Let’s imagine you’re a happy Linux user, and you’d like to create a nice chip-tune for your upcoming LD game, but you don’t have any tool for that.

You might then want to try my port of Musagi for Linux. Before the compo, preferably, because I haven’t had any feedback yet, so it might or might not work as expected…

Here is the original Musagi for Windows web site, and a tutorial.

That’s all I guess; I just thought it might be useful for some.

I hereby declare that in the unlikely event that my brain computes a game idea based on the final theme, I may or may not be using the following tools this week-end:

– Code::Blocks
– The D programming language
– SDL
– mtPaint
– Sfxr, Musagi (for Linux), Audacity

Given that I can’t draw nor compose music, I’ll more likely end up trying to make a text game though.

My base code is taken from a small platform game I am working on with a friend. (It won’t build as is because I have removed the code for the hero and the enemies.)

I forgot to say that I am using Arch Linux, but should be able to produce a Windows build should I produce something playable.

So I finally cleaned my desk. You might think I didn’t, but I did. Really!

Also got an idea that involves wandering enemies, explosions and chain reactions… I’ll see what I can do with it :).

Tags: deskphoto

I haven’t done much on my game besides a couple of sprites (programmer art!), but the important thing is that I ate. Which is good.

Oh by the way, it’s 9pm here, not midday…

Tags: foodphoto

Here’s a first screenshot:

You control the red ball, which is supposed to somehow make the enemy squares explode, preferably in chain reactions. The ball can move (but there’s a bug, it will move towards the top left if left alone), but that’s all for now.

Tags: screenshot

I haven’t had much time to work on my game today because I was helping with a removal… But still, a lot of things happened since my last post:

– I was awarded an award! That made me happy, even if I’m not really sure what it is about. Thank you, Manuel777!

– I’ve added a mouth and eyes to my enemies, and drawn three states: normal, “tagged” and exploding.

– Enemies now move towards the hero (that would be the red ball), faster when they’ve been tagged.

– I’ve added particles so that the enemies can explode and in turn make other enemies explode. Only tagged enemies can explode.

– There is now an energy bar representing the hero’s health. The energy is lost when the hero collides with the enemies or explosions, but it is also used to make enemies explode or to tag them. So for the moment, the goal is to make all enemies explode without dying from lack of energy.

I’ve uploaded a work in progress build for Linux 32bit. Arrow keys to move, left shift to tag. (Needs the SDL libs.)

Tags: screenshot

So this is it. I started looking for ways to make my game more interesting 3 hours before the deadline, then I made 8 new maps in half an hour (you can imagine the quality work 😉 ), but finally decided that the game wasn’t fun enough to be submitted to the compo. Plus I was too tired to do all the packaging and stuff.

It’s still playable and almost fun, so I submitted Stupid Squares to the Jam (Linux, FreeBSD and Windows builds available).

I don’t want to work on this anymore for the moment, so there’s almost no change since the compo deadline. If you’re bored, you can try to create fun maps…

Tags: final, jam, screenshot

Guys and girl(s), when you make a game with keyboard input, please remember that not everybody is using a qwerty keymap. There are others, like azerty (French), qwertz, bépo, dvorak, and another one whose name I forgot.

So for example wasd for movement is pretty terrible and totally unplayable on an azerty keyboard… *Unless* you use scancodes and not ascii codes to bind keys to actions. That is to say, use the position of the key on the keyboard and not the letter that’s printed on it.

How to do that will depend on your framework/engine/OS of choice.

Other solutions:
– use non-moving keys like shift, alt, ctrl, space, the arrows, return, etc. (Some combinations can be problematic, for example DOWN+LEFT+CTRL doesn’t work here.)
– let the player choose his or her key mappings.

I can change my keymap to qwerty before playing your game, and set it back to azerty after, but it’s a pain…

In anticipation of the upcoming MiniLD, I am hereby announcing the release of my base code, a platform game written in the D programming language.

This time the rules permit the use of unreleased code, but as this game was not written by me alone, I think it’s fairer to release it beforehand as per the usual rules.

And in case you’re wondering, while it’s working code, it’s not a finished game in the sense that we haven’t created any “real” map for it yet. It’s also a source-only release.

Tags: base code, D

I’ve decided to write a Sokoban clone with automatically generated levels. This is my first html5 project, so I’ll at least gain some experience with the technology! Also I’ve never tried to generate levels for something more complicated than minesweeper.

This is what I have so far; pretty impressive eh? Well, I’m impressed by myself anyway.

And to make the game more minimalistic, I’m thinking of including a single crate in every level.

I now have a working level generator for my sokoban clone, but the levels are always too easy.

Adding more crates would probably make them more difficult, but then it wouldn’t be as minimalistic I suppose…

This is late and although I’m not proud of what I have done, at least it’s almost a game. Well, it’s a game, and it is almost fun, for a few seconds I suppose!

My entry

And I want to rate other people’s games so I have to submit it anyway :).