It’s day 2, and this is one big big hearty meal.  Luckily, I have assistance in eating it.

I was going to arrange it all pretty, but I figured I had to capture the moment while it existed.  This is my piggy plate, which my wife gave me as a joke, since I have issues with different foods touching (but not nearly the issues she claims.  Still, I like the piggy plate!).  Gardenburger, fries, and apple juice.  The latest issue of Game Developer arrived today and is in that pile there.  I didn’t renew my subscription about 2 years ago when they last asked, they just keep sending it.

Tags: foodphoto, lunch

Now there are sounds courtesy of SFXr (just the fuse burning and explosions, at the moment, but that’s really all that can HAPPEN at the moment), and your fuse burns, and if it goes next to a barrel, the barrel blows up.  The barrel explosions chain to neighbors.  There are also a few assorted items visible on the screen – x2 and x4 score multipliers, and gold.  The gold and multipliers are intended to entice you into taking risks you shouldn’t.

Still all temp art, but I suspect the flame particles will stay like this.  They shoot up super vertically, looks like the barrels are practically launching into orbit.  Initially an accident, now a favorite feature.  I’m going to do art now, because I need to have the style down before I do the font stuff, which I feel is sort of next on the list.  The core gameplay is done, you just can’t lose.  And since this is a game of score, I need to get that score tracking up so I know what is happening there!  Art’s definitely the biggest portion of what’s left, so let’s get on it.

Tags: barrels, explosions, fuse, tiles

Lots of visual progress, a little bit of real progress.  All new pixely graphics all around, and a new HUD at the bottom.  The game automatically zooms the display in to cover the portion of the map that actually has stuff in it, so instead of scrolling, it just gives you a wider view on larger levels.  That’s good because you need ot know the whole layout to make your plans.  This zoom feature is currently very questionable, I seem to have to manually tweak exactly where it goes, depending on the level layout, so I’m missing something there, but it mainly worksish.

Currently, you can’t win or lose, but if you could be killed, boy would it be hard.  Thinking ahead is a must, and it all goes quite fast.  Each level has a percentage required to complete it, and you also need to stay alive, and the main gist is to get the best score you can, provided you blow up enough and avoid dying.

Tags: barrels, explosions, fuse, pixels, tiles

Lots of visual progress, a little bit of real progress.  All new pixely graphics all around, and a new HUD at the bottom.  The game automatically zooms the display in to cover the portion of the map that actually has stuff in it, so instead of scrolling, it just gives you a wider view on larger levels.  That’s good because you need ot know the whole layout to make your plans.  This zoom feature is currently very questionable, I seem to have to manually tweak exactly where it goes, depending on the level layout, so I’m missing something there, but it mainly worksish.

Currently, you can’t win or lose, but if you could be killed, boy would it be hard.  Thinking ahead is a must, and it all goes quite fast.  Each level has a percentage required to complete it, and you also need to stay alive, and the main gist is to get the best score you can, provided you blow up enough and avoid dying.

Tags: barrels, explosions, fuse, pixels, tiles

A classic combination served by Ukrainian chefs – delicately braised french bread with butter sauce and fresh fruit compote, and puffed maize drizzled with Romany salt and a light cow’s milk cream blend. Paired with this we have Crystal Geyser grapeless unfermented chardonnay.

Tags: foodphoto

Things are really about done here.  Tomorrow is going to be all about making levels, the main menu, and polish.  I think it will be relatively fun, depending on how the levels are done.  You can now both win and lose, the former of which is shown here:

There are 15/14 barrels done because the barrel you carry is currently extra to the count (you can set it down any time, which is an important part of the strategy and a very important part of not exploding), which I think will change right this second.

I have extraneous ideas for other things levels could include, like rockets that shoot off elsewhere when lit, but I’ll probably not bother.  Just polish this up and ship!

Tags: barrels, big pixels, prospector

Eat ’em and weep, boys.  That’s homemade belgian waffles.  And a rose!  Actually, pen that looks like a rose.  Hmm, the colors didn’t come out right in this picture… Dadgum lack of sunlight.  Maybe I should’ve tried turning on a light.

Tags: foodphoto

Looks like 7.5 hours to go, and I have what could be done.  I definitely want to add a bunch more levels, and maybe music… I’m going to try out Musagi a bit!  But other than that, we’re done.  Fully functional menu and instructions screens, all the gameplay is in and whatnot.  High scores are a go.  Here’s the menu:

Tags: menu

This is it! Pretty darn complete. Download here: shortfuse.zip (1.1mb)

I tried making music, and that was a bad idea, so I didn’t put it in. Love those SFXr sounds, though!

Note: If it runs way too slow, or just if you prefer, you can use the command line argument “opengl” to run it in openGL instead of directX.

Tags: explosions, final, mining, pixels, prospector, sfxr, tiles

My lunch is actually the red cup (apple juice again, remember the empty fridge?), and the thai peanut plastic tray.  The rest is breakfast mess and wife’s salad-based lunch bits.  And assorted other junk that’s sitting around the kitchen island.

Tags: foodphoto, mess

I guess people are posting tools lists… so I shall join in!

I used MSVC 6 (yes, 6!  Not 2006 or whatever), The Gimp, and SFXr.  Chatzilla for a whole lot of IRC action.  Probably Notepad for the readme. The library I used was PTK for graphics, input, and sound.  I made the font with Bitmap Font Builder.  I tried to use Musagi to make music, but failed.

And that’s that!

Tags: LD #10 - Chain Reaction - 2007, tools

inspired by PoV’s posting of this:

I created this pelly (admittedly useless as an award):

Tags: pellies

Here are all the things I can remember of the million I considered for this ridiculous theme (Weird/Unexpected/Surprise):

– Plan a surprise party. The challenge is getting it all done and everyone hidden before the victim returns from being kept out

– Whack-a-mole variations. One of them a surprise party one (wife’s idea): Kids you have to keep whacking into place so they aren’t visible when the surprisee arrives, as they constantly fidget and want to get up.

– A mountain goat hopping around on a mountain, trying to scare birds. No, I don’t know why. I just thought controlling a mountain goat that hops around would be fun.

– A stealth game where your goal is to sneak up on people and give them presents or some other surprise. I realized after a moment that this is that one Burger King game.

– A web version of Scattergories. You’re given a letter and a topic (“Actors that start with A”). You can enter 5 things that fit, and you get points for each one you pick that nobody else did. See how that fits the theme? It’s quite clever. The real challenge here is incorporating peer review so that you can’t just enter “GHJDKHS” and win.

Anyway, I have settled on a web game, sort of similar to Andy Schatz’s conversation game. It’s a text adventure where you roam around a maze, and when you get to an empty room, you can add your own on. That will undoubtedly result in weird, unexpected surprises. Each room can contain a riddle to open one of its doors, the content of which is entirely up to the room builder.

Obviously, verifying the appropriateness of submissions will be a high priority.

Tags: idea, surprise, text adventure, web game

Well, I spent day 1 playing WoW, watching TV, and trying to come up with an idea with no success.  Now it’s day 2, and things are coming along really smoothly:

There’s more functionality done than you can see in the shot.  You can move around the (two-room at the moment) maze.  If there were items, you could use them, drop them, and combine them, but not pick them up yet.  So as you can see, there are doors leading off into space.  If you go that way, you actually stay in the room you’re in, but an edit section will pop up on the screen for the room you tried to enter.  I haven’t done that yet, but you’ll be able to make your own description and layout there.  Then that place is marked “pending” as it’s emailed to me for verification (to check for language and such).  Pending areas can’t be built in or entered, and there’s a “nifty” graphic indicating them.

This is going to be a sight to see!  I can see great potential for impassable situations, but that’s all theoretical right now.  If I didn’t include items and just had riddles, we’d be good, except for one thing – I just know shortly after startup, we’ll end up in a state where all possible paths are blocked off.  But I can always manually throw in doors if that happens.  I could just verify that there is always at least one door leading into the void, but that’d be a very heavy database churn to do.

Tags: maze, progress, screenshot

No need for another screen, it would look almost identical to the last.  But big big progress.  It’s almost entirely done, and I’m quitting for the night.  Now, you can walk around in the world, pick up and drop items, and create new rooms.  The new rooms even include riddles and the use of items, and new items in them.  Riddles and using items are not implemented, but the presence of new items is.  The remaining stuff is probably an hour’s work.  Then clean up, polish, security enhancements (the big issue with doing a webgame as opposed to a single player one!), and it’s all done.  That’s going to be the best part – seeing people stuff it full of new rooms and insanity.  This is a really simple project, but it’s going to be a fun one!

Tags: surprise, text adventure, web game

All done! Already filled with lots of user submissions. I can already tell that making sure submissions work right is going to be murder. But we shall see! It’s pretty awesome already, with multi-part puzzles made by different people.

Play now: http://hamumu.com/maze.php

It requires a Dumb Account to play, but those are free and the most fun thing in the world, so you would be a fool to pass that up.

Tags: final, maze, mysql, php, text adventure, web game

Tags: canada, canuckistan, motivation

When life gives you lemons, give up!

Tags: motivation

Let’s face it, we’re obsolete.

Tags: motivation, robots

I have an idea, a pretty lame one that should be kind of funny at least, and have implemented a title screen!

Tags: leaf, pond, title