Projects between projects

Terry May 21, 2015 7 Comments

Boo, getting a little out of the habit of making blog posts again. Well, here’s what I’ve been up to!

My main project right now is my untitled stealthy action roguelike, which started for 7DRL and then got seriously out of hand.

I needed a break to do other stuff, but I’m trying to avoid my usual trap of starting lots of stuff that I never finish – so, I’m finishing stuff. I made a list of non-game stuff, and I’m working through it!

Been adding some cool new features to this over the past week or so! Things to look forward to include: new file format support, performance increases, some nice interface additions like transpose buttons. I’m also hoping to include a built in tutorial, to replace the out of date online one and make it that bit more accessible to beginners.

DONE! This was a pretty fun thing to work on! I guess at some point I might do a little more work on it so that chatbots can face off against each other…

Since it was getting pretty obvious I wasn’t going to get around to this myself, I put out a call for help. That’s going great!

I’ve been very won over by Haxe and OpenFL, which is what I’ve used for every game I’ve worked on this year. I wanna make a tiny programming library in it, aimed at beginners, which gives you a simple, BASIC like starting point for making games. That’s almost done! It’s actually part of another project I’ve been working on lately, namely:

I’m thinking of calling it “Learn to Program Badly with Terry“. Or something else, probably.

There’s this message out there right now: “you can make video games even if you’re not a programmer!“. Which is very true! But it implies something about programming: that it’s a lot of work. That’s it too hard. That it’s somehow in the way of you and the game that you want to make.

I think this message, without intending to, scares people away from programming – people who might really enjoy it! Programming can be a lot of fun, and can give you a lot of freedom to approach things in new and unique ways. The problem is just that it’s really inaccessible. Getting started from nothing is tough, and it’s getting tougher.

Programming is a big subject, for sure, but the amount of it that you actually need to know to make stuff is surprisingly small, and isn’t as scary as a lot people make it out to be. So, I thought I’d have a go at making that case – a total beginners guide to game programming. Coming soon!

Wanted: iOS Coder for Super Hexagon update

Terry May 11, 2015 0 Comments

EDIT: No longer looking for help with this. Thank you!

Hey hey – sorry for the boring help wanted post!

Since I got back from Berlin, I’ve been taking a little time out to fix up and finish small things before I dive back into my big roguelike. In particular, that’s meant fixing up copycat, making Elizascript, and a few other tiny things I’m working on at the moment. I’ll have more to say about that soon. Right now? One thing I’ve needed to do for some time is a Super Hexagon update on iPhone.

Every other version of Super Hexagon – desktop, android, blackberry – is based on the OpenFramework C++ port I made after the iPhone version came out. I consider that the definitive, final version of the game. The iPhone version is the original flash version – which is pretty solid, but has some problems.

In particular, it doesn’t have retina graphics, which is something that’s looking more and more dated with each new iPhone.

I’d really love to port the OpenFrameworks version of the game back to iPhones – it would leave the game running smoothly and perfectly on the latest versions of iOS, and would finally upgrade the game to a retina resolution. But I’ve been terrified to touch it – I had a scare with the iPhone 5 update where people briefly lost thier save games, and I’m really worried that an engine change could mean that happening again.

So, I’m looking for help! I’m looking for someone to port the OpenFrameworks version of Super Hexagon to iPhone, and I’m particularly concerned that it picks up the flash SharedObject save file.

If you’re interested, here’s what you’d need to be able to do:
– Have some experience building and releasing games on iOS.
– Be familar with OpenFrameworks on iOS, and port over the current OpenFrameworks version of the game.
– Be *somewhat* familar with Adobe AIR, and dealing with flash SharedObjects on mobile.
– Convince me the the save files will be safe when the update goes live!
– Ideally, have access to several iOS devices for testing.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, get in touch, and we can discuss it further! Cheers!

EDIT: No longer looking for help with this. Thank you!

Elizascript

Terry May 5, 2015 3 Comments

So, here’s a little thing I’ve just finished! It’s called Elizascript, and it’s an online tool for making tiny chatbots! Try it! There’s a Quick Start Guide on the website, or you could just ask Liz for help:

The chatbot in the screenshot above is by Holly Gramazio, and you can comfort it yourself here!

Very big thanks to Stephen as usual, who pushed me into getting this done and answered lots of annoying questions and listened to me whine a lot about hating Javascript. Lots of the tricky website stuff in the background is straight from his project, Puzzlescript, which itself was a big inspiration for this.