Yes, I remember Snood.
seriously have fun digging around in there, i hope you dont get lost.
( just in case this is posted before the game comes out, the game should release at 10am pst )
post your war stories here:
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Binding of Isaac: Rebirth OUT NOW!
At about 7:30am my time this morning I finally had it unlocked. So far, I have seen some of the new items, encountered the large rooms, and some of the new enemies, and observed that its sound system doesn’t seem to play well with passing through a Numark Mixtrack Pro II, but that might just be something else.
Then it was 8am and I had to go to stinky ol’ work.
And the soundtrack is seriously boss.
Get it. Play it. Love it. Zelda/Robotron/Roguelike. Me like.
Simplifying the game’s systems
Sometimes you realise you’re taking the hard road for no reason.
The board game I’m working on takes place on a 13x13 grid, as mentioned, but it’s rotated at 45° to the board (root prim). My initial viewpoint was that there’d be a 0,0 in one corner and 12,12 in another, which with a simple calculation of offset = X+12Y would reference a list of 169 local coordinate pairs (stored as vectors) to be referred to. Which of course would be great fun to plot and laboriously enter into the script.
So earlier tonight I fired up the spreadsheet and started plugging in some values, and only then did I discover a constant that was hiding in plain sight.
I could have kicked myself.
This constant also acts as a Z-offset to rest the game pieces on top of the board. It spaces both the X and Y axes on the playfield. Moreover, I finally realised, the centre position in the board has local X and Y coordinates of 0,0.
If, instead of 0..12, I thought in terms of -6..6, all of a sudden all I’d need is a multiplier and some simple math. No huge list. Just… one… float.
I think I’ll go back inworld and try it out - a second board and one piece that marches through each cell. We’ll see what happens.
One step sideways in the board game
The Second Life board game has taken a slightly retrograde step - but one that to my delight, actually worked right out of the box.
Previously, when I started, I had the sensible idea of having each seat maintain itself, sending link messages to the main script (hiding in the board prim) whenever someone mounted or dismounted. Unfortunately I didn’t understand that whenever someone did so, a changed() event was sent to all the scripts in the object, which caused Interesting Things to happen. So for a while, wanting to get shot of Interesting Things happening, I was contented by having seating and perms control handled by the one main script and one incredibly hairy-looking chunk of code.
Yes, that hairy chunk worked, but I was moving to a state-based system
Today I looked at it again and it occurred to me that, instead of four bulky and unpleasantly similar conditionals, I could have the seats asking: “Hey? That change? Was that me?” and send link messages appropriately.
And my code worked! I think there’s a little adjustment I could make which would be even more elegant, but that can wait for now. After all, for my next trick, I must not only roll the dice, but make it do something very important and cool.
You’ll find out soon.
*bulldada = so bad, it’s actually good
A poorly thought through promotional item for Yet Another Zombie Game is given both barrels’ worth of sarcasm. Best comment so far:
There has to be a zombie movie out there where the walking dead go for the tits instead of the brains.
Possibly Japanese. And the zombies are all middle-aged business men.
There’s a game idea I’ve had for about 20 years, and for some reason (*cough* Phaser HTML5 game engine *cough*) I’m revisiting it. The basic play design, even the playfield, has remained surprisingly consistent, although now the humour is even more puerile and the art style draws inspiration from Roger Ramjet. Especially for the cutscenes.
On Completing Fallout New Vegas
(This post was originally posted 31 Jan 2011, but Tumblr’s back-dating doesn’t seem to work.)
I just now completed Fallout: New Vegas, nearly a month after purchasing and downloading it.
Initially, the independent ending wasn’t my stated intention; I just wanted to play through and complete the game at least once. So I was playing along with Mister House up until the fifth quest.
Kill an entire bunker of Brotherhood of Steel types? Uh… right. I sided with Yes Man instead.
It wasn’t until that point that I realised what was making me uneasy in my headlong plunge towards completion. It’s the fact that there’s no clearly defined “good” or “bad” endings - technically speaking. There’s three basic paths, but unlike, say, Morrowind or Oblivion, they have more impact than whether you join House Hlaalu or the Fighter’s Guild - they literally close off alternatives.
Despite this, the more I read online about the endgame, the more it begins to feel like Morrowind: inevitably, you find yourself pulled back to Hoover Dam/Red Mountain, then to the final boss fight with Legate Lanius/Dagoth Ur. The main difference is that you have to choose a Great House to join, instead of being able to remain a freelancer. (Which, I suppose, makes sense in a way; I can’t imagine some rogue element wandering through and picking off one of the most feared warriors in the Mojave.)
The fact that completing the game makes me uneasy about how it’s done can only mean one thing. Obsidian’s writing team did one heck of a job.
You’re a hideous freak, running through underground caverns, fleeing a giant worm, oh and there’s creatures trying to turn you into sushi if you don’t fall in the yellow goo of death. Welcome to Discount Mayonnaise.
So, how is this game like Tetris?
The storyline is more elaborate than that of, say, Wouter “Aardappel” van Oortmersson's Cube, thanks to that bloody giant worm, but you still are involved in killing stuff. It’s just that you can’t kill or slow down that sodding worm, so you have to survive to the end where a handy bunker awaits you, collect coins to afford better armor and weapons, and generally avoid falling into the yellow goo. Maybe it’s the eponymous condiment.
Visually the game has that cartoonish, crazed edge that makes me think of a cross between Edmund McMillen (Gish, Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac) and Jhonen Vasquez (Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Invader Zim). Admittedly the graphics are overwhelmingly brown and yellow, but that just makes the baddies and pickups stand out.
The music by Hopeku is suitably frantic, and while not as ‘metal’ as the graphics might suggest, manages to do two things: first, it keeps up the anxiety levels, and secondly, doesn’t get in the way. Either that or the developers didn’t crank the volume to maximum like almost all do.
Sound effects are effective and alternate between meaty (the roars and splats of dying monsters) and strangely appropriate (e.g. the two-tone lift bell when you reach the end.)
Controls are as simple as you can get: Arrows or WASD to move, space to shoot or open menus, escape to close said menus. However, you can only shoot left or right, you can’t shoot up or down. Which is annoying at times when there’s a posse of monsters waiting for you.
Powerups are jackets (which shield and heal), gloves (which allow you to use damage and special pickups), and shoes (which affect your speed and jumping ability). Depending on the path ahead you’ll probably need to trade off powers - especially on level 12, where you need a lot of speed as opposed to jumping, if it’s your first attempt.
The first downside - and there are two - is that the game lags noticeably when there’s a lot going on - not a good thing in an action time-attack title that is this Hard. And yes, that’s Capital-H-italic-and-bold Hard. You’ll be crying with frustration by level 9 and ragequitting by level 12.
The second is that this game doesn’t have an autofire facility - and in this game thought goes out the window and the space bar gets a hammering. Which hurts after a while.
Despite this, the game is like Tetris. There’s no plot, simple controls, and most importantly, you keep going back to try again, because it’s a matter of pride.
Sky Island is a platform game where you have to rotate the playfield in order to complete each level. By rotating it, you make areas accessible, collect all the stars, and sometimes all the coins.
There are other aspects: special star stones have to be found and stood on to remove blocks, monsters have to be tricked into standing on moon stones to release stars, and of course there’s the question of just how you’re supposed to progress, or at least timing a jump and rotate in midair.
I rather like it, and I can’t help but feel it shares a similar mechanic to Fez, which I posted about last week. So it’ll tide you over until Polytron release their damn thing.
A great little game that I thought I never would find again, since there are quadrillions of games with the words “treasure” and “tower” in the title. And since that was all I could remember, it’s taken me this long to find the bloody thing.
The gimmick is that every level is randomly generated from a set of styles, layouts and enemies, so you have no idea what’s coming. And the clock is constantly ticking down, drowned out by furious MIDI piano rags. I think it’s a fun time. Well worth having a bash at.
(The author found the original of this post and was pleased to learn that his game still delighted!)
Sky Island is a platform game where you have to rotate the playfield in order to complete each level. By rotating it, you make areas accessible, collect all the stars, and sometimes all the coins. There are other aspects: special star stones have to be found and stood on to remove blocks, monsters have to be tricked into standing on moon stones to release stars, and of course there’s the question of just how you’re supposed to progress, or at least timing a jump and rotate in midair. I rather like it, and I can’t help but feel it shares a similar mechanic to Fez, which I posted about last week. So it’ll tide you over until Polytron release their damn thing.