Hello everyone.

I was digging thru old archive of mine, and found a few old games and entertaining programs. I wrote them between 8 and 12 years ago. Probably some of you will find them worth playing

1. XWorm




Classical scheme - press any key to raise, release to dive. Try to guide the worm thru 10 levels. Actually it's relatively easy to reach level 10. But final score depends very much on how you will play. There are hedgehopping, bonus multiplyer for staying near ground, several powerups activated by hedgehopping and bonus score items.
It is possible to save replays.
P is pause.
F during replay is fast forward.
Press Q during replay to quit it.

2. XSquares



Turn based (remotely) tetris like game. This is remake of some shareware game I played long time ago. Idea was nice, but implementation sucked hard. So I created this.
You place tetromino or pentamino figures on the board. Squares 3x3 will disappear from the board. Square 4x4 is scored as 4 3x3 squares. There is turns count for each level. Once counter reaches zero some part of remaning on the board squares will disappear, but remaining squares will turn into gray and cannot be matched. Rate of removed/gray squares increases with each level.

3. Tanks

This one is also remake attempt. But somewhat incomplete. At some point I lost the source code. It is mostly working, but AI is bad and network multiplayer wasn't implemented. But hotseat multiplayer is possible

4. TheWall
This one is not a game. This is infinite procedurally generated stone wall for meditation
Might be resource heavy on laptops.

5. Rain
This is screensaverlike application. It will make screenshot of desktop and start some algorithm that will ... make something with screenshot.
There are 7 algorithmes:
1. Rain - this is where everything started.
2. Pixelfall
3. Blackhole
4. Termits
5. Pixelpong
6. Flipflop
7. Pixelbugs

Algorithm is selected randomly.
But if you are aware of command line and/or starting parameters, passing numbers 1 to 7 as argument will select specific algorithm.

Here is download url of all 5 apps [less than 1Mib]:
http://www.mediafire.com/?enmzwp5a0ejj3d2

Little notice: I'm reading all this. Thanks to everyone.

One more notice: Top priority goes to game-art-essential features.
Spritesheets and animation sequencies, tilemap previews etc.

Reading most popular formats and writing pngs is working.
Very basic editing is working.

why would i need opacity when pixeling?

Why not? Even if it is colorkey transparency, bright pink background hurts my eyes.

What is the best way to display (semi)transparent pixels?

GraphicsGale has all of this functionality (multiple frames, each with individual sets of layers, and you can duplicate frames).

In fact I think GraphicsGale has a lot of the features people have been requesting in this thread (palette management, superzoom, many undo, onion skinning, color counters, etc.).

Last time I tried GraphicsGale it was just not working on my PC.
I tried latest version (free edition). Now it works.
While featurewise it is quite impressive, it's interface is beyond good and evil.
And it is windows only.

That's damn cool and damn addictive

Many/Infinite Undo

Sure thing.

good palette management

Too common words. What exactly you want from palette?

animation onion skinning and frame editing

I understand each separate word from this sentence, but it makes no sense to me

Wide variety of pixel artist friendly brushes

What is brush in context of pixel editing?

Multi-user Online

O-lo-lo. How do you see this?

Ooh, and a system to assign colors to hotkeys would be amazing.

Already in todo.
As well as various modes of animation preview.

Lines and curves.

Hm. You mean vector lines and curves that are rendered into pixels?
I was thinking about some kind of vector sketches.
But it's low priority feature.

there is no tool for changing all pixels of one color into another color.

This could be not as easy as it sounds. Especially with shading.
Colors used in shading should be somehow linked to primary color.
In case of 8-bit it's pretty easy. Just modify colors in palette.
In truecolor it could be trickier. I'll think about this.

a color counter

Number of times specific color was used (in palette)?

the ability to zoom in further

Ultrazoom with pixels grid is in my plan.

Editing HSL layer separately

HSL=hue saturation lightning?
Like rgb layers in photoshop, but HSL?

Drawing pattern directly ("surrounding canva" automatically update)

Explain this please.

[I'm more of an anti-artist]

I'm more of an anti-artist

Oh, okay.
What?

By 'anti' I meant that whenever I'm trying to draw something, the result is almost always something directly opposite to what you can call 'art'.
But I still have an urge to draw...
That's why I'm trying to create pixel editor for the likes of me, who can only create something thru the long course of trials and errors.

Hello there.

There is non-zero probability that I'll write pixel art oriented editor.
Cross-platform app (win, osx, linux) with custom gui.
But. I'm not an artist. At all. I'm more of an anti-artist
So, I want to know what are needs of real artists.
I do not promise that I'll (try to) implement these features, but I'll consider them.

Here is my plan (in addition to obvious/base things):

• Project will consists of images and animations. With possibility to export it as sprite sheet and/or bunch of separate files. Animated gifs are under question.
• 8bit and truecolor modes. Color key and alfa channel transparency.
• I'm going to add built-in versioning system. I.e. possibility to tag current version, jump between versions, make branches, and compare versions from different branches.
• Layers.
• Named selections, advanced selections manipulations.
• Multiple clipboards. Everything that was copied will be saved with project, and could be pasted later.
• Animations preview with background made of other sprites/tiles. Probably basic tile map editor. Probably basic modular animation editor.
• Hotkeys for everything. Keyboard mode.

It's not going to happen in the nearest future. I'm working on this in my spare time, and I have not too much of it lately.
It's not going to be netbook/nettop/oldscrap friendly application. Sorry.
Right now I have basics of my gui library working, have several tests and several prototypes for advanced controls, and started prototying editor itself. At least main part.
One of the reasons I'm posting this - I think there are people who need something like this. And I hope that they'll poke/kick me in case of stall

So... Feel free to post your needs.
I'll try to make things flexible enough to make additions not too painful.

I'm Photoshop-certified and I can certify you cant do it with PS

It is possible to create animated gif with photoshop if you have
frames in form of individual files named like frame001, frame002 etc.

Mmm... IIRC Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver didn't have any kind of loading screen etc.

Seiklus have continuous world.

Probably miracle-like things should happen in situations slightly beyond core gameplay.
During speed-runs or may be some restricted challenges?
It should require some above average performance from player.

I just remembered bunny-hopping in quake 2 and 3.
By jumping continuously and strafing while in mid-air, it was possible
to accelerate beyond limit and perform jumps that normally are impossible.
Ah! Rocket jump! Quadro damage + invulnerability rocket jump was awesome
Those memories...
I wonder if id Software deliberately made these features or it was coincidence?

In movies character in a tight situation can slightly overcome his/her physical limits.
What about little miracles in games?
Jumps that shouldn't reach target platform, but they do.
Surviving devastating blow from boss with 1/2 of normal minumum hitpoints.
Surviving fall from too high point.
Of course miracles require some certain condition and a bit of luck.
Probably some high combo streak, health of boss under certain threshold...
It would be nice to simulate desperate struggle, but I can't think
anything except button mashing.
Ideally it would be nice to have dynamometer controller

Take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Forever

Feels like "Crimsonland meets Geometry of War"
I like it a lot!

Fullscreen mode looks a little odd on wide screen monitor...
Probably it's worth to add an option to fix this with side bars?

p.s. download link is not working now - file not found

@ Seth
IMO in order to make something like this we need to formalize:
 - mood (or mental condition?)
 - personality
 - interpersonal relationship (I'm not sure if this 3 is enough).


Than we need to associate an event for each person to object and object to object (with person as mediator) interaction.
And make table of how each event affects each personality type in each type of mood.
Probably list of this events could be a starting point for cause-effect relationship table.

And than such a system can be viable subsystem of general 'procedurally generated story/plot' engine

@GILBERT Timmy
And than we add (hidden?) motivations and (template?) goals to the system above,
and some kind of an AI director that is managing information and events flows...
Hm.

Probably it's good idea to get some kind of little closed society to start prototyping.
Argh... Anyone have spare time machine?

@GILBERT Timmy

Well. It might work in some scenarios.
But how to generalize this?

For example. I want to generate side quest for a fantasy based roguelike game.
And by 'quest' I mean 'QUEST', not 'TASK'.
Word 'quest' somehow degraded in crpg genre over time.
'Quest' in crpg 15 years ago was something completely different than 'quest' in modern games.
So... I want to generate a side quest. Little story initiated by some hints, rumors or something like this.
But how to make non-obvious when player will encounter similar initiation for the second time?
How to avoid using templates?
If templates are used, player (who is playing for Nth time) will work toward recognition
of templates used instead of solving the quest iteself.
Partially this can be solved by making templates base really big.
But this is awkward solution.

Generating the rest of the plot based on player's decisions sounds good, but how you are going
to evaluate player's decisions? When there is X-nary choice of possible answers, it is easy.
But when you have some kind of sandbox word, it's going to be the problem of it's own.

I'm very interested in procedural quests and plot. But so far I haven't found anything acceptable in this field.
I'm afraid that in order to make this, one need to create huge database of what is logical and have sense and what is not.
If you want to make street full of strangers, each busy with his own business, and only one stands out, such a database is a must.
As well as database of 'cause-effect relationship' information.

IMO:
There is huge difference between interactive and non-interactive environments.
In a movie director will show only what is allowed to see.
Characters in a movie will act in a way that do not break story line.

In a game, where there is a tiny bit of freedom it's close to impossible to implement this.

If your procedural story will plan some unpredictable turn of events,
and there is no logical connection to what happened before,
it will break everything. If there is a matherial connection, there will be a high chance
that curious player will discover it too early...
Artificially prohibiting him from discovery will break impression too.
I'm a lil too sleepy now, I'll continue tomorrow

Procedural content=>replayablity.
"Meaning"=>predictability.

It's really hard even for a human to tell a story with finale that isn't easy to predict.
The same for other kinds of procedural content.
If content is generated according to (relatively) strict rules of logic and common sense,
it would be ... boring?
In hand crafted environments it is possible to make atractive design decisions.
But I serously doubt that it is possible to make procedurally...

I started game with admin privelegies and now it works fine
Either you are trying to open some of game resources in read/write mode instead of read only or you are trying to save something in a game directory instead of %APPDATA%/Dash/.

Finished it. Nice little game!
The only complain is absense of hit sound when you are slaping these pesky sharks.