Hempuli's blog

I think I’ll make it! :)

Time is running short! I think I’ll make it in time but it’ll sure be a close call!

^^ Seconded. The deadline is 17th October, and I really want to get this thing done before that! Once I’ve got a demo out for the competition, I’ll get back to work on the level editor.

Welp, looks like port 6121 is broken again; I’ll get in touch with Jamie asap. Port 6122 seems to work well at the moment.

As for other things, I’ve been working on something to put to the upcoming IGF competition. I’m quite sure you can tell what it is.

Oh well, so Ludum Dare was last weekend, with the theme ‘Escape’. Wasn’t really my cup of tea, and in the end I didn’t manage to create anything of interest, just a simple engine for a possible future game (I spent so much timing finishing parts of the engine that I ultimately didn’t need).

On other news, I’ll be moving away from my parents’ soon, which’ll mean a pause in any updates whatsoever. Not that big a deal, but it’s pretty exciting for me! And then for the games:
Beyond the Black Hole: Yep, still not given up on this! The engine is old and horrid, but I hope that inspiration eventually strikes and I can get it done.
Masjin: I think I’ll make an update to fix the currently existing bigger bugs and then take some time off the project in order to pursue other stuff.
Paradise Fort flash: I recently found a much easier way to handle certain stuff, so expect to see some updates on this eventually!

Then there’re various smaller things I’m working on or at least planning to work on. As Usual, I’ll wait until they’re a bit more ripe before announcing ‘em.

Stuff like this.

Woop, updated it to add more levels, enemies and mechanics. Also made some parts slightly easier. You can now press ESC to kill yourself in case you get stuck, too.

LINK IS THE SAME

So, NMS 2011 was this weekend! It was a blast, I enjoyed it thoroughly. All the cool people were there and we got to test some really interesting games, such as Johann Sebastian Joust, and a new game from the same guy (Douglas Wilson) called ‘Monster’ (alternative name option would be ‘Beacon of Light’). It’s a lot of fun playing games that feel like those classic games I played with my friends were in primary school or such, but with additional control added with the Sony Move controllers.

Also, we of course had sort of a game-making competition; people wrote verbs on pieces of paper, and everyone had to pick 1-3 verbs and use them as the theme of their game. My verb was ‘Boooom’, which is a bit on the edge on whether it’s a verb to begin with. I used it as if it was meant as ‘to explode’; I made 2 games, the first of which failed because it really was too ambitious.
Here’s a picture:

The game was supposed to have the theme included in the plotline – the No More Sweden facility was going to be about to destroy Sweden with various bombs, and Hercule Poirot would’ve been sent to disarm them. The engine was quite solid, but doing a full game with it would’ve been a major pain.

I started a new game when there was only 11 hours left to the competition. This time I used much more simplified graphics in order to make it in time.

I’m actually very happy with the game itself. It turned out to be brutally hard, but other than that the style is kinda nice. I had to leave for my airplane right after the compo ended, so my game didn’t really make it to the voting. I also got some nice music composed by Anosou. Thanks Anosou!

GO PLAY THE GAME

So hey cool, Officer Alfred was fourth in the recent Ludum Dare #20 contest. It also got to the top 10 in the categories Overall, Innovation and Fun (I think).

See it yourself here!
Now go buy me a cake!

On another note, there’ll be another post later today. Oh boy!

First of all, I’ve noted that the anti-spam filter has been removing some completely OK comments! That’s a bit annoying. I need to start looking through them more carefully.

Ok, Ludum Dare 20 was last weekend. 48 hours with the theme “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this!”. I can’t say that I’d have liked the theme very much, it was one of the ‘funny’ themes added in by admins and somehow it did make it after all. Anyway, I did finish something even though I was horribly preoccupied with silly nuisances such as partying. The result is Officer Alfred, a simple and silly puzzle platformer that has serious inspiration from Portal and uses a game mechanic I’ve already used before (in Timerocketxby). Fully flash also!

Here’s also the timelapse and full playthrough vidja:

GO PLAY THIS GAME NOW!

So, after 3+ weeks of daily updates to Masjin, I’m having a break from it in order to work on other games. And study. I doubt anyone is reading this blog at this point, but let’s have a summary of projects:
Beyond the Black Hole: Kinda frozen again. I’m stuck in level 14, but I’m quite sure I’ll eventually finish this.
It’s a frickin’ cave: Frozen as well. The code is very sloppy and buggy so in order to keep working I should recode big parts of it. This makes me not want to continue.

Currently I’m concentrating on making Paradise Fort fully flash. I’m currently doing it as a collaboration with Jeanes, a friend(?) of mine who’s really good at graphical design and has done several really good games and would-be-games. As far as I know, he’s had a bit of problem with finding a coder, though.

Anyway, here’s how the game looks at the moment: