Could you post a sketch (not necessarily game assets, if you want to keep your project under wraps)?

I'm imagining something like the turning animations in Flashback, but I don't have a clear picture of what you're creating here.

No, they're very hungry friendly.

JLJac, I'm increasingly intrigued by this project of yours. I especially love the first screenshot you posted, with the fluorescent colors. The motion of your characters is really creative!

More people need to play with integrating physics in such a playful, natural way. Physics as a gimmick has been milked for way too many years: it's about time people started using it tastefully.

News from the home front:
The high score list works. To do: separate high scores for each level and name entry.

I've also been playing lots of CPB games. I've really enjoyed Fifth's From Primordial Egg, Increpare's last minute entry Defect, and Bob le Moche's Lost in Eldritch.

I've also been playing Angband. I really like the game, but somebody seriously needs to make a good roguelike without a secondhand Tolkien world. I love the Lord of the Rings books, but I think a game is 2000% more interesting if it has its own world and mythology.

Bonus points if it has few enough buttons to be mapped to a controller.

For anyone who wants to read Flatland, here's an online edition with all the original illustrations. It's really quite charming.
Flatland

Personally, I think it's unfortunate that the IGF has winners at all. It's great to promote non-industry games, but I don't think pitting developers against each other is constructive. The game development community is remarkably cooperative and open, and I would love to see the IGF and other events thoroughly reflect that spirit.

I'm an entrant, and while I'll be happy for the winners, all that's really important to me is seeing all the neat games and meeting fellow hobbyists (and professionals ).

I move that Naked Skull Man grips ladder rungs with his teeth instead of his hands.

Ooh- also, don't get a new model!

You can get models a couple of years old for a much lower price, and they work every bit as well. Wacom just makes tiny gimmicky changes every year so they can keep selling new models.

Eww, pink blood!

I've always liked off-color gore.

Terry- You've sure got a lot of us intrigued! I look forward to playing it.

Ishi- I like the volume render. So how does that work- is it a stack of planes with transparent textures on them, or is it some kind of specialized volume rendering technique?


I've been working on lots of little features and bug fixes. The scoring's working, the GUI's getting a bit of love, enemies no longer jump into lava pits (except the stupid ones ), exploding platforms are slightly less ghastly looking, and the camera has been improved. Also now when you kill things, there are little floating score indicators.

Oh, wow. I still don't know how he managed to store all the scratch data!

This is kind of over my head, but is he storing the neighboring cell count in binary? That seems like it might fit, and be easier to do conditional operations on.

Very neat.

This seems like a pretty neat idea, but the interface is hurting it a lot. Honestly I think with a better interface and a little polish this could be a really fun game.

My main gripe is that I couldn't find a way to erase a single line without resetting the entire level. For a game that relies on trial and error as much as this one, that leads to a lot of frustration. For instance I placed one line in the wrong place in level three, and in order to fix I placed a second line at a new angle in front of the old line. I completed the course, but because I couldn't erase the old line I was one line over par! I had to start the entire level over.

Two solutions are:
(1) allow moving lines by dragging on the endpoints.
(2) allow deleting lines with an eraser tool.

I like the game, and the level design seems pretty good from what I've seen. I hope you're willing to polish this enough that it will really appeal to people! It has a lot of potential.

I dreamed I was playing the game I'm working on, except one of the new enemies wasn't working correctly. When I shot them they died, but they didn't explode. The absence of exploding was accompanied by weird underwhelming visual glitches.

I also dreamed I was playing a game where you control a group of little grey blobs of clay with mouths. They jumped around the level and attacked things. There was an enemy that looked like a jellyfish-like kite, and it had a very small hit area right in the center. I tried to bite it, but it was hard to time it correctly and I was frustrated.

Anarkex-
Nice, another sprite artist! I think you'll find yourself very much in demand around here. Don't worry about not being able to program, etc. There's nothing wrong with having an area of focus. And should you decide to diversify, people around here are always more than willing to help you learn if you've got a good attitude about it.

Chaoseed-
I've been wanting to check out SDL myself, it seems like an appealing option. Also I poked around your website a bit- it looks like you're selling yourself short in terms of how experienced you are! Welcome aboard.

And then the baobob said to itself, "pity I forgot to tell them to set the wand tolerance to zero and uncheck 'anti-alias.'"

...  burning bright   
In the forests of the night,   
What immortal hand or eye   
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

What do you do to ensure that you collide with the correct side when moving along a wall or floor? I always get errors.



In the past I've worked around this (in tile based games) by skipping the checks for sides facing another obstructed tile. So if the left side of a tile faces another filled cell, you can't collide with its left side. It feels like a hack, though.

Seconded, agj. I'd love to see natural curved lines in a 3d game.
It would be fun to play with wide FOV fisheye effects too...

Increpare and Terry, you two need to make a game where you play as an insect with compound eyes, and you have a 360 degree field of view. No wait, you play as a security camera and you have to pick bank robbers out of a crowd. Or maybe it could be a pretentious dream game where you explore your inner landscape to discover the true nature of loss. Oh wait, I know! You're inside a 3d maze, and you have a line that plays out behind you (like a bread crumb trail), and you have to, um, do stuff in the maze...

Sorry, this is exciting. If you guys make something, I'm sure whatever you choose will be great.

These are really solid, Xion. The new version of the male protagonist is really nice, and I love the warty monster. Those green bits on his torso are inspired!

Your colors are beautiful.

P.S.- a couple teeny bits are a bit busy and it makes them hard to read. check out the female protagonist's torso armor, the inside of the beefy skeleton's forearm, and the short skeleton's stomach and waist.