So I've been interested in making some platformers in LÖVE / Love2d for a while, but haven't produced much of anything so far, until this month. To get the ball rolling and reduce procrastination, I started writing more: jotting notes on paper, keeping a personal diary, and writing up public-facing devlogs with weekly goals. (Warning: unfocused ramblings about platformers). I found that writing about ZZT here helped a lot in the summer.

It is my intention to get something playable out the door between now and the end of the year. It would be a mistake to take on something larger than I can realistically pull off, so I've put my current ideas on the backburner, and I'm setting a goal to make something small but wholly realized in about two weeks. This would help me find issues in my current codebase, get familiar with packaging LÖVE games, and also give me something tangible for my efforts.

I wrote up an idea that has been in the back of my mind for a while, started a simple XM soundtrack, and outlined how gameplay would work yesterday. But I'm realizing today that I won't have the energy to pull it off in two weeks. So back into the cabinet that one goes. Started on another idea, but upon review, its workload requirements are also too high for this timeframe. Think smaller, damn it!

I need to take a few steps back. There are platformers with very little to them that are still very enjoyable. I'll post some more once I've got something that's scaled appropriately.

I'm working a lot of graveyard shifts lately, and have found myself turning to ZZT to burn idle time when I'm home and nothing's open. ZZT is technically very simple, but I find myself going OCD messing around with details in KevEdit, and the time just melts away.

I made a handful of draft game/puzzle boards, but I'm lukewarm about the overall story / circumstances I've plotted out. Struggling to make it all fit together. I've sunk too much time into it to stop now, though. The World file is over 100 kilobytes. The recommended safe maximum is about 250KB. I really don't want to split this into two files, so this should be an effective hard limit on what I can put in. I'm going to try and get the game at least mostly laid out by the time I return to day shifts.

I plan to make heavy use of dark rooms for the central hub, and use the black torch/passage effect to highlight contours of what would otherwise be a completely grey screen except for the little torch-carrying player. The problem with dark rooms in ZZT is that torches only last for about 22 seconds, so even if you have a large supply, you have to keep pressing T to light them. So I want dark rooms to play a significant role, but not for the player to be stuck doing too many consecutive tasks at once in the dark.

Indicating all contours in dark rooms is also a potentially dangerous design choice, as it can lull the player into a false sense of security: they may delay lighting a torch because they can "see" the path ahead, even though they may be walking straight into a newly-spawned set of enemies. The solution is likely to make the paths a little more winding within the space between the contours. I'll have to do some tests.

Glad to see GT is still alive and kicking! I will try to post more often.

Here is a small adventure game you can add to an Asterisk dialplan. I'm sure you will agree that every PBX needs a hidden immature adventure game. Works well with RasPBX + a small analog gateway to a physical phone.

I made an alternate Python + Kivy version packaged for Windows. If you want a package for a different OS, let me know. There are some small differences but it's basically the same deal.

Here is something I made a while ago -- completely forgot about it until this weekend. I submitted it to KNP Korner, but it never went up.

a hurried remake of this

Oh shit, I never posted about this one. I began Atomic Blast several months ago, while scoping out Game Maker 7. After a couple of goddamn weird error messages, and some icky stories about the registration DRM, I gave up on purchasing the full version.

This began as a ripoff of Destructivator, a twitchy arcade-style game I really like. Cloning got boring though, so I switched gears. The final game has a few tricky sections, but it's pretty laid back in comparison. Many more screens were planned, but it felt like I had already done everything I wanted to in the first twelve. I spent this evening tying up some loose ends, and well, here it is. Now, onto other things (JOHR).

edit #3: Ack, fixed more errors. Reuploading as ZIP, deleting the previous versions.

So, Cymon's games has inspired me to try my hand at textmode games. I will write throwaway test programs and hopefully work towards something interesting.

Throwaway Test program 1: It's a start, I guess. You can move around a boring room and talk to a single NPC (and harass him, if you try hard enough). You can also edit the board by pressing forward slash, and load/save the board to a text file.

The next one will have an actual game objective! And win/lose states! what the hell am i doing

?

Anyone know a date on when B-Game II starts? I'd like to squeeze a game in before that -- just a few screens long. Here is an early WIP!

(note: the cutscenes and gfx are salvaged from a months-old mock-up)

Felt bad about having so many little, unfinished things on my hard drive, so I dun fixed'em up. Most of it is from last year.

Inter-dimensional Fish: Can you make it to vacation island without losing your parallel selves?

Ninja: I wanted to see how much I remembered about my first, awful game. The MIDI song choices are 99% accurate!

Ultimate Maze: Ultimate Maze will put your maze escaping skills to the test. Then it will break you into a million pieces. You might as well not even attempt to escape, let alone download Ultimate Maze.

Holy Animal Olympics: Old prototype for the TIGS "bootleg demake" compo. I didn't pursue it because it was just a one-note gag, not really touching on anything that made Zoo Race funny in the first place.

Not Bob's Game: BOBSGAME BOBSGAME BOBSGAME BOBSGAME BOBSGAME BOBSGAME RONPAUL BOBSGAME BOBSGAME BOBSGAME BOBSGAME BOBSGAME BOBSGAME

Sensitive Elbows: This is the only one of substantial length. The first installment of the YOU ARE INJURED GO TO THE DOCTOR RIGHT NOW trilogy.
edit: oops, uploaded an old version. fixed