Tyrian is a top-down scrolling shooter released in the mid 90s, and it’s one of my favorite games.
It was developed by Epic MegaGames, which produced memorable titles like Jazz Jackrabbit, One Must Fall: 2097, and Solar Winds. Tyrian is beautiful and polished, filled with interesting and diverse enemies, worlds, and weaponry. It also features an interesting mana mechanic that uses generators and power consumption.
Having grown up playing video games as a kid in the 90s, it’s hard to separate the appreciation for a well-crafted game from nostalgia, but if you’ve never experienced the wonder of DOS games, I highly recommend installing DOSBox and heading over to Abandonia.
I could go on about how much I love Tyrian, and I will in future posts, but the point here isn’t simply to praise the original game, but rather to document the creation of a new game – my game.
Before I talk about this new game, you should probably know that I’m an amateur programmer who enjoys thinking and talking about games more than actually playing them (and I enjoy playing them very much). Rather than tell you my life story, here are some of my stats:
- Born and raised near Vancouver, BC
- Can eat the same thing every day
- Diploma in Computer Information Systems
- Married with a cat and no kids
- Terrible at remembering dates
- Awesome and remembering movie and TV quotes
- Fisherman and fan of mixed martial arts
Now that we’re close friends, let’s talk about my game.
About a year ago I began writing down my game ideas in a text file. After accumulating over one hundred pages, I finally began to bring one of the ideas to life, and thus Zyrian was born.
That’s right, I called it Zyrian. I chose this name because I wasted a lot of time trying to think of an awesome name, but I couldn’t.
I’ve started many programming projects over the years, and like many amateurs, I finished very few of them. Also like many amateur programmers, I tend to spend more time thinking of cool new features to add rather than working on existing ones. And after working Zyrian for about a month, I dropped the project to pursue other interests.
After watching some presentations on the importance of finishing projects and developing a portfolio, I decided to force myself to finish Zyrian. So 6 months later, I picked up the pieces.
On a side note, it becomes clear just how bad your code is when you have to dive back into an old project.
It’s now 5 months later, and I’m still plugging away at the game. I’m not sure how close I am to being finished (probably because I’ve never done something like this before), but I’ve definitely come a long way.
This is this the story of the making of Zyrian – a Tyrian clone made by an amateur programmer who’s never published a game. I’ve learned a lot so far, and I hope I can pass on some of that knowledge to you.