The dust has been collecting here since Janurary. Time for an update!
Free time has been very short since the last update. Things with my current job never did slow down. If anything, they became more intense and time-demanding. The work is both exciting and interesting for me, so I can't complain. Some of the things I've either learned from scratch or improved along the way prompted me to start my own web browser game engine, which is a Wizardry-like CRPG type thing. I'm not sure how much will actually get done with this, but it's a fun side project to tinker with. But of course, nothing half as Robb Sherwin's upcoming game, Cyberganked.
Within the bits of free time I've had, I found myself reverting back to simpler things. Actually playing some games rather than writing them, and most of these being older games. I acquired a Commodore 64 setup over the past few months, including a Zoom Floppy. More than a few hours have gone into playing games like Wasteland and other RPGs on this setup. This has been a bit of inspiration for creating my own "retro" graphics for use in my games.
One such game is one I worked on some more this morning called "Surf's Down". It's original intention was for it to be a non-traditional IF written in Hugo for an upcoming Hugo Comp. That competition has yet to come, but I continue working on it here and there because it's been a good learning exercise for me as I write the more complex DPRK game. Hopefully the short source code of Surf's Down will also serve as good example code for others learning Hugo as well.
Surf's Down is basically a Hugo conversion of an old Atari 2600 game prototype which was never released, called Surf's Up. I fired up the game on an emulator and was actually a bit impressed with some of the design aspects of the game, especially the beginning phase of paddling out into the ocean. I've been a surfer for quite a while myself, and despite the very out-dated graphics, I felt the game managed to somehow capture the feeling of going out into the waves. Unfortunately, the actual gameplay phase of the Surf's Up left much to be desired. The gameplay in my game is decision-based, yet all decisions are made using cardinal compass points.
Progress on Three Days in DPRK has been much slower than I had hoped for. At one point, I was considering trying to enter it into IFcomp 2013. In retrospect, I'm glad I did not. While the game is roughly three-fourths complete, it would have been way too much of a rush to try to finish something I'd be confident in entering. Instead, I look forward to playing the games of others. Perhaps I'll have something ready for Spring Thing 2014. Though, I think Interactive Dreaming would be a bit more well suited for that one.
The actual code of Interactive Dreaming hasn't been touched since my last update here, but the story and materials for the game continue to slowly build. The conversation system also needs to be redone now that I've removed a prototype system I used in Lunar Base 1. Trying some recent ones others are using has some ideas about what I'd like to use or create myself, but I'm still researching this. A new release of Inform may affect this as well. While I'm eager to try the new version once released, I'm not sure how smooth it will be to compile Interactive Dreaming along with all of its required libraries.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
2013 IF Plans
This year I will be working more on Interactive Dreaming along side another project I've recently started, called Days in DPRK.
The general prototype framework of Interactive Dreaming feels okay, but one of the first things I will be doing is completely changing the conversation system. I originally used one that ended up in Lunar Base 1, but that doesn't feel flexible enough to be quite what is needed for dream conversation. I think I will just test out a few systems or try creating a hybrid of one specific for the anxiety/lucidity statistics. For now, the best thing to focus on is fleshing out most of the rooms and developing a few puzzles that will also utilize those stats.
Days in DPRK will be my first game written in the Hugo language. Because there's sure to be a bit of a learning curve, I don't want to get too over-ambitious with my plans for it, but I do think it will be an amusing adventure (though it may be a bit short). The concept is that you are spending 1 day in the life of a tourist in North Korea, the 2nd day you are a resident of Pyongyang, and the last day you are in another different situation. I don't really want to elaborate on the plot much further than that for now.
Other than that, I don't know that I'll be doing much else. Paid work lately has been rather hectic, but I am learning stronger programming skills as a result of that which will help in all future game programming projects.
The general prototype framework of Interactive Dreaming feels okay, but one of the first things I will be doing is completely changing the conversation system. I originally used one that ended up in Lunar Base 1, but that doesn't feel flexible enough to be quite what is needed for dream conversation. I think I will just test out a few systems or try creating a hybrid of one specific for the anxiety/lucidity statistics. For now, the best thing to focus on is fleshing out most of the rooms and developing a few puzzles that will also utilize those stats.
(Interactive Dreaming)
Days in DPRK will be my first game written in the Hugo language. Because there's sure to be a bit of a learning curve, I don't want to get too over-ambitious with my plans for it, but I do think it will be an amusing adventure (though it may be a bit short). The concept is that you are spending 1 day in the life of a tourist in North Korea, the 2nd day you are a resident of Pyongyang, and the last day you are in another different situation. I don't really want to elaborate on the plot much further than that for now.
(Days in DPRK)
Other than that, I don't know that I'll be doing much else. Paid work lately has been rather hectic, but I am learning stronger programming skills as a result of that which will help in all future game programming projects.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Lunar Base 1 - Version 1.1
Today I went ahead and made a second release of Lunar Base 1 to my website. Here is the changelog, which I have tried to make as vague as possible for anyone who hasn't tried the game:
- Fixed description of exits (or lack thereof) in one area. A pet peeve of mine has always been not showing how to get back out of a location.
- Locked down 2 items that I thought already were in the comp release. I'm sure this time!
- Added another conditional ending.
- Made a couple of wording/grammar changes.
- Added to the "about" text to reflect the new version.
You can download release 2 of Lunar Base 1 or play it in your web browser here.
- Fixed description of exits (or lack thereof) in one area. A pet peeve of mine has always been not showing how to get back out of a location.
- Locked down 2 items that I thought already were in the comp release. I'm sure this time!
- Added another conditional ending.
- Made a couple of wording/grammar changes.
- Added to the "about" text to reflect the new version.
You can download release 2 of Lunar Base 1 or play it in your web browser here.
Monday, November 19, 2012
IfComp 2012 Retrospect
Time flew over the past 30 days or so due to having a new job that actually involves more coding and "IT stuff" in general. I had almost forgotten about the day the results would come in. I think a lot of IF authors who have entered any competition can probably relate to the feeling you get as you go to open the page to view the results; a feeling both of hope and apprehension. Personally, my thoughts right before viewing competition results are revealed to me are closer to "Let's see how bad it is." than "I wonder if I won?". I'm generally not much of an optimist.
Lunar Base 1 was not originally intended to be entered into any comp. It was intended to be short, though more bitter than sweet. After a few testers tried it out and I got more ideas for branching the story out a bit, I decided that it would be worthy of an entry.. though without any idea of how good an entry it would be.
There will be a Lunar Base 1 version 1.1 released to my website in the coming month or two. In this version, I will try to correct all grammar issues brought to my attention, as well as lock the damn "blue dial" and "lock button" down! I can't believe I missed that in my final release. I remember fixing it at one point, and must have got my versions screwed up before submitting. I didn't realize that was still in there until about the 1st of November. I never re-submitted after discovering it though because I figured the bug was a lot more minor than many of the bugs in the first release of Hallow Eve. As far as grammar mistakes, I am really not good at spotting these out as many times as I read my story, so I welcome any comments here or my email relating to to grammar mistakes you found. "Awkward wording" seems to be a style of mine, but outright bad grammar mistakes really bother me and I hope to eliminate them.
I'm overall happy with the results of IfComp this year. I did have a lot of fun coding on the game a bit at a time over the period of almost a year while listening to a lot of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and drinking a lot of beers. Next up for me will be going back to my Interactive Dreaming experiment, and I've also been jotting ideas down over the past few months for an interactive fiction based in North Korea. The latter will have a graphical scenery window but won't be as graphic-intensive as Interactive Dreaming, but will have a different game and conversational mechanic altogether I really can't say at this point which one is going to take off faster than the other.
Thanks again to the testers of this game! Having a lot of testers added a ton to my to-do list for newer test builds, which helped move things towards completion. There were a lot of good entries this year. I had a good feeling Marco Innocenti's game would place higher than mine by playing his work. His story was a lot more intricate and complex than Lunar Base 1 set out to be.
I'd like to point out some common complaints with the game and address them. Be warned if you haven't completed the game and do not want the plot spoiled, you probably don't want to see the following.
** Spoilers below!! **
1. Why couldn't the airlock procedure be automated?
This was intended design. I wanted to emphasize on the general deadliness of space, especially outside of low-earth orbit as well as showing how tedious it would be to live in such an environment. Also, the original prototype of this game did play more like a sort of simulation.
2. I found the obelisk and brought it back without doing anything with it on the moon. Nothing extra happened. Why?
Looking back I think that perhaps I should have added a line to an alternate ending that mentions that the obelisk was returned and that it would be studied. Though nothing beyond that. The "scary governmental space agency" in this story acts on a need-to-know basis.
3. Okay, I completed the "best ending". Did you just rip off 2001: A Space Odyssey?
This was definitely not intended. While there may be some similarities I don't recall 2001 drawing connections with "aliens" to "gods with elongated heads worshiped by ancient religions" and other aspects of this story. I have seen and enjoyed this movie, but it was not really a conscious influence with Lunar Base 1 at all. A lot of the strange aspects of the story were meant to be left to the player's interpretation. Some of it still is. The original plot for the prototype was basically "Two guys go to the moon, things break down, and insanity occurs". This was actually inspired by a story that a counselor told me at Space Camp as a kid; a completely fictional story about a lunar landing gone wrong and a man being stranded there. The man lost his mind, burned his face trying to repair an oxygen tank, and affixed make-shift blades to a pressurized glove to kill the first person that came to rescue this astronaut Freddy Kruger.
4. It took us this long to go back to the moon? Wait, we've never been before?
Yet another disappointing aspect of the story! But also, intended. I've always been fascinated with many aspects of space and space travel. At one point in my life I was spending too much time looking into my own suspicions and theories on this topic. I felt that while it could be interesting to imply these sort of things, it would be noneffective and a bit tacky to have too many details written as why they are implied.. especially with a PhD physicist running the competition (heh-heh).
Lunar Base 1 was not originally intended to be entered into any comp. It was intended to be short, though more bitter than sweet. After a few testers tried it out and I got more ideas for branching the story out a bit, I decided that it would be worthy of an entry.. though without any idea of how good an entry it would be.
There will be a Lunar Base 1 version 1.1 released to my website in the coming month or two. In this version, I will try to correct all grammar issues brought to my attention, as well as lock the damn "blue dial" and "lock button" down! I can't believe I missed that in my final release. I remember fixing it at one point, and must have got my versions screwed up before submitting. I didn't realize that was still in there until about the 1st of November. I never re-submitted after discovering it though because I figured the bug was a lot more minor than many of the bugs in the first release of Hallow Eve. As far as grammar mistakes, I am really not good at spotting these out as many times as I read my story, so I welcome any comments here or my email relating to to grammar mistakes you found. "Awkward wording" seems to be a style of mine, but outright bad grammar mistakes really bother me and I hope to eliminate them.
I'm overall happy with the results of IfComp this year. I did have a lot of fun coding on the game a bit at a time over the period of almost a year while listening to a lot of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and drinking a lot of beers. Next up for me will be going back to my Interactive Dreaming experiment, and I've also been jotting ideas down over the past few months for an interactive fiction based in North Korea. The latter will have a graphical scenery window but won't be as graphic-intensive as Interactive Dreaming, but will have a different game and conversational mechanic altogether I really can't say at this point which one is going to take off faster than the other.
Thanks again to the testers of this game! Having a lot of testers added a ton to my to-do list for newer test builds, which helped move things towards completion. There were a lot of good entries this year. I had a good feeling Marco Innocenti's game would place higher than mine by playing his work. His story was a lot more intricate and complex than Lunar Base 1 set out to be.
I'd like to point out some common complaints with the game and address them. Be warned if you haven't completed the game and do not want the plot spoiled, you probably don't want to see the following.
** Spoilers below!! **
1. Why couldn't the airlock procedure be automated?
This was intended design. I wanted to emphasize on the general deadliness of space, especially outside of low-earth orbit as well as showing how tedious it would be to live in such an environment. Also, the original prototype of this game did play more like a sort of simulation.
2. I found the obelisk and brought it back without doing anything with it on the moon. Nothing extra happened. Why?
Looking back I think that perhaps I should have added a line to an alternate ending that mentions that the obelisk was returned and that it would be studied. Though nothing beyond that. The "scary governmental space agency" in this story acts on a need-to-know basis.
3. Okay, I completed the "best ending". Did you just rip off 2001: A Space Odyssey?
This was definitely not intended. While there may be some similarities I don't recall 2001 drawing connections with "aliens" to "gods with elongated heads worshiped by ancient religions" and other aspects of this story. I have seen and enjoyed this movie, but it was not really a conscious influence with Lunar Base 1 at all. A lot of the strange aspects of the story were meant to be left to the player's interpretation. Some of it still is. The original plot for the prototype was basically "Two guys go to the moon, things break down, and insanity occurs". This was actually inspired by a story that a counselor told me at Space Camp as a kid; a completely fictional story about a lunar landing gone wrong and a man being stranded there. The man lost his mind, burned his face trying to repair an oxygen tank, and affixed make-shift blades to a pressurized glove to kill the first person that came to rescue this astronaut Freddy Kruger.
4. It took us this long to go back to the moon? Wait, we've never been before?
Yet another disappointing aspect of the story! But also, intended. I've always been fascinated with many aspects of space and space travel. At one point in my life I was spending too much time looking into my own suspicions and theories on this topic. I felt that while it could be interesting to imply these sort of things, it would be noneffective and a bit tacky to have too many details written as why they are implied.. especially with a PhD physicist running the competition (heh-heh).
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Lunar Base 1 Submitted to IfComp
I submitted my entry into the 2012 Interactive Fiction Competition today about 6 hours before the deadline. Even in the last few stages of polishing, I found a bug or two to eliminate. I was not able to send out the file for one last round of testing, but after running through the story a few times myself today I'm fairly confident that it won't be a sloppy release. An aesthetic request here and there from my testers may have never been implemented due to time or technical restraints. Of course, there will surely be some sort of surprises when the story is in the hands of the judges.
Earlier this week I wasn't sure if I would be able to use an original sketch I had worked on for my cover art at all. My intent was to photocopy it, paint and ink it, then scan it for an electronic version. The results were very poor using this method. I ended up actually taking a picture of the page in my sketchbook with a digital camera using no flash underneath a lamp in my computer room. This gave it the yellowish tint you see, which I think captures the ghostly feel of the surface of the moon pretty well. I then added black into the darker areas to make everything pop out a bit more, and finally touched up a rough edge or two.
This is now the last time I can mention anything publicly about Lunar Base 1 until the end of the competition per rules of the organizer. There will probably be a retrospect of the competition added after the results are in. Good luck to all authors of IfComp 2012, and good adventures to all of the judges.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Lunar Base 1: Beta Test 2 Coming Soon
In a couple of more weeks I should have the next round of beta testing for Lunar Base 1 in the email boxes of the testers. What's taking me so long? Well, a couple of things (excuses). The first being that I had a rather lengthy to-do list after the first beta test. Another has been a lack of free time lately due to doing stuff for my 2nd job in web production / programming. To make matters even worse, a co-worker at my first job sustained an injury at home that put them out for a few weeks. Guess who had to do their work while they are out?
A slew of bugs and bad grammar was to be expected with the first beta test. However, there were issues in the story pointed out by some that did come as some surprise. The main complaint is that the story (especially the ending itself) is too open-ended and too vague. Initially I felt defensive about this. I not only wanted a feeling of emptiness and eeriness during the player experience, but I also wanted to leave some large chunks of the story completely up to the imagination and interpretation of the player. Perhaps I was falling into a trap that is frequently used in modern science fiction. As one fellow interactive fiction enthusiast describes this trap, it is that basically a lot of modern science fiction doesn't even try to explain most things. This has been a big complaint with the new movie Prometheus.
I did really enjoy Prometheus, but I can definitely see where others have complaints. I had a few of my own. Perhaps the fact that I haven't even cared to see a modern movie in a theater or Drive-In going on about five years now and expecting an extreme let-down was a factor. I won't list all of my nitpicks with this movie as others have. I'll just say that I didn't expect to know every secret of "the engineers" or even David the android. My gripes were with the completely illogical behaviors of the human characters and at one point wondered about infection in one of my favorite scenes from the movie, the Med Pod scene.
It's kind of humorous to me now, but I remember a week or so before seeing the movie I actually thought to myself "Wow. I hope this movie doesn't have some crazy earth-shattering plot that ties other planets and Earth to each other. That might influence how I complete my sci-fi game." In the end, it did influence me to do something with my endings... to write them in a manner that lets the people know what actually happened in my story.
Originally, I had apprehensions that telling all would drive some people away from the weird ideas and explanations I had in my mind as I wrote the story for Lunar Base 1. Now, I'm actually doing that with the next version as I expand on the only "good ending" and create another or two. Also, I'm adding more "logical stuff to do" such as introducing the device above.
If anyone who missed out on round 1 of testing Lunar Base 1 would like to be included in the next round, just leave a comment with your email or send me an email to jizaboz (at) hotmail.com .
A slew of bugs and bad grammar was to be expected with the first beta test. However, there were issues in the story pointed out by some that did come as some surprise. The main complaint is that the story (especially the ending itself) is too open-ended and too vague. Initially I felt defensive about this. I not only wanted a feeling of emptiness and eeriness during the player experience, but I also wanted to leave some large chunks of the story completely up to the imagination and interpretation of the player. Perhaps I was falling into a trap that is frequently used in modern science fiction. As one fellow interactive fiction enthusiast describes this trap, it is that basically a lot of modern science fiction doesn't even try to explain most things. This has been a big complaint with the new movie Prometheus.
Med Pod from the movie Prometheus (2012)
I did really enjoy Prometheus, but I can definitely see where others have complaints. I had a few of my own. Perhaps the fact that I haven't even cared to see a modern movie in a theater or Drive-In going on about five years now and expecting an extreme let-down was a factor. I won't list all of my nitpicks with this movie as others have. I'll just say that I didn't expect to know every secret of "the engineers" or even David the android. My gripes were with the completely illogical behaviors of the human characters and at one point wondered about infection in one of my favorite scenes from the movie, the Med Pod scene.
It's kind of humorous to me now, but I remember a week or so before seeing the movie I actually thought to myself "Wow. I hope this movie doesn't have some crazy earth-shattering plot that ties other planets and Earth to each other. That might influence how I complete my sci-fi game." In the end, it did influence me to do something with my endings... to write them in a manner that lets the people know what actually happened in my story.
Originally, I had apprehensions that telling all would drive some people away from the weird ideas and explanations I had in my mind as I wrote the story for Lunar Base 1. Now, I'm actually doing that with the next version as I expand on the only "good ending" and create another or two. Also, I'm adding more "logical stuff to do" such as introducing the device above.
If anyone who missed out on round 1 of testing Lunar Base 1 would like to be included in the next round, just leave a comment with your email or send me an email to jizaboz (at) hotmail.com .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)