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:
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.
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.
Made this video quite a while ago, but neglected to post it here. It was made for an art exhibition (Expo Arte y Bicicleta) open to submissions by anyone, and in pretty much any format (other than video, it included paintings, sculptures, volumetric collages, music, poetry…), as long as it featured the bicycle in some way. Fun idea. I quickly made this with recycled footage from Volcano. I love these kinds of collages, as you can see here and here. In the end, the one day I visited the exhibition (which was in a public area in a Metro station, here in Santiago), the projector that was supposed to rotatively display the videos wasn’t even on. Ah, well.
Also with stuff from Volcano, but more recently (just five days ago) I made this 5 by 5: five clips, five seconds in length. A quickie, just for fun.
I forgot to report back then, but my game, Viewpoints, got tenth place in the competition it was created for, TIGSource’s Cockpit Competition. Considering that there were 41 entries, that’s not too bad.
More surprising is that Sheets, the game I entered in TIGSource’s latest, the Adult/Educational Competition, also got me in tenth place. This is so surprising due to my making the game in a rush to get something in at all, and it being mostly just a ‘choose your own adventure’ interactive story. More so, because there were a few very good games that didn’t even make it into the top ten, such as Gregory Weir’s Silent Conversation. All I can say is that I got lucky, this time.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve completed a new videogame—another entry in another TIGSource competition. The theme, this time, is ‘cockpits’. My game is pretty much on the fringe in the way it implements the theme, though. What I originally intended to make was some manner of car driving game, inspired by the original Out Run, since I’m such a big fan of the series, and because I love the aesthetic of that kind of low-tech 3D. I might do this in the future; we’ll see how creating such an engine will go for me. But the game I ended up conceiving, because I only had roughly a week to make it (until the deadline was extended another week), is not about driving anything at all, it is merely about looking; how much more simple can a game’s interface and set of verbs get? You are still in some kind of convertible sportscar, but you’re just sitting on the passenger’s seat.
I’ve coined the term ‘narrative exploration’ to describe Viewpoints, because the very core of the concept is about exploring, but not a physical space, like in, say, Metroid, but, instead, a space of different possible stories—a narrative space. The concept itself was shamelessly ripped from Terry Cavanagh’s Pathways —a short game I can wholeheartedly recommend—, though his execution is different from mine (I’m not quite that flagrant).
Also, for this past April Fools’, I made a variation of Viewpoints and released it as if it were the finished game for the competition. I took the Out Run and Sega inspiration further, and created something quite ridiculous. I call it Winner. (It may be worth mentioning that some of the contents of this variation were taken straight from Sega-made games.)
I made a very quick game (though not quite as quick as the Klik of the Month ones) for a competition that is due today. The game is called The Lake, and it’s for the TIGSource Commonplace Book Competition. The objective was to create a game inspired by one or several of the brief ideas that H.P. Lovecraft jotted down in his Commonplace Book, most of which never got turned into full stories. This is what I did; my game is not ‘based on’ as much as it’s just ‘triggered’ by one of these ideas, though.
My goal was to create a game that would not take me too long to make. I wanted just a full day’s work, it ended up being three, but that’s quite okay. It was created in Construct, which truly is a great promise for the future, but so full of bugs for the time being. I managed, though. The end result is more of a short interactive story; it’s completable in about a single minute, which is a common factor for all my games so far, but in this case the experience is more focused on the narrative. I’m pretty proud of the fact that everything in the game was created by me (well, except for the engine, of course), though I wish I had the time to do something more with the sound design, which was part of the original plan.
As I mentioned above, the idea for the game just came to my mind as if it was a dream when I read one of the entries in the Book. This sounds pretty romantic, but rather than describe the creative process, I want it to be apparent that I applied very few filters on this initial flash. This is why the game may not be very coherent, or have a palpable meaning; nevertheless, it’s there, and I tried to make it as close to this initial spark as it was possible in the time that I had available to do it. I think I’ve just always had a thing for surrealism and their techniques, and this is why I like this kind of pure, unadulterated slice of subconscious, which I oftentimes value more than very produced and over-thought pieces of work. There’s more to life than logic, is what I say.
What happens if you mix a group of people, an old and crippled game-making software, and two hours on a Saturday evening? Awesomeness happens, that is what. It’s the basic premise of the Klik of the Month Klub; you grab Klik & Play, a buggy, limited and old (from 1994) software that is nevertheless endearing and fun to use (also free,) then make a game with it during those two hours. The results are often broken and nigh-unplayable, but hilarious or even enlightening.
You can’t do a lot during that short span of time, so not being overly ambitious is key. Last saturday was my first time participating in the monthly event, and I thought that I was going to have about an hour’s worth of time to work on my game, since I was supposed to go visit some photography exhibitions, which in the end didn’t happen. Given my lack of familiarity with the (at times esoteric) software, my humble aspirations were, nevertheless, extremely helpful. My design document, if we can call it that, was scribbled only a few minutes before the two hours started. Sadly, I ended up going 40 minutes over the deadline, which is not actually enforced, since it’s all just in good fun, but still. The end result is a game I called Runaway Blast; you can download the slightly polished version of the game, or, if you’re feeling adventurous, the original from the official thread of the KOTMK #14, though you’ll need some DLL files only included in the other package.
It was an exciting experience, being there in the IRC channel, everyone making terrible games together, sharing advice (or asking for it, as I was doing) and just having fun. Afterwards, everyone trying out each others games, sharing praise or anecdotes. I will certainly try to be there next time too.
So, my game. The main idea was to make it a tense pursuit, to be outnumbered and with little resources, that is, only your wits (and some timed bombs) to aid you against the brainless mass of enemies. Which is not unlike a zombie game (survival horror,) now that I think about it. The map that I drew in my sketch illustrates this, but being surrounded from every side would have made it difficult to be strategic. The resulting mechanics are not too bad; not incredibly original or engaging, but for a first attempt, and for having been made in under three hours, it’s not a half bad result. Of course, what I’m not mentioning here is that the game is broken: you can go through walls, even though you’re not meant to. The limitations in the software made this unavoidable; attempting to overcome them would have costed me too much time, and I’m certain that it would have been worthless, considering the scope of my efforts. Had all conditions met, my character would have actually followed the pointer with a specific velocity, which would have fixed the wall-crossing bug and also made the game more challenging, since you would not be able to outrun your enemies quite as easily. The game will stay as it is, though, so we will all have to learn to live with that.
