cgMusic is a pretty interesting one.  All you supply is the structure, the style, and the seed, though.

But I have gotten a number of nice results from it.

GUYS

I NEED YOUR HELP

Shehnai or harmonica?

No no, go with the crumhorn!

Why is Cheese Bridge called Cheese Bridge I MUST KNOW

Well, the primary inhabitants of Dinosaur Land (the setting for Super Mario World) are the Yoshis.  Food-driven as they are, they named the locations after whatever food each reminded them of.

This is my dad's recipe for brownies.  I guess brownies are kinda mundane compared to a lot of the stuff here, but these can be made within 15 minutes, using a food processor and a microwave.  And they're delicious.


HIGH-TECH BROWNIES
(less than 15 minutes from first thinking of them until ready to eat)

1/4 cup (1/2 stick, or 50 g) butter (or margarine)
2 squares (60 g) unsweetened (baking) chocolate
2 eggs
about 1/2 - 1 cup (125 - 250 ml) walnuts or pecans
1 cup (250 ml) sugar
salt to taste (1/2 - 1 tsp)
1/2 - 1 tsp almond extract, peppermint, or orange extract and grated peel of an orange
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup (150 ml) unsifted flour
1/2 - 1 cup (125- 250 ml) chocolate chips

Put butter in pyrex dish 8" (20 cm) square; microwave at high for about 1/2 minute.  While this is happening, chop the baking chocolate in the processor (for easier melting), and then add to the melted butter, stir, and microwave another 45 sec.

Put eggs, nuts, and all other ingredients except flour and choc.chips into processor (with general-purpose metal blade), including melted chocolate/butter (do not clean dish afterwards: it is supposed to be 'buttered'), and mix / chop nuts with processor.

Add flour and choc.chips, and process just enough (with quick pulses) to mix.  Pour back into pyrex dish.  (Processor blade can be cleaned by running processor in emptied bowl.)  Top w/ nonpareils (sprinkle decorations) if desired.

Microwave at high for 6 min (for 1000W), on rotary plate (or turning several times).  Good served hot, at room temperature, or cold/frozen: because choc.chips are included, best served cooled / chilled (so that chips are not melted).

L. Ames, 12/15/84, modified 9/27/08

Does anybody else think that one of the teams' names should have been a bird?
Y'know, for balance?

[What I wanna know:]

Alright, it's "need some feedback" time!


http://www.l-ames.com/logan/illum-2.zip

C turns your flashlight on/off.  When on, it depletes.  When off, it charges, and when overcharged can shoot out a beam that can kill ghouls.  The regular light can still hurt ghouls, but only very slowly.

X is the action button, which opens doors, picks up items, and plugs lights into sockets.  There's an action context display thingy in the corner to help keep track of what you can do.  The plug-in lights you can find are very helpful, so keep an eye out for them.

A finite number of ghouls will appear in the house, but nothing happens when you kill 'em all.  I'm not really sure what the best sort of goal would be here.

And I apparently can't draw human peoples, so there's no player graphics yet.


What I wanna know:

Does the lighting system run too slow to be playable?  Particularly when an enemy is burning?  I've only got my own computer to test this on, so I'd like to know how drastic this issue gets.

Does the game, as it's going, have merit?  Is the flashlight over-charging thing too annoying, how you need to be so vulnerable for a short time before you can attack?

Could you figure out how to play at all?  Is the display too confusing?

Would X be a better choice for the flashlight?

...And any other thoughts on the game so far.

Needs more space otters.

Game for Part Week...



http://partyweek.blogspot.com/

Man, those tiles give the illusion that the whole thing is slightly slanted.
It's weirdin' me out.

The other issue is that the second player in the game is really not very useful. When player one is running around, it's hard to aim, and the result is the second player feels pretty useless.

It's not so much being a second cursor to collect/shoot star bits that makes the second player useful as it is the ability to totally freeze most enemies in their tracks.  And during tricky jumping bits, you can keep your cursor over Mario to offer that extra spin in the air in case your Mario forgets about it.

I've been playing second player to an 8-year-old, and those things can make quite a difference.

The A button ball can also knock around those bouncy green ball things (which can occasionally be useful) and search grass for star bits (which I guess is mostly useless).

Hm, I think I got the "Lights!" down, but it's probably gonna be a while before I get to the "Action!"

http://www.l-ames.com/logan/illum-1.zip
X is flashlight, C opens doors.  Click with the mouse to add what would be a burning enemy.

I'm kinda worried that the lighting is way too inefficient, though.  Could I get somebody to put a couple burning enemies in the big open area and tell me if it slows down too much?

I'd say Yoshi's Island is pretty lenient as far as platformers go, but I don' know how well it would work in this case.

I got it.

Aw...
I guess I snooze, I lose.

I can hear the resemblance to Porky's theme, but the beginning bit from that symphony reminded me more of a song from Castlevania Bloodlines.

One that I found is Sky Chase Zone from Sonic 2 and Pinch Me by Barenaked Ladies.

Looks like a worthwhile guide to me.  I like the idea of grouping together pages by convergent concept.

Anyway, Farbs, I thought of a small change that might simultaneously be both interesting and a bad idea:  have blank links go to a random page, instead of back to the main page.  Some of the links are already so bizarre that even a complete non sequitur might seem to make sense.  One might never be able to identify an incomplete page again, for better or for worse!

Heh, you don't actually have to do it, though.

Deep puzzles and big ol' secrets in games.  Are they worth it?  Do people generally try to find the solution?
This is something I've kinda been wondering in general, and good ol' should provide a fair polling.

When a game has some big ol' complicated secret like Cave Story's secret ending (or else is comprised of them like La Mulana), how often or how likely is it that players would try to figure it out?  Okay, maybe these kind of puzzles is more common in some genres than in others, but what does the player tend to do when confronted with this sort of thing?  Eventually satisfaction of forging through for clues and piecing it all together would have to be outweighed by the frustration of not getting anywhere, and players would just look up the solution...  Is this commonplace?

Or else there's the ever-present danger of learning the solution well before finding that the puzzle even exists, either by chancing across it or by overhearing something.  A sad thing to never have a chance to try, but a factor all the same.

So, how did you find the secret ending in Cave Story?  It's an anonymous poll, so be honest.

And it may be the closest we'll ever get to a sequel.

Heheh, this is terrific.  And totally addicting.  It's just got such potential to completely balloon out of control, that there's no telling where you'll end up when you start exploring.

It's interesting to see the recurring themes, too.  There are countless throats that you can jump down, and you can get married to a kobold, a dragon, and a tree.

Nifty stuff.

I hate Flash for Flash ads AND the plugin itself doesn't work.

My displeasure of Flash is complex.

A real indie would download the swf and play it in the stand-alone flash player. In Debug mode.

Wait a minute - I do that!
...But it's only because the Flash plugin doesn't work.

My first guess would be Crusader of Centy.



But even if it's the wrong game, you should still play it.
It's a good one, to be sure.