Gawain Games

So long and thanks for all the fish

2022-03-25T13:00:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone!

This has been a long time coming. I will not be regularly writing on here for the foreseeable long-term future. I'll leave my posts up for the archivers out there.

One last update for now, on just about everything. TLDR: I'm fine, everything is rolling along, go check my latest indie games out at https://darkgriffin.itch.io/ and check out the humble beginnings of a video game company I'm starting at https://moonbow-ent.com Details and post mortem of the blog is after the break.

WIP - Tap Tap Woosh

2018-10-25T17:24:00.000-04:00

So...yes. I'm making a game called Tap Tap Woosh.

This is still work in progress. I've been playing around with making a "tapping game". So this came out. Cause, you know, this is clearly the logical use of these animal assets.

It's not going to win any awards for best game ever made, but it's something.

Instead of describing anything, I think I will just leave you with this for today. Lots of polish work still left to do before it's ready on Google Play Store.

Infinitroid - 64 Jam postmortem

2018-10-08T15:07:00.003-04:00

It's been another 64x64 jam, and I made Infinitroid. It's a mini-tribute to Metroid, made using a tool called Pico8. Players can enter 1 of 32 possible codes, and a map gets generated to play through. The game takes about 30 min to 45 on average to finish a run. When you win, you get a "high score" screen showing your time and completion percentage, and the code so you can share it with others to see if they can beat your speedrun.

I'll spare the technical details and just drop the link here. Go play it! The game runs in browser, and is open sourced! P8 file can be downloaded for free or pay what you want.

https://darkgriffin.itch.io/infinitroid

Cheap 1 hour promotional material.

Game in action gif to make it look awesome!

A silly mistake I made today, and why you should always think through your code.

2017-05-08T18:32:00.001-04:00

That moment when you thought something would be easy to implement and then it broke all the old code. :(

This is a great example of a "simple to think about, hard to implement" game mechanic. It sounds great on paper but has a very fatal flaw when implemented that I didn't catch.

The short version of the mechanic is that

1- The level has torches around it that can be lit up by the player.
2 - The objects loaded in when the level is built are hidden at first, and when a torch is lit, it enables a list of objects to show themselves. (Each torch has previously scanned to build this list at the start of the level).
3 - The player can light their own "torch" to reveal objects nearby as they wander the level, and use this torch to light the unlit ones.

The system worked great but it had a major flaw. I recently introduced the player being able to carry a dynamic light source around, and that broke everything.

The player controlled object has to erase it's own trail, because if the player moves away from something dark it should hide itself again. Otherwise the player's light source just becomes a fancy paintbrush that reveals everything in the level.

But in adding that bit, the player is now overwriting the previously lit objects.

The result is that lighting a torch and then moving away will hide the objects again even though the torch right next to them is still lit. Doh! x_x

I got a few ideas how to go about fixing it. The tricky part is to do it without needing to always re-find the objects they lit up, as that's the main memory hog of the system. But I need a break for now. My current fix idea is to have the torches "tag" objects as "skip hiding this one", since in this system (for now) the torches never turn off again.

In the end, it will probably cost me an extra few minutes tomorrow to fix. However, it's a great example of why planning is very important.

Anyway, I just thought it might be fun to share this little game mechanic planning mishap. This is why testing your ideas out on paper is so important, as well as running over all combinations of game elements during the design.

Remember to check out Drake at https://darkgriffin.itch.io/drake if you haven't played it yet! It's the latest game I've made and I'd love some help sharing it around to new players!

Drake is out!

2017-04-04T13:23:00.000-04:00

Playable in web flash, and if you donate 5.00 or more you get downloads of both flash and windows executable form that you can keep forever and play offline.

https://darkgriffin.itch.io/drake

I really could use some help spreading this game around. In order to be a success I need as many people as possible to see it, play it, and share it. Your donations will go directly to me and supporting my game development in the future, I promise!

I also greatly need some feedback on the price. This is my first game launch, and while I think the current donation download price is fair for the amount of content given, it may very well not be. I'm operating in the dark and within the very narrow amount of games I have been able to afford myself on the lower end of the market. While I would feel 5 is a fair price were I to buy the game for offline play, I don't know how others feel about that.

Anyway, enough about me! Go play the game! And please share the link with your friends!

Why Pokemon Go has my highest recommendations.

2016-07-12T13:00:00.002-04:00

So...Pokemon Go.

Team Instinct here, for those players who might ask.

I could go on about the missing game mechanics like trading or battling other trainers directly. I could write whole rambles about how this game is basically a fancy GPS with Geocache points on the map and a spreadsheet that currently only has the first gen pokemon critters. Or how the ball throwing mechanic is basically a copy of those "put the paper in the trash can" apps combined with the catching luck of pokemon.

But over my first weekend playing it, I have realized that to boil Pokemon Go into such mechanics would be to completely discredit the real power of what Pokemon Go has done, seemingly overnight, nationwide.

This game, and it's positive effect on people as a whole, is simply put, amazing.

Last evening me and a couple siblings walked downtown. It's got a lot of historical buildings, which become "loot" points in the game. They refresh and players can also use items to make a beacon call that causes more pokemon to show up around that point.

The main block downtown had players on nearly every street corner. A few "hey you are on the other teams, we'll get you someday" rivalry comments was about as far as the supposed rival bashing went, despite a major take over of all the control points by a team during the evening.

Mostly people were passing on game tips and pointing out cool pokemon. There were families there, kids and parents passing phones to play and take turns catching pokemon. There were the 40-50 year olds, who grew up with Pokemon Yellow/Red/Blue back in their high school or grade school years. There were teens, from the Black and White gen of games. Fans of the anime, who've never played any of the video games. And lots of players who didn't know what a Pokemon was till their friend roped them into this latest "free app for their phone". Many were local, a few had driven to the block after discovering it through playing and meeting people there before.

Regardless of where they came from, the in game team color, genders, ages, race, or religions, everyone was polite and generally helpful to each other. Everyone would look out for each other, keeping over eager players on the sidewalk or calling out when a rare pokemon showed up at a certain corner. There was a spontaneous togetherness about the whole downtown, and even the random strangers walking by without the game were pleasantly surprised how polite and kind everyone was.

It was very wonderful to see everyone not only outside, but together, eager to greet new strangers, and just having a good time. For the whole evening, and well into the night, everyone in the city finally had a common goal.

For once, we all put aside our differences and talked. I had many conversations last night. All started with "What team you on?" or "What pokemon are around here?" or "What's your strongest?".

But while they all started with the game, many drifted off elsewhere, such as the cool hidden historical monuments even locals had forgotten existed. And a few touched on even harder subjects, like shootings, or race, or even a light conversation on religion. No one was insulted or told their view was stupid. We all had a glue, a common goal, a common thing that we could fall back onto if the conversations steered into strange or uncomfortable directions. Everyone was here to have a good time playing Pokemon after all, first and foremost.

I, and probably the rest of the world, are still processing what has just happened overnight with the release of this game. Suddenly everyone actually wants to go outside. They want to see new places, to fully explore the parks and trails in their local area. They are using maps and going to places they always drove by on the way to work, and taking the time to explore that area. And in doing so, they find others, and connect with them. Their first motivation may be just to catch that pokemon, but now that they are at that location, suddenly exploring the rest of the park doesn't feel so far away from home. They end up stumbling on new hangouts they didn't know before, or meeting new people they never would have talked to otherwise. Things outside the little game universe in their cell phone, that will last much longer then the little digital critters in their hand, and are just as precious.

People are outside, united with a common goal, and a little touch of friendly rivalry to keep each other motivated. And the Pokemon game's brand and virtual world has reminded them all to value being civil, kind, and understanding of each other, while also giving them a common ice breaker subject to strike up conversations with. One that doesn't involve a sensitive topic or a negative toned jab at anyone or anything. Except maybe the virtual critters that have evaded their pokeballs.

I have no idea how this Pokemon Go thing will turn out in the future. And I'm not saying it's all roses and sunshine. There will always be those idiots who use it wrong or cause accidents because of the app. And of course the entire USA's data plans have been slammed through the floor with it.

But I also see a lot of good coming from these little critters, and it reaches far more then the little phone screen. People who normally would not talk to each other are instead sharing all the cool spots they've been to. People are taking the whole family for an "evening walk", meeting other players and learning more about the neighbors around them, instead of sitting down to watch a movie or the news channels alone.

Best of all, the entire game is free to play, free to download, and doesn't suffer the geocache syndrome of having real life boxes that can be trolled by players/weather/nature/ect. It's like Geocache 2.0, with so much more to it.

(Parents may want to take note of or disable the In App Purchases, the items sold can also be gotten/earned for free. They are mostly boosting items that can be dropped rarely off collection points as well, and the currency can be earned by helping your team with control point battles.)

And so, I can only heartily recommend this game, to parents and kids alike.

Play responsibly, always be aware of your surroundings, and find some other family members to play with. Enjoy your own pokemon adventures, and strive to catch em all, together, in the most world wide definition of the word.

Small Status Update

2016-06-05T10:40:00.002-04:00

For those following me, not too much has changed this past week in my game projects. I got sick with something big on Monday and it took me out till around Friday evening to get well enough to work on anything that would take more then a few minutes time again. I've spent most of the remaining week and weekend just trying to recover myself or catch up with things I've fallen behind on.

I know this isn't the most exciting update. I wanted to post something so those that follow me know I haven't vanished. I'm still here, Drake is still a thing, my other projects are still happening as well. It's just been a bit of a "forced vacation" from game design this week.

I did manage to snag RPG Maker MV during the free weekend discount. I'm a bit too tired right now to write up a proper review. So far I've liked what they did to improve it, even if most of the improvements are just super tiny things.

Most of my up time from my sickness was spent pouring over it's engine/tools/plugin system and learning how it ticks, since I could do that in very small bursts when my eyes would let me. I have a little wip dungeon generator plugin that's not quite ready for alpha release yet. I have been able to dive right into the code running this time since the language is Javascript instead of ruby.

Anyway, signing off for now. I intend to hit the ground running tomorrow. Next week should be a bit more productive.

Drake Work In Progress Report

2016-05-09T13:32:00.000-04:00

I just want to say I am still chugging along on both Drake and a top secret project. Top secret is not ready for revealing, and has hit quite a few bugs along the way.

Level 2's layout is almost finished for Drake, and in polishing stage. The level introduces a few new game mechanics that were not implemented in the itch.io jam version. Namely boss fights, and a system for "level tasks" that open special "doors". Since these were not in place for the contest version but are needed for the final version, I have done a lot more behind the scenes work then level design the last few weeks. Moving forwards, these new systems will let me fill out the rest of the levels faster now.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a gif of Drake helping out a cute little phoenix friend who had an unfortunate encounter with the invaders.

I will keep working, and will try to regularly post updates to this blog as I get the remaining levels in place.

Drake - A 64x64 jam entry

2016-04-29T16:48:00.000-04:00

I recently made this little game called Drake, it's on my game page now under flash games. Or you can just click here:

https://darkgriffin.itch.io/drake

It's a single level of what was meant to be 6 levels around that size, so it's not complete. But it's fully playable and should entertain for a little while.

I'm now working on the rest of the levels. Those will be coming in an update as well, but very slowly.

Mostly this post is about showing you Drake, and letting you all know I'm still working on stuff.
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Read more »

Playhack winners announced! Robo Racer got Special Mention!

2016-04-01T13:39:00.004-04:00

http://blog.playcanvas.com/playhack-with-playjam-winners/

My game #roboracer got a Special Mention, just below the contest winners!

No prize money for me, but it's really great to see it get recognized! "Good solid entry" is about the best praise I could have asked for from the judges. :)

A big accomplishment for me considering I had not touched Playcanvas engine till I started the contest, and am a single developer. :)

Go play all the entries, and enjoy! The blog has a link to a special "play games" page that has nothing but the contest entries. Some of them are really good, most are worth checking out. I won't link directly here, so you have to view the playcanvas article to find it.

Congrats to all who managed to make a game in time! It was a blast!

Robo Racer is out!

2016-03-11T14:04:00.000-05:00

Yay! Another Game Jam, another actual game release!

I've added it to the game page for the blog. If you are super excited to play it, or super lazy, or can't find the page link cause it's glorious blue on blue at the top right of every single blog page, you can click below to get there.

http://gawaingames.blogspot.com/p/games-ive-made.html

I think I'll let the game speak for itself really. It's been a blast making it, and my mind is still in a flurry of thoughts and design concepts, so anything I write about it won't make much sense for now. Plus I've been promoting and repackaging the promotion material so much over the last 2 days, I don't really feel like spouting it all twice just for this blog post.

Not Robo Racer related news after the break. If you are just here to check out my games, you can stop reading here. ;)

Read more »

Robo Racer - My PlayCanvas Work in Progress Game

2016-02-25T12:11:00.000-05:00

https://playcanvas.com/project/375628/overview/robo-racer

Wondering what I've been up to the last few weeks? Wonder no more! Go press play and try the last mostly stable build I pushed as I make them.

Or just use this below permalink to the game and skip all my efforts to keep a development blog on the project. The below link will open the latest "stable" build directly:

http://playcanv.as/p/XtUBSVpS

It's still very much a work in progress and has no help menu, so here are the controls: Arrow keys to steer, hold spacebar down to charge up a jump. On mobile: touch the sides to steer, and HOLD the middle of the screen to charge a jump. On both devices: press and hold both left and right at the same time to boost.

Feel free to follow my dev log on playcanvas and watch the game take shape. The playcanvas project is also set public (cause I'm broke and they charge for private projects), so you can poke around and learn from it as well. Though keep in mind anything you see in code is also from me learning and on a contest deadline, and thus may not be the "best" way to accomplish the task.

Enjoy!

My PlayCanvas Contest Project Link

2016-02-05T09:19:00.002-05:00

Here is the url for the contest entry project I am working on for PlayHack:

https://playcanvas.com/project/375628/overview/robo-racer

That will land you on the project page, allowing you to play it, view it in the editor, and read all my exciting (or not) posts as I progress!

It's keeping me pretty busy, so I won't have much time to keep up with here during the contest. So follow that URL above and keep checking it for updates as I get further. And while you are there, browse around Play Canvas and watch some of the other devs too.

PlayCanvas Competition - I'm in!

2016-02-02T14:31:00.002-05:00

One day late to post this, shame on me.

PLAYHACK with PlayJam competition link:

http://blog.playcanvas.com/playhack-with-playjam-starts-today/

So this is quite a distraction, and will delay Chapter 2 of Mothrina. I had gone back and fourth yesterday about it, since I really want to get the more polished engine done. But I think I'll try for it.

The publicity and practice will certainly help, and the pressure of the contest will help me to "break in" my new home's "office" space. The prize would be nice but I think I need to be a bit realistic and say that with no mobile games under my belt yet, I doubt I can really pull off a winning entry. Hey, I can dream. :p

Mothrina Chapter 2 is currently in a bit of a bog down while I try getting an editor built using Multimedia Fusion 2.5 and the Mothrina Engine v2 "talking" in the same file structures. When I get that all working, I'll have a guide to setting it all up here on the blog. I actually have a draft but it's not ready for publishing as I have since discovered several better ways of doing things along the way.

PlayCanvas in general seems like a pretty fun tool so far. Not sure how it stacks up professionally, but I've been having fun building the basics of my contest game concept today. Nothing ready for publishing just yet on my contest entry. I intend to publish a Work In Progress on PlayCanvas as soon as I have something remotely playable.

Part of the contest is to keep a regular dev blog on PlayCanvas during the development of your game, so the actual game updates will be over there. I don't want to keep up with cross posting here. The dev blog will be open as soon as I publish a version of the game, so for now there is no link I can hand you. But I will be sure to post the link to this blog once I've got that started.

Anyway, super excited to be attempting this and learning yet another toolkit. I'm sure I'll have a much better idea how PlayCanvas all works after the contest deadline passes.

Wish me luck! And if you are entering as well, I wish you the same! :D

Delay of Game: Developer has Moving Issues

2015-11-23T11:50:00.000-05:00

Mothrina Chapters is not dead. Just wanted to get this out there for my blog followers.

My family is moving in a land called Real Life. This means things are getting cleaned up, packed away, and shipped to a new house. The majority of my stuff being packed is also the stuff I use while developing games(or to de-stress while doing so). Also, packing is very time consuming and seems to zap one's energy. Must be those real life motion controls.

I'll just keep this short. I have lots of ideas and plans, but all of them are on hold while I move. The moving date is the 6th, but of course unpacking will happen over the next weeks following that. There's also some Real Life MMO events called holidays somewhere in there.

So everything in Mothrina or other game development land is on hold for the next month or so while I piece together my/our new life.

It will live again, eventually, but for now I really need to take a step back and breath. Expect silence followed by an opening report on the development once I get my new "office" up sometime mid/end of next month. Stay warm!

Mothrina Chapters - Control Update Patch

2015-08-13T14:11:00.003-04:00

I'll keep this one short. I have resolved a control issue with Mothrina Chapters: The Ruins of Death.

For all people interested in playing the game, instead of downloading directly from the contest version, please download from the updated version link in the contest description. Hopefully this fixes the "controls not responding" problems for good. (It's pretty much a raw reading of the input at this point, so there really is not much more I could do then this.)

Here's the link again to the contest page:

http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/384

Thanks!

Dev log: Mothrina Engine Version 2, planning phase

2015-08-11T22:17:00.000-04:00

First off, I'm really beginning to wonder if anyone even played my little adventure.

In case you missed the link the first post, I'll plug it here again. I'm starting to sound like a broken record at this point, but hey, I'm really desperate for players.

Mothrina Chapters: The Ruins of Death

http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/384

I have posted it just about everywhere I can think of over the last few days, and have not heard back from anyone. Not even a little piece of "that was fun" or "your game sux!111".

Well, ok. One person mentioned the controls were broken on the AGK steam forums and tweaked the code to support their (strange) keyboard. And a few other users there complemented me on releasing the source code with the game, as they could poke around and learn how to better structure a larger project.

That's all I really got though. None of those things really let me know if the game itself is good or just tedious or makes people angry or sad or just bored. No idea how anyone reacted to the story, no idea if I was too vague with the clues and what happens or if there was "just enough" for a thinker to piece what happened to the Ruins of Death.

Some say "Silence is Golden", but for this instance, I don't think that applies. :/

Info on version 2 if you view the full blog post. Cut time.

Mothrina Chapters: The Ruins of Death - IGDC Game Release!

2015-08-08T13:42:00.003-04:00

Proudly Presenting: Mothrina Chapters: The Ruins of Death

There is a readme with an in-character letter to the character you will be playing, and some gameplay instructions, included in the download with the game. Here is the link. I hope you enjoy playing.

http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/384

What, you are still here?

If you could spread this link around and get more eyeballs looking at it, it would mean the world to me. It's a free game after all. Please share the contest link, as opposed to the download link. I really need the potential votes.

If you have any feedback, storyline questions, or just want to yell at me because your party members are rolling terribly, I can be reached at: darkgrif@gmail.com I'd love to hear from you!

I am thinking strongly about expanding this engine in the future, and making a few more full length chapters. If I do, the other chapters would be much longer, allow you to roll up characters and name them, and in general be much more feature rich. I might do a "pay what you want" release, or I might sell each chapter as a lower cost full game. Lots of ideas for the future, but nothing set in the cold Mothrina stone just yet.

Anyway, you should be playing the game instead of reading this. Go play, and enjoy a small adventure in the land of Mothrina!

Why I Have No Game Dev Fort Entry...or Making the Most of Failing Deadlines

2015-08-02T22:39:00.004-04:00

Alas, I'm going to probably have to admit defeat for this year's Game Dev Fort contest.

My dungeon crawler's arrays have been giving me hell, combat barely even ends properly, and I have NO story event code yet. With only a few days left before the 7th and at least one of those lost to cleaning the house, I think I'll more then likely be forced to wave a white flag on this one. I bit off WAY more then I could chew for the timeframe.

I had two ideas at the beginning, and went for the longer shot. I really should have gone for the easier of the two games to complete. But excitement of entering and a severe misjudge of how easy a new coding structure would be to learn clouded my judgement. In the end, had I gone with the easier of the two, I would have been done in a couple of weeks and had a small minigame to show for it. (I'll still be making the other game, at least in prototype form. Can't promise anything on that yet.)

But I'm a dreamer, and I dream BIG. And a month sounded like a long time when I first started.

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On the positive side, if I can ever tame my code and finish filling out the commented sections, I'll have a decent Might and Magic like dungeon crawling engine running with my custom ruleset.

With really crappy editor support, and support for attaching events to walls and full spaces, this could go pretty far. It also has a mouse driven "point" interface, which means "touch" support for tablets. I'm using AGK, so android porting should be pretty smooth, though I can't test the phone because I happen to own the only android phone hardware that AGK has issues with.

So though I am extremely disappointed to be unable to enter the contest, I also have to look at the positives. I would have never tried out AGK without the humble bundle and this contest to motivate me. And I now know a lot more about how to structure a program in DarkBasic (and what to avoid, which is 50% of my current dungeon code, lol).

It's a bittersweet sort of feeling right now. I keep wanting to plow ahead on my project, but I know already that there is no physical way to get the code and the game written and tested in time. I certainly won't stop dev crunching till the deadline date itself, but at this point I'm mostly doing it out of sheer madness then any real chance of having a game entry.

And gosh darn it, I can certainly say I've given it my all. That's a prize worth having all it's own.

Some notes on the App Game Kit tool, a small mention of Pro Motion, and plans for the future after the cut.

Smiley Gems High Scores and Ads System is going down at the end of the month.

2014-03-17T12:06:00.000-04:00

Mochimedia is going down at the end of this month, and taking most of the social and high scores of Smiley Gems with it.

Their parent company has ordered them to shut down. Much sadness. :( I don't have time to look into alternatives yet, so for now the system should just cease to function but still let you play the game itself.

If anyone knows of a system for ads and high scores that works with Multimedia Fusion 2, and is free to get, point me in that direction. I don't have a solid web host or server to run such a system on, so I cannot write one myself.

From March 31st, 2014 onwards, the game won't have high scores or any of the Mochi powered systems in it. So Smiley Gems won't have ads, but it also won't have any way of posting high scores. The game itself should still function for those who just like to play it.

I'll update the games page of the blog to point to newgrounds, since the mochimedia hosted page is going down as well.

OUYA, that's why I'm doing this.

2013-07-04T15:20:00.000-04:00

I love how easy it is to make pun titles using this console name. :D Ok, now that that is out of my system, on to actual info.

Cirrell Battle, from OUYA Nation over at G+ asked the OUYA group this question this week:

"What do you plan to do with your new OUYA console?"

The following after the break point is straight from my reply on the group, and sums up my thoughts on the current OUYA games market.

TLDR: The market has more then it's share of problems, mostly from ported or cheap cash grabs, and from developers who don't remember to think like a consumer or keep marketing things like they did for android / iphone. In short, don't market your game by annoying the people who haven't paid you cash.

------------

Developing and releasing a game for it. Hopefully more then one, but I'm a one man army so for now even one good game is a great goal.

I wish I could say I'd be playing games on it, but there really isn't much in the market that catches my attention without breaking my wallet just yet. To be fair, I have only given the market and OUYA about 20 hours of play so far, total, and most of that was spent having a little too much fun with The Amazing Frog.

From what I've seen, as a poor gamer on a shoestring budget, I'm not all that convinced to buy games yet. There are a number of reasons why:

Oh look silence, let's break it with an OUYA!

2013-07-03T15:44:00.000-04:00

I don't have much to say, but I wanted to post something so you all know I'm still around.

It looks like the last blog post was way back in January. That gives me a lot to catch you up on. With the timescale, I feel most of the events will be water under the bridge, so to speak. So I'll just hit the highlights.

I got an OUYA!

I know you all expect me to have lots of game reviews and such for it, but in truth, I've been so busy developing my own game for it that I haven't really played much.

Yes, I'm developing a new Smiley Gems. A very upgraded version, running in Unity 3D, which in turn means running on OUYA, PC, and probably Android as well. A new blog will be coming that is about the project, as I'd like to keep all the news about it in one source.

I'm currently coding the game engine to adapt to all the devices, so it's taking a bit longer then usual to actually write all the gameplay elements. In particular, the controls and gameplay elements currently scale and adapt to all three devices. Mouse on PC(with controller support overwrite), controller only for consoles, and tilt on Android devices. It's all a bit rusty and lacking in polish, but I do have it working.

As for OUYA itself:

I feel any list of recommendations for OUYA games I give is going to be a very slanted view of what's on the market. But yes, OUYA is a thing. It's only $99, the controllers are expensive but with some quick use of the internet you can get PS3 or X-box wireless working on it too.

It's not perfect, a lot of things still need some work or could be improved. But it's very developer friendly and open, and really impressive considering the company behind it didn't even exist as more then a dream a year ago.

Our new standard for things we try on OUYA is how they compare to playing "The Amazing Frog?". We might have been a bit biased when we played that one due to it being 2 AM, but it managed to entertain us for at least a few hours, and is still fun to play later on. I do recommend getting that game, it's free, and features free-form no goal ragdoll gameplay with frogs, explosions, and two player support. It's definitely experimental and open minded.

I told you OUYA was a thing.

Perhaps the biggest flaw, and feature, is that OUYA is currently suffering an identity crisis of sorts. My impressions from the store have been that the console has a lot of potential, but like a new Nintendo DS, no one really knows what to do with it just yet. Hopefully once the free market and more developers hop on board, it will become more clear what OUYA's eco system has to offer in terms of gameplay style and audience.

I was sure there were some other things to talk about, but as it turns out, none of it seems that important. So I guess this post will mostly just be OUYA first impressions and a small teaser that I'm cooking up something new in regards to Smiley Gems.

La-Mulana PC Remake - First Impressions

2013-01-14T22:18:00.001-05:00

Not a review, more like a comment, but I felt it to be blog worthy. Besides, I might never actually finish this game till a few months or years later given my current progress, so any review I do wouldn't do it justice. So I'll ramble instead.

Bought La Mulana, the paid PC remake of the old freeware game.

Still got mixed feelings about it. I don't regret buying it, nor the time spent playing it. Not in the slightest. Up to 13 hours so far and have barely scratched the surface, revealing a much deeper game than I expected. This game is rather long for a Metroid-like game, especially a platformer.

In fact, it's one of my new favorite platform/exploration games of all time. Scratch that, one of my favorite games of all time, period.

But man, sometimes, I just want to throw something at the designer.

I constantly waver between throwing massive nostalgia tear soaked thank you notes for all the hard work this near perfect gem of a 2d platformer has taken to produce. Or the biggest, heaviest, most painful to die if hit by spike studded object I can find.

But I do want to throw a Something. Just not sure which yet.

Maybe a spike studded object covered with nostalgia tear soaked notes would send the message?

The new graphical overhaul in the PC remake of the game and the refined puzzle design makes it all the more sweeter to play, while the difficulty of the old freeware game has been kept intact despite having a Wii Ware release. And the length, in a world of Metroid clones that last 8 to 10 hours, La Mulana's puzzles and just plain massive maze like map is very refreshing. The content is also quite varied, no two puzzles are quite the same, and often they are unique riddles that need to be carefully thought about and then acted on in experimentation to solve.

This is a good game. Of that there is no doubt.

But it is certainly not for everyone.

Light headaches, code progress, and combat control theory.

2013-01-08T11:58:00.001-05:00

Running through compiler errors while having a headache from a sickness isn't a recommended activity for entertainment. It's a bit demoralizing, to say the least. I may need to take a break till this sickness runs off.

In good news, I now have a script that lets objects be "aware" of how many of a given type of object are around them.

Still working on getting the distances between them returned as well. Ideally the script would enable the object to request how many of X object are within distance Y, and get an array returned containing either distances or the object references.

Why do I need this? Good question. It does seem like a silly script taken out of context.

Our main character needs to know how if he is fighting one enemy or a group. Combat changes a bit depending on which situation he is in, so like a real fighter, he's got to be dynamically aware how close the nearest enemies are and change his moves accordingly.

In turn, the proposed system lets the controls be super easy (just one attack button) while the combat itself can vary from "doing combo attacks on the big thug enemy" to "swinging all around to defend from all sides". It should be pretty fun once it all works.

But mainly, having him aware of how many enemies are near helps solve the problem a lot of games with a combo attack system have.

Yes, game design rambling oncoming:

Anyone who's played them knows one of the most annoying things ever is to have your main character "lock on" to one enemy, only to be smashed to bits by the three other surrounding enemies.

Realistic, sure, after all, you were the one that mashed the attack button telling the main character to start the combo attack. However, that doesn't make it any more fun to be a victim of this when you panic in the heat of battle.

Most games call it "skill" and leave such a trap in on purpose to punish the player for making mistakes. For a combat focused game, that would be an acceptable additional complexity. There's nothing wrong with it actually, assuming your game is mainly about fighting or has a complex fighting system in it.

For games that don't have such a system, they usually solve the "combo gets you killed" in a few ways:

-Having the other enemies mostly just stand there while the combo is going on. This works, but makes the enemies look kind of stupid since they go from charging into battle to just standing around screaming while their friend is brutally murdered in front of them. Assassin's Creed players know this all too well, it happens so much in that game it's often immersion breaking(They've been trying to fix this in the sequels, with varying success).

-Splitting the attack commands into a "Light attack" and "Heavy attack" option. This creates two buttons in the controls, which works for complex action games, but for this game I want to keep controls simple so anyone can play. In a game where fighting is only going to be a third of what the player is doing, it doesn't make too much sense to make it so complicated.

-Give the player a control for "dodge" that interrupts the combo, even when it's been pressed into motion. This is fun, I like games that do this, but once again, we're adding a third button that only exists for the sake of combat. Combat in turn is only a part of the platforming game experience, and so unless we can come up with a lot of platforming uses for the button, it's just adding more complexity to the controls.

My game actually sort of uses the third solution without adding a third button, the Jump button will cancel a combo by jumping out of it. This actually serves a purpose in platforming, you can jump higher by kicking off enemies or combo attack-able elements in this way. Of course, this alone isn't enough to fix the initial problem of getting attacked by many enemies at once.

And so my final solution is to avoid ever creating the "combo mobbed" situation in the first place, by making the main character himself only be able to combo attack if there isn't other enemies nearby that might interrupt him. It sounds simple on paper, but in reality there are a lot of little scripts that need to talk to each other to make it work and feel right. In the end, it should just feel like the main character is "behaving smart" and helping the player out. Since the game is primarily focused on collecting and platforming, having the combat be a bit light should work just fine.

Not sure how soon I can get the system up and running with all this illness going around. But I think it looks really good on paper, and I really want to try it out in practice.

Gmod 13: how to fix broken model addons

2012-10-28T18:42:00.000-04:00

Gmod 13 is no longer in beta. It's slick...has workshop support at the click of a button, and lots of shiny cool stuff. Updates are fun! However...

Of course, EVERYTHING OLD BROKE.

After some research and much stalking on the FP forums(which I will not link due to some of the content of that site being...well, let's just say not so good for most eyes.), I've found a few fixes so far that let one salvage stuff made for 10.

In order to help people not have to do so much digging and questioning, I'm listing the major thing here that let most of my stuff work again.

NOTE: This is going to take a bit of work with files on your end. If you are not comfortable with mucking about in files, it's probably best that you stick with what others are converting on the steam workshop and just put up with the fact all your old NPCs, models, and props don't exist.

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