role-playing game – one of the most complicated genres to create games for? Would it be possible?
I didn't know. I knew it would be extremely difficult. But I accepted the challenge.
On top of that, I documented what I was doing as I worked, which I expected would be a little like going through an entire development cycle on fast-forward. I thought it might be interesting to game developers – or at least an entertaining record of how I fell on my face if I failed. The end result was a long, rambling, stream-of-consciousness record of my hourly activities. I've tried to edit it down to something a little less yawn-inducing here.
So here is how I created a game in a single week from scratch, with no budget. If you want to skip to the end and see what the final product looked like, in all it's buggy, imperfectly-realized glory, you can download the Windows version of the game at: http://www.rampantgames.com/hackenslash.html
Lo más relevante de todo el proceso son las reglas que se han marcado en la competición dado que apuestan por las herramientas libres e imponen muchas restricciones en el software utilizable (lo cual da mayor mérito al desarrollo):
Rule #1: A limit of one work-week (defined as 40 hours)
Game Development time should be restricted to 40 total hours. These will be actual game development or research hours. Breaks of longer than ten minutes won't count towards the total time. This will be an "ideal" workweek of 40 highly productive hours.The 40 hours only includes development to a feature-complete "alpha test" stage. Debugging and packaging the game for distribution and won't count towards the development time, but no new features should be implemented. Documentation of the process doesn't count.
Rule #2: All Free Tools
Except for the software that comes with a Windows install, only free / open-source software tools are used. The point of this whole exercise is to show how you don't need expensive (or even not-so-expensive) tools to develop a game. Hardware such as a scanner, microphone, and digital camera are exempted from this rule – if you don't have these, you can probably borrow them from someone.Rule #3: No Engines, only basic libraries / APIs
The game must be created "from scratch" without the benefit of a fully-featured Game Engine. No cheating and creating a game using some kind of "click-and-play" game-maker software to throw together a game.
El artículo además proporciona explicaciones sobre el lenguaje de programación y código y una descripción detallada del trabajo realizado en cada hora del proyecto.
Alex Steffen, en Worldchanging, recoge la noticia y destaca lo que demuestra este caso:
"The bottom line is this: If you want to develop games, nothing is stopping you. You can find the time. You don't need a big budget or fancy tools. You don't need a team of specialists. You don't need years of training. All you need is the will to make it happen."
El potencial educativo y de comunicación de los videojuegos es indudable, además de proporcionar un nuevo lenguaje que permite llegar a grupos de población poco accesibles con los medios tradicionales. Pero, hasta el momento, el desarrollo de videojuegos era una barrera insalvable si no contabas con un presupuesto digno de una superproducción cinematográfica y un pequeño ejército de diseñadores y programadores dedicados en cuerpo y alma durante años. Parece que esto empieza a cambiar. Sobre todo pensando en los videojuegos que no buscan una rentabilidad comercial, si no ayudar en la educación, gestión de problemas y toma de decisiones (como hace pocos meses propuse).
