| (no subject) |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|04:34 pm] |
- worked more on float collisions, separated decorative float collisions from the collisions of floating objects that the player can bonk into, and did an optimization which is hard to explain but related to how often it checks for collisions after just having a collision -- it's working okay now, i like how collisions between floats "feel" now, on balance
- added an 'antitree' variable (for those objects that allow the player to move under them to an extent) for collisions; currently the only objects which use this are the large cliff wall objects
- updated border drawing in editing mode to show those borders
- updated border drawing in editing mode to be semi-solid (more useful information that way), pictured
- installed my previous computer's windows xp w/ boot camp on the macbook (figure might as well have both xp and the mac os on that macbook, so i can test my games in xp, vista, and mac). the trackpad is really burning my fingers though! i need a mouse for it soonly
posting this early (it's only 4:30pm here) due to going to sleep soon (was sleeping for a few hours, earlier, but haven't had a night's sleep yet), if i work on the game again today (likely) i'll edit this entry and add the additional items |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|11:09 pm] |
- just continued working on various aspects of float collisions -- a lot of things are slowing it down or not working well, so i'm trying out a lot of variations (varying how many times it's checked per second, the length it goes before the loop runs out, the increment of how much further to check in each loop, and so on) -- still not done with it though |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|06:54 pm] |
copied from evajolli's blog at http://evelynjolli.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-to-make-better-game.html
"
the gold
what makes your game fun, is it gold? maybe... you wish your games were made out of gold... but they're not. so i'll list some things that i find fun in games i play. i suggest you list some too, in the comments, or have your own list for personal use...
-shooting things
-shooting things that break
-shooting things that bleed
-shooting things that... explode!
-powerful guns!
-stealth kills...!
-fast vehicles!
-flying vehicles!
-fast flying vehicles!
-building things!
-building things then destroying them!
-building things then destroying them then building more things!
-level/map creation/editing
-eating things! yum...
-finding cool things! (example of cool: audio logs, example of not cool: keys)
-gaining money or points or score or rank... or things!
-unlocking things! (achievements, special features, characters...
those things are pretty generic... but why don't your games have them??? what a fucking genius you are, start making games you like!
"
i don't like the list but i like the idea (make a list of a lot of things you like to do, then make a game where you can do those things). so here's my list of things i find fun:
- talking to people i like
- drinking tea
- making friends
- exercising
- making games
- selling games
- playing games
- buying stuff
- meditating
- fantasizing
- making food, eating the food that i made
- researching things
so the best game for me would be a game where you can do all those things. the ones that come closest would be koei's simulation games, like romance of the three kingdoms, nobunaga's ambition, genghis khan 2, etc. -- those have at least 90% of the stuff above in some way or another. alpha centauri and civilization also come close. |
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| you were in in my dream, DF |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|10:32 am] |
I don't know how interesting it will be for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) donferdinand , since the images here might only have meaning for me, and it's not a surreal dream, but I'll go through it anyway.
I was on FB and you had posted a video of a middle aged guy being interviewed by his balding father about his recent performance at his job. The father kept asking his son if he had made a sale yet, but the son always avoided the question, until the son finally gave a name of a person he had supposedly sold goods to. The father knew this was a lie, because the name he gave was the janitor, "Scotch Brian", of a large company, instead of a higher ranking member of the company, which was the whole point of the sales assignment he was given.
Then the camera cut to a closeup 'talking head' of the son as he was outside their meeting room, alone: "He wants Scotch Brian's number to call my bluff...Well I'll give him a Brian number: Brian Peppers." This was supposed to be like leading his father into a trap :S
That was the end of the movie. Next, I left my home and was walking to the bus stop, when I saw you walking in the opposite direction. You looked as you do on FB, except you were wearing a pink and blue fuzzily striped winter coat. We jokingly teased each other as we passed ("nice coat" etc), but then I stopped you to ask about that movie I had watched.
You were surprised by my request, and said, "I don't AGREE with everything!"
I asked you what you meant, and you said you posted it because it was similar to a working experience you had in Pickering (a city close to Toronto). Also during your time working there, you said that once while you were driving, you reached a red light and beside you was a blond woman driving in a black car. Both of your windows were unrolled so that you could see each other clearly. You said it was a strange experience, because it felt like both of you were going to do something against the other (I imagined spitting on the other person's car), but both were waiting for the other to make a move first so that you or she could feel justified in doing something you wanted to do from the beginning. I don't think you knew the woman.
After this we were just talking about whatever came to mind, and you said you had participated in an anti-fascist rally in New York City when you were part of a union there. Now, though, you said you could not care less about anything political in New York. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|10:43 pm] |
- as far as i can tell i pretty much fixed the surfaces error -- or at least, i played the game, got to a part where surfaces are used, and let the screensaver interrupt the game in both windowed and fullscreen modes, and the problem didn't come up during those tests; so until it happens again i'll consider it fixed
- small optimization in map object invisibility when off the screen
- began working on getting floating objects to free themselves when they get stuck
today i had thanksgiving w/ family, and a 1.5 hour drive each way, so less work was done than usual. i met my cousin andre again for the first time in like 9 years, and met my cousin nicole for the first time ever. andre and nicole are half-siblings but didn't actually meet until adulthood due to having different fathers and being raised apart because their mother (my aunt) died; they met by chance because andre noticed nicole's nametag had the same last name he had. |
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| funny (bad) video game endings |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|05:56 pm] |
Here are some I selected from: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWinnerIsYou
•"Stop The Express, the old Spectrum classic by Hudson Soft (later of Bomberman fame) finished with the message "CONGRATURATION! YOU SUCSESS!" and a shot of your guy in the front of the train. Then it loops back to the start, presumably for more SUCSESSful action... "
•Space Station Silicon Valley, a Nintendo 64 puzzle game in which the main character took control of various robotic animals, ended with one of the characters explaining they didn't have the budget for a good ending and just played the credits.
•Ghostbusters for the NES, a game which is generally considered near-unwinnable, ends with the poorly translated "Conglaturation!!! You have completed a great game. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes!" The Angry Video Game Nerd either was crying or laughing. It was hard to tell since you can't see his face.
•If you manage to defeat Jason in the Friday the 13th game for the NES, you're rewarded with a picture of Jason sitting down and the text "You have finally managed to defeat Jason... But is he really dead? We're not telling!! END.." This editor is more fond of the losing screen, which, right in the midst of Nintendo's Never Say Die period, declared "You and your friends are dead ."
• The overly-long, Nintendo Hard, Everything Trying To Kill You Dr Franken 2 on the Game Boy ends with a message saying "Well done Franky, you've saved the chateau!" followed by a full screen picture of Frankie. I could have looked on the game box for a bigger picture in colour, thank you very much.
•If you make it all the way to the end of Ghosts 'n Goblins and didn't forget to pick up a necessary weapon and beat the boss, you get rewarded by having to play the whole game over again. If you manage to do that, all you get is a brief scene of Arthur reuniting with the princess and the following text: "Congraturation. This story is happy end. Thank you. Being the wise and courageour knight that you are you feel strongth welling in your body. Return to starting point. Challenge again!" Yes, those spellings mistakes were in the game.
•Disney's Aladdin game tie-in has two bonus levels where you control Abu the monkey. When you lose those levels you get a black screen with the text "Nice try". When you win you get the same thing: "Nice try".
• The simply titled Mickey Mouse for Gameboy, one of many Mickey Mouse video games, finishes with the oh-so-gratifying declaration: "CONGRATURATIONS!! YOU ARE GOOD PLAYER!!" while Mickey pumps his arms up and down for your entertainment. Oh, boy. How swell.
• Wonder Boy in Monster Land: "War is over. Dragon was robot. He may come from star. We regained our peace. People will be happy."
•Nintendo Hard shoot-em-up Xenon 2 has the anticlimactic ending of showing the mid-level shopkeeper again, who briefly informs you that this is the end, followed by a black screen with a white dot.
• The infamously difficult and obtuse NES strategy game Bokosuka Wars gave you a goofy little animation and the message "BRAVO! YOU WIN!" if you actually managed to beat it. Of course, most gamers probably saw the infamous "WOW! YOU LOSE!" game over screen far, far more often. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|11:42 pm] |
- the sound that you recorded is now saved in the save file
- the function the ship was currently using is also now saved in the save file
- changed peeka's movement pattern so that it doesn't bounce off of walls but instead can leave the room (but will come back, usually, especially when it's very far from it)
- changed the blur effect a bit (now uses varying colors)
- adjusted the bottom 'cut-off' parts of harlock's title screen image to be less cut-off-looking
- began working on the numerous code changes that will be involved in fixing the surface bug (where screensavers destroy the surface and crash the game), will finish these changes tomorrow likely |
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| surprise surprise |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|12:58 am] |
I thought "SebastiAn" was a genius but then I realized the certain songs worked on by him that, if they were composed by a single person, had to have been written by someone that could EX-NIHILO imagine contrapuntally stylistically disparate musical lines, were all just taking a drive through sample-city. Not to put down sampling, obviously, but I had thought this one person was capable of so much single handedly.
Here is a song by "Danger" that was linked to in a forum. The beginning is kind of chiptuney. I'll check out his other songs later.
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|11:53 pm] |
- attempted to make the chain/line function work better when moving floating objects; got it somewhat better but still not great (it still shakes the object that's being pulled a little)
- also altered its appearance minimally
- removed shadow for alpha repo (forgot about it)
- added autosave after you friend a creature (to avoid friending a creature, quitting, and then being annoyed to find it didn't save your friending of that creature)
- think i fixed a bug i didn't know i have regarding inaccurate friend totals being displayed in the save slot select screen which occured when you friended a creature, autosaved by moving one room away, then quit before going to any rooms after the last autosave
- added in saving of friended meter and health meter of the creatures to the room save file; previously only friended state was saved (except for larva, where its friending meter depending on total creatures friended), but not the actual partially friended amount, and not its health; this works but unfortunately will make old save files incompatible with the game -- not all of the save file, but now every friended creature in v0.45 will revert to unfriended in v0.475 (the next version of the game) -- this may be annoying to some playtesters, but i can always give them the debug key to friend a creature instantly to offset that
- added in a thing where if you are killed by a creature's health meter, they all return to full after you load from saved game (to avoid getting in situations where you are saved near an almost dead creature, and have an infinite loop of dying)
- got the macbook in the mail and tried it out; haven't yet connected it to the internet or tried game maker for mac's release candidate on it yet though. weirdly, even though i ordered a $750 refurbished macbook with 2gb of ram and 120gb hard drive, they actually sent me (at no extra cost) one with 4gb of ram and a 500gb hard drive (!?). yay for me, their mistake? |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|03:36 am] |
ID sales for this month have been pitiful so far: 5 sales on the site, 1 on d2d, 2 on reflexive. i probably need to do some more marketing somehow. perhaps send review copies to sites/reviewers which have not yet reviewed the game? there's a ton of those, and new reviews always give a tiny spike of sales. will try that.
also, haha:
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|03:06 am] |
been reading "the china study" -- i was quite disappointed by it, but at the same time intrigued. i didn't care as much about the subject as i did about the epistemology of it: how people's conclusions come before everything, and how universal this is, even among people specifically trained in methods to avoid it (scientists).
there really is no such thing as a rational person, just people who can be rational some of the time but aren't rational most of the time, and people who can't even be rational some of the time.
i agree with this review from amazon:
( Read more... ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|11:33 pm] |
- re-organized the to-do list / wish list for the game a bit
- changed the creature shadow heights for some of the creatures and removed the shadows for some of the other creatures
- when attempting to test the above, i kept getting that annoying 'error defining external function' fmod error (an error that happened infrequently, often when you ran a sound program at the same time as the game, but often required restarting the computer in order to fix), so i re-integrated the newest version of icuurd's dll with the game, and even though it was giving me 'error defining external function' a few minutes before that, it then worked. to test it, i started winamp and then ran the game, which frequently causes the bug, but it still worked. i hope that bug is gone, although no mention was made in the update logs that iccurd has fixed that bug, so i can only assume the bug is still latent. i also re-read the thread related to that bug, and i'll have to ask starmaker if she's on vista, because the theory there was that it's vista related, and starmaker is the only one other than myself to have encountered this 'error defining external function' bug with SD.
- adjusted the exit_game function to properly stop all sounds and both the music and ambient sound loop before exiting the game, in the hopes that this will help with the above-mentioned bug
EDIT: iccurd replied to my latest post in that thread, saying she compiled the dll using a different method (codeblocks) so this newer version of the dll may (or may not) have fixed the bug, and asked me to report if it still happens with this new version |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|11:29 pm] |
- changed the 'press a button to add invisible walls for each side' to a single button that added invisible walls to all sides because that's the way i used it anyway, and made it impossible to press it twice in the same room (to avoid placing more invisible walls over those which already exist)
- began working on creature shadows, added a shadowless attribute for those creatures who don't have shadows (usually ones that are directly on the water, or underwater)
- altered podoboo's splash effect a bit
- did a small optimization in the creature draw step (moved sprite index determining function from the draw step to the normal step)
- fixed a bug in the creature shadows for podoboo
- filled in a few areas w/ invisible walls (about three more)
- fixed a bug in the creatures shadows related shadow scaling and origin points, which involved going into like 50 scripts and adding another factor to each one's rotated sprite drawing function call (origin of rotation needed to take into account the scaling of the image)
- tested the shadows with all the creatures, fixed a bug in the shadows of scylla. shadow test pictured.
- sent half of gilbert's payment for an opening movie that he's filming for SD (to be used in the intro or ending or something)
not totally done with shadows though as i want to give different creatures different shadow heights, and remove the shadows from all the creatures which it'd make more sense to be floating on the water rather than flying above it
also i can't believe it's almost been a month since the igf deadline already! i feel like i've done very little on the game since then (mostly polishing and bug fixing issues) |
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| dream - 'tearin it up' |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|05:11 pm] |
A few days ago I had a dream where I was given an assignment I completed in grade three that was somehow saved through all these years. It was colorful and supposedly representative of how I was at the time. I was supposed to comment on it or file it somewhere during the dream, but instead I picked it up and said, "I'm done with this. So done with this," then tore it in half. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|07:13 am] |
long dao singing a song he wrote for SD (although this version of the song is newer than the one used in the game) |
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