CHIP-8s and Game Dev
Around last Thursday, I unfortunately caught a cold. In the meantime, to entertain myself, I decided to take up CHIP-8 programming, my first venture back into game development since... the fuckin... uh... fast pair of shoes Sonic ripoff game that I started last year and gave up on within weeks. As a matter of fact, you can play it right here, in this very blog post! It's like a miracle of scientific knowledge! Everything that's ever been invented and done practically culiminated in being able to play Monster Battle inside of a blog post! Press W to start the game, Q to attack, and S to heal! There's also a super extra special secret attack you can do, but you can find that for yourself!
Anyway, writing that was a fun experience. The CHIP-8 is a very delightful machine to write code for, especially considering how easy it is to understand. It's nothing like x86, folks! Sure, Monster Battle here isn't really that good, you can tell by the way the title screen sprite is fucked up bad, but you know, it was still a fun thing to do. And it got me thinking, man... I wanna make games again.
Thing is, I suck at finishing things I start. You know that because it takes me eons to update projects, and the fact that many of my projects are incommunicado. Dungeon, anyone? Nobody remember when I tried to make a game with the Source engine? Fun fact about that particular game, it's literally fucking gone. I formatted my drive and forgot that Dungeon was on it. This was an action that obliterated absolutely everything that I worked on in my early days in software engineering. Nearly every program I wrote from mid 2023 to early 2024 except for the lucky ones who got backed up on GitHub are GONE. Even took some of my game saves. You win some, you lose a lot, I reckon.
So what's next for me in game dev? Well, for my next game, I'm planning for it to be a sorta IWBTG-style game. My last post here was about Nintendo Hard games. Well, I'm inspired. I did a bit of research into it, and I see the light. I see the light of torture and pain and anguish. I've played hardcore mode Minecraft a few times myself, I know how painful it is to lose a world, I've felt rage, and it feels nice to overcome tough shit. Even better when it's absurdly tough, troll-tier shit.
Nothing but speculation, of course. Not even I know if I'm gonna do it. It all depends on whether I'm up to the job or not. Could become reality, though. I imagine play-testing it would be a major bitch, though. Personally, I suck at hard games, regardless of whether I created it or not. I'm the type of guy who instinctually picks easy mode. Don't judge me, I'm having fun. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some things to take care of. Like continuing to suck at Baseball for the NES.
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