from Hacker News

‘It took over my life ’ How one man made his dream 90s video game on his own

by dan1234 on 2/21/23, 2:49 PM with 70 comments

  • by NiagaraThistle on 2/21/23, 4:16 PM

    In middle school (late 80's, early 90's ?), me and a couple friends used to sit around in class and dream up custom JRPGs like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy type games. We'd draw maps and build out stories and wish we could build out the actual games.

    Today with tools like Godot and RPG Maker (regardless of how good or bad compared to others), I realize it is actually possible to build these games I used to dream about. But like the title of this article, I fear falling too deep down a rabbit hole now that i have a family and adult responsibilities.

    But man does that inner 12-year fet super excited at the thought of building an 8-bit Dragon Warrior clone based on the old Middle Earth Role Playing TTRPG adventures.

  • by yamtaddle on 2/21/23, 3:47 PM

    Wishlist of games I want but will probably never make myself:

    - Warzone taxi / ambulance driver. I discovered this with GTA San Andreas: cheats "all pedestrians armed" and "all pedestrians fight", then run taxi and ambulance missions. I guess this could just be a game mode in GTA. Putting in the cheat codes is tedious, especially since it's usually nice to also do the 100% armor code so you have some chance of actually completing multiple drop-offs, so a separate game or a dedicated game mode that wrapped it all up together would be cool. Courier, et c., would also be cool roles. Crazy chaotic urban warfare in which you're not a main target, but you've got to get around the city, is the point.

    - Tailspin / Tales of the Gold Monkey / Archer Danger Island flight/business sim. You run a scrappy barely-getting-by flight service in some fictional Pacific island chain with a backdrop that's more-or-less the late 1930s. Survive, upgrade your plane, buy more planes, hire more pilots, et c. Indiana jones vibes (one mission type could be flying Indy-like characters to and from whatever ruins they want to explore, in fact). Maybe some Sid Meyer's Pirates! elements, to a degree—but you've got a flying boat, not a pirate ship. But, yes, pirates should be there, and all kinds of other unsavory characters. Spies, simple cargo runs, smuggling, the occasional military skirmish. A little like some of those trade-oriented space sims, but the planets are islands and the space ships are planes. Presence of plot(s) optional but encouraged. Big extra points if there's some element of first-person play outside the planes. I'd be OK with the flight being anything between pretty-damn-realistic and fairly-arcadey-but-not-so-arcadey-you-can't-stall.

    Then the ones that are just "why the hell is there no modern equivalent of this game?":

    - 4+ player (including at least 4 for local play) Return Fire for modern consoles.

    - Battletanx for modern consoles, w/ local multiplayer (um, feel free to rewrite the setting....)

    - A tower-defense type game even half as ambitious and weird and genre-mashing as Dominus was.

  • by dmonitor on 2/21/23, 4:08 PM

    I was really hoping this was about Pizza Tower [1]. Game in the article looks a bit like an asset flip crazy taxi clone.

    There's a lot of game recently that have been trying to capture the late 90s aesthetics without the late 90s technical limitations. The Big Catch [2] and Cavern of Dreams [3], for example. I'd love to see an exploration of the appeal to that aesthetic, because I think there's something more to it than just the nostalgic / vintage appeal.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlq6fFOqI28

    [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHeJBfqf9d4

    [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDjZl1EZaBc

  • by weekendvampire on 2/21/23, 3:44 PM

    I desperately want a project like this to take over my life for a few months. I'm in grad school so am juggling job hunting with coursework and other part time job duties, but I miss the feeling of giving 100% of my time and energy to one thing.

  • by everyone on 2/21/23, 3:54 PM

    In fairness this is a typical indie game dev story.. There are 100's maybe 1000's like this released every year. I'm curious why this one got a Guardian article. The creator must have some pull at the Guardian somehow.

  • by causi on 2/21/23, 3:54 PM

    Hmm, this seems less fun than Crazy Taxi. A huge part of Crazy Taxi was trying to keep track of the upcoming terrain and gauge how it's going to affect the momentum and trajectory of your car. With a flying taxi there is no terrain, no ramps, etc you just fly around obstacles.

  • by h2odragon on 2/21/23, 3:00 PM

  • by hawski on 2/21/23, 4:03 PM

    Does anyone remember or played Crime Cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Cities ?

  • by uejfiweun on 2/21/23, 6:14 PM

    Does anybody else have the following issue? I've worked on many personal game projects and the beginning is always very fun. But as the complexity scales and my ambitions grow, I end up so deep in the weeds that it renders me incapable of objectively judging my game. I can't tell whether it looks good, whether it's fun, etc.

  • by petodo on 2/21/23, 4:18 PM

    I can't believe nobody in this thread mentioned Quarantine (1994). I never played Crazy Taxi, but remember Quarantine being fun, something in likes of Carmageddon.

    You can play it here:

    https://playold.games/play-game/quarantine/play/

  • by r721 on 2/21/23, 5:23 PM

  • by jrootabega on 2/21/23, 4:09 PM

    Even if this game turns out weak, this guy is gonna cash in on a huge ripe nostalgia market. People who played the original Crazy Taxi have also been consistently upset that the later releases didn't have the same music, so they may buy this just to stick it to whoever published those.

    I think he'll regret the lack of kb/m support, though. And I wonder if releasing this as a personal product (instead of a corporation) is wise, considering it very closely imitates two separate IPs, and references others like Total Recall's Johnnycab.

  • by karaterobot on 2/21/23, 6:11 PM

    What I remember most about Crazy Taxi was the extremely 90s pop punk sound track.

    If the main monetary expense for him was hiring voice actors, I assume he didn't license any Offspring songs or anything like that. Does that mean the game has no sound track, or that it has a sound track of free songs, or that he made all the songs himself?

    Anyway, wish him well. Making a full game by yourself is a ton of work, and most people just give up on it after a few months, so that's especially impressive.

  • by AndrewOMartin on 2/21/23, 5:35 PM

    The game seems to have an arrow at the top middle of the screen pointing you in the direction to go. This is basis for a lawsuit.

    Video on the subject: https://youtu.be/EmyCy5pRMSg?t=520 The patent in question: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6200138B1/en

  • by JohnDeHope on 2/21/23, 6:56 PM

    If you're afraid of falling down a rabbit hole of complexity, look into Pico 8. It gives you everything you need to make a game, but also very solidly caps the level of complexity you can inflict on yourself. https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

  • by shanebellone on 2/21/23, 4:32 PM

    Terraria might be the most successful example from a 1-2 person dev studio. Does anyone know of a more successful example?

  • by ggambetta on 2/21/23, 3:49 PM

    I dreamed of exactly that game since The Fifth Element came out in 1997. Can't wait to play this :)