Can anyone else say, “About time!”?  I’ve had this almost ready to release for quite some time.  But I wanted to add some finishing touches to it.  There are more finishing touches that I’d like to add, but at least now it’s to a point where I feel like I can let other people download it, play it, and rag on it.

Before I give my blurb about the game, here’s a gameplay video.  If you’re a super anti-spoiler type person, it does show how to get past the first few levels.  They’re not that great of levels though.

So the idea here is that you can switch which direction gravity pulls.  I thought that seemed like a kind of robot-y, ninja-y sort of thing to be able to do.  I guess you’d classify this as a puzzle platformer?  I had a couple of aims in making this game.  In no particular order:

• I wanted a break from a bigger project that I’m embarking on.  With this bigger project I’m in the phase that requires a lot of thinking and not a lot of coding.  Since I like to code, this was a nice break from that.
• I wanted to try an exercise in simplicity of game code.  Being a software architect at work let’s me learn about all kinds of good programming practices.  I wanted to test applying them in a game (not that I didn’t apply some good programming practices in other games, I just wanted it to be more of an emphasis in this one).  I think it turned out pretty well.  The main game engine itself is only around 400 lines of code.  The executable is only 67Kb, most of which I’m sure is embedded PNGs.  I even added some unit tests.  They were sucky unit tests, and I didn’t create very many of them, but even a small number of sucky unit tests saved my bacon more than once.
• I wanted a snazzy level editor.  I ended up with a so-so editor, but it’s a better editor than I’ve made before.  All the level editing is done in the editor (no creating images outside and then loading them in or anything like that) and is WYSIWYG.  It even lets you go straight from editing to play testing the level.  Very handy.  It still has a fair amount of work before I’d release it to the general public, but at least it’s something I would consider releasing to someone else.

I’m sure there were some other aims too, but those are the ones I could think of right now.

So what’s in the future for Ninja Robot Winning Gameshow?  There are some improvements that I’d like to make at some point in the future.  I don’t know that I’ll actually make any of them, much less all of them.  But it’s a list, and we all like lists, right?  When and how many I make will probably depend on how many people ask for them.  So if you want them, ask for them.

• More levels.  I think the game as it is has 15 levels.  More levels = good, right?
• Going along with more levels, I’d like to release the level editor publicly.  Maybe let some other people make some levels for me.  I’m sure that there are many better level designers out there than me.  Someone who played the game told me that the levels were way too hard.  I thought they were way too easy.  I’m sure I could have a much better progression from easy to difficult.
• Revisit the music.  I like all the individual tracks that are in the game, but I don’t think they all go together terribly well.  I’d like to revisit the music and probably add more tracks.
• More death phrases and commercials would be good I’m sure.
• I thought it’d be cool to add an instant replay if you die in a particularly interesting way (determining what that means programmatically would be half the fun).
• Remember which levels you’ve beaten and let you resume the last level you were on even if you quit the game.  I didn’t think it was that important with only 15 levels (all of which I thought were too easy anyway, as previously mentioned), but with more levels it would be more important.
• I don’t like the sound engine I used much at all (more on that in another post).  I’d like to replace it with something better.  I encapsulated it away, so hopefully that will be easy to do in the future.

Is that a big enough list of improvements for something that’s just barely being released?  I hope so.  Makes me feel depressed. << MORE >>

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've had a big distraction lately. I've included a picture of said distraction for reference.  (You can see the picture if you click to view the whole post.  I forgot my blog host is rubbish.  I really need to make the time to switch to something better...)

His name is Sam. And last night he learned how get himself stuck under the couch. He'll be six months old at the end of this week. So if you're quick with your mental math you'll know I've done a couple of posts since he's been born, but not many. It's not that I haven't had time to post since he's been born, I just haven't had time to work on anything worth posting about. Isn't the first rule you read on all those "How to make a living blogging" blogs that you keep posting whether you have anything to post about or not? Oh, well. I never claimed to be a good blogger.



Anyway, I do have something to post about now. I'm actually working on two projects. The first one is rather ambitious (as in I hope I get done one day) and as such I don't really have much to show for it yet other than some design notes and a tiny bit of code that doesn't really work yet. In working on such a big project that takes so long to make any progress, I realized that I still needed a creative outlet. So I decided to work on a small game while I'm working on my larger one. About a week or so ago I woke up with an idea for a game. I have the basics working and made a little video for your viewing enjoyment.