No Time To Play

I finally took a break from game development this week, mostly due to my brain refusing to focus on anything resembling code. So instead I’ve been following news more closely than usual, and making plans.

On the news side, the 2011 Interactive Fiction Competition is in full swing, and looking good. There’s a good handful of CYOA titles, mostly browser-based, and at least two experimental works. A refreshing variety of authoring systems are represented, including Alan and the reborn Quest, and the comp enjoys mainstream coverage. As a minus, not only there are still untested games being entered, but I caught one author openly advertising that!

Let’s make one thing clear: a game that hasn’t been beta-tested is half-finished at best. I don’t care if it’s as simple as Hamurabi, it will have issues. Don’t open it up to the public in that state.

In the way of plans, I’ve decided to pause the development of Dungeon Romp for now, and start a more streamlined, graphical roguelike instead. It will be based on a novel concept, and make a better browser game, in addition to being portable. When I resume work on Dungeon Romp, it will be running in the natural environment of traditional roguelikes: a Unix terminal. That way I hope to satisfy both casual and hardcore players without too many compromises.

But first I have some other things to get out of the way.

After a week of barely adding anything to Dungeon Romp, I have to admit being overtaken by burnout again.

On the plus side, I’ve added the all-important time management, and it shows. Also, mobs can now have natural armor, and defense is no longer based off the same attribute as attack. That should allow considerably more tactical diversity… once I get around to taking advantage of it. The bug where a mob other than the player could trigger the end of the demo is gone, too. Last but not least, now there can be non-portable items, good for making signage and such.

On the minus side, it’s obvious to me now that three levels aren’t nearly enough even for a demo. So much for my code size target. Of course, adding another set of levels is a whole can of worms. And I still have to add ranged combat. At least now I know how. Probably.

But first, a break from programming. See you around.

I’m up to my ears in work again. All those shiny projects. On top of that, what little I did to Dungeon Romp is mostly refactoring work. In the way of user-visible improvements, now the game tells you when you’ve reached the end. You also get light sources and poisonous food (which is nevertheless useful). The really good news? I still have those extra 200 LOC, enough to fit another level generator, or else the much needed ranged combat and time management, for which I’ve just came up with an idea.

I also realized that until now there was no indication whatsoever that Dungeon Romp is open source. But like all my other games, you can have it under the terms of the MIT License. Enjoy!

We interrupt our regular program to let you know that Ramus has been updated. The new version has two changes:

• A bug was fixed whereas the the starting fragment was not being parsed for templates when initially displayed.
• Smooth scrolling has been added, based on this ITnewb tutorial.

The latter may still need some fine-tuning, but I cleaned up the most egregious idiocies in the code, and in any event it’s better than without the effect. Enjoy!

My latest game went online on Friday. I spent Saturday coding improvements, and there’s one still on my list. But I forced myself to take a break, not just in order to avoid burnout, but also in order to summarize how it went. Funny how such a small project can teach you so much.

What went bad: 8 months in the drawer.

I actually had the base mechanic implemented in the summer of 2010, but then a combination of real life and not knowing where to take it from there conspired to keep the project in suspension. And when I finally figured out how to continue, worked kicked up again, sapping my creative energy.

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Sooo… I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I’m working on a new game. It’s too early to show you more than a screenshot, but it’s coming along nicely. What’s it about? Imagine a combination between Pac-Man and Robots, except with a few twists. It stayed in Limbo for a while, as I had the base game mechanic down, but no idea how to use it. Now I’m past that hurdle, it shouldn’t be long.

The bad news is, of course, that this post is late. You’d think that after four years and a half of blogging I’d know to prepare better. But nooo…

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So, the world of Warcraft is coming to an end… Wait, I am not a doomsayer and no, I am not talking about the “World of Warcraft” game itself, but about the current state of the virtual world inside it. In Azeroth the year 2012 will come sooner than expected. On December the 7th, 2010 to be more precisely. That sounds more accurate than the Mayan predictions, doesn’t it?

And, apparently we are not talking about any meteor, nor an asteroid, nor aliens but… a mighty dragon. Yes, the end of all will be… Deathwing, a bad-ass dragon.
Say what? A dragon? But wait, we’ve been killing dragons in WOW since 2005, how could a dragon put an end to the… world?

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Just a quick heads-up: Canvas Demos links to a couple of tutorials that teach how to write games in Javascript, using the HTML5 canvas element.

The first is called Accelerated Game Programming with HTML5 and canvas and teaches how to create a simple game: basic program structure and canvas programming, double buffering, handling map data and how to put everything together.

The second, Physics for Lazy Game Developers, is more like a cheat sheet, also using HTML5 and JS. I’ve covered about one third of it myself here, with explanations; the rest is just as easy, and definitely useful.

The two materials complement each other very well, and apart from the rendering technology they can easily be adapted to other platforms.

Every time some artist, or author, or publisher moves to a “pay what you want” or “freemium” business model, trolls inevitably show up to yell how this is never going to work, despite numerous examples to the contrary. A similar outcry could be heard a few months ago, when several high-profile MMORPGs announced moving to a free-to-play model. So I guess they’re in trouble by now?

In a word, NOPE. Ars Technica gives a quick heads-up on how Lord of the Rings Online is doing:

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So, this week’s been abuzz with talk of old games. And I don’t mean Good Old Games — is there anyone who hasn’t heard of their little publicity stunt and its aftermath? No, this is about something closer to my heart, namely classic computer games, and how they are or not suitable to a modern audience.

It all started with this article about giving old games to young students and the, ahem, interesting results of the experiment. This was followed by a flurry of reactions, ranging from Jeff Vogel writing, essentially, “well duh, old games suck” to Jay Barnson of Rampant Games fame defending them fiercely (unsurprisingly, given his recent declaration of love for retrogaming), with The Escapist going for an unbiased summary that failed to draw any conclusion.

This is all very subjective, of course. But I would like to point out a few things.

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