I put up an article on basic sound synthesis yesterday. It had been requested by some folks. Touches on fundamental aspects of sound in general as well as more specific details relevant to classic retro waveforms and the kind of stuff sfxr does.

Semi-productive day in the other-computer mines. Now blowing up trash cans and dumpsters yields nice little explosions. But better than that, when ponies and their minions die, they fall over as usual, but then they vaporize in a puff of blue stuff. It's just a nice little effect, I like it a lot better than the previous "blink to death because apparently this is Double Dragon." Besides those various explosions, weapons actually have the right graphics now! Well, some do. The only one I am actually testing, the H.R. Puffencrush, certainly does. It fires big chunky marshmallows which are much more fun to see than the old red dots.

In addition to visual splendor, damage is now inflicted properly - the game actually knows at long long last that the marshmallows are Sweet Damage, and thus they have a 1% chance to cause Tooth Decay (and 150% damage) on impact. That was a major overhaul of half the files in the game, since damage used to simply be a number.

And if that weren't enough for you, along with some bug fixes, there's now an infinitely long highway leading out of town. Feel free to walk down it for all eternity. You will not reach America (and it's not some Escheresque trick where heading back up will send you right back to town - you really are however many miles away you walked!). But I am somewhat tempted to have it end in a border station at some point. Guess you'll never know unless you walk down it! For a long time. I'm debating how you'll appear in the game. Remember Rocket Keychains? Those are based on the model of Bouapha's rocket ship as seen (pretty much only by me) in SpisHulk. Maybe his rocket should be landed on the road there, indicating that that's how he arrived. Either that or he should have a car, but then there are issues of what kind of car he would drive, and you'd be able to drive it down the infinitely long road. Maybe if you drive far enough the game ends with you giving up and leaving London to its fate. Kind of like the beginning of Karateka. You can sure lose that game quickly, especially if your joystick isn't calibrated right.

Today's sneak peek demonstrates the user interface of Happyponygate, as well as what was going to be a very secret enemy. I've decided to display this enemy today in honor of the holiday we are celebrating today. If you don't know what I mean, then you surely don't know what this enemy is, either! You'll just have to find out. The monster's still going to be secret in game - you may have seen it now, but you don't know how to encounter it in the game!


Obviously the monster is just pasted over the screen, not actually in the game at the moment. But I think it turned out great - it's remarkably close to the concept art I used, right down to the oddly tentacular roots! Anyway, this is the on-screen interface as well. The big block at top is the life meter, and all the white bars are meters for different things (all full at the moment for testing purposes). Weapons go in the slots down the side, click on them to select. You can also select with the number keys on the keyboard (and - and = for weapons 11 and 12). Click Menu to visit the menu (same as pressing ESC), and the intentionally blank spot is for something else you will find out about someday.

That's it! Nice and simple and easy to use.

I got much done today already, as you see in the picture. How did such a miracle occur? Quite simply, and I don't know how I didn't come up with this plan before. I realized that since most of my development tools only work on my old computer (non-Vista), it was ridiculous that I tried so hard to work on the new computer. It's always cramped my style dramatically, and I would procrastinate doing any art or sound for weeks and weeks just because I knew I'd have to go over, turn on that computer, fire up the needed programs, do the work, transfer the results over, and so on. So today I decided to move the code over there, and just do all the work there! The difference is splendiferous. That computer is also not connected to the internet, making it even more ideal for not slacking off. That is probably the reason I avoided being there before. I like to slack off.

Sol Hunt has given me a deadline on this game - it's supposed to be in a playable complete-ish state (not necessarily even beta, just something worth playing) by the time her school gets out. I have 5.5 weeks. I have a lot of work to do.

Ay! No he blogado mucho! I don't even know if that's conjugated right. But I do know blogar is not an actual Spanish verb. It means "to blog" in Jamulish.

So, results are in for LD48 #11! I did well. I got 1st place in Humor, 2nd place in Theme, 3rd place Overall, 5th place in Polish, 5th place in Audio, 6th place in Graphics, and far too low to bother even calculating in Technical, Innovation, and sadly Fun. I also got insanely low ranks in Food, Journal, and Timelapse, but I didn't try to compete in those.

I got a lot of comments that my game was really nifty but not fun. Oh well, I am happy with it! And the first place in humor is a triumph (note: huge success!), because it really was intended to be a joke in video game form. Looks like it worked! I thought it was fun to play too (though I can really understand not thinking that... all it was was trying to click objects quickly). Many people lamented the fact that you start over when you die, but my defense is twofold. First fold: the whole game can be completed in under a minute (and by "can be", I mean "must be", because you'd lose if you took longer!), so really how bad is restarting? And second fold: I made it work that way (and with a simple fade out rather than any kind of "GAME OVER") intentionally, so that it would seem at first glance that all you do is watch a leaf fall and then it returns to the title screen. The actual game is supposed to be sort of a secret... a really really obvious one, but nonetheless, a bit of a surprise. It's supposed to appear to be some kind of snooty art garbage, but then you subvert that by blowing it apart. I was going to have big gunshot noises too (I also considered having your clicks be used to target nuclear homing missiles), but that would ruin the surprise at the 4th level, since you'd already be in ridiculousness at that point.

So no, commenters! I do not regret the restart on death! I shan't repent! It's funny because I am a stickler for playability and ease of use, and I would never make a restart-from-the-top game normally, but this joke game truly calls for it. Although one commenter did mention limited lives, that would be nice (but again, they'd have to kick in on level 4 or something, or they'd ruin the joke).

By the way, the words that many people can't understand in the game are: "THE K IS SILENT!" (bad Sean Connery impression), "WHAT A DRAMATIC CONCLUSION!" (bad Strongbad impression), and at the end is an outtake from when I was recording rhino noises, where I am laughing and saying "Rhinos don't sound like that!". That's because I was actually making cooing noises, something I probably should've included in that sound clip. Come to think of it, that final rhino should've cooed as it fell.

So that's that game. Another game just finished was our first try at Heroes Mafia. It was so awesome! My wife thought I was crazy because I'd run around the house shouting out strategies and plans, and how things were working. I was a bit excited about it. I am dying for the next game of Heroes!

Why buy your kid toys when you can make ‘em? Fun to construct and play with - and no guilt when you chuck ‘em into the trash!

Cosmo and I have a moderately cool town going on:

Of course Akiko saw what we were doing and totally put us to shame with a super detailed 9 page fish-market design she found:

All you need is the right paper and a color printer! All the designs are free.

Man, I can’t wait for 3D printers to make it big…

PS: My LD48 entry won! I want to put together a post-comp “special edition” and do the things I ran out of time on, hope to get to that soon. Damn my laziness.

 What worked well:

• Building a good infrastructure: Clean object system & usable level editor = worth a lot. I only really started building levels around the 40 hour mark, and that worked like a charm.
• Cutting stuff in the end: Music wouldn’t have helped me a lot. Not having an ending was smart too: Everyone who noticed that must have liked the game anyway
• Ruby, together with an ad-hoc autoloading mechanism, made for one of the smoothest coding experiences ever.
• TIME MACHINE! I knew I’d need a backup system sooner or later (turned out to be true), but I really didn’t feel like bothering with Subversion because I always forget to add files etc. and it wastes time, so I just watched Time Machine do its background work every hour. Boy was that a relief.
• Periscope: While my timelapse wasn’t highly interesting, it only took two clicks to create, so no time wasted here for a low score

What didn’t really work:

• People had various problems with the gameplay (controls, motion sickness, …), and even if I knew that earlier, I probably could not have done much about it except getting into a panic.
• Needed to do more optimizing than I usually do, and some levels are still slow. Will revisit this and try to improve on this from the Gosu library’s side.
• I had a cold that made thinking pretty hard. Anything that involved maths was buggy, which caused a minor panic just before the deadline. It also made IRC very hard to follow

Next time’s plan: Keep the solid workflow, hope that the game concept works out better with regards to the Fun, and consequently Overall category, try to be more experimental technically. Can’t wait

Also, did anyone play the game with a gamepad? Would be cool to know for the next time, because it was hard to decide between a small ending screen and gamepad support in the last few minutes Thanks!

Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone who voted for providing kind and constructive comments in the voting area. They’ve really encouraged me to continue developing this game. Keep in mind when reading my comments that I too am trying to be constructive, and I’m not trying to come across as a complete butthead. In my mind anyone who even got half a final entry completed has done an amazing thing in such a short time. Secondly, let me apologize for including a few levels that were far too hard …. actually I’m almost certain now that they were impossible.

So, I’ve prepared an updated version of Mondrian for those who’d like to play it. I thought I’d leave this release until after voting, to ensure that nobody could accidentally judge based on the non-48 hour version. You can get the latest version a my OMGWTF Games !!1! page. This new updated version includes: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve found out that level mode is troublesome on Vista system. Running my game in a browser solved that problem. However, performance goes down a lot in the browser. To get decent framerate shrink the browser window until it feels good. Here is the game

http://enedahl.com/ld11/final/exxon.swf
Same as the exe but online.

Here’s a new version of Minim Madness:

• Source
• Windows build
• Linux x86 build

Highlights:

• Completed in-game instructions.
• Added easy difficulty mode for people who found the original too hard. Activate it by pressing D to toggle difficulty.
• Added playback/recording mode.

This version includes some recordings of me playing the game. There aren’t any new levels, but hopefully I’ll manage another release in another couple of weeks.

While I was doing the compo (and before), my computer was suffering from a disease I like to call “imabigstupidjerkofacomputerandimgoingtofreezeeveryfifteenminutes”.  It made coding extra fun, but by the grace of Billy Idol, I managed to submit something.

I noticed the comments and stuff on my entry about it basically being a piece of junk, so I went back and (hopefully) fixed those bugs.  Yet my computer was apparently just being a saucy taunt-face, because pretty much right after I’d packaged and tested the bugfix release, the thing froze before I could upload it anywhere.  It now freezes about one minute after it starts, thereby disallowing my every effort to get the update posted.

In all fairness, the computer’s about six years old, which I think is a pretty impressive lifespan for a laptop which I’ve worked pretty hard every day I’ve owned it.  I guess Ludum Dare must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Anyway, in summary, I won’t be able to get the new, fixed, maybe-working-for-Windows version up before the voting closes.  If you can’t get it working on your system, feel free to judge it on the last-minute drunken stupor of a README and the sexy graphics in the gfx directory.

Also, I’m not going to be able to really rate anyone else’s because I only have access to computers which are not mine to install dodgy games on (no offence).

Peace out, and good luck to everyone whose computer isn’t a steaming pile of wreckage!

sorry if I fouled up that spanish anyhoo… #3

This one’s animation looks pretty good to me, although there’s still some work to be done, I might have a few more go’s at it. stay tuned

Keith

As promised, it's a Chocolate Moose! Two, because I wanted to get a shot of him facing you. Surprisingly enough he has big googly eyes. This is also the lovely alleyway you begin the game in (it won't be full of monsters like this, though). You can see some debug text in there too, ignore that. I always feel a little guilty making the monsters just a bunch of spheres stuck together like this because it's so easy, but honestly it's exactly the result I want. That is my style, and it's just a coincidence that it's really easy to build. I love super round, super simple, characters.

A notable draw-back to sitting in front of a screen all day is that I get bloated after a while.  Thus, I’ve built the corndog diet for when I wish to drop a few pounds.

• Breakfast: yogurt + 1 cup grape juice
• Lunch: one corndog + 1 cup water
• Afternoon: 20 minute workout *
• Dinner: something modest + 1 cup milk

Drops around 1/2 lb per day if I actually do it.  I usually don’t exactly do that, so I’m probably at a 1/4 lb rate right now.  At any rate, 10 down, 5 to go.  Gotta keep my body at least moderately comparable to my blog pics.

For fun, see the Corndog Patrol Flag.

* Usually about 150 jumping jacks, 7 pull-ups, 45 push-ups, and 120 sit-ups.  At a separate time Nan and I walk Cuzco the goat around the lake.

I feel like I've been spending far too much time playing instead of working lately, so I'm kicking my point system back into gear! It didn't last long because of some interruption or the other... I think it was when I got sick. But anyway, it was a good system that worked well for me, and I'm bringing it back! Today was my first day back on it, after yesterday indulging in too much Ratchet in the morning, and too much WoW all evening.

Today is the first of the month, so I've earned my points on maintenance type things - the newsletter is written, three addons are (almost) ready to go, new fan art is up, the monster contest is judged and done, and a new microntest is up. Oh, and I've finally finished judging LD48 entries. Right now I am working on the bills and writing a journal entry in which I am writing "writing a journal entry in which I am writing "writing a journal entry in wh... okay. Hey, and I did the dishes too!

So, I'm holding off on sending out the newsletter until I have the addons up, and I'm holding off on the addons until I get some files I am missing for one of them, but aside from that, it feels pretty productive. Tomorrow, maybe I can be productive on an actual project.

Say thanks to keeyai for making this exe!

http://xer.pixelarttut.googlepages.com/john_minimalist_house_builder.zip

I’m actually quite pleased at the walk itself, it seems to bob correctly, and the eyes seem to follow through just a little bit later than the head. That being said, there are still problems with it. Firstly his legs are way too long. They whole body should be about 3 heads high (in this case 3 brains high). The brain itself needs to be less bulky, and be fairly uniform through out. I’m going to try again, and eventually will get to something I like.

Here’s the animation in a small 160×120 size, maybe closer to the way it will be in the game.

Keith

In one 48 hour period, I made a simple game based on the theme “minimalist”. I didn’t try to stay awake throughout the entire Ludum Dare competition, so the game was made in less than 48 hours.

What Went Right:

• Used my build script to create a distributable game from the beginning.

  I have a build script from a previous project that allows me to use a single command to take my project source, build it, and create a .tar.gz file to distribute for GNU/Linux users. Towards the end of the competition, I wasn’t spending too much time trying to figure out how to get my project into a judge’s hands since.

• Mouse control was easy to do and easy to use.

  Since I was learning SDL, I tried to make my game as simple to use as possible. I knew that using a mouse was a lot easier than expecting someone to use the keyboard, but I had never implemented mouse control in a game before. Luckily, it turned out to be very easy. As a result, the interface was very simple since you’re just moving the mouse around, and the game that this interface produced was better for it.

• I got really involved in it.

  I had food photos and a time lapse video, and I even received two trophies, one for my eclectic food choices. Hanging out with all of the other Ludum Dare participants, even if just virtually through IRC, was a lot of fun.

• I finished!

  Of course, finishing was also a lot of fun. While I could have used some more playtesting and would have loved some feedback before it was submitted, I think I put together a decent game in a short amount of time. It feels good to finish things.

What Went Wrong:

• My work environment was horrible.

  A couch is comfortable…but not for marathon game development sessions! My back still hurts. I need to clean my office. Right now, I am using it as a giant inbox:

  

  I prefer development with my laptop because the CRT of my desktop is harsh on my eyes. Still, it would be nice to sit in a real chair while working. Alternatively, I can finally buy an LCD for my desktop.

• My cats love to hang out with me.

  Even if I was sitting in my office, I know from experience that my cats would still jump up into my lap and try to rest their heads on my arm. When you’re using a laptop, there isn’t room for it AND a cat or two. Having an office door to close would help, of course, but the cats were quite a distraction for LD#11.

  

• I didn’t practice using SDL before the competition.

  It was a problem especially since I had decided not to depend on the Kyra Sprite Engine for future projects, but I really only used libSDL for input and creating a window prior to this project. When the first 24 hours are finished and all you have is a window rendered and the knowledge that the mouse handling is working (even if it isn’t visible), you might be afraid that you won’t have anything to show at the end of 48 hours. I did manage to pull it off, but by the next competition, I want to be able to work with less of a focus on technical details and more of a focus on game development.

• I spent too long in the beginning trying to mock something up in the GIMP.

  Similar to the previous point, I was spending more time on technical issues than on creation. I thought I was more familiar with the GIMP than I was, and I spent a lot of my early hours fighting with it instead of just using pencil and paper. The worst part about it was that the initial idea was one I ended up discarding, and if I wasn’t wasting time with figuring out how to do some simple things in it, I might have been able to figure it out sooner.

What I Learned:

• My kitchen goes to entropy during LD.

  When you’re focused on game development for most of your waking hours for two days, other things have to take a lower priority. One of those things was cleaning. I had a bit of a mess to deal with after the competition was over.

• Even something incredibly simple can be a good game mechanic.

  I knew I wasn’t going to be drinking multiple cans of Mountain Dew or Red Bull, and I don’t drink coffee, so staying up for 48 hours wasn’t going to happen. I needed to work on a game I could finish, so I picked the simplest thing I could. Surprisingly, it was fun, and some of the judges have said so as well. At the end of the competition I already had a list of ideas that could improve it, and I hope to release an updated version with those improvements.

• It’s possible to do a lot in a single day.

  Even though I spent some time learning how to use SDL, I still managed to make a game. The best part is that I can incorporate what I have learned into my personal library of code for my future projects. Also, there were over 70 games submitted, and it is amazing what some people were able to do in 48 hours. Some of them were learning how to program!

I set aside most of a 48 hour period, and I have a game, some new code, and more experience. If I could work on a project with a similar scope each month, I think it would go a long way towards improving my ability to create video games. Also, it’s a lot of fun, and I will definitely be participating in future Ludum Dare competitions.

Little update on the 'Gate today. Items are now destructible! It was a little bit complex for various reasons. First, items have never had 'health' in this engine, so I had to find a way to cram that in without breaking my existing map. That wasn't really a requirement, since I've hardly done anything on the map, but I always hate to trash things. Lucky for me, that turned out to be easy once I discovered how I load and save maps (discover is the right word - that code hasn't been touched in 8 years!).

Secondly, there was a bigger issue, which is that items only occupy a single tile of space. They're an element of the map. That would be okay if they were all tile-sized, but of course they are often quite huge, like my trash dumpsters. They could of course be arbitrarily sized, treated like monsters in that regard, and kept in a list, but that means a whole lot more collision checks, and I am already increasing the number of bullets that will be bumping into things at once, not to mention other stuff like the scrolling world that just slow this game down more than previous ones made with this engine. So bad idea to do that. Instead, I did something used in a lot of the previous games - added invisible blocks that can be placed to make items get in your way over a wider area. But this time, that's not enough - you need to be able to shoot those inviso-blocks and have it harm the main item, and when the main item is destroyed, all its associated inviso-blocks need to die with it, or you'd have strange invisible obstacles left over. So I made a whole system of invisible blocks with a direction, so you place items on the map, then inviso blocks around them that point to the item. They feed the damage done to them onto the item, and when it's destroyed, they go with it.

So anyway, it all works! You can destroy items now, but there are no explosions or anything, they just vanish. Yay?

From reading the comments, I got this feeling that not everybody has understood how the grinds and walljumps work in Tiny Hawk. The way you do them is you have to be holding the button when you hit a rail or a wall. Most commonly, you’ll do a jump and you’ll keep holding the button until you hit the rail or wall. Also if you’re walljumping up a tall column, just keep on holding the button, you don’t need to let go for each jump. The walljump is actually kinda buggy, and won’t always work if you’re falling down. This is because the game thinks you’re landing on a tile instead of hitting it from the side. I’ll likely fix this at some point. Also if you hit a rail on the very edge, you might hit the rail but fall off instantly. I’m going to call that an unintentional feature, because it’s kind of a neat thing that you can “almost” hit a rail.

A lot of people have been asking for a button for changing directions, but I think that not being able to turn around and playing the game with just one button is a pretty big point. I’m probably not adding that in. The actual problem is of course level design. There should be more blocks around so that you can bounce off a wall if you want to turn, or climb up quicker if you fall down.

Anyways, people seem to be liking the game, so thanks for that. I hope this little explanation clears things out (if there was anything to be cleared).

So, there’s a list of idea that I commonly refer to but have never written down. It’s basically a bunch of stuff I’d be happy coding in the future but is odd or hard to do.

1. Genetic art.
2. Sound based game. Basically no graphics at all.
3. Music based game. Like a shmup where the music determines the enemies.
4. Shmup where all the sprites are 4-8 pixels in width/length
5. Online nomic
6. Something involving multiple interacting irc bots

I must have screwed up the build somehow. It runs OK on my MacBook Pro, and I did bundle the Bullet/SDL libraries, but it seems others have had the bus error (and someone else was able to launch it, but the graphics didn’t work properly). I’ll try to fix it and post a link to the working version (if anyone is still interested…). Should be possible to compile and build it also, on any Mac, if you download Bullet and SDL.

I would have posted this version earlier but I just took a week off to tour a college and didn’t bring my laptop.(which was a stupid mistake on my part considering all the free wifi.)

There Is No Screwdriver

Version 1.1

Bug Fixes:
Fixed an error of being able to leave the first room without actually opening the door.
Cleaned up the code slightly.

Download

If there are any other bugs or if anyone has comments feel free to leave a comment for me.

In response to this comment, “What no one else has said so far is … what the hell kind of class names are those? “Thing”, “Dood”, “Baddie”, and “Shoostings”? =P”

Yeah, I really don’t normally code like that. Right at the beginning, I couldn’t think of a good base class name for what became the polygons. It wasn’t the player, and it wasn’t the enemies, because it was both. I ended up just putting ‘Thing’ there to get the ball rolling, and it all went downhill and into the gutter from there. After thing came Dood for player, then Baddies, Shoostings, and Lewt.

I talked briefly about this in IRC: It was pretty funny at first, but, since I don’t normally code like that, it got to be confusing and bug-inducing later on when I couldn’t remember if I spelled it lewt or loot, dood or dude, etc… Back in college I had fun telling stories / being clever with my variable names, but generally, I recommend picking a reasonable naming scheme and sticking to it, especially with a deadline no more than 48 hours away.

Still, thanks for noticing. I hope you got a kick out of it.

It actually feels like something is happening with Happyponygate today! I spent the morning making tiles so that I could actually have some buildings instead of just grass and roads. The buildings I made look... well, pretty much just bad. They're not ugly or horrible, they just aren't good art or impressive in any way. They're just really simple block buildings. But you know what? I totally don't care! I just want to blow up ponies, so I am going to roll with it.

So, once I had my blah buildings available, I started actually laying out the map as it will be in the finished product. The firs tiny tidbit of map now exists - you are forced to walk down a dark alley behind a grocery store (okay, it's not dark... but it could be, this is the Supreme editor after all!) because the main road is blocked by those traffic barriers. At the end of the alley, you'll meet your first enemy and have to deal with it, and obtain your first weapon. That encounter doesn't exist yet, but the map is laid out for it. It doesn't sound like much, but it makes me feel more like this is something instead of me randomly toying with weapon ideas.

On an alternative note, you may recall that the Paladin was my second most hated WoW class in the past. I got over that and started rather enjoying her for a while. But then, my friend started playing with me, and he had a Paladin too. Since we both had the same thing, I decided to change my talent spec, so that we'd be different. I was formerly Retribution, as is to be expected, and I respecced as Protection. Wowzies. Quelastima (that's her name!) is now my favorite WoW character ever and has totally sucked me back into a game that was kind of getting less interesting (well, mainly the teaming up with my friend is what has sucked me back in, but this is seriously fun). She is absolutely invincible! Fighting a single enemy is terribly boring, because she doesn't do a lot of damage, so what I do is run around gathering up enemies, and I fight them all at once. They just pound on me as I stand there ignoring them, and one by one they gradually crumple to the ground. It still takes a while to kill an individual one, much longer than Retribution did, but by the time he's dead, the 5 friends he had around me are all pretty close to death themselves, and I mop up and enjoy the experience, none the worse for wear. I'm telling you, it's a whole new game, and it's fun.

On the other hand, there's not a lot of stuff to do in these fights. Mainly it consists of picking which guy to attack next (and it really doesn't matter which), so it'll probably get boring. But there's more fun stuff to come in the talent tree, like throwing my shield. And the other big downside is that I am very weak against magical enemies. But for the moment, it is just raw fun in liquid form. Only not liquid. I can fight ten guys at once!

It's hard to know what's appropriate to write in this journal, since this is obviously not a WoW blog or something. I'm sure a very small percentage of people who read this know what I was talking about there, and a smaller percentage care in the slightest. But it was exciting to me to discover this whole new game hiding inside WoW, so I blurt it out. Blurting is the key to blogging.