kwongo

Thank you!! :)

Basically any time I have when I'm not in school I put towards either playing a game or working on a game. I should really be putting more effort towards my schoolwork which has fallen by the way-side especially in the months leading up to the release of Mass O' Kyzt, but now that it's done I think I can spend a little more time and energy on schoolwork.

As for getting kids into coding, I think that the kids have to have a significant appreciation for computer first. I think that once they realize just how powerful, fast and versatile a computer is and once they realize that coding is literally the means by which they can manipulate humanity's greatest accomplishment, they'll want to learn about coding. I think the best learning experience is when a kid would take a template of a program, maybe they'd copy it out or something, and then they can add bits to it to make the program slightly different but ever so slightly personalized.

I don't really have much experience with that stuff so maybe I'm just talking nonsense but I hope that gave you something to think about?

I've been programming since I was like 8 years old so the programming side of things just came from a lot of experience. I have spent the last two years or so getting really into game development so that's when I've really been concentrating on improving my skills- it's slow, but I think it's paid off.

Haha, I'd recommend using a full-on engine rather than just Java and whatever framework(LWJGL, etc) if you're trying to make a game as an indie. There's really no shame in it- it saves a lot of time and pain that could be spent on the higher-level elements of your game. Performance isn't really that relevant unless you're doing something really unconventional that other engines just don't facilitate properly, but concepts like that are few and far between.

As for finding all the bugs...

I just pushed an update to fix like 3 of them after getting a few messages about them.>.> It's the price to pay for no real QA testing, I suppose.

Well, mostly it's because I really like to know how the computer works at a fairly low level and I like having a lot of control over how it runs- even if that control means I break it every few months.

With regard to developing on Linux rather than Windows/Mac, I found that certain things like compilation and running the editor were a lot smoother and faster than they were on Windows. Also, by the time I really got into game development(1-2 years ago?) I was already way more familiar with how Linux worked than I was with Windows, so the fact that I was just used to it became a large factor.

I don't consider myself a zealot for the Linux cause, I think everybody can pretty much choose what they want- but I think in order to use Linux you have to be a bit of a computerphile.

I've spent about 9 months making this game, all in all.

As for the graphics, I've spent the past 2 years or so creating placeholder graphics that I never thought would stick. Eventually, these placeholder graphics became high enough quality to where I just... kept them. I really never meant to learn pixel art on purpose, but it happened and I guess I'm going to keep developing my pixel art skills!

Thank you!! :) That's the idea. For a while I was kind of disenfranchised with getting into gamedev and thought that I'd just spend my life working a 9-5 as a software developer in some random company, but at some point I just... decided not to? Now I've got my heart set on getting a career in gamedev, or becoming homeless trying.