I've been looking for a new home for my gamedev thoughts for a while. Since I use Stencyl frequently, I had been posting on the community forums. Sadly, web forums seem to be on their way out--but I like the idea of reaching out to a broader community.

I like to make games in my spare time. It's a good creative outlet that combines my technical side and artistic side.

My current project is "Rogue of Vallas", an action-adventure platformer with RPG elements that pays tribute to 90s era games--particularly MS-DOS games such as Prince of Persia and Jill of the Jungle.

Screenshot from Rogue of Vallas

The project started as a way to pass some time during the COVID-19 lockdown in North Carolina. It has really pushed my artistic and level design abilities, which were never as strong as my programming abilities. But it's always good to learn new things!

It's strange looking at old screenshots now, such as this one from later in 2020...

Old screenshot from Rogue of Vallas

... and compare it to more recent screenshots.

More recent screenshot from Rogue of Vallas

It's harder to see improvements in level design, though. It doesn't take long to look at a piece of art and form a quick opinion on it. Like reading a book or watching a movie, playing through a level takes a greater investment of time. This makes it harder to experience enough of it to form an opinion. I like to think the levels I've created recently are better than those I first designed, but there's also the possibility that I only think they're better because I've adapted to my own designs.

Difficulty inflation is a concern. I test my code and level design by regularly playing the game. Since practice makes perfect, I'm regularly adapting to my own designs, which means I need to make the levels harder to feel a challenge. I don't want to squeeze every topic I have a thought on into one post, but this would be a good topic to return to later.

If nothing else, this has been a learning experience.

A final screenshot from Rogue of Vallas


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