Changing my Hobby to 2D Game Development from Collecting Stamps
There was a time I used to say that my hobby is collecting stamps. Well that was really my leisure time activity for a long time I was a kid. But since the last year I changed that to something else.. that was 2D game development using construct 2.
Construct 2 is one of the most popular 2D game development software. I have never heard of it until I joined with the Loops . But since then, Construct 2 has become one of my favorite tool.
Now it’s been almost an year since I start working with this amazing tool. We have been working on several gaming apps at Loops for various customers using construct 2.
At the beginning my team lead asked me to follow some tutorials on construct 2 as I earlier mentioned on this post, I had no idea about how this tool works( not even heard of it :) ). He was really supportive character and he even taught me first few construct 2 basics from the installation to the use of physics.
I found lots of youtube videos and channels related to construct 2 game development. Every time when I found a free time I started following those tutorials. That was really fun, day by day, video to video and tutorial to tutorial I started fall in love with construct 2.
Even though my position at Loops was Full Stack Engineer, I really wanted to become a full time Game Developer because of construct 2.
So it took almost a month to complete my first multi level platform game. Well that was a tutorial tough :) . I learnt 90% of the construct 2 by following it. Since then I spent most of my weekends to develop small games using construct 2. It was all about self learning and experimenting.
But as I was not good in graphic designing stuff, I had to use already designed sprite sheets and images. You can easily find hundreds of free game development assets in the internet but the only issue is you might have to create your game storyboard according to them as you are not good in graphic designing and you have to rely on already designed characters and assets!! so you have to work according to them( *sigh ).
GraveYard Run is one such a game that I built using construct 2 and collected free assets.
GraveYard Run is a multilevel adventure game, where you need to collect more items(diamonds and coins..blah blah) and survive from the zombies and the death traps. Level by level you will be able to unlock several powers such as shields, weapons and etc. Also your challenges will going to be harder as you go ahead... yeah some old school gaming stuff.
Even though I have not finished developing it, yet you can check a beta version of it here.
Day by day I’m learning some advance stuff and sharpening my construct 2 skills. I really believe that I’m still in a learning curve.
We can even integrate social media logins to our games and also can enable sharing your achievements and scores via Facebook through the game. Also you can connect MySQL data base to the game and collect your users information and maintain a leader board.
And the best part is you can easily convert your HTML 5 game to a mobile application (Android or IOS). I recently converted one such a game that I developed to a Android app using Ionic 2.
I can easily spend hours on construct 2 projects. That because I love working on them and playing games. And that’s very cool. I’ve learned so much in the past one year period working on several construct 2 projects. Any one can easily learn construct 2 and build some cool things. It’s not the rocket science.
For me, working on construct 2 project like having a stress releasing pill.
As a kid I really enjoyed myself by collecting stamps and now as a young man I’m enjoying myself by developing games. Every time when I see someone playing a game, which has been developed by me it means a lot for me!( only released a few though :) ).
Yeah finally.. I changed my hobby to game development and now I’m really addicted to it. But I haven’t stopped collecting stamps though.
PS: Now I have started learning UNITY, High level game development, all because of construct 2 .
