[Unless]

While it's true the "make games, not engines" philosophy is not for everyone, the alternative should be "make games and engines", not "make engines nobody uses". Unless, and it's a big unless, unless this is what truly brings you joy; and if it is, I won't judge. For most of us, though, actually finishing a thing, no matter how crappy, is like landing the last blow on that piñata. Think of the candy! Don't give up!

I look forward to seeing this thread evolve.

Hi guys! I've been working on this funky thing for about two months, posting it to /r/gamedev for FF, but I thought I might post it here for folks who don't tend to hang around that particular corner of the tubes.

The style is evolving quickly but it looks something like this.

Video: https://player.vimeo.com/video/127282068

GitHub http://github.com/Cheezmeister/vec
Windows http://luchenlabs.com/dl/Vec.7z
Mac http://luchenlabs.com/dl/vec-osx (`brew install sdl2`)
Linux http://luchenlabs.com/dl/vec

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[will]

Wow, this is...what in the world did I just play?

Mechanics are strange, the game does not explain them very well. I've no idea what the difference is between dark/scary and bright/happy. It's very hard to tell what to collect and what to avoid.

Too many menus/cutscenes between runs. I'd prefer to zap straight through them.

Two distinct art styles conflicting with one another. If you want to go 8-bit, then go all the way. But don't mix styles.

Your English is better than my Portuguese, but players will notice minor flaws. I only saw a few in-game, but you want to ship with zero. Pull in a native speaker if you need to.

The unavoidable car that mows you down out of nowhere is just cruel!

Call me a snob, but psychedelic and psychotic are not the same thing. Antichamber and Soundself are psychedelic. This guy is just psychotic.

Last but not least...what in the world did I just play?

No iPhone here but based on the video, I'd say "awesome" is a fair assessment. Though I'd personally go for the less-overused term "bejujular" 

Hmm. Nice. Well-polished, lots of subtle touches like the jumping eyes. Movement feels well-tuned. Looseness of the camera is a bit disorienting but not a big deal. I wasn't a fan of the pixel-perfect jumps, but that's just like, my opinion, man.

I got stuck in that same spot on Lvl.4. Highly frustrating. I also found no way to get the last portal piece right above the death blades. Almost as frustrating, but clearly it is at least possible, even if I couldn't suss it.

Add a free camera to spectator mode, please

Interesting comparison to Thomas. I disagree that plane-shifting is more "original" than async co-op, but I could certainly envision the two mechanics blending quite well.

I'm not good with AS3 or FP, but based on what you've posted, your problem is that you're changing the variable after you've already used it, and not reading it again.

Code:

// Game starts
var introText:Text = new Text(texts[currentID]); // currentID is 0
var textEntity:Entity = new Entity(0, 0, introText);
add(textEntity); // "hello, traveler."
// Later
currentID++; // currentID is 1
// textEntity still hasn't changed
// introText still hasn't changed

That's like...telling everyone the party is at 7, then later changing your mind but not telling anyone. They're gonna show up at 7. What you need to do then is modify the text on introText, or new up another one and stick it on textEntity.

HTH.

Should I just be scrapping everything and figuring out a better way of doing the collision detection? This has been ruining the past week for me in terms of productivity

I'd seriously consider that at this juncture, but it really depends on the kind of physics you're going for. Going from right angles to 45° seems like it should be simple but it might be quite a leap if your collision was naive until now. Here's some questions to ask yourself in no particular order...

* Do you want objects to rotate (i.e. apply torque)?
* Do you want objects to slide?
* Bouncing? What kind?
* Sticking?
* Destructible environment?
* Ghosting/phasing through stuff?
* 30° angles? 54.123° angles? Circles? Arcs?

Collision detection is a common issue with lots of algorithms to steal, if you're careful not to go overboard. Overengineered < Underengineered < Just Right(TM)

Crap man! Why did I not know ZGameEditor existed until now? Here I've been banging away on my own half-bit SDL/GL stack, and this thing was hiding right under my nose.

:/ Even with internets, so much cool stuff I only learn about after it's too late.

Anyone submitting(ed)?

I'd been planning on doing so, but I just took a look at the price tag and 80 bucks is a bit steep for something that's barely playable ^_^;

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the general PAX submission more selective/competitive, given that it's open to THE MAN--er, I mean, more professional, commercial games with more dollars behind them? I mean, that's the whole purpose of the megabooth, isn't it, to give indie devs more clout at these venues by joining forces?

Assuming that's the case, I'd only bother submitting to the general pool if the extra exposure of your very own booth really justifies the extra fee (and if that's the case, why would you NOT submit to both?) For that matter, I'd _prefer_ being in the megabooth because that's where your peeps are, players and devs alike.

May God have mercy on your soul.

=P

It's not a bad premise, I guess, but I suspect it's trying to do too much too soon. I can't speak for everyone, but I can scarcely deal with the distraction of leaping between TIGS, Reddit, Twitter etc. while trying to get actual development done besides. Why should I invest in ANOTHER account with all its care and feeding?

I see potential here, but in order to gain momentum you're gonna need to differentiate your site from all the other options out there. What's the value added?

Not a glaring error, really, but it's in vogue to substitute README.md for ReadMe.txt and use Markdown. `backticks` for code and ##Hashes for headings make it easier to grok on the web UI. You can even get real fancy and [hyperlink directly](https://github.com/ThemsAllTook/libstem_gamepad/blob/master/source/gamepad/Gamepad.h#L68) to the functions to which you refer.

Just do it indeed. I'm kind of finished already, because the rest of my weekend is spoken for. It's a terrible awful abomination of a game, but that's OK!

Looking forward to playing some real entries :D

I would just like to say that I love this thread's title and also μηκοοι's handle.

Looking for something fun and small (~$100-$250, 1-3 weeks) to pass the time while an illness keeps me from my day job. The low rate is because I haven't freelanced before. I'm in it for funzies and expect to overdeliver.

I can communicate live or async via Skype, phone, gchat, email, whatever twiddles your bits, really.

FYI, I dislike Unity. Poke through my sig to see my indie portfolio. Professional creds are at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheezmeister . Contact (my handle) at gmail with project details. 

I waited way too long to start using C++0x

To be fair, C++0x waited way too long to exist, and in the meantime a bunch of better alternatives cropped up (depending on problem domain). Still, good ol' fashioned C is still pretty much king of its hill.

Here's a handy lil one:

Code:

#define DEBUGVAR(x) std::cerr << "[" #x "] = " << (x) << '\n'

Very neat idea to provide an editor for adjusting params; you could easily make it a middleware niche with little competition, I think.

I've no use for it personally, or I'd give it a spin. I can, however, tell you that your demo is way too long for someone just learning of the project. If I were you I'd take the most interesting 5-10% of your demo and make a 1-2min trailer.

Having encapsulated myself into a corner on more than one occasion, I tend to err on the side of "bad" programming practice. The modern school of programming grooms students, primarily, for working on large business software with lifecycles longer than employee turnaround, which is not a *bad* thing, but it's not appropriate for what we do.

Of course, as your project grows, you *should* be keeping an eye out for patterns and refactoring appropriately (DRY). Just don't do it prematurely (YAGNI).

I tend to subscribe to Casey Muratori's idea of "compression-oriented programming", which I think is mostly the same as "emergent design".

Love2D is the only one I've heard of before, so there's that. I'm not very experienced with Lua but the engine looks relatively solid to me...  https://bitbucket.org/rude/love

Try it out and see if you like it?