June 6, 2010

Where's Teddy?

So I did this course Game Design and what's a course on Game Design without a game? Well, here it is. Made in about seven days (more likely eight) and I thought it became quite cool.

Where's Teddy?

Download
Where's Teddy? (6.2 MB)

How to Play
Your mission is to find teddy and his teddybear friends. The problem is that it's dark and it's really hard to find them if you can't see where you're going but thankfully you have a candle with you and if you're lucky you can stumble on more candles to keep you from going completely dark.

Controls
Move with Arrow Keys
Switch and light candles with Space
Next Level: N
Previous Level: P
Reset Level: R
Console: F1

Credits
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Music: Joshua Holtz - Sounds of Insects
Rest: Me

Source
http://github.com/treeman/A-Game

May 18, 2010

Competition Feedback

The voting is over and I got a few ratings I want to comment on. You can view all ratings and comments here.

They're all from 1 to 5.

Innovation: 3.75
This is by far the most positive of the bunch and the one button timing combination worked great!

Fun: 3.29
Again a good grade and I thought the game was fun although it became really frustrating.

Theme: 3.17
The islands wasn't very prominent in the game and the game could've been about anything really, but again I'm more than happy with the grade.

Graphics: 2.54
Very simple and with some more effort it would've been better. But I'm happy, programmer graphics ftw!

Audio: 2.14
I only had two click sounds but still got fairly high. Many decided not to vote on it and I wouldn't either. They were just last minutes add-ons but good to see someone liked it.

Humor: 2.54
I didn't focus on this at all but got some decent grades from it anyway. Not sure if my graphics are that ugly.

Overall: 3.13
The most prestigious grade and it's okay. I'm absolutely happy with it, especially since my desperate hope was to get something playable out of this.

Community: 1.64
The community rating is for posts and stuff over at the Ludum Dare homepage. Sadly I didn't spend time there, almost at all, so I can't really say anything about this.

Overall I'm really happy with everything and I'm really happy with my relatively good grades.

I will do my very best to make my next game even better, but atm I can't seem to decide which idea I want to work with (I have like 4-5 serious ideas I'd want to explore).

April 26, 2010

Beebop The Island Hopper

It's here! The stuff of dreams, an entry for the epic Ludum Dare 17 has been made! For those who don't know it's a 48 hour game making competition which actually is pretty silly. Even more silly is my two hours of commitment yesterday but late this night at about 03:05 I am now, finally, writing this post! The theme was islands and this is what I came up with:

Beebop The Island Hopper

Download
Beebop The Island Hopper (0.6 MB)

Controls
Any Key.

Credits
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Random Coolness: Ludum Dare
Rest: Me

Source
http://github.com/treeman/ludumdare17

February 28, 2010

A Geek Valentine

Yes! I made it! It's 22:22 on the very last day of February and I've been programming virtually non-stop for the past two days, my brain feels like mashed potatoes...

A Geek Valentine

Download
A_Geek_Valentine.zip (4.1 MB)

Controls
Steer with the arrow keys.

Use spacebar to:
1. Build the time machine
2. Buy and place traps (Just face an empty square and choose a trop on the top right)
3. Sell traps (Face and click)

Story
Well it's Valentine's Day and as the geek you are this is the worst day ever. Luckily you havean almost complete time machine hidden here in the grass and if you could complete it you'll be safe for now! But beware... The girls are searching for you! Place traps and run away!

About
This game, as usual, was made for The Experimental Gameplay Project. This time they asked for a short explanation on how the theme would fit together so here it is:

Rejection + Valentine's day = feelings hurt

And you're the one hurting all the girls' feelings. Enjoy.

Credits
Music: Nighttime Falls, I'll be Waiting for Her - ilocan18
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me

Source
http://github.com/treeman/Rejection

January 24, 2010

Why is my file so huge?

My latest game was absolutely huge! And I'm not talking about the music (which was pretty huge too - roughly 20mb) but the little .exe file.

It was 14,6mb!!

Now every way you look at it, that's incredibly huge. It's like comparing an ant to a human. Normally the little ant is the exe file which should be small, except that it's not.

Incredible I thought, what the heck did I do wrong? I mean my code isn't really good but I never knew it was this horrible. So today I was determined to find the cause of this obscene mutant ant.

I started out chopping off everything regarding exceptions, cause all c++ resources I've read say exceptions will take space like a mutant gremlin. Okay I thought and chopped away everything - but nothing happened.

Now that's weird, what happens if I scrap this.. and this.. It ended with me beginning a big revamp of my whole "engine", or rather collection of stuff - nothing inherently wrong as it was badly needed - but nothing happened with my exe file! It was still almost 2mb big with basically only a hello world...

Then it struck me! I had been using -g with gcc and without any optimizing at all. When I turned on size and speed optimizations and scrapped the debugging the change was quite extraordinary.

The mutant 14 637 kb was magically transformed to a more fitting ant size of 856 kb. I couldn't save much of the total file size (23 254 kb -> 20 768 kb) so while I apologize for hogging your bandwidth, time and harddrive space I'm hoping you won't be too mad at me.

January 16, 2010

The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros

Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month's failure! This time it's a small shooter.

The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros

Bullet masher - can you keep up with 100 enemies at the screen? Try it!

Download
afro.zip (19.8 MB)

Instructions
W: up
A: left
S: down
D: right
mouse: shoot
space: leap into the sky!

Credits
Music: The Last Prophecy - Matthew Le Blanc (SynthR)
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me

Source
http://github.com/treeman/100-things

November 25, 2009

Jonas IceCream Stand

Ahoy there! This time I'll take you along for a ride with an arty Tycoon game.

Jonas IceCream Stand

Get wild and become a Crazy Dealer of IceCream!

Download
jonasicecreamstand.zip (12.8 MB)

Instructions
It should be pretty self-explanatory, it's a very simply tycoon game.

Credits
Music:
All Around Us - Eric Maskol
I Will Always Look up to You - Steve Chatterton

Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me

October 13, 2009

MenuCity

This game is called MenuCity and it's a numbers game. Well that's the theme anyway. The game pretty much held to what I planned for - except that it deviated from the theme -again- a bit.

My game is very reminiscent of the old calculator classic Block Dude made by Brandon Sterner. If you like that game, or any puzzle game for that matter, you're gonna love this one.

MenuCity

Download
menucity.zip (7.4 MB)

Instructions
Left/Right arrows - Move
Up arrow - Climb
Down arrow - Pick up/Put down
f1 - Secret dev console

If you're stuck this might help: Walkthrough Level 0

Credits
Music: The Year Before The War - Eric Maskol
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me

September 28, 2009

Why make games

Why did I start making games? Because I like to play them of course. Think of all the fantastic games; Super Mario, Lemmings, Tetris, GTA, The Sims, Counterstrike, Theme Hospital, SimCity and Rollercoaster Tycoon... Damn - when you count them like this you'll see how many great games there are out there. And I can honestly say each and every one of them has inspired me and made me wanna create something similar. No - something even better!

I also like to program, that's almost a must if you should make a working game from scratch, so I figured why not use it to make something productive and hopefully something fun?

September 20, 2009

Bugger

Ahhh... Finally another game! Theme of this beauty is Failure and your mission here is to avoid the bugs. As a programmer the fight with those nasty bugs are a daily occurrence and now I've brought you a chance to kill those nasties too!

The gameplay wasn't what I was planning on - yet again - but I'm actually quite content with the game. It's able to grab your attention for at least a few minutes before loosing you and it's absolutely the prettiest one I've ever made! Enjoy! ^^

Bugger

Download
bugger.zip (7.9 MB)
Update: 21 sept - small bug fix.

Instructions
Type the text on the bugs to make them disappear, that's all folks!

Credits
Music: Dare to Breathe - Tom Fahy
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me

August 20, 2009

Black and White

Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a game where graphics where included into the gameplay but sadly it didn't come out nearly as good as I expected it too.

Yes I know there are a lot of things bad and wrong with this game, but this is a competition with myself to create a game in only seven days and you can't always polish the games like your heart tells you to do.

Black and White

Download
BlackWhite.zip (11.2 MB)

Instructions
Move left and right with the arrows, jump with space and change the blocks with enter. Esc into the menu and there you can enter a highly advanced (not) level editor to change the levels however you want with left and right mouse.

Credits
Music: What we take to the grave - Tom Fahy
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me

August 1, 2009

Balls

Here's my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god I'll be making another tetris clone but the end result turned out a bit different. I'm not sure it's very addictive but it's actually okay! =D

Balls is a game about... balls. Well it's all in 2D so maybe Circles would be a better description but I don't think that captures the attention enough.

I didn't think this was possible but here it is! My very first jewel =)

Balls

Download
Balls.zip (7.1 MB)

Instructions
Well... There's nothing to it really. Move the mouse over the balls to make them shrink, survive until the top is filled with balls.

Credits
Music: Markovich/A.M.P. - Twisted in flight
Sound effects: Random from freesound
Rest: Me