Late Again!

Yikes! Two weeks in a row! So sorry everyone, time has just been getting away from me lately :/

Wait wait wait... What time is it?!?!

This is mostly just going to be a check-in post, since there hasn't been any visible progress on Torso Ninja II (though I've accomplished a lot with the music and some behind-the-scenes code, so its not been a completely unproductive week). I'm still in finals-mode, for whatever reason, so its been a challenge for me to devote a lot of time to the game. That excuse is getting old for me, though, so I've dedicated myself to making some real progress this week! Expect a good dev blog! (hopefully definitely on time this time!)

In other news, I've also been fiddling with the idea of doing some tutorials on here. I'm no expert on game design/development (or on much of anything, really) but I have some scattered knowledge that might help out fledgling devs in some specific situations :) I've dabbled in a bit of everything, game-programming-wise, but most of my in-depth knowledge
is centered around python and pygame. I think pygame is still pretty popular, though, so maybe somebody out there can get some use out of what I have to teach :)

That pretty much does it for now. Again, I'll do better about being on time next time. That's a promise!

So long!

Dev Blog #12: Busy Weekend!

Woah! Hey everyone, how's it going? You may realize that I'm a day late with my blog post. Aaaaahhh! D:

It has been a very busy weekend for me, but to be honest, I just forgot, so it's completely my fault! But, I'm posting this as an update right quick, so nothing lost! (I hope!)

Development on Torso Ninja II has been progressing decently. I spent most of this week creating a method that will allow me to script enemy spawns and bullet patterns for levels, independent of the source code. What does that mean for you? It means a certain level of client-side customization! If you're willing to learn a simple markup language (and calling it a "language" is a real stretch), you can modify the levels yourself!

I made this scripting method to speed up development on TN2 ("Hey, Erik, cool acronym!" they said. "Hey, Internet, thanks!" I replied). I have big dreams for it, and hope to maybe expand it into a sort of development method for making simple scrolling shooters. I used to mess around with the M.U.G.E.N. fighting game engine, so I was thinking of doing something like that (on a much smaller scale, of course) with shmups. Who knows if I'll be able to actually get around to it, but if so, hooray! :)

On another note, I've also been working on the music to I'm going to be using for TN2 a lot this week. I make my music in the Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS, Windows version in my case). Following is a picture of LMMS as I use it, since this article needs some visuals ;)

My DAW of choice, the wonderfully free LMMS.

I feel like I've generally been improving with my music-making skills as time has went on, and I hope for Torso Ninja II to be my most musically-accomplished work yet. I'm making the music early (unusual for me) and I've already got a couple of songs that sound okay, or so I think. At the very least, the soundtrack should be better than the original Torso Ninja (not that it's much of a horse race).

So there ya go, my day-late update :) See you next week, hopefully on-time!

Dev Blog #11: Scrolling and Shooting

Hello again! I'm back this week with a little bit of a status update on my work-in-progress game, Torso Ninja II. I've also got a couple of small screenshots to share, more to give a rough idea of the way the game will work than to provide any concrete details. So, let's get to it!

My goals for this past week were a bit subdued, as my Spring finals are going on (only one more week to go... ;_;) but I got the visuals up and running. As I mentioned previously, I'm making this game in Pygame, so I'm very familiar with what needs to be done at this point.

Here are the screens:

 

The screen scrolls and Torso Ninja follows your pointer, like in the original.

That cryptic blue dot is a bullet. No hard patterns up and running so far.

 

I should also mention that the bullets are going to have much more complex behaviors in this game than in the previous Torso Ninja. I'm drawing inspiration from my favorite curtain fire games, and I've got simple trigonometric movement working for the bullets already, so stay tuned for crazy spirals of death ;)

So, there's a taste of my past week of work. I hope to eventually include 3 total levels, and maaaaayyyyybe, just maybe, a boss at the end of the final one (that one's on the 'dreams' list for now though).

See you in a week or so :) Peace!

Dev Blog #10: Announcing Torso Ninja II!

HELLLLLLOOOOOO!

I'm back again folks, and this time I have some exciting news! For my next #1GAM game, I'll be revisiting one of my older games. That's right, I'm making a sequel to Torso Ninja! Hold on to your hats!

Torso Ninja II's logo, of which I am actually quite proud :)

Torso Ninja was my first #1GAM game, and it was (in my opinion) a pretty choppy affair. I made it in a hurry and the only goal I had was to publicly release it, so its a very small, only mildly amusing game. Nonetheless, it is far and away my most popular game, both among my friends and family, and with the internet at large (it actually has more plays on Game Jolt than all my other games combined).

I feel like I've come a long way as a game developer since last December (when I released the original Torso Ninja), and I want to prove that by reviving this game and making it as awesome as I can. So here's the plan! :)

The gimmick of Torso Ninja is that its a bullet-hell shooter where you can't shoot back; you can only dodge. I feel like this is a pretty solid concept, as, having played a few danmaku/curtain fire/bullet-hell type games myself, it seems like the vast majority of the gameplay centers around dodging anyway, with firing back as only a sub-component. The main focus of development on Torso Ninja II, therefor, will be on making dodging both fun and challenging. I have a few ideas, but you'll have to wait a bit to hear about them :)

Lastly, before I go, I think it bears mentioning exactly how I'm gonna make this game. I originally planned to make Torso Ninja II in Construct Classic, but I kept running into snags with getting a test version of a bullet pattern up and running. I was attempting to use Construct's built-in Python scripting support, but the main problem was not having any way to index specific instances of any of the game objects, which made dozens of bullets firing in all different directions at once pretty much impossible. Unfortunately, I ended up simply giving up on Construct and deciding to make the game in Python with Pygame (the same as the original Torso Ninja). It might slow development somewhat, but with Pygame I'll have all the direct control I need to make this game a reality :)

Adios, until next time!

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:0

(Stay tuned!)

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SKRMSH released!

Surprise! I'm here to announce the early completion of my April 2016 #1GAM game, SKRMSH! This game (which, by the way, is pronounced "skirmish") is a simple card game for two players that I cooked up yesterday afternoon, and implemented in a BASIC script today over the course of about 3 or so hours. It is playable with a standard deck of 52 playing cards. Read on to find out the rules!

In SKRMSH, two players are each dealt a hand of 6 cards. Both players choose one of these cards to "bet" and a second one to "play," and lay these face down.

Standard 6-card starting hand.

The player (spoilers: me) has placed a "bet" card and has his
hand on the "play" card.

Both players flip their "play" cards at the same time, and the winner of the round is the player that has the higher value "play" card (Aces are low, face cards are scored as follows: Jack=11, Queen=12, King=13). The players then flip their "bet" cards, and the winner gains points equal to both "bet" cards put together. In the event of a tie, nobody gains any points. 

The players then set aside both of their "bet" and "play" cards and continue to play with their now-smaller hands. The "skirmish" ends when both players run out of cards in their hands (that is, after three rounds), and the cards are then shuffled back into the deck and another skirmish begins. There is no hard limit to the number of skirmishes that constitute a game, but at the end of the game, both players tabulate their scores, and the winner is the one with the higher total score.

Whew! Quite a wall of text, but SKRMSH is actually a very simple game. I didn't actually set out to make a new card game for this #1GAM game, though. I had actually intended to simply make a BASIC type-in game!

I'm 23, so I was born long after the microcomputer boom of the 70's and 80's. I have, however, always maintained an historical interest in this period, especially in the types of games available on these machines. I began thumbing through 101 BASIC Computer Games (an early edition of BASIC Computer Games) by David Ahl last month, and I was inspired to try and make my own simple BASIC game. I conceived that I would write the code, take a screenshot of it, and upload that here on my blog, thus preserving the "type-in" (that is, you, the end-user, have to enter the source code yourself, by hand) nature of these games.

I was originally going to implement the simple card game War, but I soon decided that doing so would be too easy. It also would be repetitive, because this game had already been created numerous times in the BASIC language. I then set to work fiddling with a deck of cards in my house, and came up with SKRMSH while trying to add more tactical depth to War. 

I finished my BASIC script for this game earlier this evening, and here is the promised source code screenshot!

Part 1

Part 2

There it is, in all its immune-to-copy-paste, probably-horribly-done-because-I'm-a-novice-at-BASIC glory! :) In all seriousness, I made this game as more of a personal hobby-project for myself, so I understand if nobody wants to go to the trouble of typing this in. Hopefully you can learn to play the game physically from my instructions above, even if you don't run the BASIC script. I played it with my family, and it seems to be pretty fun :)

If you DO decide to try to input the script above, I recommend you run it with the Vintage BASIC Interpreter, as it is what I used. I unfortunately do not have access to a real home computer that implements BASIC natively, but if you do and you get this program running on it, I would absolutely love to hear from you! Stuff like that delights me, cause I'm a nerd ;P

That's all for this week! I'll get this uploaded to the #1GAM site tomorrow, but right now, its already past my bedtime. Goodnight, everyone, and have a pleasant day tomorrow!

Games on the Menu #1

Hello, internet people! This week, I thought I would try something different here on the ol' blog. Instead of talking about my #1GAM plans, I'm going to talk about what games I am actually currently playing myself! That's right, you get a glimpse into my wonderful and exciting game collection (read: Steam library)! Let's go!

The following are all games that I'm actively playing as of this week. I'm going to organize this in a listed format. All games are un-ranked and in no particular order. Under each entry, I'll spend a bit of time describing my feelings on the game and maybe reviewing it somewhat (note, I am certainly not a professional critic, just a guy who has played a lot of games. No representation is made that the quality of the game review presented is greater than the quality of the review presented by other reviewers ;P)

So, onward!

MOUNT & BLADE: WARBAND

I call them my "Hammer Bros."

Mount & Blade is one of my favorite game series of all time. I've invested a LOT of hours into Warband, and I'm pretty much always playing it in at least some capacity. I play it one-player only and don't care too much about actually being good at it (shocker, I'm terrible), but it's somehow the ultimate time-waster for me :) I never get bored with it.

 

 

 

CASTLE CLASH

The gang's all here.

This is the main game I play on mobile. I've played Castle Clash on my Android for a little over a year now, and I usually squeeze in a few minutes on it here and there each day. My main account is F2P and has about 36,000 might. I have PD, Cupid, and SK, among a plethora of other legends. Most mobile games get boring to me really quickly, but CC is one I come back to time and again. Currently, I'm saving up shards to buy an Atlanticore to stick in the new hero totem.

UNDERTALE

Scenic locales!

I just started Undertale a couple of days ago, and I'm absolutely loving it. The detail and care put into it is just astonishing to me. I love strange little RPG Maker games, and Undertale really puts me in mind of some of the best, such as Yume Nikki and OFF (note: I am, of course, aware that Undertale itself was made using Game Maker Studio). I could write a thirty-paragraph thinkpiece on Undertale right here, but not a lot can be said about this game that hasn't been said already. There's no way I can heap enough praise on this game, so I won't even try :) If anyone out there hasn't played Undertale yet - seriously, go do it. It lives up to the hype, and that's saying something.



So there's what I'm playing for the time being. I would like to start writing more about games I play, rather than just ones I make, so maybe expect to see more entries like this from time to time, dev permitting :)



See you in approximately seven days!