Head's up guys. This post is written by Joraaver.
We've given you the basics of who we are, but now, I'm going to dive into what the game is about, as well as what part each of us plays in the development of the game we're working on. The game has no name yet, so "the game" here means The Game.
The Game
This is a puzzle-platformer game. It's got a bit of a backstory, but the real focus is on the puzzle in each level. We hope players will learn to love the titles as they move on through the levels, because they'll get no other hints. Now, I can't tell you everything, can I? But perhaps a screenshot will satiate your hunger for now:
Our Roles
I'm Joraaver, the lead programmer on the team. I'm using the JMonkeyEngine, or jME version 3 RC2, as the game engine for this project. I could have gone with a more classic 2D engine, like Construct 2, or even have used Unity, which has just released a 2D framework in it's latest version (v4.3). However, I am most familiar with Java, I like the open-source nature of the engine, and the community support from the guys who work on the engine is amazing (fastest response I've gotten on the forums was in two minutes, and the slowest was within a day).
Some of the many options for game development (jME, Construct 2, Unity 3d):
The levels are created through Tiled, an extremely simple but effective tiled map editor. Further down the road, I'll go over how I process the maps created in Tiled into a level in jME.
Suchaaver is our resident artist. He's using a Wacom Intuous 4 Tablet for his drawing needs, along with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash. However, for vector and raster images, Inkscape and GIMP work just as well.
Amarinder works on our sounds and music through GarageBand. He's the most familiar with Garageband, and it suits our needs adequately for this game.
We all chip in on progamming, design, QA, and ideation.
Future posts will cover the art, sound, and programming aspects of development of the game in more depth.
Hope you all had a joyous Christmas!