Holocaust deniers.


Anyway, the indie community doesn't have a strong overall organization or 'congregation' or any official set of political beliefs other than one which drives them in the direction of being poor and making art they think is good rather than making oodles of cash and compromising their vision.  Like most artistic communities its members generally swing to the left, but diversity of philosophies is welcomed!

One could argue the indie game community to be anti-capitalistic if one wanted to, in much the same way one could make that argument for the opensource movement or starving artists in general.  As with the other two, however, indie games are a grounds for enterprise.  And that, not corporate dominance, is what American capitalism is supposed to be about.  Unfortunately, it's dying for the most part.  But we hold out!

Moral:  Every time a shitty, well-marketed game succeeds in the market, an eagle starts crying.

I have an iPhone and a Droid and still haven't gotten around to coding for either.  Except at a summer job last year.  :/

Also, bummer.

Man.

I've had the idea of a game or story where the player is the 'big bad' of a game story and acts as a plot agent, setting up the layouts of dungeons and placement of enemies, items and such so that the hero is challenged but ultimately prevails.  That's the bad guy's job in your average videogame, you know.

Of course, that idea isn't as fun-sounding as your thing.  Good luck.

A master programmer no longer controls the code; nor does the code control him.  Flow in the truest sense is achieved.  Code and coder are as one force, with one will.  Also the programmer doesn't need eyes any more and women flock to him.

Skyy, savethedinosaurs-

You're being dreadfully encouraging.  That's nice of you!


Anyway, 'A point 5'.  This one, still windows only, fixes the collision bugs, makes masking (making walls) much easier [and lies about right-click, sorry], lets you go back and edit graphics [but moves them to the top layer] and lets you load up different world files.  The character is slower with a lower jump.  Expect a grappling hook to spice the little fellow up and customizable appearance as mentioned previously.

There are some very minor changes to the Figure Editor but it's still gonna take a little experimenting or a tutorial video (that one I'm sleeping instead of making) to figure it out.

EDIT: Oh, and a few of the more excessively crappy issues from the first release have been fixed and forgotten.  The one where there's color bleed in places where the player doesn't draw anything, and probably others...

Download here:  A.5 for Windows

If I play my cards right I'll have created a functional MMO (and not the lame, grindy RPG kind) in two weeks.  Nine of fifteen days in at present.

I'm working fast because I've already coded all the utilities I need for the game (which involves drawing the world): drawing tool, network module, serializer, engine-engine.

I felt really good achieving my deadline of having a (albeit super-crappy) singleplayer version working by the wednesday after the jam where I started the project.  See the sig for details on the project.

At present, I've fixed the collision system's badness (and made the character much less fast and slippery, due to feedback--I might compensate with that grappling hook) and am preparing to implement networking.  I think.

Expect an "A point 5" release this evening with the altered physics and the ability to edit already-made places.  It also supports multiple map files for debugging; maybe I'll send some of mine along.

- Cellulose Man  

* Morality systems with a "goodness bar".  I think something subtler is in order, affecting things without making the effects of the player's actions blatantly obvious.  It also opens the door for moral choices that aren't blatantly divided.

* That one enemy which can only be defeated in a specific way and is painfully common.  Frequent in platformers.

This smells a little like Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist or something along those lines.  Obscene, surreal, colorfully chaotic.  I found the former to be an enjoyable experience for its outright and uncompromising strangeness; if this is your goal, I wish you well.

Good idea!  I'll try and have a mac build ready by then.


EDIT: And, upped the priority of simplifying the heck out of Figure Editor at friends' requests.

Milestone B isn't too much work, but is being moved back owing to a combination of a family event [all weekend] and a pressing need to get some hours in at work.  Next wednesday, conservatively.  I might be early.

I might release a few inbetweens.  Also, I've added a few things to the milestone to make up.

Even though I'm a C++ programmer I firmly believe 'easy-coding' tools should be used in the vast majority of game development projects.  I wanted to do some things that no free 2D game engine could do well, so I wrote my own engine.  I'm making a set of tools for it, and may well release it as a scriptable easy-coding tool of its own one day.


EDIT:  And it's important to remember that before people look seriously into game development, "you can make video games" is not an obvious fact at all.  Outsiders don't have any idea what kinds of processes are used or available, and usually assume them to be outside their means.

Beau drew this.  It, and my current handle, relate to an old game idea I'm still fond of.  The protagonist is a mediocre, middle-aged office worker who suddenly becomes a superhero who can manipulate paper.  That dramatic shift from mediocrity to privilege is explored.  (Or would be.)

I was talking to a female friend of mine recently.  She doesn't play games.  Doesn't really know a whole lot about them beyond common knowledge--that most are shallow, violent and not particularly well-written.

I had a conversation with her to the effect that the commonness of violence in games isn't so much that violence sells or is stimulating as it is that it's the easiest way (conceptually) to create a struggle in context, which is in turn the easiest way to create a challenge except in an abstract world like that of a puzzle game.

I think what's keeping women away from game development is largely a cultural gap--women who play mostly casual games or none at all tend to hold an association between 'video games' and brutish masculine values, usually overlooking casual games as being part of the group, or seeing them as a minority.  (And they certainly aren't!)  The media is a big part of this with frequent (and perhaps well-founded) criticism of video game content, as well as alarmism about corrupt children and such.

Last time I listened to a speaker asking the community to help the female indie community--GDC rants, I believe--she said that teams need to work to include women.  Thus far everyone I've chosen to work with I've worked with for three reasons: I've met them, their skills are valuable, and they're interested in making games.  The cultural gap gives me horrible luck with number three and doesn't help number one either.  (In the context of artistic networking.)

So what can I do?  The only thing I can think of is defend the art as I did with my friend as mentioned above, and try to give any 'unenlightened' female artist I meet an alternate perspective on games.  Any more than that would be silly--am I to set about tracking down semi-skilled women artists and cramming them awkwardly into my projects?

Or I could make things like this that are non-violent games that are attractive to artsy folk.  [/plug]

[EDIT: Fixed a problem with autosaving by adding a drawings/ folder to the downloadable. Uploaded.]

Milestone A met on time.

Download for Windows, should work with anything from NT to 7.

No Mac or Linux builds for now, sorry.

It saves your world as blank/world.map.  I'd like to see what kinds of mini-worlds people make!  (as in upload something and I will love you forever)  The rather homely starting area is my work; mind the programmer art.

You can delete world.map and re-run the program to start over with just that beginning room and a triangular collision mask.  (Remember that E-key!)

The Figure Editor isn't documented at all, yet.  I'm gonna make a tutorial soon.  For now, screw with it.  The "OK" button completes drawing.

Forseeing endless hordes of walking penises.

Of course.  But I'd rather laugh than tear my hair out over things like that.  Players will be given a little regulatory power over pretty much everything, so it ought to work out.

I would make switching over to the other rooms (while editing yours) really quick and simple.  I know that I would want to be constantly aware of exactly what they look like while drawing my own room.

A very good point.  I made it so the adjacent rooms are a background in the Figure Editor.  You can sample colors from them using the dropper tool [D].


EDIT: Fixed a problem with autosaving by adding a drawings/ folder to the downloadable.  Uploaded.

Oh, Sh*#!

Your 'avatar' is your moving, jumping character.  It'll be visible to other people and you'll be able to make it "say" things by popping up a little canvas and drawing on it.  As stated you'll also be able to draw the little fellow, and maybe animate him too.

Not all that's gonna make it into milestone B, of course.

I'm at the tail end of an unexpected all-nighter making the map system work.  Good progress was made!  I now have something to manage an arbitrarily large, sparsely-populated map-grid.  Woo.  Screenshots don't mean very much to this end but what the hell.

The fuchsia stuff is collision masking.  The little gray ellipse is the character for now.  (It's supposed to be super-neutral, and is visible over any background color.  Remember players will be able to draw their own in the future.)




How ya like my programmer art? 




This second shot is the area left of the first one.  Blank with overlap.  (which isn't limited yet)

I started something I have had in mind for a while: Infinite Blank.

I cheated and found a swiss proverb for it: A good spectator also creates.

It's an online platformer where people create and explore a 2D world, which can grow arbitrarily in all directions.

Will players interact directly, or will it be, uh, "massively single-player"?

Most definitely multiplayer!  You'll notice I mentioned chat.  Though, at least in early versions, avatars won't be able to affect one another much.  The 'rules' system I hinted at might let players fight (in specified areas) in future versions.


How complex will the screens be - are we talking a peaceful Explorer with some tricky jumps or a game with complex platforms, traps and enemies?

Again, simple to start with, but I might add the ability to create hazards later, in 'hazardous' areas.


And will the game (/level designers) reward players for exploring, or is exploration reward enough?

I've thought about adding 'trophies' as something players can add to their rooms.  Again, not slated for the initial version, which I want to keep as bare-bones as possible.  I'll definitely have discovery of new 'spawn' points as a reward for exploration.  Players will be able to jump to these at will.


If I update the game after the first release, I'll keep the world intact but probably require old copies to be updated.

Thanks for the kind words!  ++motivation;