It has been a very, very long time since I’ve talked about this, but I have some things to say.

After making Minerbot, I started thinking of improvements for Minerbot as it was, but those never got anywhere.

Then I made Secretnet for another Mini Ludum Dare compo. Did great (by my standards), also deserving a sequel. But I started my summer internship and didn’t get much done.

Now, much later, I’m in college. Right now Minerbot 2 is slightly ahead, and I’m focusing what little effort I have on it. It took me a while to decide on this–my few fans on Kongregate push for both sequels just about equally, it seems. Finally I decided on Minerbot 2 because it would (hopefully) not require as much polished content as Secretnet 2.

A screenshot of the current version, just for kicks.

Heading into finals week soon, so I don’t expect to get any work done in the immediate future. However, I do think I’ll get some stuff done during winter break.

I also might post a little feature addition list for Minerbot 2 before then.

Woot! From this handy image that I’m hotlinking from here, you can see that Secretnet did well in the minild:

And congratulations to everyone else who participated, too! Fun times.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another Ludum Dare event, another game.

This one, the Mini Ludum Dare #27, had the theme of all talk, as well as a phrase that was suggested be included in each game: “I think we can work something out…”

So, I made Secretnet. It’s an adventure game that takes place inside a fake IRC client. It’s short, so instead of writing a description that would likely take longer for you to read than to play the game, I’ll just give you a link to the competition entry page:

(Click on the image. Or here. I made the text a link because people usually look for text links and assume image links go to bigger versions of images. Anyway, just click one or the other, and you’ll be fine.)

Now I’ll get back to work on Minerbot 2.

I’ve been really busy lately, but it looks like I’ll have a lot of free time soon to work on stuff. First, I decided I’d post a little about Minerbot’s sequel.

First off, Minerbot was a bigger success than I thought it would be. It’s a shame nobody took the chance to sponsor it–too bad. Thanks to this game, I was able to earn enough money on Kongregate to finally receive it a month after the end of this month.

After the break, information about the sequel. Read the rest of this entry »

I decided to put the current version of Minerbot up on Kongregate and work on improvements in a sequel.

Have fun!

*: It will be updated, improved, etc., but it’s functionally complete.

It’s finally back up on FlashGameLicense, up for bidding. Unless you have a game on FGL yourself, you won’t be able to use this link, but here it is just in case: Minerbot.

It has been a long time in development, but it’s finally finished. I can’t think of anything I didn’t improve since the last time I posted a link to the game publicly.
Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I saw this offer of a free BlackBerry PlayBook to developers who put a game on their market, App World. I was already thinking about porting the game 0xC0A57ED I had made for a Mini Ludum Dare competition to a touch-screen device, and the possibility of a free PlayBook convinced me to go with it.

Title screen of 0xC0A57ED's old Flash version, back from the minild.

It has been a while since I’ve posted here. Many events of very pressing importance (EVPIs) have drawn me away from continuous development, but I felt like I could spare the time to at least share how far all these projects have gone.

AGP, now Minerbot: In the very last stage of development. My tutorial has been long overdue for a redo, and that redo is exactly what I’m trying to effect right now. It’s going to go back up for sponsorship on FlashGameLicense.com (as I was unable to get a response from Kongregate’s sponsorship email address). After that, it all depends on the sponsor(s).

Mystery of Yrevoc Sid: I immediately dove for a graphical overhaul, but the matrix math became frustrating. The way to fix it all is somewhat obvious, but it’s hard to tell how efficient my solution is. Thinking about jumping for opengl at this point for the guaranteed graphical acceleration and workable matrix stack.

0xC0A57ED: Finished in a plane-flight-infused weekend, alongside an EVPI. A simple arcade game made for MiniLD 23.

Danger Love (working title): I really just refer to this as “the game I made for the last minild” as it is very unfinished. Currently features some strange dialog and buggy levels past number 2. Made for MiniLD 24, but I didn’t have enough time to finish it (more EVPIs).

If I forgot any other projects I was working on, chances are I’m not actively working on them anymore. (Not that I’m able to work on these very actively, EVPIs and all.)

However, I have an idea for a new project I’d like to add.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sure nobody’s asking this question, but I think it deserves answering.

First of all, I renamed it Minerbot. After someone on the #ludumdare IRC channel pointed out that “A Greedy Profession” was unwieldy, I had to agree. I’ve been shortening it to AGP forever, and in my opinion, my game isn’t cool enough to be called by an acronym. WoW, CoD, etc. are able to get away with it because they’re really well-known. If I say “AGP” to anyone, it either means nothing or (to the technologically-inclined) a type of motherboard expansion slot. Therefore, Minerbot.

Secondly, I gave up on the big graphics overhaul, but I still made some neat additions in this area. A little more glow, a lot more font, and an overlaid pattern to give it some texture. I think it helps.

What I was first trying to do was add graphics everywhere–on the tiles, on the miner, on everything. It didn’t work, for technical and gameplay reasons. (I had to zoom in to make the textures possible, yet this made the game difficult for those who were used to it as a full-view game.) This brief foray caused frustration and anger, and delayed the game until recently. Next time, I’m adding graphical capability first.

I also started to use Kongregate’s API for high scores and statistics. Obviously, this means I plan on putting it there. And hopefully soon.

First thing you’ll notice when you go to the entry page for Mystery of Yrevoc Sid is that it’s unfinished. Although it is partially due to ambition (and chatting on IRC), I blame most of all my incomplete entity system (ES) basecode.

(In the Ludum Dare competition you are allowed to have some code ready, as long as you release it to the other competitors, ideally so that they can use it for the competition themselves if they want to.)
Read the rest of this entry »