My projects section is a bit sparse isn’t it? Looking at it you could assume I never made anything! But I honestly I haven’t felt like I had any projects worth releasing.(well until recently…) I’m going to talk about some of those projects starting with Retrofit.

Retrofit is a 2D top-down shooter where you control a customizable and upgradable spaceship and take on missions. It even had a story! I was making it with Game Maker 5.3A

It also has a survival mode where you fight bots as long as you can. There’s a tutorial section called the ‘Academy’ too but it wasn’t included in this build pictured. It also had a kind of maze level that I scrapped because it didn’t really fit the method of control.

You could tie weapons and skills to buttons on the keyboard. (ex: ‘X-Defense’ corresponds to the ‘X’ button. Here I’ve got standard rapid fire laser, Reflective Shield, Mines,  drones that orbits around my ship and fires constantly and the ‘Berzerk’ skill. I was going to have a leveling system. The skill ‘Berzerk’ causes your ship to go so fast that it creates after images, increases speed and fire rate as long as you don’t slow down or run out of energy. Other weapons include: Homing Shot, Absorb Shield, Sword Drone, and Missiles.
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Retrofit has a map and markers to show when enemies are off screen. It might be hard to tell what’s going on in the screenshot here. What your seeing above is me fighting the first boss in the game. I’m using the Reflect Shield and the boss has just fired a homing electricity shot at me. There’s only one finished level but there’s actually 3 ‘finished’ bosses in the game. I really enjoy making bosses.

So why didn’t I finish it? First of all while I did almost all the art myself, I used a lot of scripts from now unknown authors. I think all the songs in the game are from OverClocked Remix or something. I worked on it a lot, and then I took a long hiatus from it. When I came back to it I decided I wanted to make a new demo that my friends could try out as fast as possible. This is the version of the game pictured. It was actually playable and didn’t have game ending bugs. But after I made the demo I lost interest not just from the game but Game Maker itself. At the time I just felt it was to limiting for what I wanted to accomplish. Looking back on it now, I just don’t think I was skilled enough to finish it to the level I wanted and that probably frustrated me out of working on it anymore. There’s some ideas in the game that I’d like to come back to though.

Hi, I’m Matt. Before I get into regular game development stuffs I figure I should write a little about myself.

I like video games. The earliest video game I remember playing is Pong. I played it with my older sister on her Atari 7800. I have an original Game Boy that still works to this day. The first console I had to call my own was a Sega Saturn. I’m currently playing Portal 2 on PC.

In middle school I discovered RPG Maker and Game Maker. I was fascinated by the idea of creating my own games. However I felt like I wasn’t able to make the kind of games I wanted to make with these tools. It is through this thought that I discovered programming after trying out scripting in Game Maker and having some success.

In high school I taught myself how to program outside of the classroom while I learned about analog and digital electronics inside the classroom.

It wasn’t until I went to college at MCCC that I was formally taught how to program. It began to “click” thanks to the amazing teachers I had. While I was at MCCC I was able to take the Electronic Games and Simulation courses and learn more about the game development process as a whole.

These days I am attending Temple University pursuing a BS in Computer Science. I’m working on expanding my portfolio. I have some skills, now I need to actually finish and release some games! I’m using the ever-growing philly game scene as inspiration.

I’m always learning, I will use this blog to document my thoughts, progress and projects!