Jul 18th, 2010

Drawing thing for KOTM games

In the second hour of yesterday’s KOTM I made this Flash drawing thing.

Give it a try

May 16th, 2010

Deconstructivism games

This month I made a kind of klik that took advantage of the foundations laid out in Wirewalk, Prosopamnesia, and other unreleased experiments also dealing with image searches. This made it so easy to make, that I achieved my initial concept within the first hour. This first idea involved no interactions, so I used the following hour (of two that the monthly event lasts) to add that layer of interactivity.

Deconstructivism (Flash)

You may leave it untouched and it will ‘play itself’. Or you may click and flick on the image displayed to alter it manually. If it takes too long to load, or if you want a new picture, refresh the page.

May 5th, 2010

Prosopamnesia games

After Wirewalk, I felt inspired to do more work using images acquired through web searches. Yes, I failed to mention it when I released that one, but the images are obtained at run-time through Google Images. I’m rather proud of this particular result:

Prosopamnesia (Flash)

It was made for The Games Collective negative capability pageant. For sound, I used the port of DrPetter’s sfxr to AS3, by Thomas Vian. Also used the Google API AS3 library by Joris Timmerman, as for Wirewalk.

Apr 5th, 2010

Wirewalk games

I’ve made a thing for an event that Stephen Lavelle describes as a ‘pageant’ —a competition sans the competitive aspect—, with the theme ‘bricolage’. (I made a promotional picture for the event, too.)

The thing I made is called Wirewalk. It’s something that, I feel, is best not to describe. Just try it and see if you like it—shouldn’t take you over a couple of minutes.

Wirewalk (Flash)

Dec 14th, 2009

Climbrunner games

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to participate in this weekend’s Ludum Dare, as it had been too long since I last made (and released) a game. This time I didn’t make a fancy timelapse video or anything like, but I did spend some time on Friday learning to use the beautiful Flixel, and then the weekend bending it to my nonstandard needs. The result is a game, unlike last time, though not exactly what I set out to do. Still, it’s playable. And it fits the ‘exploration’ theme.

I made this animated GIF over a year ago, thinking of an idea for a game I envisioned for the Game Boy Advance. This game was to be a bichrome, Knytt–inspired platformer. I decided to reuse the core of this idea: that is, the running on walls and ceilings, and a tad more. It was simplified to the essence, though: the little guy won’t stop running, so all you can do is jump in order to steer him where you want to go. It feels a bit like controlling a jumping, sticky train.

Play Climbrunner (Flash)

This time around I didn’t neglect to provide the source code.

Oct 14th, 2009

New portfolio page musings

When agj​.cl first went live, the only thing that was there was my old portfolio website, made in Flash. It was my first experience with actionscript, back in 2007. I took it down a while ago because it had grown too outdated, and since it was so hackishly conceived, I wasn’t planning on updating it. Well, I’ve finally made my new portfolio page. Things have changed enough that only two of the works I selected for it remain from the old Flash portfolio.

I’ve archived the older one (in Spanish) for posterity.

Aug 31st, 2009

Cave Trip games

I had things to do and places to be Friday night and all Saturday, so only got started on my Ludum Dare entry by Saturday night. LD is a 48 hour competition in which I also participated four months ago; back then, I made Heart. This time, I didn’t get to make such a complete game. The theme was ‘caverns’, so I had planned to make a rhythmic game about flying through a cavern (okay, more like a tunnel) and avoiding obstacles to the beat. It was actually pretty hard to just get the visual effect right, so I got only as far as adding some randomized obstacles, and throwing in a sound effect upon hitting one. So, it’s far from a complete game. The code that would allow me to add in a music track and have it be synchronized to the images is already there, at least.

Play Cave Trip (Flash)

This one was made using FlashDevelop and Flex SDK 4, coded in actionscript 3. Below you can see all those hours of work, squashed into just a few seconds.

Aug 13th, 2009

Sheets games

This latest TIGSource video game competition has a double theme: adult/educational. I have to say, it’s a fantastic combination. The idea was that entrants could create a game under one or both themes. I wish more entered games had used both simultaneously, but, well, not even I did that in the end.

During most of the duration of the competition, I didn’t find the time to make my game. Also, I was finding it hard to come up with an idea. Educational games are tough to make; they require familiarity with the taught subject, therefore they involve plenty of research, usually. I wanted to make an educational game foremost, but the adult theme also intrigued me, so I was thinking of incorporating it somehow. When I finally came up with an idea, it was already too late to really consider trying it; a week wasn’t going to be enough. That idea was a puzzle game about additive and substractive color theory, which I still think is good enough to archive for a future opportunity. But since it would take me too long to make that, and educational games in general were already out of the question, I decided to just go for the other theme.

Next came the question of how to make any game in a short enough amount of time. I’ve had the idea, for some time, of creating a small engine for text-based games in Flash, which I would use to make a series of games, and which I would also release independently. Trying to plan that proved to be too difficult with my limited knowledge of programming best practices, design patterns, and whatnot. But I figured I could use the occasion of the competition to just hard code a game in that fashion, which would be an easy thing to program, and in the process figure out what kind of structure my code would need to turn it into an engine. So, by making this game, I fulfilled two goals: I entered the competition, and I learned a bit more about programming.

The game is text-only, but it does deal with subjects such as sex and rape, so it is meant for mature players.

Play Sheets (Flash)

Apr 28th, 2009

Heart, complete games

Heart is finished. It is a short, bleak game that questions one particular human ideal/cliché.

Play Heart (Flash)

The game was created originally for the Ludum Dare competition, and polished during the following week. Coded in Actionscript 3, using FlashDevelop as IDE and compiled using the Flex SDK. For the graphics I used Photoshop and Illustrator, and for the audio I used LMMS and Audacity. (continue reading)

Apr 20th, 2009

Heart & Hope games

What you see above is my computer screen during the past weekend (each hour reduced to 2.5 seconds), as I make two games for two events that were held concurrently. One is a competition called Ludum Dare, on which, during the 48 hours of its duration, participants are expected to create a game by themselves and ‘from scratch’. The week prior, participants vote on a theme. ‘Advancing wall of doom’ won this time, which is not one I’m too fond of, but I did participate and make a game. Or two, in fact, because for the other event, my usual two-hour Klik of the Month, I made a game based on the same theme.

Heart is the name of my Ludum Dare entry. The game is not final, and neither is the name, so let’s say it’s the competition version’s name. It was inspired by Stephen Lavelle’s Defect. It was made for Flash, using the Flex SDK and coded in Actionscript 3. I’ll probably post more about it in the future, when I decide that the game is finished.

Hope! is what I called my Klik of the Month. It was made in Construct, so it’s Windows only. You will need the latest DirectX to run it.