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.
* New class, the engineer! Stand still and press Z to open his own special fabricator. Since there are no other downsides but increased price, I imagine they’ll need some balancing. But hey, they’re here anyhoo.
* Moved the turret healing ability from cybermasons to engineers.
* Fixed a couple weird bugs.
* The game now shows information about the gamemode as you join.
* You can leave a buy menu just by clicking anywhere.
* There was a really easily exploitable builder glitch that allowed basically unlimited griefing; fixed that and trying it again makes you suicide so don’t even try!
* Fixed a really dumb bug about money. Protip: when you send signed bytes remember to check if the value sent is between -128-128!
Really low on additions, but I did some pretty necessary bugfixes.
* Turrets should now work proper. No more nameless killers! Also if a player logs off, his turrets disappear.
* You can’t use the fabricators and such in the enemy base. This kinda sucks, I know, but there were some really annoying tactics around.
* There was a silly bug in the Ore Race that made it horrendously unfair for the red team, but now it’s fixed.
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.
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!
-A little tutorial-like thing added. It’s a bit empty at the moment, I need to add more stuff to it.
-Mucus grenade buffed a lot!
-Hand tele made ninja-cloakable
-Fixed lots of small bugs and a couple bigger ones!
-Added a nice little tooltip to the shop screen to give a bit of information about the items.
-Removed that dumb level type.
-In ore race, a team earns 5 ore by killing someone in the opposing team.
I’ve been slightly out of steam, but I’m quite sure I’ll get the next update out this week. After that I’m quite sure I’ll try to work on other projects for a while; I’d like to get some games such as Officer Alfred done. Next weekend I’ll zoom off to Stockholm for No More Sweden, yippee! I’m even going to hold a presentation. I’ll try to advertize Masjin there a bit, it’d be nice to get a lan-like session of the game running (that might even help to locate some bugs). Hopefully the weekend will be all kinds of great anyway.
On other news, check out this insanely neat fan-made Masjin trailer:
