1. Hi there! What's your name? Want to introduce yourself?
Charles, aka chaslinux. I'm 50. I dabbled in game development in the 80's trying to write games in assembler on the Commodore 64, but ironically got stuck because I couldn't slow down my sprite movement enough in assembler (you'd pull down on the joystick and the sprite in the middle would become a ruler-sized blur in the screen). Gamedev seemed really difficult then. A couple of years ago I started getting the itch again watching Youtube. I bought GameMaker 1.4 on a Humble Bundle not long after, but didn't start any kind of development until several months after.
2. Did you participate in the last jam we held? If so, what do you plan on doing better this time? If not, what's your reason for joining?
This is my first game jam. I've been working on the same "small" game for 2 years, declared it finished, then worked on it some more. I'd like to finish a different game. Recently I've learned quite a bit more about GameMaker so I'd like to try out some of the things I've been looking up. I've also found there are a lot of really great, supportive game developers on different forms of social media and this appears to be another chance to get to know others with the same interest.
3. What games are your favorites? Did any of them inspire you, or made you want to make your own?
The Youtuber responsible for helping re-scratch the gaming interest was ThinMatrix. Watching him build Equilinox in Java was really inspiring. I played a lot of games in the 80's that were really fun back then but have been lost in the flash and glitz of today's AAA titles.
4. Do you have experience with game development? What did you do/with what engine?
Very little. The development I've done on my 2 year project has really been spread out. There was at least 6-8 months where I did almost nothing on the project. Going back to it was very difficult at first, but it's been a lot of fun for the last few months. I've decided to stick with GameMaker (I bought GMS2 after buying 1). I'm more into drawing sprites than modelling, but I don't have an art background.
5. Tell us about something you're passionate about!
Family. This is one of the reasons game development has been a challenge, trying to work and spend enough time with family, but also develop games.
6. What are your goals for this game jam?
Use some of the techniques I've been learning to create something a bit more dynamic, but keep it small in scope. When I came back to my project I started re-editing some of my existing code, improving things, finding bugs I didn't know existed, and organizing things better (#region - thank you FriendlyCosmonaut).
Finishing something very different from my main project.