YYYYYY

[Shasharala]

"They're waiting for you Gordon... in the TEST CHAMBER."  
Woowoo!
Best line ever!

I am so excited to play. 

[Robson]

Had a rather crazy week at work, so unfortunately haven't had a chance to add much to YYYYYY. I'll probably be taking part in mini ludum dare this weekend, so no updates until next week! Oh well, here's what I've done:

Moving platforms are in and almost finished. I just need to add the code to make them move the player, when the player is on them.


I've got the final task done on the word enemies - letters display in red if they are responsible for a player death:


Grades are displayed on the final screen and the menu screen:

For the code, well, thanks for explanation. One more silly question: Did you have to program a code that turns playfield at its current state into a picture that is then rotated, or is that PlgBlt function capable of immediate transformation of program's display? Anyway sorry for offtopic here.

I have an invisible picture box on the window, which stores an image of the game at the moment the player hits the rotation wire. I then send that through the PlgBlt function and it draws the rotated version onto the main window. There's probably lots of example code on Google and I'll be releasing the code of YYYYYY, so you could grab the code from either of those places.

And the Conway's Game of Life idea is superb! Actually, I've been thinking about a simple shoot-em-up game with enemies at least partially generated by Conway's rules (or some other rules), but, to my big dissapointment (but also delight) I found out that someone has already done it!  But still this topic is extremely innovative and hot, it's procedural generation and replayability at their best.

Or maybe not so innovative, as when trying to find the game I've mentioned I just found a bunch of other games using Conway's Game of Life. :| Well, definitely still hot.

I've suddenly got interested in the rules, so I'll definitely have a look round the internets to find these games. I hope you decide to make a game as well. You could always think up something new or take an existing idea in a new direction. Or just blatantly copy someone else's great idea, like me!!

The 2010 seven-day-roguelike challenge starts on March 6th. The rules feel like they would work perfectly with a roguelike, so I'm determined to figure out a way to combine the two ideas!

"They're waiting for you Gordon... in the TEST CHAMBER." 
Woowoo!
Best line ever!

I am so excited to play. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKRGCwulOm8
Perfection

[Shasharala]

Yeah boy!
Good stuff.
I just adore how he emphasizes those last few words.

[Robson]

I finished my mini ludum dare game! It's called What the Duck?! and it has nothing to do with VVVVVV, so I'll shut up about it now!

I've been thinking about adding a bullet-time/slow-motion feature to YYYYYY. The bullet-time meter would increase with every death. Players who are "stuck" on a room would build up there bullet-time and could then activate it to slow down time and make the room easier. This is a relatively easy feature to write and I think the benefit would be worth it. Using bullet-time would be completely optional and I'd allow campaign authors to disable it for their campaign. What do you guys think?

I'm getting reasonably close to finishing the first step of the game, so I thought I'd list out the stages:

Step 1 - Write the engine
Step 2 - Test the engine and remove any bugs
Step 3 - Optimise the engine and cleanup the code
Step 4 - Make the first campaign
Step 5 - Release the game
Step 6 - Maintenance and additions

Step 6 is responding to feedback, removing bugs, adding more campaigns (by me and hopefully other people) and adding more features.

[Requiem]

Robson, if you're looking for testers, or decide to later on in development, I'd love to be a part of it. Looks like a great ASCII twist on the game, and I'm really looking forward to playing and making my own levels in Y.

On topic, Adding a bullet time would definitely be interesting. Could possibly make for some extremely hard, extremely awesome DTTHW puzzles that are designed with that in mind. I say it is a pretty cool idea.

[Robson]

Robson, if you're looking for testers, or decide to later on in development, I'd love to be a part of it. Looks like a great ASCII twist on the game, and I'm really looking forward to playing and making my own levels in Y.

Thanks Requiem! I'd love to include levels that are written by people other than me. I haven't put any thought into releasing test versions of the game, but I could give you a copy after I finish steps 2, 3 and 4.

Is your name any relation to Requiem for a Dream? That's my favourite film.

On topic, Adding a bullet time would definitely be interesting. Could possibly make for some extremely hard, extremely awesome DTTHW puzzles that are designed with that in mind. I say it is a pretty cool idea.

I like the sound of that! Perhaps I should include a tile which automatically fills up your bullet-time meter. This tile could be chained together inside a room (or across multiple rooms), so you alternate between fast and slow areas.

[Requiem]

I've been asked that question before... Unfortunately, no, its not related to the movie. I think it was a vocabulary word in some middle school English class, and I kind of just grew accustomed to the sound of the word, and just kind of adopted it as my online identity. It's a cool-sounding word with a good meaning.

Waiting patiently for Y, now... Looking forward to it. 

[Robson]

The engine is complete!

Moving platforms are now finished:

(It's hard to tell they're moving on a screenshot!)

Campaigns can now be set as OneSwitch, which disables left and right movement. I'm imagining that the direction tiles will be very useful for these campaigns. I'm tempted to write in a bit of code that would make individual levels OneSwitch as well, to allow me to make some new types of rooms within a regular campaign. Currently the menu isn't navigatable using oneswitch, but when I make a suitable campaign I'll get that sorted.

My ASCII cutscene player has been ripped out of one of my other games (Dysaster) and inserted into YYYYYY. Cutscenes are linked to areas of tiles within a level, so when the player moves into that area, the cutscene plays. The timer is paused while the cutscene plays.

Finally, it's possible to take "screenshots":

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
#       Y Y Y         |         Y Y Y       #
#                     |                     #
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#         |                       |         #
#         |         A A A         |         #
#   # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #   #
#   | Y Y | Y Y | Y Y | Y Y | Y Y | Y Y |   #
#   |     |     |     |     |     |     |   #
#   |     |     |     |     |     |     |   #
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#   |     |     |     |     | @   |     |   #
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# A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A #
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Flip Check 2
d:0/3 s:2/6 t:167/30

If anyone knows how I can create a black background using the forum bbc codes, I'd be very grateful. That would allow me to use the colours from the game, so these screenshots would look exactly like the game.

I'm now onto Step 2, which is testing the engine and removing bugs. This doesn't really give me much opportunity to post screenshots, so I'll make up for that by posting a new video next week.

I've been asked that question before... Unfortunately, no, its not related to the movie. I think it was a vocabulary word in some middle school English class, and I kind of just grew accustomed to the sound of the word, and just kind of adopted it as my online identity. It's a cool-sounding word with a good meaning.

I like your reasoning! I used to have an internet handle as well, but I found that my offline and online life was overlapping a lot, so now I just use my real name.

Waiting patiently for Y, now... Looking forward to it. 

It's one step closer now

[SoulEye]

Do you need music for this?

[Robson]

Do you need music for this?

Your music? That would be perfect! Wow, I'm honoured that you'd consider this

[SoulEye]

Drop me a mail at souleye at gmail dot com and we'll work something out

[Robson]

It's been a good week! I've been busy fixing bugs, optimising, testing and generally tidying up the code. I've created some more levels and uploaded a new video. I'm writing a simple puzzle game as a birthday present for a friend, so I'll be spending most of the weekend on that.

Drop me a mail at souleye at gmail dot com and we'll work something out

Done!

[Shasharala]

Ooo!  Souleye music!  Sounds great!

[Robson]

Bit of a progress update:

I've been super-busy improving the code and making sure things work correctly. The platform/word-enemy code has had a major revamp, which has significantly reduced the lines of code and speeded that up. I want to add a bit more functionality to them:

1. Allow them to wrap around the screen. So a platform that goes off the right side of the screen would appear on the left. DONE
2. Create invisible blocks that stop the platform and make it reverse direction. Currently platforms only reverse direction when they hit a wall or another platform. DONE
3. Allow horizontal platforms to go up and down.
4. Allow rotation with platforms DONE oh my god that was tricky

SoulEye has very kindly allowed me to use one of his tracks in the game, so I've spent many many hours figuring out the perfect track... and I've narrowed it down to six!

Previously entire campaigns could be set as one-switch (this disables left and right movement and only allows flipping), but I've changed this to be per-room instead. I can still set campaigns to be one-switch, but now individual levels can be as well. Should allow for some interesting puzzles...

I wasn't keen on how the status line looked and thought the "d:0/3 s:2/6 t:167/30" stuff could be confusing. I also didn't like that the map was on a separate screen. So I've fixed both problems by creating a new pause screen:

The map used to have a green line around the current room, but I think the yellow looks nicer.

The normal screen is a lot cleaner now:


I also finished my birthday present game, which is over here.

[Shasharala]

Wow!
I love that pause screen with the map!
Man, everytime you post I just get more and more excited for the game!

I also added your website to my favorites.