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Discussion forumMy year in Valheim
Post #: 308
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2025-01-25 21:36:39.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: gaming
Introduction
I never liked survival games. I preferred story-driven role-playing games, like the old Ultima series, Fallout, and Mass Effect.
But when Microsoft laid me off in January 2024, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and no income. While I waited, perhaps in vain, for my industry to recover, I figured I should take a look at my gaming backlog. Surely there must be some titles in my Steam library that I could rediscover?
As far back as Ultima VI, I dreamed of a fantasy game where I could build my own castle. Why should Lord British get to look down his nose at us plebs from his massive fortress, when we’re the ones doing all the work to save the kingdom?
Just because you’re the king, that’s no reason to be so condescending
And so I came back to the world of Valheim, an indie survival game released in 2020, that had an emphasis on base building. Maybe this could work?
Little did I know how big this black hole of gaming was, and how close I was to the event horizon.
1. Meadows
Valheim starts you out in a vast world, alone, naked and afraid. You’re dropped to the ground by a giant raven during a thunderstorm. The bird, Hugin, at least gives you some starting tips before flying off again.
Like many survival crafting games, you start out by picking up rocks and sticks, and then you build a crude hammer. Now you can craft an axe and start chopping down trees. It’s a time-honored tradition by this point, but the Viking-themed world of Valheim is a little different. For one, it’s clearly not our world. A giant tree arcs through the blue skies, stretching from horizon to horizon, forever out of reach. And your journey starts in a group of giant stones, each one representing a boss monster that you have to defeat. This gives the game a set of objectives that are clear from the start. You could go fight the first boss right away if you wanted. But you’d probably die. You need to get stronger.
A vast world awaits…
While the meadows are peaceful in daytime, they get dangerous at night. Tree-like creatures called Greydwarves come out to menace you. The solution is to build an enclosed home out of wood, with a campfire to keep you warm, a roof to stop the rain, a door to keep out creatures, and a bed to sleep in.
This was about as far I had gotten in the game before I had given up, four years ago. Early on you get the sense that this is going to be a grind. You can make a crude bow to hunt frightened deer, then slowly collect enough leather to make better clothes. It takes a while.
I decided to abandon my old character, “Jeremy”, and begin anew on a fresh world with his twin, “EvilJeremy”. Of course, the twin had a goatee. I had only grown one once in real life, when I was feeling particularly disgruntled with the world. It seemed appropriate.
EvilJeremy was a bit more adventurous than his brother, and wanted to see what was beyond his initial shores. After constructing a makeshift home, I built a raft, sailed across an inlet, and landed on the far shore. I built a new house on a stretch of plain by the beach. On my map, I called this new place “Gibsons”.
In real life, I had been born in Vancouver and raised across the water in a small town that George Gibson had founded. For some reason, it felt reassuring to have my virtual avatar recreate the steps I had taken as a kid, so many years ago.
My new home in Gibsons
After upgrading my armor and my bow, I went to seek out the first boss, Eikthyr. He was a giant deer that shot bolts of electricity. Despite being scared, I managed to take him down and recovered pieces of his antlers. They were hard enough to break stone.
I felt like I was well on my way. I had no idea how naive I was.
2. Black Forest
The Black Forest is the first new biome you find in Valheim. It was a long way away from my home at Gibsons, more than a day’s walk in-game. So to make sure I had an easy escape route back home, I flattened the ground with my new hoe tool to make a primitive dirt road. I also built little shacks along the way that I could use to rest.
The dense forest is peppered with crypts, populated by nasty skeletons with swords and bows. These crypts taught me the ugly reality of death in Valheim. When I died in one, I revived back home in my Gibsons’ bed, but without any armor, weapons, or anything I had been carrying. I also lost points in every skill I had been training up until then.
You can go back to the site of your death — indicated by a skull and crossbones on your map and a glowing orb on the ground — and retrieve these items by wearing your backup armor, assuming you made some. But if you get killed again, you’ve lost both sets. To remind myself of the fragility of my life in Valheim, I crafted a third set of armor, and then left both the map icon and the orb undisturbed where I had fallen.
The forest is also home to giant blue Trolls, some of whom like to pick up entire trees and use the stripped logs as weapons. Unless you’re really good at dodging, one hit can kill you at this stage. But they can also help clear out the forest and even smash copper deposits for you in their misguided rage.
I’m not trollin, you’re Trollin!
The next boss, the Elder, wasn’t on this continent. I had to build a proper boat, sail off, and build a sort of forward base — which I named White Rock — on the coast of this new place. I made a nice little log cabin with a bed and a fire and everything. But when an army of Trolls with logs came to visit, they smashed not only me, not only my cabin, but also the bed I was sleeping in.
I died and was resurrected at the starting stones. Getting back required building a new boat. Sailing at night is scary. You can’t see much, especially if there are clouds, and sometimes giant serpents will chase you.
When I finally made it to the Elder, I was unprepared for the fight. The giant tree shot out tangled branches that collided with my face, and raised evil roots that tore at my feet. Weighed down by my bronze armor, it was hard to dash in and recover the items from my corpse.
Eventually I figured out the pattern and downed the boss. I was awarded a Swamp Key. Great, but why would I want to go into the swamps?
3. Swamp
The whole purpose of my playing was to build a castle, right? But up until now I could only build wooden structures. Building stone walls required a stonecutter, and that required iron. And iron was inconveniently buried deep in the swamplands, inside sunken dungeons.
Apparently an ancient humanoid race, the Draugr, had mined all the iron and built a great civilization, before making a key strategic mistake: going to war with the gods of Aesir and Vanir. They lost badly and the gods buried their settlements and them. They ended up walking their forsaken land as undead warriors, fighting their final hopeless battle forever.
The swamps are dark, damp, and dangerous.
Draugr are horrifying and deadly. I found a swamp on a nearby continent and built a new base, Nanaimo, in a forest next to the Draugr. I tried to be extremely careful, cutting down trees, building torches, and flattening the land with my hoe so that I wouldn’t constantly fall into deep puddles and get killed by leeches. It took forever to tame the swamp, but I kept going.
I was unlucky and the strip of swamp I had found contained only one dungeon. And that dungeon contained many nightmare bone piles that constantly spawned new Draugr, including elites. I died a few times. But I persevered, and got enough iron to at least build a small castle in Nanaimo.
My first castle. I even dug a moat!
So I’d achieved my initial goal, right? I could stop playing? In theory, yes. But it didn’t feel right. Not yet. There was a giant swamp monster, Bonemass, to defeat. I was scared of his massive blobby arms and his poison attacks, so I built a little house on top of a giant tree and peppered him from afar with frost arrows.
My prize was a mystical wishbone, which apparently could find treasures and silver deposits. My quest wasn’t over just yet. It was time to head up into the mountains.
4. Mountains
Like Mordor, you can’t simply walk into the mountains. It’s cold, and you’ll freeze to death, unless you prepared some frost potions ahead of time. Even if your blood is full of antifreeze, there are packs of wolves that would really like to have you for breakfast.
I enjoyed my time in the mountains. There were abandoned castles everywhere waiting for me to claim them and restore them. Searching for buried silver veins was fun and rewarding. When packs of wolves attacked, I sometimes had to escape by sliding down the snowy slopes. I built base camps and equipped them with carts to haul the silver ore back to Gibsons, ready to smelt into shiny new armor.
Castles… castles everywhere…
Flying drakes guarded dragon eggs, and once I had liberated three of them I could summon the next boss, Moder. I prepared a lot for this encounter. I cleared out and flattened the area surrounding Moder’s temple, and even walled it off so that nosy wolves and ice beasts couldn’t interrupt me in the middle of battle. I used my hoe to raise the ground into giant columns of stone that I could use to hide behind when Moder attacked with her frozen breath.
It felt good to be over-prepared. Moder fell to my onslaught and I was rewarded with a set of dragon tears. These apparently were necessary to build a whole bunch of new stuff, like Artisan Tables, which let me build even more new stuff, like windmills, spinning wheels, and stone ovens.
I felt like a kid getting a whole bunch of new LEGO sets to play with. And I realized that it was time to take my toys and start building a place that I could really be proud of.
Intermission - Founding a city
I sailed back across the inlet and saw my first home, still standing where I had left it. This would be the site, I decided. I named the place Vancouver, the same as my real-life birthplace, and the city I came back to for high school and university. In the game and in reality, Vancouver was a place I would often travel away from, but would always come back to. It was, and is, my home.
Valheim has an optional multi-player cooperative mode, so in theory I could have invited my friends over to help me build this settlement. But my friends had either stopped playing Valheim or didn’t want to start. I would have to engage in this massive building effort by myself.
It took a lot of stone and iron to make this place. I found a site, way off on another continent, that was full of boulders. I constructed a portal to get there and back quickly. Iron ore couldn’t be transported through portals, so I had to build a longship to take me far away to new and even more distant swamps.
Building the castle. My first house is in the background.
Sailing off to get more iron was surprisingly relaxing, especially now that I had the speed, armor, and weapons to either avoid or fight serpents. Finding the wind, charting a course — it reminded me of happier days in childhood, when my sister and I would take out the little dingy and sail around Keats Island.
At first I labelled many of my cottages in Valheim as Keats, but finally settled on just one that was on its own small island. But I didn’t end up spending a lot of time there. Hanging out in the virtual Keats didn’t feel like the real one. Some memories have to remain just memories.
Constructing the Great Hall
To make sea voyages shorter, I took my pickaxe and carved out a small canal through an isthmus that was preventing me from sailing west. I can’t think of many games that would allow you to do that, let alone preserve every road I paved, every rock I carved, and even every object I dropped over an entire world. This made Valheim seem more like a place that I really inhabited, a world that I could make massive changes to over time.
Vancouver comes to life
The castle and city I built in Vancouver was evidence of that. It started with just a single tower. Eventually I built stone roads connecting outlying settlements, made streets and avenues and parks and houses and farms, and even a Great Hall to celebrate all my accomplishments. I even tamed a pair of wolves and filled my stone hallways with their happy doggy offspring.
Happy puppers
In the real world, I will never be able to afford a house in the city. But Valheim has no such limitations. I could make as many houses as I wanted.
But still, across the sea, the wind-swept plains beckoned. There was more to do out there. I didn’t want to stop just yet.
5. Plains
The plains used to mean death. Literally. Giant “Deathsquitos” would swoop out of the sky and kill me in one bite. It wasn’t a pleasant place to be at first, but as my armor and health improved, it became a second home.
I shared that home with the giant Lox, sort of a cross between bison and lizards. They scared easily and were tough to fight, but after trapping one in a pit I dug out of the ground, he calmed down and allowed me to tame him. I kept “Snuffy” at my base, where I fed him cloudberries and petted him and told him he was a good boy.
He saved my life more than once. On time, a giant flying bug from the neighboring Mistlands followed me home and swooped down upon me. Snuffy woke up and saved the day, as well as my base.
It was a sad day when Snuffy died. I was outside at night, surrounded by Fulings, short, goblin-like creatures with spears and torches. He burst out of his pen and broke through my stone walls just to tear through the green monsters. He saved me, but gave his life to a Deathsquito. I never tamed a Lox again.
RIP Snuffy
The plains were filled with Fuling camps. Taking them down was tricky. Not only would the smaller goblins swarm me, but the giant Berserkers would smash my face in while their magic users rained down fiery death. It took all of my skills, a ton of rest, and the best healthy foods to even attempt to take them over. But when I did, the camps were now mine. I had built my main base in the plains on top of one of the former camps. It felt good. I was taking back this world from my many enemies, one town at a time.
The Fuling camps also contained mysterious totems, which I discovered were the key to summoning their god, the horrid creature Yagluth. I landed on the swamps of another continent with my bow already singing, like it was the beaches of Normandy. I slowly built bases closer and closer to Yagluth’s temple. Finally, I summoned the demon.
This monster hurled fire and doom at me endlessly. I had tried to prepare, building tunnels down underneath the temple where I could rest and repair. But I still died, over and over again. Fortunately, I had multiple sets of backup armor, and a portal that got me right back into the fight. Yagluth eventually went down, but I was exhausted. Was this game really worth this kind of stress?
Little did I know that my stress was only beginning.
6. Mistlands
It’s a beautiful place, if only you could see it.
The Mistlands are aptly named. A thick grey mist pervades almost all of it, and while you can take out a Wisp to light up your immediate surroundings, you’re basically stumbling around blind.
It’s also a horrible place, full of giant bugs called Seekers that fly out of the mist to kill you when you’re least prepared. It’s full of crazy peaks and valleys that make it easy to get stuck. And when you get stuck, that’s when you hear the foghorn that signals your doom.
I ventured cautiously at first into the Mistlands from my base in the adjacent plains. I met the Dvergr, a group of mining dwarves who were the first friendly folks I’d met in Valheim. They had a bunch of bases deep inside the mist. They were ferrying some mysterious cargo and warned me about the Gjall.
They ought to have heeded their own warnings.
These floating gasbags signaled their arrival first with a blast from their horns, then with rivers of fire and oceans of blood-sucking giant ticks. Many of the Dvergr bases I found would end up gutted by these terrors, leaving no survivors. And I too got caught by them, leaving two corpses in a literal Death Valley for future archaeologists to wonder about.
A destroyed Dvergr base
In order to make the armor you need to survive, you have to venture into the worst part of the Mistlands: the infested mines. These are literally crawling with horrid bugs, ticks, and other creepy things. There are twists and turns and holes in the floor you can fall through. It’s not easy to get out alive, let alone with the precious Black Cores you need.
The worst part about the Mistlands was finding out that I was in the wrong Mistlands — my lovely base in the Plains bordered the largest chunk of the misty place I could find, but it was the wrong chunk. The Queen was holed up on the coast of an entirely different continent.
I thought maybe I could try an amphibious assault. I was wrong. Gjalls patrolled the Queen’s lair and blasted me off the tiny island I was using as a foothold, just so the giant ticks could surround me and bleed me to death.
I realized I had to take a slow and steady approach. I made landfall far away from the Queen on an adjacent continent, and pushed my way though to the spot where it was close to the Mistlands. But I needed to somehow bridge the gap between the jagged coast and a safe spot for an inland base.
I built a long and winding wooden bridge around the coast and up the mountains. When Gjalls showed up, I’d run away and snipe them with my crossbow. Eventually I found an abandoned Dvergr tower looking over a flat area surrounded by mountains. A perfect place for my Mistlands base.
My little home in the misty hells
From this base, I slowly moved forward towards the Queen. I’d extend my stone path and walls until I reached a safe spot where I’d build another portal. These forward bases allowed me to retreat when things got dicey. I also constructed many wisplights, their pale blue glow pushing away the mist in the surrounding area, making the path visible at last.
It was slow going, but it felt like I was taming the Mistlands. Eventually I reached the Queen’s lair, and cleared out its guardians. I felt like I was ready. I felt prepared.
I was wrong.
7. The Queen
The Queen was a horrible nightmare of a beast, a giant crawling bug with razor-sharp pincers and a hairy tail. Even when I perfectly parried her attacks, she would push me back across the dungeon, which was — of course! — shrouded in mist. Then she’d summon more flying Seeker bugs to attack me, and spew up a firehose of poison and tiny bugs. If she got bored, she’d burrow in the ground and reappear somewhere high up, out of reach and out of sight.
I could get her health down a little, but she would wear me down, drain me of all my health potions, and chase me out of her lair. It felt exhausting to fight her.
And why was I fighting her in the first place? She was sealed up in her lair, not bothering anyone outside in the world. All I had wanted from this game was my castle, and I had that. Why not just give up?
I couldn’t give up. I had one last black can of cherry cider in my fridge, and I decided that I would drink that cider when I killed the Queen.
I scoured the Internet for hints and tricks. Everyone agreed that attacking her with a sword and shield was a bad idea. The answer was to use magic. But training in magic required crafting a whole new set of cloth armor and cooking up entirely new foods. It meant going back into the infested mines to grab more Black Cores, and scouring the Mistlands for black skulls filled with soft tissue that I could refine into magic Eitr. It meant slowly leveling up skills that I’d never used before.
I did all that. I raised my new Elemental staff above my head and cast my protective shield bubble. Then I went in to face the Queen as a powerful fire mage.
A few minutes into the fight, a seeker bug popped my bubble and propelled me across the floor, straight into the Queen, who killed me with one hit.
I gave up for a while after that.
Every time I opened the fridge, that last can of cider would stare back at me, mocking me for my failure. I wondered what I was doing. Why was I spending so much time and so much emotional energy on a computer game? Why did it matter so much to me?
I didn’t have answers for those questions, at least none that I wanted to dive into too deeply.
But I decided I would make a plan. I would train. Like Rocky Balboa, except with fireballs instead of fists.
I found a spot in the swamp with a pair of bone piles, spawning endless Draugr. Once, I would have run from such a place. Now, it was to be my salvation.
I would portal in, blast undead warriors for an entire in-game day, then return home to rest and recuperate.
My Elemental magic slowly went up. I could cast more spells without being drained. Even my shield bubble got slightly stronger.
It was time.
I returned to the Queen, and poured fire into her oozing carapace. Over and over again. She would attack, and I would run.
I killed her.
That cider was the most delicious drink I ever had.
The Queen is dead, long live the Queen
Conclusions
I have spent over 700 hours playing Valheim. It’s a number that’s easy to criticize, or to mock.
But those hours have been mostly happy ones.
I have built castles and founded cities. I have cleared forests, drained swamps, and criss-crossed continents with roads. I have dug canals and sailed through them with mighty ships. I have climbed mountains and defeated dragons.
All in all, I’ve had a good time.
But it feels more than that, somehow. It’s all the little memories that happened along the way, memories that are only mine. It’s that time I taunted a troll from my boat by shooting him with fire arrows, and watched in horror as he waded through the water to smash me to pieces. It’s the time I wandered through the forest and recovered two lost tamed wolves, only to have one die to a marauding skeleton and the other give birth to his successor.
It’s all these memories, and also just moments of watching the sun go down over the water. Or watching the sky clear up after a thunderstorm.
Real life is like this as well. We have our triumphs, and our tragedies. But sometimes the moments that mean the most to us are the small ones. Times we spent with people we love. Times we spent alone.
In the end, isn’t it enough that we were here? That we lived in this world?
I’m looking for work again. It’s a slow and frustrating process. Sometimes it seems like everything is getting harder. I’m definitely getting older. For the first time, I’m realizing that there are more years behind me than there are ahead.
But I’m still here. And I’m still dreaming of a world I can help build.
Sunset in Valheim
Views: 84
Micro History Episode 2 is up!
Post #: 305
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2024-07-19 21:00:55.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags:
This one's a doozy - welcome to the crazy world of personal computers in the 1970s. This story has it all - bad managers, overworked engineers, mandatory "training" based on crazy cult-like seminars... and it ends with the most bizarre implosion in the history of tax evasion.
Plus, some computer history! The IMSAI was the world's first personal computer clone, a 100% compatible copy of the MITS Altair 8800. It set the stage for other companies to clone the IBM PC later on, which changed the world forever.
Plus plus plus, the first appearance of Gary Kildall and CP/M! But definitely not the last.
Enjoy!
Views: 957
My article on the history of public messaging is up on Ars Technica!
Post #: 304
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2024-04-29 15:02:37.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: Articles
This article was deeply personal to me, because my life overlapped with so much of it.
It starts out with the earliest networked computers (PLATO, and the Arpanet) and goes through BBSes, Usenet, web-based forums, and social media. It's a wild ride.
Check it out!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/first-post-a-history-of-online-public-messaging
Views: 1716
Micro History Episode 0 is up!
Post #: 303
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2024-04-23 17:38:49.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags:
It's an exciting beginning for me, the culmination of a dream I've had for a long time, to chronicle the entire history of personal computing.
Enjoy and don't forget to like the video and subscribe to the channel!
Views: 4060
Jeremyreimer.com is live on a new server!
Post #: 301
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2024-02-19 21:43:01.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags:
If this works, you should be seeing a new blog post!
I migrated all my websites from AWS to Linode. It's a lot cheaper, and I really like the simplicity of Linode server management.
Onwards to new things!
EDIT: Just checking image uploading! Still works!
Views: 6124
How is Facebook's Metaverse doing? Worse than buggy, it's lonely, boring, and bleak
Post #: 300
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2023-03-21 20:15:20.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: gaming metaverse
In a previous article I posted my thoughts on Facebook's sad attempt at a Metaverse, and how it was already failing shortly after launch.
Some time has passed, and I have an update, courtesy of journalist Paul Murray: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-meta-horizon-worlds.html
"After a certain number of hours in Zuckerberg’s personal universe, you find yourself asking questions like “Does he think this is good?” Looking through my notes, I keep coming across words like diminished, depleted, wan, bleak. The beta-ness of it all is mystifying. If I were Zuckerberg and I’d spent $36 billion building a metaverse, I’d make sure when I launched it there was something to do. Why would he go to all the trouble of building a virtual world, then leave it to the users to make their own fun, as if they were at a holiday camp in the ’80s?"
...
"I can’t stress how unlike a party house the Party House is. It’s not just the amateurish, low-tech design; it’s not just the sparse attendance and desultory interactions. It’s the total absence of mood. It reminds me of when I’d try to get together with friends over Zoom during lockdown — everyone’s face appearing in a box in the grid like contestants in some bleak, prizeless game show, the total absence of physicality making us feel more distant from one another than ever."
Bleak, deserted, lonely. I'm glad Paul spent some time in Facebook's Metaverse so that I don't have to.
Views: 7115
Revisiting Apple's failed Lisa computer, 40 years on
Post #: 299
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2023-01-19 21:27:36.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: articles
A second article in less than a week! This one's about the revolutionary yet forgotten computer from Apple, the Lisa, which was announced today, forty years ago.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/revisiting-apples-ill-fated-lisa-computer-40-years-on
With this second article, I had the strange feeling of being bumped off the front page of Ars Technica by... myself. My editor called it "Reimer week". It's been fun!
Views: 2886
The History of the ARM chip: Part 3
Post #: 298
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2023-03-21 16:40:22.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: articles
The third and final article in my History of the ARM chip series is now live on Ars Technica!
Read it here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/a-history-of-arm-part-3-coming-full-circle/
This article focuses on how ARM changed the world, from the iPhone to the Game Boy Advance to smartphones and Apple's new computers based on the M1 chips. It ends with a look at how ARM managed to succeed when so many other technology companies failed.
I hope you enjoy it! Please share it with your friends!
Views: 7063
The History of the ARM Chip: Part 2
Post #: 297
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2022-11-22 02:16:19.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: articles
This morning I was happy to find that Part 2 of my History of ARM article is now live on Ars Technica. You can read it here:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/a-history-of-arm-part-2-everything-starts-to-come-together
The first part was mostly a technical story of talented engineers who created something amazing. The second part is the story of how the ARM company was able to bring this technology to the world. It's a reminder that it takes both technical prowess and a focused business approach in order to succeed.
Part Three is coming next month!
Views: 6760
Reimagining the most obscure video game ever made - Part 1
Post #: 296
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2022-10-28 05:23:08.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags:
The original game, running on my Heathkit H-89
A while back, I wrote about the most obscure video game ever made, called Balablox, which I wrote when I was 15 years old in 1987. At the end of the article, I teased the possibility of a modern rewrite.
I’ve been working on that project, on and off, for about half a year now. My goal is to get it finished this year, for the 35th anniversary of the game. It’s been a ton of fun. To celebrate, I decided to write a series of articles about how I made the game, and what I’ve learned through the experience.
Everyone agrees that developing games is hard, but why is that? Don’t we have much better tools and languages now than we did back then? How hard could it be to make a simple game in 2022? Read on to find out!
Choosing an engine
These days, the first thing you do when you decide to make a game is to pick an engine. Game engines didn’t exist 35 years ago—every game was made from scratch. Today, the most popular game engines are Unity and Unreal. But these engines are ridiculously powerful, and take years to master. They’re designed so you can make any sort of game, including modern AAA titles with advanced 3D graphics and multiplayer support. They’re a bit overkill for what I wanted to make—a simple single-player game with very simple 2D graphics.
I ended up choosing GameMaker Studio 2. I made this decision after watching a series of YouTube videos where Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame) created 12 games in 12 months. A month to write a simple game? That seemed achievable.
My first steps working in GameMaker Studio 2
In the end, no matter which engine you choose, you should commit to it. You can end up spending months just playing around with different engines, or reading endless forum discussions about which one is better. All this is time that you aren’t making a game. And whatever you do, don’t switch engines mid-stream!
First things first
GameMaker Studio, like any of the game engines, takes a while to get used to. Because it’s based around 2D images, or “sprites”, it has a sprite editor built in. So the first thing to do is create a sprite for the player character.
Balablox was built on my ancient Heathkit H-89, which only supported character-based graphics. In any case, the characters were supposed to be blocky, like the cartoon that inspired it. So I stuck with a simple rectangle to start, and attached stick arms and legs. But using the power of pixels, I added large expressive eyes. That felt like a good compromise between the old and the new.
Editing the player sprite
How big should the sprite be? On my laptop’s screen, 32 by 32 pixels looked about right, and it’s a nice computer-y number to use. Done! Now I could make an “object” that used this sprite and place it on the screen grid for the first level, or “Room”.
But an empty room isn’t any fun to play in. GameMaker lets you design levels the same way people did in the original Nintendo days—as grids of tiles. I wanted a bit more granularity for the room tiles, so I made them 16 by 16. This seemingly innocent choice would cause me a lot of headaches later!
The tile editor works a bit like Photoshop, in that you can define different layers that are displayed on top of each other. The room tiles are usually the lowest layer, followed by a layer for “Collision” objects that define what you can and can’t bump into. You put collision objects on top of any part of the level that you don’t want the player to pass through. Then you set the Collision layer to be invisible. The top layer contains the objects themselves, including the player object.
Working with layers in the Room Editor
Movement
The player needs to be able to control this object, so I added some code to check if the left or right arrow keys had been pressed, and set a direction of motion variable if they were. Then for each frame of animation, called a “Step” in GameMaker, I added code to check the direction variable and update the position of the character. But before it moves the player, it first checks if that movement will collide with an object on the Collision layer.
What about vertical movement? When the player hits the jump button, I add a negative vertical movement speed variable. To simulate gravity, I slowly increase this variable in each step. I also check to see if this movement will collide with a collider object.
I wanted to include ladders, which are a special form of vertical movement. This required an additional invisible layer in the room, which I called “Ladders”. If the player “collides” with a ladder collider object, it changes the vertical movement speed to be steady in whatever direction the player chooses.
Enemies
This was all well and good, but we need enemies to give the player a challenge. This is where the object-oriented nature of GameMaker’s coding language (GML for short) comes in handy. You can define a generalized “enemy” object, give it some default values for movement speed, and write the code that will make sure it too doesn’t run into walls. Then for each individual enemy, you create a new object that’s a “child” of the Enemy object. It will inherit all these default attributes, but you can add a sprite image and special code for any unique behaviors.
Setting the initial startup variables for the default enemy object
In the original game, I had some very simple code that took a random number between 0 and 1. If it was below 0.5, the enemy would move towards the player. If it was above 0.5, it would move in a random direction. This same strategy still worked in my modern game, although I had to add a timer variable so that the enemy would stick with one direction for a while and not just wiggle about.
The code for default enemy movement
I added a few other niceties, like coins for the player to collect, and ropes for the player to hang on. I also added the Key object, which when touched, advances the player to the next room.
Because the graphics were very simple, and the code was also simple, it didn’t take long to put all of this together. I didn’t keep a log of my time, but it was only a couple of weeks of work, a few hours at a time. And at this point, I had something that looked a lot like a complete game—it had a player-controlled character, it had platforming challenges, it had enemies and things to collect—surely finishing it would just be a matter of a bit of polishing, right? How long could that take?
Oh, you sweet summer child.
Stay tuned for Part 2!
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So who am I?
I'm a writer and programmer. I write science fiction stories and novels.
I am the writer for the upcoming documentary series Arcade Dreams.
I also write technology articles for Ars Technica.
I'm the creator of newLISP on Rockets, a web development framework and blog application.
- Email: jeremy.reimer@gmail.com
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