This is Lance Zimmerman and I created this website to share my latest shared video game projects.

Even more recently I've been learning the raylib game library. I used C++ to make games, and my Knightmare Game Engine, a lite engine that includes an entity manager, and content manager. It is open source of course, and Ray used XNA among other libraries as a guide for the API. It was fun making Asteroids with it too, and even more fun making Asteroids Deluxe, and Defender for the first time. Defender will be added in the future when it is ready for the public. I plan to make a tutor for it as well, as there really are none. It performs really well too, my Asteroids Deluxe project I just got done uses about 1-3% CPU, 10% GPU on my desktop, at 5000~FPS. I of course set it to max at 120FPS, no reason to waste energy.

Future plans are to remake more 80s arcade video games. Gravatar, and others are on my list.

On October 2022: I started getting deep into raylib 4.1. I use raylib 4.5 now, the latest release. I use Visual Studio 2022. I've been doing game jams as often as I can as well. I did six in the years ago. I've not done one lately, been busy working.

I found a new open source game engine that looks interesting. Flax Engine

October 2022: I built myself an all new desktop. Ryzen 5700X, 32GB RAM, and a Strix 3070 RTX. Two 1TB NVMe, a 4th gen and a 3rd gen drive, and added three 4TB and two 2TB SATA SSDs. Did RGBs for the first time, see photo below. Gave Jenni my old one below from 2016. She is happy with my hand me downs.

November 2016: I upgraded my desktop to a 4ghz octacore with 32GB RAM with a Strix 970 GTX and gave my old desktop to my partner in crime Jenni Jewell. She also helps me with some graphics in some of my games. In 2018 I upgraded it to a Ryzen 2700X system that used a 500GB NVMe drive.

I will post all of my video game projects on Github, all open source. I hope to share what I've learned so others may learn from it. Remember, sharing is caring. So far I have two game projects that are active. Vector Omega Race and Base Defender.

I'm still working on rebooting a game I did using XNA4 years ago named Base Defender. I will upload it as soon as it is at a point that it does something. I am behind because my desktop HDD failed, and I've been saving up money to replace it. Don't worry I had the project backed up. My old 500GB high speed system HDD November of 2016, and that has been replaced with a new Samsung 3D 850 EVO 500GB SSD that is about ten times faster.

I started learning C++ in 2012. In that time I have learned much, but I also know I have so much more to learn. It helped so much that I already had a good grasp of programming. I started learning to program modern video games using C# using XNA back in 2009. See some of my projects below, soon to include my raylib projects.

On June 22nd of 2024 I started a new project, to create what I think the next version of Asteroids after Asteroids Deluxe by Atari 1980, should have been. I used raylib 4.5 for this project, still my go to library, with C++. Using my Knightmare Version 1.0 arcade engine. I changed the game up, making it a dual stick style game with power ups, and more enemies. The player main weapon is a turret that is pointed using the mouse, or controller. With power ups you are able to gain secondary weapons. I even added a Boss every five waves. The game starts out easy, but the difficulty quickly ramps up. I have game play videos on my YouTube channel. You will find the most recent release binary in zip file format for Windows 10 and up for the game under releases in the repository on the right side. Or follow this link: Asteroids Reimagined binary.

On December 5th of 2017 I started a new project to recreate the classic arcade game from 1980 known as Missile Command by Atari. I used MonoGame for this project. I've since then made some other improvements on the game play. I've improved both performance and code maintenance ease. It also saves the top ten list to a file. This game is complete and you can download a binary for Windows 7 and up in this zip file Missile Command binary download to try it out and is included in the github. You will need the .NET 4.7 runtime, if you don't have it yet you can find it at .NET 4.7 runtime. I had fun making this version. I made my own 3D library for the graphics that includes text and numbers made in voxels awhile back and I wanted to test it. That was much fun.

On March 16th of 2017 I started a new project to recreate the classic arcade game from 1980 known as Asteroids Deluxe by Atari. I used MonoGame for this project. I've since then made some other improvements on the game play. I've improved both performance and code maintenance ease. It also saves the top ten list to a file. This game is complete and you can download a binary for Windows 7 and up in this rar file Asteroids binary download to try it out and is included in the github. You will need the .NET 4.7 runtime, if you don't have it yet you can find it at .NET 4.7 runtime. I had fun making this version, I had to get used to MonoGame again as I've not used in over a year. I made my own Vector library for the graphics that includes text and numbers. That was much fun.

On October 7th of 2016 I started a new project to recreate the classic arcade game from 1979 known as Asteroids by Atari. I used Xenko for this project. I've since then made some other improvements on the game play. I've improved both performance and code maintenance ease. It also saves the top ten list to a file. This game is complete and you can download a binary for Windows in this zip file Asteroids 4.5.1 in Xenko binary download to try it out and is included in the github. You will need the Visual C 2015 runtime, if you don't have it yet you can find it at Visual C 2015 runtime. I had fun making this version, I had to get used to C# again as I've not used in over a year. The Xenko game engine has much promise too, as a free open source game engine. It is well refined, it is just missing documentation.

On May 30th I completed the last tutor I had time for. I was ready to test if I could make a game using Unity 5 so I started what is my ritual game for a new engine or library. Asteroids, making it as close to the original as I can. It was pretty easy, just needed to figure out the methods of Unity 5, it has changed much since the first time I used it years ago. I'm sharing the code to help anyone else that may have had the same issues to get past that I had. You can play it in the web too here. Asteroids in Unity 5 Web Player

On January of 2014 I started a new project to recreate the classic arcade game from the 80s known as Omega Race. I used SDL2 in this project as well. I've since than made some other improvements on the game code that I will take back to Asteroids. I've improved both performance and code maintenance. I've got most of the game mechanics code done, I just need to get the final touches done. This project has been put on hold so I could reboot Base Defender.

On November of 2013 I converted my Asteroids project that I did earlier that year that I used the Allegro library so that it used the SDL2 one instead. I made a few improvements as well as it no longer used normal fonts. I created a line based font for the game that I plan on using in future vector based games as well.