Sep282009

Game Makin’: nonograms?

Nonogram game screenshot #1

Makin’ another game! It’s a nonogram game, inspired by Mario’s Picross (read more details about the whole genre at Game Set Watch).

Admittedly, nonograms aren’t for everyone. I enjoy them, however, because they’re simple logic puzzles that have a visual component… they’re more interesting to me than the straight-up numbers of sudoku. When I explained the concept to Chandra, she seemed interested! It’s my goal to make something that she’ll play through =]

1 comment · Written by Nathan at 9:19 am · Tags , , ,

Nov182008

Gannroids

In the breaks I have at work I downloaded and installed Adobe’s CS4 software and decided that I would make a quick little prototype game just to learn about ActionScript 3.0 and CS4.  I did what I usually do which is to make an Asteroids clone.  This time the theme would be one of my co-workers; I wanted to blow up his head, what can I say? *grin*  The collision is a little funky due to my sloppiness/laziness but I’m satisfied for the amount of time I put into it; which I would say perhaps 12 hours over a week and a half.  Most of the time was spent learning ActionScript idiosyncrasies.  Here is the result:

For some reason the transparent pixels wouldn’t save when I uploaded to WordPress, so you get square heads.

Gannroids

CS4 has some interesting features.  One can enter media objects onto the stage and bind them to a keyword and ActionScript file.  Its seems cool at first and really easy, however it only seems useful if you have one or a few instances of a class.  For the most part I just bound the stage to my game.as file and let game.as handle everything.  I created classes for Asteroids and Bullets to learn how to do class work in ActionScript and I ran into a few problems but for the most part everything was seamless.  (As seamless as it can be writing anything in a new language).

To look at some specific problems I encountered, continue reading.

(more…)

1 comment · Written by Tyler at 2:26 pm · Tags , , ,

Apr032008

Penny Arcade’s “Greenhouse”
distribution service

I kinda quit reading Penny Arcade regularly a while ago… the comics were just too hit or miss for a while; I really didn’t like the fact that I had to read a blog entry to understand what was, in essence, a gaming industry “political” cartoon. I think that their level of influence over their audience is also a bit disproportionate, but that’s just my own bitterness speaking.

Regardless, a while ago they teamed up with a development studio called Hothead Games (an aside: they’re doing some interesting stuff… you’ll no doubt hear more about them in the future) to produce their own episode-based game series. I hear good things about the first entry, which is encouraging. However, what’s really interesting is the digital distribution service that is going to make the game available. In essence, they’re rolling their own online game store. That, in itself, is not interesting. But the fact that they will help distribute indie-developed games is. Being featured on this service seems like a sure-fire way to (at least initial) financial success as an indie. The qualifier being that only “Tycho and Gabe approved” games will make it.

Read the Interview by Wired’s Chris Kohler

No comments · Written by Nathan at 11:20 am · Tags , ,