oh, duh.

Hey farbs, I just noticed something...


... what's the 'fire' key? this doesn't do anything if I try pressing stuff like spacebar, Z, X, Enter...

Code:

function init()
   -- initialize position to middle of screen
   x = 0
   y = 0
end

function update( delta )
   -- move
   x = x + delta * ( right - left ) * 100
   y = y + delta * ( down - up ) * 100

  if fire == 1 then
   draw( 0.5,1,1, x, y, 10, 10 )
  end

   -- render
   draw( 1, 1, 1, x, y, 10, 10 )
end

Lua itself is pretty dead simple, it's a matter of learning whatever API you are wrapping with it.

                                                     
                                                     
              |           |           |             
              +           +           +             
            |---|       |---|       |---|           
            |   |       |   |       |   |           
            |   |       |   |       |   |           
            |   |        | |        |   |           
            |   | |   | |---| |   | |   |           
             | |  +   +  | |  +   +  | |             
            --- ------- |---| ------- ---           
            |  =|      =|   |=      |=  |           
            --- ------- |   | ------- ---           
              ^   ^      | |  v   ^   ^             
        ------- --- --- /---\ --- --- -------       
        |      =|  =|  =| @ |=  |=  |=      |       
        ------- --- --- |---| --- --- -------       
         | |  ^   ^   ^  | |  ^   ^   ^  | |         
        |   |           |   |           |   |       
        |   |          >|   |<          |   |       
        |   |           |---|           |   |       
        |   |          > | | <          |   |       
        |---| -------   |---|   ------- |---|       
      -+ | | =      |     ^     |      = | | +-     
        |---| -------           ------- |---|       
                                                     
                                                     
Pilot this vessel

Trying to take a different tack with this one... a basic layered crucifix with some large pylons for shielding. The shielding has saved my ass a few times already, I took a volley from a blue ship but managed to keep all my engines, just losing the shield pylon.

Kind of weird, I got particles working, but they all switch to the color of the team who last launched a missile. Grr.

I got the camera to pan when you move your cursor, such that your vision extends a little more into the direction your ship is pointing, like it does in Cortex Command. When I used to play Subspace it really bothered me that the camera was locked to my ship, so even if I didn't care what was behind me it took up half my screen.

Unfortunately it's very jittery. It sets the camera position rather than doing a smooth pan. I need to rip out Box2D and replace it with homegrown collision because I'm running into performance or desync issues with it, can't tell exactly, and I'm only using it for collision detection.

After that, I need a cooler looking space background than just stars sitting around. Any suggestions?

Fenix

Its main feature, inherited from DIV, is the pseudo-parallel programming similar to Coroutines, i.e. it gives the developer the chance of programming different processes (enemies, characters, etc.) separately, and the engine will synchronize them.

Interesting! Thanks for the heads up, might take a look at this one.

Unless you are in a programming mindset, or you worry about stuff like cross-platform ability, it's indeed wisest to go with one of the existing game-makers out there.

Plus, I purport that pyglet + python is pretty pimp.

5.  [15] Overgrowth

Surely this isn't released yet? How can it go on a greatest games of all time list?

I figured that as long as you can play it, it counts. There are a lot of indie games that are doing the playable alpha dealio. I mean, I wouldn't put something like Brutal Legend up here yet, but that might bump something off the list.

Also I shamed myself to have forgotten Golden Sun and Jet Force Gemini, and promptly fixed that.

I put Captain Forever on my list, because it's got a playable build out, so I support your choice.

Here are games I probably should have included in my list, but I hadn't thought of them or didn't feel like splitting up my existing spent points:

Darklands
Day of Defeat (HL1 Mod)
Airquake (Quake mod)
Guardian Heroes
One Must Fall: 2097
TIE Fighter (superior to X-Wing )
Blast Chamber (I only played the demo on some free CD but it was sooooo fun)
Star Control
Star Control 2
Starflight (Genesis version)
Subspace (also known as Continuum)
Freelancer
Elite
Privateer
Bioforge
Wing Commander 2 (liked it better than 1)
Wing Commander 4 (liked it better than 3)
Quest For Glory
Quest For Glory 4
Shining Force
Carrier Command
Aces Over the Pacific
Aces Over Europe
Chuck Yaeger's Air Combat
Shadows of Yserbius / Fates of Twinion
Tribes
Tribes 2
Buzz Aldrin's Race to Space


The only true MMORPG (meaning not a MUD or a multiplayer RPG like Diablo) that I've enjoyed is EVE Online. I can't stand the others because the grind is painful and boring. I did have the advantage of guildies showering me with money, though.

1. [20] Tyrian
2. [20] Castlevania: SotN
3. [20] Thief: The Dark Project
4. [20] System Shock 2
5. [20] X-COM: UFO Defense
6. [20] Spelunky
7. [20] Dwarf Fortress
8. [10] Gunstar Heroes
9. [10] Herzog Zwei
10. [10] Mount & Blade
11. [10] Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
12. [10] Kohan: The Immortal Sovereigns
13. [10] White Butterfly
14. [10] Captain Forever

I haven't completely analyzed your approach, but I would suggest looking into methods that are "good enough" and take advantage of silly tricks. You might just want to make some kind of box body/bodies to represent the contacts of the landing gear, and trigger a crash if these contacts hit the ground while the plane is at a strange roll or pitch angle.

Do you know, I used to think "what I want is a game where there are LOTS of characters, but they can actually die.  So there are always cool replacements if one does die, but if I mess up, that character is gone!  So I'd be more ok with characters dying, but would want to keep them alive, lending more weight and meaning to my actions!  That would be rad!"

X-COM feels like this, but even when playing that, if a veteran soldier dies you will see me navigating to the 'Load Game' button. The time spent training up the soldiers and their quality compared to green recruits makes losing a veteran kind of a big deal.

There have been a number of games that have done this in the past, despite technical difficulties and the like. What I'm wondering is, considering that it's a lot easier with the current hardware, why isn't it done more nowadays? It would make a lot of sense from a lot of different perspectives.

Quest for Glory has done this, adding stuff like the Paladin class, which can only be played by imported characters, to make it even more enticing to import. It's also a clever marketing strategy, now someone has even more reason to buy the prior games if they haven't. I'm going to bet this and the AD&D games pulled it off because the creators wrote the games with this in mind.

TIGSource and Destructoid. Gaming and Indie Gaming. That's all I need.

I'm so indie I feel out of touch and uninterested when I watch / read something talking about Chipotle games.

[<spoiler>]

There is no gameplay whatsoever and there are merely two(?) not really that interesting choises to take. (I hope I didn't miss too much.)

Did you try pressing 'X' while standing in front of her? 

I guess that counts as a choice...

* rape sequence
 i think there'd be some positives to making the actual rape gameplay more interactive, rather than an automated thing. example: a bar that decreases that if you don't "thrust" enough, will 'kill' you. that would link the player in a bit more to the actual act and make it far more disturbing.
 the sounds could then be linked to the actual input - freaky.

Not sure if the 'gameplay' I'm mentioning above was added before or after your comment. I think the extra choice makes the experience a little more disturbing, even though the choice doesn't impact endings at all.

<spoiler>
I could have sworn that I heard a "chopper" sound effect right before you regain control after meeting Emily, but I can't seem to reproduce it.

I also thought it was kind of amusing that you can smack Emily around and let her crawl all the way back to the taxi, rape her a little, and then get in the taxi like nothing happened.

</spoiler>

And every time I ask this but I don't think Ive got a sufficient answer to it yet, what is wrong with games breaking the mold of it HAS to have fun mechanics?  Why can't we swap out mechanics with atmosphere?  Or emotion?  As a player, I'm kind of turned off how most games try so hard to please you with jump on their heads and collect those coins type mechanics, its kinda getting old to me.

I understand to most people, fun mechanics are the reason they play games, but I think there is room for more than that, and it would be pretty narrow minded to say otherwise.

I think if you just replaced "fun" with "pretty" you'd notice the same question is constantly asked in traditional art. Most people only appreciate art when it's just pretty in some way, while others might think there's some value to stuff that isn't pretty at all but provides a message or experience that's valuable. You might think it's obvious that there's more to traditional art than just being pretty, but go around and show average people some art and they'll probably just say "that's pretty/ugly!", or more likely, "my 5 year old could do this, why should I appreciate it?"

I prefer my games to be fun, but I also like "art" games that aren't really trying to be fun at all. Honestly, I prefer that they are short and to the point, I haven't really played an "art" game longer than 5 minutes (Passage) and I feel that's enough time to spend with them. I think it's cool that people do break the mold, but I can understand why people don't like it. Games are an interactive medium, and I think it's a disservice to the medium if they aren't very interactive, or the interactions are very trite. Most JRPGs could probably be better enjoyed as just movies or anime series or whatever rather than games because the interactivity is so low. This is why I think "art" games are best when they keep themselves to a small set of interactions that are presented in a way that's going to invoke emotion through the agency of the player rather than quality of the narrative.

If I'm sounding too nebulous, yes, I think Edmund is a cool game, I enjoy it even though it's not fun.

                                    
                                    
                |---|               
              -+|   |               
                |   |               
              -+ | |                
                |---|               
              -+|   |               
                |   |   |---|       
              -+ | |     | |        
                |---|   |---|       
              -+|   |   |   |<      
                |   |   |   |       
                 | |     | | <      
                |---|   |---|       
              -+|   |   |   |<      
                |   |   |   |       
              -+ | |     | | <      
                --- /---\ ---       
              -+|  =| @ |=  | v     
    ------- --- --- |---| --- ---   
    |      =|  = | | | | | | =  |   
    ------- --- |---|---|---| ---   
          ^   ^   ^  | |  ^   ^     
                    |---|           
                   > | | <          
                    |   |           
                   >|   |<          
                    |---|           
                      ^             
                                    
                                    
                                    
Pilot this vessel

Behold, my broadside monstrosity. At least it flies straight!

Edit: it's so easy to lose stuff in this game! One false move and all your guns are gone.

I'm moving up to Montreal by the end of the year so I would greatly appreciate an indie event at an... ahem... "indie budget". 

I'm not sure how this could carry over into straight C or C++, but I'm pretty sure py2exe for Python (using the bundle option) will zip up all the required python code, the interpreter DLL, and extra DLLs upon request and append it (or otherwise 'contain' it) inside an .exe file that will open the zip and do what it needs to do.

"Image" is the module name of PIL (Python Imaging Library). You sure that's not being imported anywhere?

Yeah Panda looks great and seems to have a very good workflow but documentation is lacking.
For example the engine has apparently a nice lighting and shaders system but last time I checked there was no documentation about it.
Just check the demo game (a sort of space harrier clone) to see how cool it is.

Having invested quite a bit of time in the engine, I have to agree. You can tell it was an engine purpose-built for student projects and then opensourced. There are quite a lot of conveniences for the beginner (tasks, collision nodes, etc.) but it's not well documented and wants you to program a certain way (i.e. the code is highly coupled, monolithic).

This isn't specifically about XNA, because it handles both 3D and 2D, but if you are more interested in making games than learning 3D math, I would suggest sticking to 2D.

They're trying a different approach with this batch of Freshmen by giving them live distributions of Linux equipped to develop with Python (I /think/ it's python). I gave some thought to PyGame -- but that puts me in an area of little expertise.

Whoa, dude, just to be clear... XNA is Windows-only. I might just be misunderstanding, but if everyone is going to have to be running Linux, then XNA is a no-go.