Very often we are blinded by the grandeur of Triple-A games. We try to explore a world  beyond our own and eventually realizing that it was a foolish strive. For a starting indie developer this is a constant personal struggle, ensuring that games remain viable and do-able. In all aspects of work knowing one's skills and gaps are the key for a successful delivery, such concept also applies to game development. In creating great games we should try to define what a great game is, at least to a personal level. Below is my list of what a great game is.

1. Great games are simple
2. Players should feel good while playing the game
3. Graphic consistency should be valued
4. Live-or-Die in the first two-minutes
5. Games should be sticky

As a developer, never under estimate the difficulty in making graphics. As an artist, never under estimate the difficulty of writing the codes

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Minero is a save the world type of game. It is a prototype online game that implements polling and tile generation. The hero aims to collect all the tomes and give it to the high magician to uplift the curse.

• Project Objectives: 
  1. Online ajax long polling game
  2. Server side generated maps
• Game Features: Online game. Rough story back draft. Not much due to being a prototype.
• Graphics: 16 bit open creative content pixel art.
• Production Time: approximately 48 work hours

Check out the game above, share your thoughts and drop some feedbacks in the scirra arcade comments section.

In learning new things in software development, I believe that it is best to scale your knowledge by developing simple working projects. When creating a polling html5 game one should also consider polling request limitations and advantages, this will help you decide what type of gameplay you can create on top of it. Polling is different from websocket, webrtc and other tcp socket connected interfaces. The advantages are as follows:

1. The game will work in most devices, This is the only major advantage of polling over other technologies, html5 is still on the works and currently not all browsers or mobile devices support webrtc and websockets(websockets are slowing being supported by newer browser.).
2. Server resource, polling games if designed properly can use less resources compared to dedicated connections.
3. Learning curve, if currently you only know traditional php, dotnet and java. I would recommended though to use nodejs as polling server to achive better response rate.

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Once in a while we can be a victim of our own development phase and pattern. After reading scirra's working in progress section (link here), I can see a couple of casual developers not being able to finish their game even with a foreseeable targets. Being a software designer for a living, I follow specific process, schedules and workflow standards. Software development process and guidelines are often missed or ignored by new game developers and hobbiest. These are my top five items to note of prior to writing any codes.

1. Identify goals.
2. Define your scope.
3. Don't skip a design document.
4. Have a project schedule.
5. Stick to your scope, goals and schedule.

I would recommend solo or small teams creating an experimental driven game to use an agile development. It will greatly help segregation of scope and re-iteration of design changes.
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It has been six month and this site is barely empty. The first few attempts was difficult for me, releasing prototype games are harder and time consuming than what I expected them to be. After practicing Construct 2, I have somehow grasped my targets and goals for Pinoypixel game blog and to a degree re-aligned my expectations.

Getting the grip-on, and moving forward Pinoypixel will be a site intended for play testing not a one stop html game center. It is basically a sandbox of my casual games and prototypes. Learning game development is not an overnight thing, it takes a few months for me to get the feel on the trade. As a hobbiest hopefully I can put more time and dedication in building games.

I have started writing the design of Pinoypixel world in an excel file, and every now and then I do some short games to practice my Construct 2 skills. I will be adding a few of my prototypes soon.