Proxemit still alive

Proxemit is coming along nicely. Most recently I've added a little intro, where a "rat" finds you and releases your pod from it's locks in the floor just before a sentry turns up and chases the rat away.

It is insanely hard to figure out if this is actually a real little indie game or not. Till now I've only been thinking about it as a "nothing" that maybe a couple of people would ever experience. But looking at the catalogue of different indie bundles I'm slowly starting to think about Proxemit as a viable though short indie effort.

My further plan is to, when I have time that is, to add maybe a couple of more rooms/challenges, such as a couple of different lock mechanisms and ultimately a boss of some sort in the end. If there is cream for the crop then a sort of "end" would be nice to have, but I can surely figure out a way to wrap it quickly if that would be necessary.

Merry Newyear

This year will hopefully incompass good things.

Proxemit Playable Updated

I updated the playable version of Proxemit. The build has all the fixes and suggestions from test session #1. Content-wise there is still a way to go.
I'd love to double the number of levels, add an enemy of some sort - a sentry maybe, which lies dormant until triggered. When triggered it'll chase the player down. A final upgrade will aid the player towards the end - or I'll settle with a fast reloading ******** which is already in the game, but not used as a weapon.
Another enemy (or the sentry) could also scan the surrounding area with a laser which hits the invisible walls. The beam rotates and therefore there'll always be a safe area where the player can move. If the laser hits the player the player dies and the level restarts.
The game is also in dire need of a proper ending.

Anyway grab it here:

Download Proxemit.zip

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Proxemit miraculously works

Proxemit - which I've destroyed some months ago, after applying changes and fixes from playtest #1, now works. Somehow it is impossible to recreate the fatal bug, so I'll calmly look the other way, and ignore my hunches about what and where it was. Fingers crossed that it'll stay on the other side of the river... Shouts* Laughs*

Anyway, let's talk about how I save progress in Proxemit!

I'm saving everything in small ini files. Hush hush. I know ~ you don't have to tell me, but please do if you absolutely must, I'd love to hear how to do it properly. 

So every orb you pick up, tells the game to open an ini file, then look up the orb by adding together the orbs x and y coordinates only to use it as a sort of unique ID. Every ID is stored under the levels individual ID, so some orbs might have the same specific ID, but combined with the level ID, no orb will share the same. 

An orb in level_1 placed at 400x, 500y, will then be easy to find by going through the ini (the ini read command does this automatically) to locate the section which is called [1] - for level_1. Then the game will check for an ID called 400500 and see if it is equal to 1. If it is 1 the orb will be deleted and a "dead orb" will be placed in it's spot. If it does not exist in the ini, the game will register it, for later use. When first registered the orb will get the value of 0. So it does exist in the database, but it has yet to be collected by the player. 

I do the same with exits. When an exit has been activated it's variable "open" will be set to 1. Then when a level ends by the player going to the next/previous, a special "level end" event will register in the Exits.ini if the exit is open or not. 

The reason I do it this way is to effectively make the objects register them selves, and leave me out of it. I love the fact that, with code, this is possible. Every object that needs registration has been programmed to do this. Gamemaker is a trooper when it comes to these kind of things, because it has the ability to check an ini, if it doesn'e exist, it creates it. The same goes for the "posts" inside an ini. It creates them if they do not exist.

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The failed remains of Proxemit

Proxemit ~ my game from early 2013, which I completely destroyed after the many fixes and applied suggestions from my good friend Martin Fasterholdt, who play-tested it a couple of months ago, should be fixable some way or another. I'm desperately trying to pick up the ashes and debug and debug_message my way out of the problem. A problem which I do not have any understanding of.
All I know is that it is some sort of infinite loop, but it is super hard to find, since GameMaker does not give me much to go on. However the few times that I've miraculously gotten info from GM it has been very helpful, but when I fix what I thought was the problem nothing changes. Proxemit remains unplayable ~

BUT - the now dated, yet playable older version is still available here ->

edit: It's a lie, it has been replaced with a newer and working version.

Download Proxemit.zip

If you play it, please get back to me - tell me what you think. Also keep in mind this is an early version, some features are not polished, and amount of content is at 50%. Yes in the end it will be a short experience. The reason for that is that the concept is pretty "hard" and might not be entertaining for a longer period of time, not without expanding it beyond it's original scope. Which of course is a possibility, but why not move on?

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It works! Finger That Shit is alive

I got it to work. The SDK and NDK and whatnots were somehow out of date. What I didn't realize was that in the SDK install manager alot of things was depending on things that was "missing".

Anyway now that I got the device testing in Game Maker to work, I got to test my awkwardly stupid touch game idea. The concept works almost as I expected, however my phone and therefore my testing device has severe lag on the touch inputs, which results in the "buttons" being moved around is half a second late. It's super annoying!

A couple of stages more, and then I'll be off to another idea, that I got on my way home from work today. - A racing/driving game ~ also made for touch devices.

Testing on phone fail.

I'm having huge troubles testing on my android. Gamemaker supports device testing with the pro edition, without additional add ons. But It seems like it has trouble getting the game to run on my phone which is connected through USB.

Right now it looks like this, and i have several features working - in a sort of computer debug mode, which lets you push things and they stay pushed.

Finger That Shit restarted

Yesterday I was browsing my ever expanding library of crappy, deprecated, given-up-on, stupid game projects. Finger That Shit was always a gem of mine in some respects. It has a cool style, well fitting my hOLYfBlog effort and best of all - it is (can be) easy to produce. So for a coding moron like me, "easy" is the only way to get anything out the door.
Getting something, just something, out the door is more rewarding than anything. Doing projects that never see the light of day does not do you any good. I felt the kick when I madly finished WTF Action years ago. Got over 50.000 views, and many hundreds of reviews and general feedback. I know on newgrounds it might not count as anything, but I think it does. People loving something gives strength and an inner craving for more. Constructive critique makes you better, yeah - but it doesn't give you any rush in your veins to produce MORE.

So looking at Finger That Shit made me realize that I can actually make this game pretty easily. Back in the day I only made a fake test, a video which can be seen in an earlier post on this blog. It was made in the belief that me and my then co-worker and good friend Stefan should do something, but he became busy and was moving, and stuff, so that went into the flute.
So yesterday I made it myself and by midnight I had a working prototype - yes with only one path to follow, and wonky touch code for handling the "button" that you have to "finger" through the stage.

For a real working slice I need the following:

• Multiple paths to follow, and buttons to finger
• Button locks that hold onto a button. Has to be pressed to be able to move button.
• Checkpoints, that has to be fingered before the goal is unlocked.
• Hazards that you have to time your way through. If a hazard touches a button the level restarts.
• Actual touch device executable - I don't own the Game Maker extension that allows for this.

I can feel that I become more and more confident in Game Maker.

So today is my day off, not from Playdead, but from tampering with things at home. Maybe tomorrow...

Helmet Game HD fakery

More design and a short video of how the HD remake of a nonexistent game could look like.

The blopgun, the dragon gun and the plastic sword you've seen in the pixel version of this game. See it here: Helmet Game

The military grade heavy duty bobbler is also from my ancient Helmet Game gamemaker project.

And here the short test which I promised to dig out if possibly possible. Made in AE overnight.

Finger That Shit

Before I realized that this game was already being made (I think it wasn't made by then (past tense)) - a friend and I was talking about this touch game, which I wanted to call "Finger That Shit" - and I still would! Blinking smiley, happy smiley, blinking smiley.

Here is the video:

Well the concept is viable. I guess there are a couple of offerings though, but nothing with this attitude and angle.
On another note, it is soo much fun to make a fake video of a game.

Helmet Game HD Remake

Years ago I made a moving test of this, using After Effects. If I can dig it out - i'll totally share it here. It looked pretty need.

On the other hand I'm not really sure if I like this sort of aesthetic. But secretly I do. 

The little guy is pretty sweet though. Gazing on him might reveal that he in fact is a HD remake of the little dude from this project: Helmet Game

Explorer

Some old, very old, quick sketches. Very quick. Just for something - explorery kind of thing. 

The lava streams are pretty graphical I know. But I think it would look quite nice.

Obviously inspired by the side of the island in Cave Story.

I wanted a drone that you could use to explore remote places where your character would never be able to reach. And by never I mean never.

Rogue space explorer

Stretched C64 inspired pixel aesthetic is right up my alley. And I didn't even know that until I reread some of my Retro gamer magazines from years back. This is made by kind of cheating. The actual assets have double pixels instead of being half the width and then stretched during rendering. I wanted it to actually do it in rendering, but then I would have to keep track of half/full speeds, and rotation would be out of the question. 

At this point the little guy moves, and he is able to pick up things like the boxes and the propane tanks. If he touches the health packs it'll disappear and he receives health. Buttons open closest door available. And the chest in the upper middle of the screenshot contains gold. Lots of gold. Like 30 or 35 gold. Which is alot.

Did I just make Epic Snake playable?

I kind of picked up Epic Snake again. The urge to just wrap something, even if it means that I do not "finish" it is unstoppable. None of the projects here is really supposed to be "finished" - I'm sure that it would be possible, but not without a strong coder for me to spar with. 

Try it out here:

Download EpicSnake.zip

Enjoy! if possible.

Well I was just procrastinating a bit for an hour or so while I didn't know what i wanted to do on a secret project - and it ended up with a somewhat working somewhat lacking Epic Snake experience, alpha experience to be more precise.

Mind not the jaggy transitions, and the fact that there is nothing more than a couple of stages to take care of.
The whole idea behind the game is as earlier described to be brutally hard and unforgiving. However to merit that kind of philosophy I want it to "open up" with "more things" to do. Well - as with everything else here Epic Snake is merely a simple manifestation of an untested concept. Keep that in mind!

Snake

Snake clone - with action and more stuff. Going on... Stuff.

Grav

A game where you manage a small satellite orbiting planets, moons, stations.

Mainly I wanted to make a game filled with gauges, diagnostics, stats, specs numbers, visualizations of different mechanics. Would be really cool. But it takes too much effort for a non programmer I'd never get anywhere with this. Well I got somewhere, but the amount of skill required to finish this sort of project is astounding. Sadly.

Proxemit

I came really far with this one. My good friend Martin Fasterholdt helped me test it one day after work. I took the critique with me home on two standard size ordinary stationary. Fixed almost everything - but realized that one of my fixes had completely destroyed the game. Not the gameplay but the actual game. It is now in a state of numb void of nothing. It does not run, and if it does it breaks at specific points in the gameplay.

Check out an early pre-critique build here:

edit: This download has been replaced with a newer working version.

Download Proxemit.zip

I've searched and searched for hours and weeks upon end for the bug, implemented oceans of debug messages but alas.

Some day I might return to it. And give it a proper spanking. But for now I cannot look at it, I cannot be near it. I hate myself for not being a programmer, I hate myself for not being able to correct the mistake I made. 

Screw this stupid game project!

Vivid forest

Being a blue slime is up for discussion. The forest however is alive!

The parallax sensation in this forest scene is extensively awesome!

A little brick structure. Not so cool. Sticking with the forest!

Cityscape horizons

Massive randomly generated futuristic city.

Small structures randomly put together to form an endless city ocean.

Add all

I'll just add it all. Except a couple of projects that actually have some uniqueness to them.