IM IN UR BLOGOSPHEAR

BLOGZING UR WORDZ

IM IN UR BLOGOSPHEAR

BLOGZING UR WORDZ

LD48 #1 theme was Guardian. I created Scarecrow: Heart Of Straw, a game where you play the role of a scarecrow, scaring crows (as they are wont to do) away from corn. I don’t know what Pellies it did or didn’t win. I think it did fairly well, and has a rockin’ crowmetal soundtrack and a mumbly farmer.

Tags: BOO, corn, cow, crows, farm, final, guardian, nehe, opengl, pelican, scarecrow, shopping

LD48 #2 theme was Construction/Destruction, with a minor theme of Sheep. As such, I created Hitsuji: Shears Of Fury, a game where you destroy construction equipment as a ninja sheep. It featured a really cool tweening animation system I wish I had used since, as well as some lovely use of very default Allegro fonts. It also included zombie construction workers, and pelicans. Pelicans appear often in these games.

Tags: allegro, beat-em-up, combos, construction, destruction, fighting, final, gyros, ninja, pelican, sheep, side-scroller, tiles, zombie

LD48 #3 was themed “Preparation – Set it up and let it go”. For this I originally made a game where you were a leprechaun and needed to plant traps to kill people trying to come steal your lucky charms. For some reason, despite how fun that sounds, I couldn’t get anywhere on it and quit halfway through. Then I came back on the second day, reusing some of the code and graphics and created NPC Quest! It’s a game of buying gear for a fantasy hero, and then watching him fight battles without your help. It’s actually more strategic and fun than it sounds.

Tags: allegro, fantasy, final, knight, medieval, mutant dolphin, NPC, peasant, preparation, random levels, RPG, shopping, tiles, used car salesman, wizard

LD48 #6 theme was “Light and Darkness”. Another theme that came close to winning was Remote Control, which I also included in my entry. So I made Habitat For Horror. This game is quite flawed – it’s a somewhat interesting and worthwhile puzzle/arcade game where you have a limited supply of fuses with which to keep rooms lit in an apartment building. Evil CHUDs crawl up from the sewers, but can only travel in the dark, so you must keep your tenants safe from them. The flaw is that in order to have remote control, I have you working only on a fusebox rather than clicking directly on the rooms you want to lighten or darken. It’s just kinda weird. Would be much more playable if played directly.

Tags: apartment, CHUD, darkness, final, fuses, light, PTK, remote control

LD48 #8 theme was “Swarms”. It also occurred right around the initial release of the Nintendo Wii. Thus, you get Wee Ninja, a game where you are trying to beat an insanely large horde of other shoppers to the last remaining Wees in stock during the holiday season. It’s fun to play, simple, and includes achievements to unlock bonus abilities. One of the more complete entries I’ve ever done (possibly because the gameplay was so incredibly simple!).

Tags: beat-em-up, combos, fighting, final, ninja, PTK, shopping, swarms, tiles, wee

LD48 #8.5 was an unofficial competition with two themes: Moon, and Anti-Text. “Moon” was actually some insanely long thing about how you’re looking at the moon and suddenly realize it’s an alien spaceship or something, but we just called it Moon. So I created probably my favorite of my own LD48 entries, Moon Invaders. There’s no text whatsoever in the entire game, which makes reading the manual rather necessary, since it’s a strategy game. It’s basically a tower defense game, but instead of monsters following a path, they descend Space Invaders style. I greatly enhanced this game post-compo, working obsessively for a week. I just like it!

Tags: anti-text, explosions, final, invaders, lasers, moon, PTK, research, retro, shopping, space, tower defense, upgrades

LD48 #8.5 was an unofficial competition with two themes: Moon, and Anti-Text. “Moon” was actually some insanely long thing about how you’re looking at the moon and suddenly realize it’s an alien spaceship or something, but we just called it Moon. So I created probably my favorite of my own LD48 entries, Moon Invaders. There’s no text whatsoever in the entire game, which makes reading the manual rather necessary, since it’s a strategy game. It’s basically a tower defense game, but instead of monsters following a path, they descend Space Invaders style. I greatly enhanced this game post-compo, working obsessively for a week. I just like it!

Tags: anti-text, explosions, final, invaders, lasers, moon, PTK, research, retro, shopping, space, tower defense, upgrades

LD48 #9’s theme was “Build the level you play”. Sadly, I came up with that theme, yet still spent the first 12 hours or so of the contest trying to come up with an idea that would work. Eventually, I decided that Medusa was somebody who could build the level she played (by turning enemies into platforms). In the end, I had Medusa’s Lament, a game so simple it could’ve been a flash game you played on the web. But it’s fun for the few minutes it keeps you entertained and features a mildly disturbing soundtrack.

Tags: build the level you play, crows, final, medusa, PTK, statues, stone

LD48 #0 was a 24-hour competition with the theme “Indirect Interaction”. To celebrate that, I created Castle Smash, an RTS game where you have no control over your units. You just make buildings to create them, and decide where to build bridges. Their “AI” tells them what to do. Yes, it’s a lot like Majesty, which I had not even heard of at the time. This is a 2-player (at the same computer) game, with no single player option at all.

Tags: building, castle, final, indirect interaction, knight, peasant, RTS, tiles, tinyptc, wizard

I don’t know what the theme for this Non-Compo was (I think there wasn’t one), but I made a yahtzee clone. Much more than a clone, though, it is far more complicated than Yahtzee, allowing you to score a bunch of different ways.

As you can see, there are 2 colors of normal ducks, and a King Duck. So you can score in the Same column if your dice involved are the same color, the Diff column if any different ones are involved, and in the King column if the King is involved. The High column is one you can use if you ever get another column twice, but your second time is a better score than the first. It makes some sense when you play it. And to stop a die from being thrown on subsequent rolls, you put the ducks to sleep (as you can see in the picture).

This was my first actual 3D game! Well, my most finished 3D game (even though it’s not finished). Those dice are pure 3D, hand coded from scratch. Take that! Their rolling is real, not just a visual representation of a random number generator – they get a random spin on all axes when thrown, and wherever they stop when they land is what they are on. The code to interpret their facing into a number was the tricky part.

Too bad for you, you can’t play it – there is no downloadable version at this time.

Tags: allegro, dice, ducks, final, king, water, yahtzee

Probably my least-finished LD entry (not counting ones I didn’t even start), Termites is the adventuresome tale of a small band of termites on a very small screen. All you can do is wander around and chew up grass, making termite babies with which to devour the couple of buildings onscreen.

It’s kind of entertaining to enjoy the simulation a bit. This ‘game’ cannot currently be downloaded anywhere in particular.

Tags: bugs, final, growth, simulation, swarms, termites, tinyptc

I got nothing but ideas… Well, I also have a black screen that you can press ESC to exit.  But anyway, none of the ideas are really kicking it.  The most unique one, but one I am not at all sure I want to do, is something like this: You’re a old prospector type guy, carrying a keg of gunpowder.  It has a hole, as they always do, so you leave a trail behind.  You’re in a place filled with explosives.  After a set time, the end of your fuse lights and begins chasing after you.  It blows up any explosives it gets near, and of course if it gets to you, it blows you up too.  You can put the keg down any time, so the goal is A> blow stuff up without getting killed (put the keg down and hide before the flame gets to you), and B> blow up as much stuff as possible.

The chain reaction is that obviously all the explosives blow up other explosivs near them.  So the strategy is in putting your fuse down well without getting blown up along the way.  Seems kinda fun, but I don’t know about actually making it… well, after writing it, it’s strongly considered.

Other ideas include a Bangaio-style shooter where guys who explode blow up other guys near them, so you want to cluster them up and destroy them.  Also, a guy with a chain who smashes enemies, sending them flying into other enemies for a chain-based chain reaction (but chain physics scares me).  Another is  something along the lines of pool, shoot out a ball that hits enemies, and they go flying and hit other enemies.

But behind all that stuff is the idea that I kinda wanted to make a turn-based thing, like a board game or card game.  I don’t know, though.  So many ideas, so little interest in them… maybe the prospector thing.

Tags: ideas

I’m not vegan, I just like Silk better than milk.   It’s saturday morning, time to start crankinating!  I am going to make the stupid prospector game.

Tags: foodphoto

I’m not vegan, I just like Silk better than milk.   It’s saturday morning, time to start crankinating!  I am going to make the stupid prospector game.

Tags: foodphoto

Like so many, I have a random screen of tiles up and running now.  Guess I’ll make the editor, because this game will NOT work with random levels!  Well… hmm.  Better not.

Tags: tiles

Like so many, I have a random screen of tiles up and running now.  Guess I’ll make the editor, because this game will NOT work with random levels!  Well… hmm.  Better not.

Tags: tiles

Fully functional level editor!  Lets you draw the map, and saves and loads.  And check out that hardcore artwork!!  Hopefully I will update that later…

Tags: editor

Gameplay!  Nothing explodes, but your gunpowder fuse burns after you as you run.

Tags: fuse