Hempuli's blog

Posts from date 2010-10:

Best Game Since Who Knows
Posted on 2010-10-22 18:51

My internet friend Jan-Willem Nijman (Jwaap) made a really really addicting game called SuperCrateBox! If you read this, do check it out ASAP, I’m totally addicted. And I also hold the best score on the scoreboards (currently, though probably not for long).

LOOK HERE

Tags: Games, Other

Beyond the Black Hole video-thing
Posted on 2010-10-18 18:31

For some reason I wanted to make a video about BtBH. I hope you like it.

(Broken video)

Oh, and this is the third time I use Movie Maker for anything. Sony Vegas looks rather interesting, but its middle name is ‘expensive’.

Tags: Games, FIG

Klik of the Month Klub #40 – HELLOWEEN
Posted on 2010-10-17 18:47

We had the latest KotMK this Saturday, this time themed Halloween (big surprise, eh). I had some ideas ready, but they weren’t quite halloweeney so I decided to try another thing and made a Zombie shooter – with a twist. I can’t help it, I just am not able to create a basic shooter. So instead I made a shooter that runs in reverse. Yes, It’s like mushroom engine, but a lot simpler.

So here it is, the game doesn’t have a name but I call is seibmoZ due to the way it works.

DOWNLOAD

All instructions are given in the title screen. Again, don’t expect much, KotMK is a 2-hour compo!

Tags: Games, Glorious Trainwrecks, Small games

Bloom or no bloom; that is the question
Posted on 2010-10-12 21:26

So a certain very awesome person called Looki (He’s helped me a lot over the years!) made me a nice bloom overlay that didn’t suck unlike the other bloom shaders for MMF. However, now that I have it in, I’m not sure if it’s the best choice. I’ve tried different combinations, and today has also been a nice lesson for me about shaders overall.

Of course, the ideal solution would be to get a similar blur as was in the desktop picture, but darn if I know what are the functions in Paint.NET’s “soften photo”-tool! So we’ll have to rely on bloom.

So here are a couple different choices. From left ro right & top to bottom: Bloom and shadows, just shadows, nothing, and just bloom. Sorry about the changing background colour; bloom brightens it up a lot so I had to alter it. And I’m really not sure what would look best!

Here are also some crazier attempts:

(Broken image)
wee!

Tags: Games, Plans, Procedural generation

New direction!
Posted on 2010-10-12 18:57

This picture doesn't give any kind of a clue of what is going on.

I started making a new, Dwarf Fortress-style control scheme for the 48-hour thingamajig. I just got felling trees working; it’s lovely to watch how the tiny guys hack down any trees you mandate, except those that are either out of reach or from which they can’t return.

Tags: Games, Procedural generation

I’ll call it finished enough
Posted on 2010-10-10 19:17

So, this weekend I tried to create a game around that desktop picture I posted. My idea was to use a deadline to increase motivation, and I wanted to see if I could implement a nice platformer RTS mechanic, something I wasn’t able to pull out earlier when I tried. I guess I still didn’t quite manage it.

Anyway, since I have only 5 hours left and I’m quite fed up with the bugs of the engine, I’ll upload the thing here and let people see what kind of weird bugs they can exploit. I was left with the feeling that the engine is very clumsy and hard to use, what with the player having to do every little thing, starting from picking up/dropping items. Next time I try to approach this I’ll have to try to make the game action-based instead of character-based; by that I mean that instead of commanding every guy separately, the player would just make commands which the characters would try to fulfill, Dwarf Fortress-style.

worp

So, before linking I’ll make some kind of a summary of what I got working and what I didn’t, perhaps a pros and cons list.

* I got the base engine running, complete with felling trees, mining and simple building pieces. You can move the guys and perform everything there is to perform (which is not much, haha).
* The procedural generation part went really well, and I think it’s easy to get some really ace formations. I’m happy with my increased skills in PCG.

– From the things I planned beforehand, I didn’t get in enemies, swords, furnaces, ore and creating tools. Also I planned the characters to move with a balloon that you’d use in the beginning to select your starting place
– MMF’s bloom feature was seriously lacking so I left it out. Someone is looking at this, though, so perhaps I’ll eventually get a nice bloom and grain effect going.
– The thing is enormously clumsy and buggy. There are varying bugs with the characters being unable to walk to places, especially digging can break very easily, and trees/bushes can float in midair. Controlling the characters one by one gets tedious very fast, especially when the digging command can be applied to only one tile at once, per miner. Picking up items is hard because they’re so small, and it’s annoying to drop stuff.
– No effects whatsoever. Boo hoo, who cares.

So the conclusion is that if I want to continue this, I need to fix the bugs, and change the controlling system heavily. Currently the amount of choices available is so narrow that one can kinda manage with the clumsiness, but with a larger system I can merely think of the problems that would present itself.

Here’s the link

Controls:
Use left and right mouse button for everything.
-You can pick up stuff also by rightclicking straight to the object.
-Before doing any actions, you must select a character, so click or box-select them.
-You can also dig and cut trees by right-clicking, assuming you have the correct item.
-Mushrooms can be cut like trees (and they drop brown logs – herp derp).
-Remember that when building, the builder has to be close enough to the place you want to build – the range is about 3 tiles to every direction.
–In case you fall into a pit at the start, press F2 to retry!
-There’s absolutely nothing to do yet, you can just build walls and ladders and be cool. Try to dig through the bottom.

I had a lot of fun making this – hopefully I can fix the stupidities and get some real stuff going eventually!
What a great way to ignore my current, ‘proper’ projects! Hehe.