Moving Stories

Terry Dec 30, 2014 11 Comments

A short game I made this month with Stephen Lavelle.

(note: contains some NSFW content)

Suddenly, #screenshotsaturday

Terry Dec 27, 2014 5 Comments

Gosh, no updates in a while! Will try to do better about that next year.

Stephen and I are working on a little thing. Should be out before the end of the year.

App Store > Games > Terry Cavanagh’s Favourite Games

Terry Sep 6, 2014 5 Comments

This morning someone on twitter reminded me that today is Super Hexagon’s 2nd birthday! Gosh 😀

It’s probably a coincidence, but Apple got in touch recently to say they’d like to put Super Hexagon in one of their App Store indie game showcase features that they’ve been doing recently, which is very nice of them and very good timing.

Part of the feature meant that I get to put together a list of iOS games to tell the world about. Here’s the ones I chose:

	4NR An elegant, fun little platform game that I love the structure of. Still find myself replaying it occasionally, long after finishing it with a perfect score.
	80 Days Probably the most recent game on my list – it’s a great boardgamey interactive fiction take on Around the World in 80 Days. It nails this feel of being on a long trip and getting a fleeting sense of this world you’re passing through.
	868-Hack A brilliantly designed roguelike-like with a smart take on character progression. I’ve probably played more of this than anything else on my iPad.
	Boson-X One of the best endless runners I’ve come across – moreso than usual, I got really competitive with this one!
	Ending A drod-like of sorts, with a wonderful roguelike mode. Have played this pretty compulsively since it came out.
	English Country Tune It’s by my flatmate, so, you know, nepotism – but I’m far from the only person to love this one. There’s an astonishing, mindblowing idea in the middle of the game that not enough people have seen.
	GameDog GAMEDOG! I love Gamedog! It’s this weird broken fake-LCD bootleg game emulator for a machine that doesn’t exist, with lots of weird bootleg takes on pacman and things like that. Charming and really funny.
	Hoplite Another roguelike-like! I love games that challenge you to purposefully make things harder for yourself as a show of swagger, something this game does very well with its achievement system.
	I am Level Like somebody looked at an iPad and said “RIGHT, how can I make a Spectrum platformer work on this?”. The solution they came up with is unlikely and really clever. Hits right at the things I get nostalgic about. Plus the ending’s pretty funny.
	Kairo A mystlike – walk around giant environments and interact with mysterious machines. I originally played this with two friends, passing the controller around and taking turns at the puzzles, which worked great because it’s beautiful both to watch and explore.
	Kero Blaster Pixel’s low key follow up to Cave Story, a humble little platform shooter bursting with character and charm. I get a bit fanboyish about Pixel’s work!
	McPixel A fantastic take on point-and-click adventure games, and a GREAT fit for touchscreens.
	Rebuild A really great board-game-like zombie survival game about rebuilding society. When it came out I played all the way through in one sitting.
	Realistic Summer Sports Simulator My favourite multiplayer game on iPad – hilarious and really fun. Watch the trailer!
	Skullpogo Does tilt controls *really really* well. You play as a skeleton on a pogo stick, hence, Skullpogo. I like Skeletons.
	Super Spike Dislike Aaaa I love Super Spike Dislike. It’s a really simple one-jump action game. Like Hoplite, has that wonderful quality of being hard mostly because you’re making it hard on yourself. One of the first games I recommend to people who get an iOS device.
	Thicket Thicket’s a music toy that’s so spongy and great, you touch it and it makes sounds and you can mess with it with all your fingers at once. Ah it’s so lovely.
	Tumbledrop Beautiful and cute and charming and such a perfect fit for a touchscreen device. A thing I often show to people who aren’t sure if they really like games.

There’s a bunch of other stuff I love on the App Store too of course, but hard choices need to made for things like this. Hope it helps people find some stuff they like!

Elegy

Terry Aug 7, 2014 6 Comments

The game over screen, featuring broken items important to the game – a mask, a sword, a potion bottle.

Here’s something that really sucks about the way I approach making games: a lot of things I work on don’t work out. Like, for every game I finish, there are five or six unfinished ones, in some cases games I’ve spent weeks or even months on.

When those games are just mine, it’s sad, but I just accept it as part of my creative process – failed projects sometimes become the core of something new and better. It’s just what works for me, for better or worse.

When one of those projects is a collaboration, though, it’s different.

My game with Cristian Ortiz didn’t work out. 🙁 Essentially the design just wasn’t as deep as I had hoped when I initially prototyped it, and we got carried away and let the thing grow huge and way out of proportion. We ended up with something that was gonna take months to finish, and probably wasn’t a strong enough idea to be worth that kind of time.

With solo projects, I rarely announce when they don’t work out. But since this was a collaboration, and a project we worked on for several months on and off, I think it’s important to mark it. Partially just to have some closure, but mostly because Cris did a bunch of amazing work for the game and I really want people to see it:

The Hollow Templar! A mini-boss that was supposed to be half way through the game.

A gif of some combat!( Some of the GUI stuff was placeholder)

A skeleton enemy. To be honest, I just really like Skeletons. Wanna make a skeleton game at some point…

The main character. The mask lets him see things that other people can’t see.

Another gameplay gif, blocking an attack.

A frog enemy. Part of the concept meant that all the enemies needed to be non-human.

Various items found around the monastery.

Working with Cris was an absolute pleasure – I’m hoping we’ll end up working on something else in the future!

Outer Space

Terry Jun 12, 2014 95 Comments

Hey everyone! I have lots of big annoucements about VVVVVV today, so let’s get to it!

VVVVVV: Make and Play Edition

Let’s start with what I consider the really important thing – inspired by things like Knytt Stories and DROD: Architect’s Edition, I’m releasing a special build of VVVVVV on Windows, Mac and Linux today. It’s called VVVVVV: Make and Play Edition, and it’s completely free. This version of the game only includes the player levels and the level editor – which means that, from now on, the tools to make and play VVVVVV player levels are completely free.

People have done some really incredible things with the VVVVVV editor. I want to share that work as far and wide as I can!

Lots of new VVVVVV ports

VVVVVV is now available on iPhone, iPad, Android, and OUYA!

These ports have been quite a long time coming! Actually, I originally started the iPhone port before I started Super Hexagon, way back in 2012. So it feels very, very good to finally have it finished, and released. This is something I felt I really had to take on myself – VVVVVV’s important to me, and it was really important to me that this be done right. I wanted the game to be as good as it could be on mobile. I feel very good about how it’s turned out!

You can get it from here:

Nicalis have been working on a Vita port as well – this should be coming out sometime this summmer!

Super Gravitron

Surprise! Today I’m also releasing another game on iOS and Android: Super Gravitron. It’s a little minigame that you might remember from the end of VVVVVV!

It’s acting as sort of a demo, but mostly I just think it happens to work really well as it’s own thing on mobile. And it’s completely free! Get it here:

Version 2.2

Thanks to Ethan Lee, VVVVVV on desktop has finally gotten an update! Version 2.2 fixes a bunch of long standing bugs (for example, player level warp lines) and makes the 2.1 changes official (like player maps, coloured text in player levels, editor direct mode, etc).

If you’re on steam, this update also adds achievements! They’re the same ones that VVVVVV always had, except now they’re recognised by steam. If you’ve already got them, log into today and you should get awarded a bunch of them at once, which is extremely satisfying!

MMMMMM

Finally – remember that amazing Metal Medley of VVVVVV music by @FamilyJules7x? Yeah, both Souleye and I were seriously impressed!

Introducing: MMMMMM! A complete Metal cover of the VVVVVV soundtrack! You can pick it up today directly from Souleye!

The soundtrack comes with a mod, which you can install in your player level directory to play the game with the metal soundtrack instead of the original one!

That’s all, everyone! Thanks for playing!

Terry Versus E3

Terry Jun 9, 2014 12 Comments

Announcement time!

Finally! VVVVVV is coming to iOS, Android and OUYA this Thursday, the 12th of June! A Vita version will follow later, at some point in the future!

I’ve also been working on something secret that I’m very excited about, which will also be coming out this Thursday. Ahhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

Ports ports ports

Terry May 29, 2014 9 Comments

Time for a very imPORTant update! Ho ho ho

VVVVVV’s mobile ports are definitely taking a lot longer than anticipated, but things are finally coming to an end. A few days ago, after weeks of testing and fixing bugs and optimising, I finally submitted VVVVVV to the app store! It’ll be in a review for a while, and going live hopefully not too long after that…

So what’s the next step? Well, there’s also the android version (that’s going pretty well too), and the steam update. And one more thing…

The OUYA version!

I like the OUYA as a thing quite a lot – last year I even ported 10 of my freeware games to it for fun! And it’s really cool to be able to play VVVVVV on it too – this’ll be the first time you can actually sit down with a controller and play VVVVVV on a telly, which is kind of a big deal. It should be out at the same time as the other ports – not quite sure when that is yet, but I’ll announce it as soon as I know 🙂

That’s not all, though.

Surprise! I’m also bringing Super Hexagon to OUYA! And real soon, too. Like, next Tuesday. Ahhhhhhh

In a Single Bound

Terry Apr 26, 2014 20 Comments

So, update time! I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working on android and iOS ports of VVVVVV. This is a super overdue thing – it’s been like 90% finished for over a year – but I never seemed to be able to find the time to finish it off properly and release it. After GDC, with Nicalis’ PSVita port imminent, it seemed like it was now or never.

And it’s almost done! The last big thing I had to do was update the menus to be more touchscreen friendly, which is now done and works really well. Should be ready to submit any day now.

The big concern that comes up when I talk about this project is controls – is VVVVVV even a game that works well on a touchscreen? And the answer is yes, it does! Mostly, anyway – using a touchpad for this sort of game is just never going to be as good as using a joypad, but the touch controls I’ve got are feeling really nice.

I tried out a bunch of different control ideas – d-pads, virtual analogue sticks, super hexagon style controls where you press both sides of the screen to flip, and these all basically work with varying levels of success.

The one that definitely works the best, though, is swipe and hold to move, which is what I’m using as the defaults. Basically, you put your thumb down on the screen – move it left and you move left, move it right and you move right, let go to stop. It feels super responsive and nice!

Anyhow, time to put up or shut up. Here’s a video of me doing Veni, Vidi, Vici on touch controls:

Wanted: Coder for VVVVVV maintenance

Terry Mar 26, 2014 13 Comments

Edit 26th March 2014: I’ve now found somebody for this job. Thank you!

Embedded that video mostly because I just wanted another reason to tell people about that medley. OMG, have you seen it? I know, right?

Heads up, this is a job offer post. If you’re not a coder looking for work, it’s probably going to be very boring oh no

I’m just back from GDC, and made a decision to take some time out of my projects to finish up a couple of small jobs that have been hanging around for way too long. One of those jobs is to finally update VVVVVV, which is currently in need of a patch.

The current steam and humble store version of the game is 2.0, which is the first version of Simon Roth’s C++ port. It’s mostly pretty stable, but it does have some issues – time trial scores aren’t saved, for example, a bunch of other small things like that.

There is a version 2.1, but it’s not live on steam – Simon did some work on the rendering code to make it hardware accelerated, which improves the games performance, but caused it to break for other people. I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk to make that version live and potentially break the game for people who’d not have problems with it before. 2.1 fixes most of the 2.0 bugs, and adds some nice new features (like maps in player levels, coloured text in player levels, and some cool new player levels included by default like Dimension 333333). The 3DS version is essentially 2.1.

There’s also an unreleased version 2.2, which adds joypad support and a few other small things.

I’d like to hire someone for a week or two to finish version 2.2 of the game. If you’re an experienced C++ coder familar with Windows, Mac and Linux, available to start now and interested in working on this, I’d like to hear from you!

A broad overview of what’s involved:
– Get familiar with VVVVVV’s terribly messy code, and clean it up where possible.
– Update the rendering code to make it safe and stable on all platforms.
– Finish implementing the 2.2 patch, which includes a couple of half implemented features and a couple of features still to be implemented that we can talk more about.
– Mac Specific: Ensure that the game works correctly on the latest versions of OSX, and get the game ready to re-submit to the Mac App Store.
– Linux Specific: Ensure that the game runs nicely on the latest multitude of confusing linux systems.
– Steam Specific: Implement steamworks support in the game.
– A few other secret things I don’t want to list here.

An ideal candidate for the job is someone who can be on call from here on out to fix issues that crop up. For example, should a mac update cause the game to suddenly stop working (these things happen, especially on mac), then you should be available to sort it out at your usual hourly rate without too much of a delay.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, get in touch, and we can discuss rates, deadlines, and more about what’s involved. Thanks!

Maverick Bird

Terry Feb 11, 2014 112 Comments

A Flappy Bird fan game.

Thanks for the inspiration, Dong. Looking forward to your next game when things settle down!