Immanentize the Empathy
An update concentrating on some gameplay mechanics, mostly optimizing for speed and playing around with the effects of power-ups; specifically, allowing the player to fire multiple shots. Arrow keys move left and right, space bar shoots. Click the image to launch the game.
Click here to launch the maze explorer.
I have combined two of my experiments into something greater than the sum of the parts. Or at least, pretty close to equal to the sum of the parts. The height map explorer from a couple of weeks ago, combined with the maze from a few days ago. The combining took me all of ten minutes.
Now that I have got this far, I next need to start playing with collision detection so players can navigate the mazes, instead of flying over them.
A more technical description of this experiment can be found on my GameDev blog
A generated maze. Click the image to play.
Sorry for the title; I couldn’t help myself.
I took the Java code from the Wikipedia article on Maze Generation Algorithms, converted it to Actionscript, and Voila! A randomly generated maze of practically infinite variations. For all intents and purposes it is just an image at the moment, but I will soon add wall detection and turn it into a game of some kind. Click anywhere on the maze to generate a new one.
An update to the game. Click the screenshot to see it in action.
Still very rough, but playable for the moment. Arrow keys to move clockwise/widdershins, and SPACE to fire.
Click the image to see the experiment in action.
Arrow keys to move clockwise/widdershins. Click the movie if nothing happens at first.
My tile game experiments led me back to an old project where I was trying to recreate/reinvent the game Gyruss in Flash. I was playing around with the Perlin Noise generation functionality in Flash, and co-incidentally came across a polar distortion class at BIT-101. I took it, played with it a bit, and figured out how to go from Polar Distortion to Twirl, with the addition of one very short line of code. Voila! I had the thing you see above. The addition of a simple gradient provides the depth.
An update to the game, this time with color substitution. Click the screenshot to play around
Use the arrow keys to move around. Hit the reset button to swap out the background.
Iteration 2 of the latest experiment: using a bitmap as a world map. Click the image to play.
Use the arrow keys to move around. Hit the reset button to swap out the “world” bitmap.
A tile game engine, using a bitmap to determine content in the larger world view.
In the past two years I have spent a lot of my free time working on two computer games. They were both entries in the annual “Four Elements” (“4E”) contest put on by the website GameDev.net. Both were (well, ARE, actually) economic games, manifested as trading simulations.
I have always liked games where you start out with nothing, and by virtue of personal fortitude, business acumen and a bit of luck, amass a fortune and gain whatever rewards come from the experience. The 4E games were my attempt to make those games better. And maybe win some money.
I recently finished reading the Baroque Cycle for the third time, and when I finished the second book in the series I went to the library and picked up Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. I am part-way into the first chapter. At the beginning “economics” is defined as “…the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternate uses”. In other words, why do people decide to spend money on A instead of B?
This is some seriously interesting stuff, and may help me refine my games, if I am ever in a position where I can bring them to completion.
A friend recently pointed me to a series on Google Video called The Century of the Self (links to videos at the bottom of the page), which explores how governments have used Freud’s theories to “engineer consent” in various populations. One off-shoot of this was Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who is generally recognized as “the father of public relations”. Basically, he showed organizations how to take his uncle’s theories and put them to use in convincing people to buy things.
I am convinced that somewhere in the intersection of these two basic texts is the seeds of a Big Idea I can put to use somehow, either in a game, or in some aspect of my “real” life – although making it real may require some research into how the stock market works, and perhaps some delving into psychology.
In any case, I have something to keep my mind occupied for the next couple of months.
A little over a week ago I signed up for the yearly GameDev.net Four Elements contest. Over the next five-and-a-half months, in my free time, I will attempt to build a trading simulation game based in the Ukraine in the year 1000AD. Updates here have been sparse because I have been posting in my developer’s journal.
If anything significant happens over there, I will provide a link to it here. Otherwise, if you like deeply technical stuff, are interested in Flash and/or game programming or the medieval Black Sea region, feel free to stop in from time to time.
