Weekly Links #170

Hello, everyone. I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I've been working on a game based on my recently revived 2.5D engine. The bad news is, I'm running out of steam and might switch tracks for a while. So for now, have some screenshots:

Yeah, yeah, I went right back to first-person after explaining how it doesn't really work, but the visible pathways should help. As for the limited draw distance, I already had to redo the backgrounds once as it is, and anything further away looks bad in the first place. The theme just requires first person here, it can't be helped. As for the map generator, you might recognize the one from RogueBot, somewhat refined. It feels kind of cramped in a game with tile-by-tile motion, but enemies and limited moves should fix that. Whenever I get to it, that is.

On the plus side, hey, I got to practice my Inkscape some more, and people seem to like the look. Also, refactoring code can be very fun, not to mention good practice. So yay.

In the way of news, we have an interview with Sid Meyer, then a history of hit points, that turns out to be quite complex and unexpected. And while Konstantinos Dimopoulos kicks off a series on medieval urbanism that's equally useful to fantasy writers and game developers, Bruno Dias shares some thoughts about replacing the interactive fiction parser, that complement my own from a while ago. Clearly these ideas — which have been floating around for a while — are coalescing into something solid. It was about time, too.

Last but not least, via Vintage Is the New Old comes the news that next month there will be a Sinclair Basic game jam, which is especially tempting to someone like me. I even know what game I'd like to try and make. But whether I'll actually take part is another story entirely.

Until next week, stay motivated.