I kid you not! Also, Fl0wer is featured in the exhibit, and the PhysOrg article has an interview with the author:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-video-games-realm-art-smithsonian.html

Just figured this might be worth an article, or at least it would be interesting for you guys reading this post!

Actually, it's very easy to get used to the rest of the editor, except for that tiny detail I mentioned I'm starting with an existing map and copying relevant parts to one area of the map, so I can use it as a sort of "palette" and copy by right-clicking. But it's not exactly an optimal solution

If there are any improvements to the editor coming up in the short term, I'd probably hold off the compo until then -- nothing worse than railing up people's expectations and then making them realize it's not that easy, it could do more harm than good.

I think just a better way to select tiles is what could make this into a great editor, no need for any external editors! And then bring on the compo

Didn't mean to step on your toes Shig! In fact, Nietzsche's opinion on videogames are insightful and witty, the problem is people taking conclusions about videogames from his non-videogame-related material (*cough* IcyCalm *cough*).

About quantity vs quality, obviously Tetris and Chess's longivity can't be measured in hours as GTA4. Also you may love playing games as you love eating food, but why would you want to eat lots of "crap" (relatively), instead of enough good cuisine? (Without starving of course; just not eating 'til you drop...)

Wow, that icycalm dude sure read a lot of Nietzsche, and it really shows by the way he talks. You know who else else loved that egocentric maniac? Hitler. That's where he got the whole "me and my tall, blond, handsome pals (*sigh*) are superior than thou". I'm just glad today's little Hitlers have an Internet to vent, otherwise they might hurt somebody!

Encourage him folks!

~~~

On the whole artsy debate, here's my General Inequation of Artsiness:

Quality(your_game) >= Pretensiousness(your_game)

As long as your game obeys that inequation, it's totally ok! Nothing wrong with being a bit pretentious if your game has something to show for it. In fact I think in the right doses it adds a lot to the appeal. And many blockbuster titles are very cheesy, which is equally pretentious. Like that recent Bionic Commando remake.

And I'd rather play 10 minutes of concentrated fun on a Flash game with a quirky mechanic that challenges my intelect and pre-conceived notions, than 5 hours on a cinematic grindfest.

Woops... Thanks for trying to help me out Widget

BMcC: Can I officially request a verrrrry simple tile browser? As in, press spacebar or whatever, and the screen is filled with all tiles so you can click one, presto it's selected... Did I mention it doesn't have to be fancy?

I'm sure map contributions will skyrocket as a result

 

Damn... Maybe I can see what the differences are anyway and write a short script to convert? Because really I just need it to lay down the bulk of the graphical tiles, the rest including small edits are OK in the original editor.

Or we could just write an output script for Mappy. http://tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php

Guys, I hate to be a buzzkill... I was really pepped to make some maps for BQ, and tried starting a new map with the in-game editor -- the general interface is alright, and in-game editors are awesome, but laying down tiles is really painful because of how you select them from a linear list with the left/right arrow keys. The fact that I can't see all or most tiles at once to choose them makes it hard to select the tile I want, unless I memorize the order they're in; and looking at a single tile it's very hard to visualize how it fits with other tiles. BQ's tiles are small so they usually don't make sense in isolation, they're just tiny parts of bigger things. Tile copying with the right mouse button is very handy though. So I wanted to try Snakey's BqEd, but the link is broken and I can't seem to find it anywhere. Little help? 

If I can make a suggestion for a tile selection interface, it would be nice if we were able to define for each tileset a "canvas" with some useful arrangements of tiles already laid out. For relative ease of programming a canvas could be defined as a BQ map; except it doesn't have a lot of gameplay in it, it just has tiles arranged in useful ways. Just a suggestion though -- I'll be happy if someone just gives me a link to BqEd, which I assume lets you select tiles with the mouse as most tile editors

How about the 7DRL (seven day roguelike) at RGRD? There are more than 150 entrants this year, it's freaking epic

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.development

(Yeah, you can just press the "older" button over and over again, and the 7DRL entries never seem to end! )

Congrats on the win! I'm sorry to bother ya, but this:

When I launch the game I am taken to a window with what I assume is a menu (a sort of squashed white T in a blue bar with snow). I hit enter, I get another white rectangle. I hit enter again and I am taken to what seems to be the game, but all I see is blue with snow. So it seems like nothing is rendering. Is this because I'm using crappy integrated intel graphics? And is there anything I can do on my end of things to get it to work? From what I've seen you have a really great game here, I just wish I could play it  

I have the same problem... BTW it's not like it doesn't render anything; the dungeon is there, and the sprites have shadows, but no sprites are showing (are those items?) The GUI is all white too... If I may suggest something, could you make it work with the fixed pipeline and no shaders? Many cards don't support them at all, and if I was willing to shell out big $$$ for a good graphics card then I probably would be the kind of guy who plays blockbuster games instead of indie games (which traditionally have lower requirements)

Dude, just wanted to congratulatate you on the awesome game! The way you streamlined movement and pretty much every mechanic is awesome. I only now realized how much time I usually spend in a RL just traveling from room to room and getting to objects. Also you kept the graphics and sound style of Star Guard which I love

This is the biggest, awesomest game of all time!!

Two things:

• In the ice caves, when I throw a yeti to the bottomless pit, shouldn't it count as a kill? (I can think of a couple of reasons it shouldn't, but thought I'd point it out!)
• How about if you drop a stone right next to an idol and quickly pick the idol up, shouldn't that deactivate the trap? It would certainly be loads of fun, and one more tribute to the Indiana Jones movies! That was the first thing that occurred to me when I saw the idol for the first time but it didn't work Also this way you can get rid of the other ways of disarming traps (Bombs is the solution to everything these days! :D)

I'm interested; but I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm more curious to know what they say about the EDGE(tm) competition

Nice. Summer is for fun, so I'll see if I can get off my arse and script those rolling barrels (which are a forgotten classic IMO). The only unfun part is getting started unfortunately since I'm a chronic procrastinator

Hmmmmmmmmm... just wondering... does summertime mean everyone's gonna contribute more or less to BQ?...

(EDIT: BTW BMcC the chicks totally dig your avatar, sorry but I had to steal it for a few days no hard feelings right? )

Hey you should drop the dope some day. I hear it's bad for you Get well mate, you're needed! Think of the children!

Ok, Finally pretty much doneish on this forest tileset  :



It is here :http://sites.google.com/site/justicejonesbiz/, as Tiles_Forest, and TheWoods.

It's not really much of a level, It just demonstrates most of the elements.

OMG I love so many things about that tileset that I can't even begin to describe! Frankly, every little tile there is awesome. I can't wait to see the kinds of levels that come out of this! (the pikes, the branches, the green dude, the underground skull, is that an owl? picking up little moons and stars, everything wow)

Hm, maybe the interior of the trees (the part where you can pass through) could have a bit more texture? It contrasts a bit with the rest; since everything has texture all over, that piece comes out a little plain-looking. But if you leave it like that it's still cool Congrats!

Snakey: Good idea, menus are kinda "volatile" in that the smallest provocation makes them go away; most of the time I'm cool with that, but when navigating huge lists that can be really irritating! So a browser is good indeed.

Justice Jones: Love the tileset! There are some issues when Balding gets close to some tiles, some of them appear below him and others appear above (and the water too), but it's a minor nitpick and you're probably already on top of that. Can you make some tiles for the passable part of those trees? Some foliage and small branches would be nice too! Another suggestion, maybe a vine would be more appropriate to climb up than a chain? (That chain could be useful for other tilesets anyway.) But all in all, it is great! Thumbs up

Hey this just occurred to me: an animation of fishies jumping out of the water (like in a half-circle trajectory) could be really nice. Anyway these are just random thoughts off the top of my head, don't take them as requests yeah?

Just have a little faith, and drop into the unknown!

Hey the maps here are pretty awesome! Some of them take a little while to figure out. If your map is on this thread, know that I liked it very much! Buzzkill and GhostStory are my favorites so far, but it doesn't mean that the others aren't following closely.

Some constructive criticism:

AMinorDetour: Really cool. But the beginning run gets in the way. Balding is a little slow so retrying this level is always a bit painful; for that reason I didn't explore it much past going straight for the finish line. Maybe the beginning run could be made shorter?

PTPGP1/2: I love the puzzles here! But the names are hard to remember and type in BQ. Maybe you could rename the series as something a bit shorter and more catchy? NoTwitch? PuzzleTime? Something like that