Here’s my workspace pic. It’s a standing desk I made out of a standard rack shelving unit.

Yes, I’m so hard core, I make games standing up.

Anyway, time to get food…

Food for the weekend, or at least until tomorrow night.

• Two parts caffeine, one part “juice” (also coffee, not shown)
• Turkey samwich on rye (was tasty)
• Hawaiian Punch — omg Hawaii is islands!!!

Also, I finally know the direction I’m going, but I’ll wait until I actually have something to show.

Good luck, everyone!

So, yeah, I’m going with a pirate theme. A bit overdone maybe, but it should still be fun to work on.  Also, that’s just the working title. =)

Time for bed.

My entry is up!

Play Pee Wee Pirates

Between this and Game-in-a-Day, I’ve done this kind of weekend “game jam” thing probably 10 times now (yikes). But this is the first time in a couple of years, so I was a bit rusty going in. I also decided at the last minute to go with an alpha-quality development framework that had some serious limitations.

Despite all that, though, it was fun to work on, and I’m pretty satisfied with it. Now I’m just looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with. =)

Thanks to everyone who organized the event!

Here’s what I have after 6 hours. The goal is to collect your fellow fish to bring them back to school.

And, snacks…

BTW, if you want to hang out and watch, I’m broadcasting live.

http://twitch.tv/frosty_freeze

Will start up again tomorrow around 2pm Pacific.

Here’s progress after Day 2. I’ll put in another 4 hours before the deadline to clean up the enemies and add some polish.

Play It
You can play the current build here (Flash):
I Wanna Be the Fishy

Summary: You’re a lost fish looking to find your way back to your school. Collect the bubbles to track them down. Goal is to get to the end screen as fast as possible.

I Wanna Be the Fishy is meant to be a somewhat rage-inducing arcade game, inspired by I Wanna Be the Boshy.

Summary: You’re a little fish, lost in the ocean, searching for his friends.

I wish I had enough time to add music, but otherwise I’m quite happy with it. Hope you like it. =)

Database Entry (Flash)

Tags: easter-egg, kitten-challenge

I will be doing the Jam this time, working with the inimitable Wormburn (of Minecraft megabuild fame), who will be focusing on the art side.

We will be dual live-streaming on Twitch.tv as well.

Tools:

• Snax (my new Haxe pre-processor)
• sfxr
• FL Studio
• Photoshop

Bonus Tips

Also, since this is my umpteenth time doing this, I decided to write a blog post with some tips.

How to Win at Game Jams

I have noticed that some of the advice probably overlaps with the new Game Jam Survival Guide, but I hope you find it useful.

Good luck!

It’s been sort of a rough start, but it’s gradually starting to come together. The game is a race against time inside of a computer.

Also, both wormburn and I are streaming live, if you care to join us:
Wormburn’s Channel
Frosty’s Channel

The game is starting to shape up overall, but now it’s time to dig down and work on level design.

Play c!ph3r »

Post Mortem

Now that I’d had a bit of time to recover, I thought I’d share a few notes from my experience this weekend doing the Jam.

1. This was the first time that I’ve worked with someone else for game art. It was also Worm’s first time working on a game, much less a game jam. While we had a pretty decent system down (Skype + Twitch + Dropbox), there were a few rough patches early on where there was some wasted effort. To his credit, Worm stuck it out, and if nothing else, he contributed a mighty fine splash screen! =)

2. Programming-wise, this was my first real project using Snax, my custom pre-processor for Haxe. It made things much easier overall, but there were a bunch of annoying behaviors coming from Haxe where I wasted time trying to get basic things like Float/Int conversions to work out right. Snax is getting close to where I can probably make it open source, so let me know if you’re interested.

3. I’m pretty happy with the game. This was my first time doing something rather puzzley, and I’m glad I was able to use all of the game elements in combinations that feel fun. I’m particularly happy with the way the player sprite evolved into a sneaky-hacker-spy type guy and how that idea influenced the game mechanics.

Anyway, I hope you like it. =)

My entry is done. Give it a go! =)

Mad Scientist Monster Maker

– It’s a tile based smash-em-up that takes inspiration from Rampage, Mail Order Monsters, and The Creature that Ate Sheboygan.

– I wasn’t sure I was going to participate this time, and didn’t actually join until Saturday. Since the design ended up being rather complicated, I ended up in the Jam, which is fine, since I got to take it easy for a while…

– … Until the frantic finish, of course. I didn’t have time to add helicopters or custom buildings like I had planned, but I’m pretty happy with it.

– This is my second game using Snax, which is my custom mini-language for game development. If you look at the source code, and are interested in trying it yourself, let me know.

I decided at the last minute to join in and do something small-ish.

After about 4 hours, I have the basics of a turn-based sneak-em-up, mostly inspired by the old Robots ASCII game. The premise right now is that you are a fugitive in a futuristic city, being hunted by robots.

Progress.

It is done.

play

My finished entry for the Charity Game Jam is an HTML5 puzzle-type game based on everyone’s favorite emotes. =)

It was created to support Operation Smile, which provides surgery to children born with certain facial deformities.

Please play, share, and if possible… donate!

Play Super Smile Factory

Tags: charitygamejam

Here’s a screenshot of my progress so far…

It’s not going to be much of a game… right now, it’s more like a sandbox for drawing your own constellations on a random starfield.

This is also my first time using Phaser, which has been pretty smooth sailing so far.

Good luck to everyone on the final stretch. =)

One of my reasons for tackling a football game (pun intended) is so I can play around with a sports TV-style user interface. Meaning lots of gradients, chrome and what-not.

Here is the latest iteration…. 100x better than a couple of hours ago!

Count me in for liking this theme. =)

I’ve been looking for an excuse to do a football game for years, and I realized this is a good fit for what I want to do. Not much to look at yet, but I’m feeling pretty good about it so far!

Started on a programmable tank thing, which is a concept I’ve been wanting to try for a long time.