Doing something real - sprites and sprite-sheets

I started playing with sprites. For testing I downloaded dog from Wolfenstein 3D and some other retro games sprites. I played with the sprite-sheet editor and sprites packer (used to put together individual sprites into a single texture called atlas). In general I just looked around Unity and check how those tools are working.

Examples, which highlight the fact that nice 2D animation does not require too many sprites:

Wolfenstein 3D

Batman Returns 

Castlevania

Here are listed several sprite database pages, which are good sources for inspiration:

• http://www.spriters-resource.com/
• http://retrogamezone.co.uk/
• http://spritedatabase.net/
• http://erantzo.awardspace.com/
• http://www.nesmaps.com/
• http://scrollboss.illmosis.net/mainmenu.php
• http://tsgk.captainn.net/
• http://www.bghq.com/
• http://www.vgmaps.com/

Starting game development (or at least writing about it)

I was big computer games fan in my childhood. I started playing on Commodore 64 and in the beginning of 1990 I received my first 386 PC with MS-DOS, where I played all the best RPG dungeons of that time like Eye of the Beholder (1990), Dungeon Master (1988), Lands of Lore (1993), Betrayal at Krondor (1993), The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994), Ishar (1992) trilogy, Realms of Arkania (1992) serie and many other titles. 

From my perspective it was the golden age for RPG – pixel art graphic, great stories and mystical fantasy worlds with hours of playtime without Internet, so every problem had to be solved by players… 

Here are some images if you do not know games I am speaking about:

Ishar 2

Dungeon Master

Eye of the Beholder 2

Lands of Lore

It was of not only RPG genre that fascinate me – there were tens of other adventure and strategy titles and I spent with my friends days and weeks by playing games and ignoring what’s happening around in a real world. Games stopped interesting me when the 3D era come – in fact last games I was really mastering were Doom 2 and Warcraft 2 and I totally abandon any game playing around 1998.

As a C++ developer I become later in my professional career again interested in games, when Windows Mobile and first Symbian phones arrived to the market. I have tried to come with my own games, but it all ends without success, because I had no time to finish anything being always busy with some other projects. Bellow are some screenshots of my attempts - I tried to create the classical RPG dungeon, which I called Thormdeil:

Now after 10 years after my tries on mobile phones I am no longer developing, so when I saw the Unity (https://unity3d.com) for the first time I realized that it is probably my last chance to become hobbyist game developer as I always wanted. 

To increase my internal motivation I started this blog, where I plan to inform everybody and nobody (I do not expect to have readers), how it is to start game development knowing nothing or little about game principles and physics, close to nothing about C# and having zero abilities to create graphics on one side, but being enthusiast and full of energy to create own small 2D pixel art games.

Wish me luck,,,