Hyperabuse Monolith

A second game on the S.C.U.M. theme. This is a game about harassing people in the street. Again, the visuals are where I want them to be, but the gameplay isn't quite. It's more like a "proper game" though, has a score and everything!
(my best is 16130, but higher should certainly be possible.)

Hyperabuse Monolith



If videogames were rock music (a much better metaphor than movies), then this a fairly dull quiet track 2/3 of the way through the album (I'm not selling it very well, am I?).
I quite like that idea; an album of games.

edit (24/06/10): new version, incorporating some suggestions and fixing a bug; also, scoring is now different by an order of magnitude, so scores mentioned previously will sound absurd.

edit (26/06/10): new version, mostly the same as the previous, just improving depth-buffery problems but not fixing them completely because I'm lazy.

Warstorm

Several of my friends have started playing a game called Warstorm on facebook, and I've been getting lots of messages about them giving each other hunters and mages. I decided to try the game today. My impressions have not been very positive.

It's a CCG about fantasy armies battling each other. The battles themselves seem to be completely non-interactive. Your cards are drawn in random order, and after being in your hand for a number of time steps (the 'cost' of the card) they enter play. No decisions are made during battle. So basically, the entire game is about deckbuilding. This is (like Dominion) a game designed to attract ex-Magic players who get nostalgic about deckbuilding, regardless of depth. But it's combined with the money-sink of actual CCGs (you can get new cards by investing time, but the cards that cost real money on are strictly better) and the social addiction of Farmville. A charming mix. Plus the UI is laggy and the game has more fun than the player. I don't recommend it.

(It's a pity, because the mechanic of having a card's cost be the number of turns it takes to enter play after drawing it is quite elegant.. unfortunately what it elegantly achieves is nil interaction!)

Babeltron 2010

Another game. Really it's basically just an elaborate word-processor though.

Babeltron 2010

I'm not completely satisfied with the mechanics, but I think there's something there. I am quite satisfied with the visual aesthetic.











This was made as part of the Games Collective's pageant on the theme of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto. I don't think it's a very good use of the theme, maybe I'll do something else as well.

Brog Blogs about Brog Grog Jog Blog

On Andy's blog, he has blogged about I, Brog. I (Brog) am now blogging on my blog about his blog about I, Brog.

Irregularity Bog Sog

There was a big frog, he was sitting in a bog, he was climbing on a log, he was gnawing on a dog, he was a NONALOG FROG.

A Nonalog Frog.

There was a big goat, he was swimming in a moat, he wore a novercoat, he nibbled on an oat, he was a NOVERCOAT GOAT.

A Novercoat Goat.

That is my song for today.

Knot-Pharmacard Subcondition J

I made a game.

Knot-Pharmacard Subcondition J
(alternate download)

Don't play it if you suffer from epilepsy (it has lots of rapidly flickering colours).
Let me know if it crashes.







The idea behind this came from the theme "bricolage", meaning "a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things". I went through a bunch of unfinished prototypes I had lying around, foetal games that will never see birth, and copied chunks of code out of each of them, pasted them into one file, and stuck some arbitrary interactions between them. There is a victory condition; it doesn't make much sense, but it is possible to reach a "you win" screen. Don't feel compelled to aim for this though, just do whatever.

Edit: The zip was slightly corrupt (3 non-essential files were broken), this has been fixed.
Edit: Updated with very slightly modified version - main difference is that it displays a title screen. Also, the "you win" screen is replaced by just having weird graphical effects then going back to title. (15/9)

Alien Oort Cloud Refinery

The Brink of War, the next Race for the Galaxy expansion, is due soon. This is fairly exciting.

The first expansion came with a collection of blank cards (with the same back) so that players can make up new cards, and there have been 'card contests' for the second and third expansions where people can send in card ideas - the prize being having the card in the expansion and a mention in the rulebook.

Anyway:
The winners of the card contest for Race for the Galaxy: The Brink of War are:
* Michael Brough for inspiring Alien Oort Cloud Refinery,
* Kester Jarvis for inspiring Golden Age of Terraforming, and
* Ville Halonen and Raine Rönnholm for inspiring Universal Peace Institute.

This is even more exciting.
(The reason it says "for inspiring" is that they take the cards through their full development process to make sure they're balanced and fit the theme.)

The card I submitted was:
(ALIEN?) Rainbow World
Multicolour Windfall
Cost: 0, VP: 1
$: you may not trade goods from this world.
IV: you may consume goods from this world as any colour.
V: you may produce on this world with a "produce on windfall" power of any colour.

And the form it ended up in was:
ALIEN Oort Cloud Refinery
Multicolour Windfall
Cost: 0, VP: 1
$: you may not trade goods from this world.
ANY PHASE / GAME END: choose this world's colour.



So the only mechanical change was that they simplified and strengthened the property of "being any colour" - it does basically the same thing, but it's expressed much more cleanly and has synergy with more different powers (now it applies to cards that score for different coloured worlds, powers that let you draw cards for producing goods of a particular colour, and the new powers on e.g. Golden Age of Terraforming, which allow discarding goods of particular colours to gain discounts on other phases).
I'm really pleased not only that my card made it in, but that it was changed very little, meaning I'd already done a good job of balancing it. I'd actually started it at cost 3, and progressively reduced the cost as we played with it until it had cost 1, then cut it to 0 at the last minute before sending it off.

2 bugs

I've found two Vertex Dispenser bugs in the last two days. In the actual game mechanics, not in the netcode where I already knew there's still some brokenness going on. Nothing game-breaking; probably nothing anyone but would notice, just weird corner-case interactions not working how they should. Still, it bothers me a little because I'd thought everything there was solid.

Another cold has infected me. My immune system seems not to have been performing to specification for a while. I continue to blame the hideous climate. Have spent my time fiddling around with the sound rather than fixing these bugs, and don't have much to show for it. I'm finding it quite hard to generate new sounds that fit with what I've already got but don't mush together in the same frequency range. I guess I probably should try using something a bit more advanced than sin(pitch*time)*volume.

We've been playing quite a bit of multiplayer Vertex Dispenser. The aforementioned brokenness doesn't seem to interfere with what actually happens; it just claims to be out of sync for a frame and then gets back in sync afterwards. I'd like to know why it's happening though.

Something quite entertaining to do is to place a boobytrap next to an opponent's white vertex, after attacking the vertex a few times to weaken it. Then run away, and wait for them to set it off - with any luck, it destroys their white vertex and you'll hear a grunt of rage from across the room. One time I managed to kill both my wife and her last white vertex with this trick.. playing against human beings is a lot more fun than just against AI.