Today I managed to crunch PONK into 512 bytes! If you have a slow internet connection, you won’t have any problems now!

PLAY PONK

[CSDb] Ponk by Triad (2013)

Click here if you don’t know TRIAD.

Also, I updated PONK website!

Sooo… I decided to make a game on a C64… And how did it go? Pretty awesome!

Making a game for a C64 and on PC is super simple and tons of fun! But Making a game on a real C64 is something else! One false move and BAH! your game is gone! There are no drives inside C64, everything that you are working on will die once you flip the power button. Moreover, there is no memory protection, so you can accidentally wipe out your code while it’s executing~!

(more…)

I have no idea what it is going to be yet, but here’s how it looks like:

No way to play since I still need to solder a cable to be able to transfer it to PC! Everything is written in assembly on a real C64.

Watch stream.

I decided to make my LD game on a C64. I hope I remember how to do that!

Watch the livestream!

Screenshot:

But I’m in on and about!
Here’s my mess.

I’m not going to clean that up!

As many other people, I had some hard time thinking up my game idea this LD. In the end I decided to make a metroidvania platformer. I wanted it to get players to learn and master the controls and be able to do parkouresque awesome moves in the end. Here is how it went, and how I feel about this.

What was the plan?
To create a metroidvania style platformer taking place inside an evil scientists hi-tech lab that allows users to learn and master the controls and be able to execute cool moves inside.

What went right?
I have managed to tailor the game as intended and I was able to master it nearly perfectly.

What went wrong?
It appears that the players find the game really hard. It seems havign mastered the game, I had to require some external testing, that I had simply no time for during the LD. However, I keep telling myself they’re just lazy

What was left out?
I had to cut down on few features. One of these is movable enemy robots, that I didn’t even start to work on. The other would be final boss. The environment of the game is pretty tight, so I am eventually glad that I did not stuff it with more obstacles. I also had grenade launchers ready and working, that I left out. I just thought it unnecessarily make the game harder. Also, enemies have HP and cool this hit-effect all ready, but I wanted the game to be as speedrunnable as possible so they are all one-hit-kills.

So, can you speedrun?
Sure! I decided to record a video of me speedrunning it to perhaps help players who might have trouble on the way! Here it is:

Play now!

I have fixed clunky wall jumping, added wall mounter lazers, force fields and grenade launchers and overall made some progress. You cannot interact with stuff and it can’t hurt you yet, so feel free to explore!

Hey, I slept well too

I will proceed to feast now.

I have had troubles thinking something up, but here I go! And I’m pretty much catching up already!

You are a spy designated to infiltrate a villains lab and plant a bomb inside. For now, you can only walk around!

I am really proud of the mechanics, so please let me know what do you think of these! You can slide walls, do wall jumps, grab and climb ledges.

The spy run animation is probably the smoothest run animation i have ever managed to draw. I always take too much time to do such stuff. I hope it looks good at least!

Play here!

I’m super excited as usual! And as usual I have no idea what I will use, but I shall enumerate some of the stuff I comonly use:

IDE

• FlashDevelop
• Code::Blocks + MinGW 3.2.3
• Visual Studio 2012

Middleware / Libraries

• FlashPunk
• Stage3D
• Allegro 4.2.3
• Allegro 5.0.6

Graphics

• GraphicsGale
• IrfanView
• XnView

Sounds / Music

• Adobe Audition
• FL Studio 10 Fruity Edition
• sfxr

Coffee

• Lavazza
• Davidoff
• Daylmar
• Movenpick

Other tools

• FRAPS – videos and screenshots
• C64 (dunno for what, but it might come in handy!)
• XSplit – streaming
• Chronolapse – timelapse
• Notepad++ – PHP and HTML and JS stuff
• Xchat – IRC
• XVI Hex Editor – desperate measures
• foobar2000 – musics

Hey, remember when I said that McPixel is coming to Commodore 64? Well, it is!

And I’m going to use this month to make this happen! I am going to misinterpret the simple 3 points to my disadvantage! Here’s the plan!

1. Make a C64 game!

2. Take it to a flea market!

3. Monetize!

Wish me luck! It’s been some time since I made something for C64!

PS: If there are any troubles with the list, or you have feature request or opinions, let me know in the comments. I really want to make this an easy way to rate low-rating games.

McPixel is on Steam Greenlight! Help McPixel get to Steam, he needs your thumbs!

Vote McPixel for President!

This will not be your usual post-mortem. I will not be saying what went good and what went bad. I will just focus on what I didn’t give a damn about.

What I didn’t give a damn about:

GRAPHICS
Definitely, I got a bit over ambitious with the amount of stuff I wanted to have in the game, and there are many things I just didn’t care about.

These are acutally not noticable when playing the game, because it’s fast paced. But this is what you should keep in mind.

This is Ludum Dare, and you only have 48h, you need to get over your OCD and don’t care about anything.

You might want to say that “My game is not fast paced, so I couldn’t have gotten away with that!”. Here’s a slow-motion version of Badass to prove you wrong.

CODE
Use whatever you can! It might be forbidden to use existing artwork, but coding is a copypasta fest! I used FlashPunk, and it has a build in collision detection, but that does not apply to layered beat’em’up style. So I just used it implicitly misplacing the graphics. It took me exactly 2 lines of code.

Code for Badass is super simple and I think I spent around 8 hours writing all of it.

SOUNDS
It takes less time to record and playback an audio file, than to write text and text display. Also, it’s 100% more badass!

This is my recording device:

Amd here is a drill I use to create badass voice:
- Record with mic
- Stretch wave to 111% length
- Apply subtle dynamic processing
- Add slight reverb
- Normalize
- Convert to 22kHz 8bit Mono
- Save as 32kbps mp3 (32kbps@22khz/mono == 128kbps@44khz/stereo)
Takes few clicks in your favourite audio editor!

MUSIC
Instead of working on one track to make it nmore awesome, I actually made 3 tracks and ditched 2 of them. If you know how to use a tool to make music, it shouldn’t take you much time to create some!

Ditched track #1
Ditched track #2

When I finally got something I was satisfied with, I spent few more minutes on it and used it!

DURATION AND DIFFICULTY
The game jam is 48 hours, and you’re always going to be making last-minute fixes soon before the deadline. Then you want to test out your game, and you remember it takes 1 hour to beat!

Also, You spent a lot of time adding content, but the game is really hard and parts of it, noone will see.

That’s why Badass is

1. Short
2. Easy

Badass takes about 3 minutes to beat completely. When you game over, you start where you left off, and apart from all that, the game’s terribly easy.

Why?

Because

1. There are 1405 games to play, if you played all 3 weeks straight, you only have under 5 minutes to play any of them
2. I wanted people to see all that I made, and not get bored in the process
3. I made this cool ending

So, keep that in mind, and make short and fun games! I always aim at making an LD game that has a proper beginning and a proper end and is short. It doesnlt always work out properly, but I knwo that this is the way to go

THIS IS IT!
You, it is! Always remember, leave your OCD somewhere else, and just have fun making awful things for this amazing event, just as I do!

And naturally, here’s a Badass link!

Sorry for something not related to the recent LD, but McPixel just went live on AppStore and Google Play!

Also, Badass approves of McPixel!

Play and rate Badass vs Hipsters!

Ot is done! I managed to complete most of my poor schedule!

There are 8 levels and the game is perfectly beatable within 3 minutes. Play it and move on! There are tons of awesome games out there!

Play and rate!

Writing code like there’s no tommorow! You should do the same! Why are you still reading! I’ll just leave this here!

Ps. Yes, that’s Badass riding an AT-AT in outer space!