Making a bilingual game is more than twice the work of making an English-only game. Not only do you need to have everything written in Spanish and English but you also need to create functions that make everything change from Spanish to English (and back again). To add a layer […]
Code Talk
1 Elements can have data. What the heck good is that? Why would your <div> tag need data? I’m always trying to learn new things, even if I have no particular use for them at the moment, because you never know. I had an idea that the sounds that play when you […]
Better HTML5 Game Development: Data Attribute
1 It’s well-known around here at 7 Generation Games that the first 10-20% of a project is going to take you 40% of the time. Progress is slow while you figure out how to do some task, but once you have that code written, you can reuse it many places. Here […]
Step by Step Guide to Making a Mini-Game: Step 1 ...
One of the questions that came up during our Kickstarter campaign was whether it was wise to release “sneak peeks” of our game under development, whether that would, in fact, discourage people from backing us because it was less than perfect. My answer was that I believe there are several […]
Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Perfect
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. So, I thought today I would show you how Fish Lake is progressing from the alpha version to a soon-to-be-released beta version. This is what our Fish Lake start page was. And this is what it will be after I finish […]
Two pictures are worth 2,000 words: Progress on Fish ...
I believe that every software project has to comply with a law best shown in the chart below. If you get something done right away, it will be very far from perfect. On the other hand, the perfect software never gets done. Every software project that I have ever worked […]
Done is better than perfect
Last post was what we accomplished. We also learned a lot, I think. First of all, when we do this again, we will be clearer up front about how much time we expect to spend on the project. I think most of us did not realize how much this week was […]
Lessons learned from anti-hackathon
Not everything we do makes it into the games. Sometimes we start out with an idea that we think will capture students’ interest and teach a concept, but it just doesn’t work out. For example, I thought I could demonstrate the ideas of probability, certainty, impossibility using the office guinea […]
Guinea pigs make poor co-stars
Here at 7 Generation Games, our jobs can change from week to week. As a small company, our work is decided not by title but by what most needs to be done. For the last few weeks, Dennis has been working on the 3-D game, making an application that does […]
Adding the juice
Hey, you! Yes, I’m talking to you! You couldn’t be like everyone else, could you? You just had to be an individual. Yes, you, with your shiny brand new laptop running the latest version of Chrome on Windows 8. You, too, Mr. Our-School-Must-Upgrade-Computer-Security. And, I’m talking to you, person running […]
Why It’s Amazing Anything Ever Works At All
In January, we spent two weeks in North Dakota talking to teachers and observing teachers and students playing Spirit Lake: The Game and Fish Lake. For weeks, we have been working on the changes they recommended and more suggestions that came in as students played the game. Drum roll, please […]
It’s here! It’s everything you asked! Spirit Lake 2.2
Have you ever thought about how many parts there are in a computer game? You need artwork – every single scene has, well, a scene. You need a background. Then you need characters, people, zombies, whatever. You need a story line. It can be simple – the zombies are going […]