The French Can Dev - Sim Tower Remake HQ

Hey all!

Sorry for not keeping this blog up to date in the last months… I have been extremely busy with work and now a move might be in the works for me so big stuff is happening IRL!

Anyways, I would like for you all to know that this project is a “in the long run” project and I will see it through no matter what! I loved Sim Tower (bought it around 96) and played the shit out of it. Now we can’t have that pleasure anymore since it does not work (at least not without quite a bit of work) on recent setups.

I want a Sim Tower successor to see the light of day and if it takes me years to see this through, then so be it!

I had previously mentioned that I had switched to Java and this… has proven to be a crude WAKE UP call as to my current abilities. I know that a software language is the ultimate best choice but for now I will concentrate on learning the language with less complicated tasks than creating a full fledge game.

With that thinking in mind (only fools never change their minds) I have decided to go back the ImpactJS route. I am much more confortable using web technologies as it is my job.

I am currently participating in the Fuck This Jam competition/event and will be learning what I can in ImpactJS while taking part in this event. The event revolves around creating a game in a genre you hate. I decided to make a JRPG. This should be simple enough to learn a framework and get some stripes in game making.

So again, sorry for the lack of updates and please do come back and check once in a while as I will be putting more update once the smoke of real life clears a bit!

Just finished writing the first draft of my Game Design Document. You can view it here and I would very much appreciate any feedback on what you see in there. I do not think of myself as a game creation master or expert tech wiz. I do and say what I think sounds right.

So for those of you who are experts in either/both those fields, do not hesitate to let me know your thougts.

Alright now back to the cool part: learning Impact!

I have been doing alot of workplace setup the past few hours. Trying to arrange things so that my Air and my PC are both co-existing in one area. I’m sure alot of you are familiar with this kind of problem but for me, It really is the first time that I have tried to have two different computers live on my desk

I think that I have hit a good spot where I can work on both computers without streching too much or being placed in an awkward position for typing/manipulating mouse.

FYI: My Air is my main work station and my PC is for gaming and in this case, reading the ImpactJS PDF book while I’m testing out on the Air.

Anyways, I will now get back to learning as it is the most pressing matter now ;)

See you in a bit!

Hi all,

Thanks for coming to this blog and reading my rants about making a Sim Tower remake with a wonderfull HTML5 Game Framwork called ImpactJS.

I will try to keep this blog updated as much as I can remember to do so ;)

At the moment I am learning the ropes with ImpactJS using a combination of the official documentation and this book by Jesse Freeman which is amazing for newbies like me.

My plan is to start with basic game mechanics and work my way through Impact and JavaScript in general. Being a web developer myself, I have familiarities with JS but I’m in no way a master. I am decent at jQuery(which is not real JS. Just a framework built on top of JS to speedup DOM related manipulations) and know pretty much all there is to know about HTML and CSS. Using Impact to create my first game is actually a no brainer for me as it is very close to what I do on a day to day basis.

Well the answer is simple… I f***ing love that game. I know some people are not as convinced and bring the elevator simulator argument often but to me it represents so many hours of fun and escaping reality to build a virtual word. I spent countless hours playing that game when I was younger and always felt it did not deserve to be buried.

Now that is not to say that Sim Tower was perfect. It surely isn’t a perfect game but I do think that if I manage to achieve my goal of recreating a working clone of the original, I can correct some if not most of it’s original shortcomings.

Of course there is the spiritual successor of Sim Tower which is called Yoot’s Tower. It was pretty much the same game but with more diverse locales and added building options. But the core game was the same. So I will be looking at both game while creating my version but my goal is not to reproduce YT or ST exactly. My goal is two folds:

1. Recreate as closely as possible ST
2. Improve on the recipe

So as I said earlier, I am currently wrapping my head around Impact for now, going through Jesse Freeman’s Introducing HTML5 Game Development and drinking alot of coffee ;)

I’ll keep you posted on examples and progress as I go.