Hempuli's blog

After seeing the developer of Caves of Qud utilize the Wave-function collapse generation algorithm successfully for generating roguelike environments, I felt like it’d be fun to try to implement something akin to that in Multimedia Fusion 2. The original algorithm (You can find it here!) was written in C# and after trying to parse the code for a while I gave up and thought up how to approach the algorithm based on the general description of it on the git repository. The result isn’t nearly as nice and tidy, but it was fun to dabble with and it just might be useful for something if I can get it optimized a bit.

First try:

After some tweaks:

Current state:

As you can see, the algorithm suffers from slight misalignments here and there, making the results less neat, as well as small holes that are technically ‘handled’ by the algorithm but for one reason or another don’t get assigned anything. The generation is also very slow, something that can’t be seen in the gifs.

Anyway!! Ludum Dare #37 results arrived! Sadly, Salvage Star didn’t fare very well – it got in the top50 in the Graphics category, but that’s it. Very much understandable since the game ended up being really hard and frustrating + I guess people have kind of seen the ‘singular huge enemy you climb’ -thing already at this point. Still, I of course kinda wish it had fared better! Maybe next time. At least the game gave me some good data on how to get moving platforms to play nice.

Download Salvage Star

So, Ludum Dare #37 came and went; the theme, One room, didn’t inspire me much and at first I didn’t think I’d finish anything this time around; however, eventually I just decided to ignore the theme altogether and make an idea that came to my mind after reading about the release of The Last Guardian and discussion about the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I streamed the whole development process, which was pretty interesting! The result isn’t quite as polished as I’d have hoped, but it gave me new opportunities to add to my knowledge on how to implement moving platforms, and I feel I learned some stuff that could come in handy with, say, the Snake Game. Unfortunately this also means that I’d kinda like to continue this project!!

Anyway! The game’s very difficult but hopefully feels interesting nonetheless! I didn’t have time to add proper sounds and, since I don’t want to be a jerk anymore, left the entry like that.

Salvage Star on Ludum Dare

Post-compo version

(The post-compo version has various bugfixes and some more sounds. Maybe slightly easier?)

A fairly productive stream, yay! I added two new rooms, an important mechanic for the ruins area, two new traps (or one trap and one map feature that behaves similarly), and a new enemy. Also some decorative tiles, woo!! I’ll have to up my room design game a bit soon because I’ve been working on the ruins area for several weeks now; the good thing is, though, that I think I’m really starting to get a good feel to the area! The next area to work on will be very very different and located kind of awkwardly, so I’ll have to do some plans regarding that before tackling it.

I was informed by ZenSoturi in the stream chat about the upcoming Ludum Dare! Despite my earlier regrets, I feel like it might be fun to join this time around. However, whether I’ll actually join or not remains to be seen.

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.

Here we go again! Cavern of Flight didn’t fare quite as well as some previous entries, but all in all I’m nonetheless very happy with the results. Out of the 1118 compo entries, my game was

#6 in the ‘mood’ category
#20 in the ‘graphics’ category
#48 overall

I’d call that a fairly successful result! As usual my entry ended up being too hard and finicky to control, and those are things I’ll keep struggling with in the future, too, but it was a lot of fun to make a game and that’s all that matters. I’m really happy that I had the time/energy to enter the compo.

DOWNLOAD THE GAME

A lot of time in today’s stream was spent reminiscing the early days of the Klik Skene, but progress was nice nonetheless. The laser traps are now in along with buttons that come in hidden, timed and one-off variations. I also added a new enemy, although I’m a bit afraid that it’s too much like a certain existing enemy. :( Oh well! I’ve been playing Ludum Dare entries on-stream every day when not otherwise busy and will continue to do so later this week as well. Many high-quality entries there this time around!

I really got interested in weird dynamic animation stuff during the Nordic Game Jam last week, so Ludum Dare this weekend was a great excuse to play more with that stuff (although the theme, shapeshift, wasn’t really fitting for what I had in mind). Anyway, here we are again! My entry is called Cavern of Flight and while it barely incorporates the actual theme, I’m very happy with the result because I got to do what I wanted to and the game feels pretty solid despite some hiccups. The coolest thing was that this time around I recorded some random sounds with my Zoom recorder and actually made the soundscape on my own! Lots of fun, that.

GET THE GAME

After this I feel like it’d be cool to also have rats crawling on the walls, some bats & snails and the spiders rolling other creatures into cocoons. Maybe also little archers hopelessly overwhelmed by the wildlife?

Ludum Dare stuff

One week left until release! That’s pretty cool, also really really scary in many ways. I hope I can build up enough interest for the game so that it doesn’t fall into obscurity instantly. Not very good at this kinda stuff, nope!

The game will cost 8 dollars and have a 10% discount for the first week.
Check out the store page again: http://store.steampowered.com/app/350070/

In other news, Ludum Dare #32 will be around next weekend, and despite the pressure of the upcoming release I’m going to (try to) participate! I have some ideas that I think could be neat. We’ll see!

So, the voting for Ludum Dare #31 ended last night, and the results seem really nice! The theme was “Entire Game on One Screen“, and my game was called Where They Once Were.

Results:
1st place in Mood
3rd place in Graphics
10th place Overall

Considering there were over 2500 entries, I’d say this was a pretty good result! :) Thanks to everyone who voted.

DOWNLOAD FOR WINDOWS