Posts with tag 'Other jams':
The Plumber Thing – BIG MEAT EDITION Tags: Games, Small games, Other jams The Plumber Thing Tags: Games, Happenings, Other jams, Small games, Plans 7-Day Roguelike Challenge + 10 year anniversary?? Tags: Games, Other jams, Happenings, Plans, Streaming, Regular updates, Procedural generation, Small games Weekly-4 progress post #106: Behind in updates, again Tags: Games, Baba Is You, Happenings, Other jams, Plans, Regular updates, Streaming Weekly progress post #101: Good progress Tags: Games, ESA 2, Baba Is You, Regular updates, Streaming, Other jams Progress post #98: PENGUIN Tags: Games, Baba Is You, Small games, Happenings, GDC, Other, Other jams, Plans, Regular updates, Streaming Weekly progress posts #77 and #78: I guess I’ll do this now Tags: Games, Baba Is You, Small games, Other jams, Regular updates, Streaming An open apology to the Ludum Dare community (and other game jam communities) Tags: Other, Happenings, Other Jams, Nordic Game Jam, No More Sweden, Ludum Dare Weekly progress post #6: Boss cutscenes Tags: Games, ESA 2, Other, Plans, Streaming, Regular updates, Other jams More 7drl stuff! Tags: Games, Procedural generation, Small games, Other jams, Plans
Posted on 2022-12-21 12:13
Ok! I’ve been working on a “holiday update” of sorts for The Plumber Thing, mainly because I felt that the game could’ve done with a little bit more content & polish. That’s done now, released just yesterday together with a 50% discount on Itch.
The update mainly adds a new area, a new powerup, new puzzles and some extra details and polish. If you liked the original game, this is probably up your alley.
Check it out on Itch.io!
Posted on 2022-10-29 12:20
I made a small puzzle metroidvania as a part of the Click-or-Treat Halloween bundle this month! It was fun to make a silly side thing, although I did end up crunching a bit to get it done in time.
You can find the bundle here ($9): https://itch.io/b/1601/click-or-treat-2022
The game itself is here ($2, Windows only): https://hempuli.itch.io/the-plumber-thing
There have been some other new things I should make a blog post about! I’ll try to get that done eventually!!! Anyway, happy Halloween and whatnot.
Posted on 2020-03-11 09:42
After ~4 years of trying and failing, I finally took part in the 7-Day Roguelike Challenge (or 7DRL, as it’s generally known as) last week (https://7drl.com/). I still failed to finish my game in time, but compared to the only previous time I’ve actually managed to create something (in 2016), the addition of lua to my repertoire allowed quite a bit faster development and I actually got pretty far with my project. Sadly, after streaming for 8 hours on one day, I had a headache for 2 consecutive days and that kind of destroyed my chances of actually finishing. Still, I’m pretty happy with what I have now and thus decided that instead of submitting an obviously unfinished game for the challenge, I’ll try to poke at it and make it available when some of the more obvious missing features are in.
I’m especially happy about the font.
In other news! I was looking at the nice list of months in the blog sidebar, and it suddenly dawned on me that this blog is now over 10 years old! My inability to post regularly has consistently kept it from being as neat as it could be, but I’m nonetheless very happy that some kind of a catalogue of my past game-development endeavours has stayed alive this long. Thanks to Excavatorrr for giving me the push to set this up originally.
Now let’s see if we’ll get another 10 years of use out of this…!
Oh yeah, and one more (set of) thing(s): I was going to give a talk about Baba Is You at the Game Developers Conference, The MiXit conference and an event called Addon, but the first two have been canceled thanks to COVID-19, and since the third would be organized in France, I would be very surprised if it wasn’t cancelled as well. I’m currently also awaiting word on what’ll happen with Nordic Game Jam this year. Wild times.
Posted on 2018-09-10 05:30
So, Gamescom happened, as did Sommerhus Jam, and combined with work on Noita I have had a hard time keeping up streams. Managed to have one tonight, though, so maybe this is the time for yet another return to form!(?)
I fixed various issues in Baba, most importantly a relatively long-standing logic issue. I ran into another that I thought I had fixed for good; there was a pretty simple solution available but I’m slightly afraid that said solution causes some other hairy cornercases (that I had previously fixed and forgotten about.) I guess I should document why I’ve done things the way they are at some point.
I also spent some time working on the game’s music; the Forest theme gives me trouble and while I found some new directions, the song will need more work still to get to a state where I’m happy with it.
All in all the stream was fairly productive and I actually finished all the things I had planned to; now just to keep that momentum somehow!
Posted on 2018-07-01 07:03
Today more work was done on ESA 2’s new editor; layers are now back in along with copying multiple tiles. A new feature is being able to select multiple tiles in the tileset and placing them simultaneously; this’ll make it easier to create multi-tile structures. I also added support for animated tiles and a couple other things. Nothing massively flashy but still, good progress. Hopefully next time I’ll get to work on the gameplay side of things.
As for Baba, I tidied the intro screen up some, adding a neat little background effect and moving some text around to make things nicer and more consistent. Again, pretty small things in themselves, but the effect of having the game look nicer is very noticeable (to me!)
In other news, I talked about Baba Is You at the Jam Jam in Sappee, Finland yesterday. Good fun. My IGF prize things also arrived, I’ll try to post a picture if I remember. Also also, my Summer holidays started! This is very much welcome.
Posted on 2018-03-12 03:23
I had a massive 8+-hour stream yesterday and another of some 4-5 hours today; I spent most of those working on the penguin game (now titled “Stumblehill”). I’d like to get the game’s levels done before GDC but that’s looking somewhat unlikely. I finished the second level on Saturday and worked on the game’s map today. It seems that the biggest slowing factor is the need for extra assets, and hopefully the third level won’t be quite as demanding in that regard.
I’ll be leaving for the Game Developers Conference on the 18th of March! From there it’ll be a week of probably outrageous amounts of social interaction and receiving Baba compliments from various directions. I’m not *super* stressed about this but I’m sure it’s a force that affects my mood on the background. It’d be really cool to get a prize in the IGF! The beginning week will probably be mostly work on first Stumblehill, then making sure that Baba works at GDC.
What else… 7drl was last week and I started making some simple prototypes but (maybe luckily?) I couldn’t concentrate on them much due to all this vidyagame hubbub.
Posted on 2017-08-31 02:45
So, last time I streamed I promised a weekly update for the next day. As it turns out I forgot to do that and here we are, over a week has passed with no weekly updates. Whoops!! I’m also 2 updates late to begin with. WHOOPS!!! I can’t remember at all what I did during the stream I didn’t make an update of, so let’s just leave it at that.
Today I added more words to Baba, along with some little graphical polish in preparation to changes to how the sprites are positioned on-screen. Stuff was tedious, yo, but now it’s done and that’s good. One of the new words can be seen in the gif above.
Last weekend I was at the Sommerhus Game Jam in Vellerup, Denmark. It was a fun cozy tiny little jam, there being about 10 people attending in total. The theme was ‘Me’, but I ended up working on Baba most of the time (along with having saunas and doing other summer cottagey things). I had a couple ideas but mostly they were too ambitious or I lacked the motivation to create them. I did finish a tiny thing, so if you’re interested you can download that here.
Posted on 2016-09-15 02:00
Just a moment ago I finally realized something I should’ve realized years and years ago, and decided that the best way to approach it would be to write an open apology.
Over the years of participating in Ludum Dares and other game jams, I have partly unthinkingly and partly knowingly cheated and otherwise acted maliciously in ways that have made my results look better than they deserve. This has happened in two ways:
- Using certain bits of MMF2 code I had made earlier to get started with a game project faster, and
- Using the “submission hour” to add content and polish/tweaks
In earlier LDs I’ve taken part in it’s also possible that I’ve added content after the deadline along with bugfixes, but I’m not certain of the extent of this kind of behaviour and I’m fairly certain it hasn’t happened in recent years (not that that makes it acceptable to have happened before!)
The former category of cheating has mostly concerned certain relatively simple “modules” that I’ve added to my projects upon starting to work on them; it would’ve been quite trivial to re-implement the same features during the actual compo and I doubt I’ve gained much advantage via this abuse of the rules; this of course doesn’t make my behaviour any less wrong, merely a bit dumber.
Using the “submission hour” for polish and features has definitely affected the quality of my entries significantly; I have no excuse for this behaviour.
It makes me angry at myself to have abused the goodwill of the community in such a way and I’m very very sorry that I’ve acted this way. The reason behind this kind of behaviour is probably partially in my own naïvete; when I first participated in LD I was much younger and thus had less of a moral compass, and after that it’s been easier to point at past offences and think “well, I did that before so I don’t have to care now, either”, or just not think about the whole issue in the first place. I’m glad I’ve realized that this way of thinking is actively malicious and morally wrong, but I’m really sad it took me this long to actually decide to acknowledge it and the awful things I’ve done. What makes me feel even more awful is the fact that I’ve manipulated my time lapse videos so that this behaviour couldn’t be seen in them.
So, again, I’m very deeply sorry to have acted in such a malicious manner, and I apologize for having been as dumb and mean as I have. Ludum Dare has been a very important part of my game developer hobby for these past 7 years and I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed all the experiences related to the event; I just wish this kind of attitude hadn’t been a part of it behind the scenes, or at least that I’d have been morally sound enough to stop doing it, feel genuinely sorry and apologize a long time ago.
As a gesture that someone hopefully finds useful, I’ve decided to upload the bits of engine I’ve re-used in many of my LD games; right now I can recall two that I’ve utilized in multiple entries (especially the latter can be found in nearly every entry):
- A simple platforming engine. The version I’ll include here contains some extra functionality, such as slopes, because I’m not completely certain on whether I’ve used only the simplest form in a cheaty manner or also this more advanced one.
- A system for quickly resizing the game window to a multiplier of its original size. This is a very simple piece of code, but as a result also very easy to quickly add to a project at the start of development.
Additionally I’ve used Adam “Sketchy” Hawker’s pathfinding tutorial in multiple entries, and while I’m not certain of how much of the tutorial code I’ve copied directly to my entries, I have a memory that suggests that I’ve done so and renamed variables afterwards to make this less apparent. This is awful.
I have used these two particular engine pieces in a similarly cheaty way in other game jams, such as No More Sweden and Nordic Game Jam, for similarly dumb and irresponsible reasons, although without the intention to act maliciously (if that matters).
I hope that the fact that I bring this matter up on my own helps prove that I genuinely feel very sorry about it and wish to be a better person in the future. It’ll be somewhat scary to see what’ll come out of this, but in the end whatever possible bad outcomes are deserved and I’m nevertheless sure that this is the right thing to do, right now.
Here are the two pieces of engine mentioned:
Platforming engine (with slopes) – ThePodunkian kindly taught me the basics of this design years ago (in 2008, maybe?)
Screen size multiplier – I’m fairly sure I implemented this myself and refined it over the years.
Seems like Adam’s pathfinding tutorials are no longer available; I feel slightly uncomfortable uploading them as they are, but if anyone wants I can make a tutorial based on the system I’ve used.
I’ll be posting this on twitter & the Ludum Dare blog; hopefully all relevant parties will see it.
Posted on 2016-03-21 00:14
So, my 7drl entry ended up being late due to me being busy on the weekend, which kind of drained my will to keep working on it. Maybe one day…! I’m pretty happy with what I have now, though, because I implemented many features I had never done before, it’s cool.
I was really tired after all this theatre stuff last week so the stream started early and also ended somewhat quickly. However, I managed to implement a pre-boss cutscene and maybe-kinda settle on the design of the boss! Also added a button to change the level editor’s background colour to magenta, woo!
No picture today because I didn’t really do anything that visual, but next wednesday should be better in that regard!
Posted on 2016-03-12 20:22
I’ve had very little time to work on games this week, and next week looks to be even worse in that regard; I’m working in a student theatre group and our we’ll have our premiere and the rest next Tuesday. Woo!
Anyway! I’ve taken what little time I have to work on the 7drl thing, because it’s fun to take a crack at making a “pure” roguelike (or at least something imitating one). MMF2 really isn’t up to the task, causing slowdown even with just a bit of raycasting & pathfinding (especially pathfinding), but in a weird way I enjoy having the push the program to its limits.
I now have moving enemies with different movement patterns and speeds, field-of-view and a system for enemies noticing players and so on. I was really glad to find out that making the enemies collide with each other wasn’t quite as terribly hard as I feared in this specific case. I probably won’t have time to finish anything actually playable since Sunday will be reserved for theatre stuff, but there’re some features I’d love to see working before the 7drl. Biggest of these is some kind of an “skill system”, in that the player can affect the enemies with spell-like skills and vice versa. We’ll see how smoothly that’ll go.