I'm reading Tracy Fullerton's "Game Design Workshop" book. One idea she puts forth is don't worry about playtesters stealing your ideas, your game will be just about as hard for someone else to make as it will be for you, and you obviously have a head start...

Those economics don't quite apply to quick and dirty KotMK-able games, but I'm still a little nervous about sharing because A. i guess i'm "paranoid" about some stealing, but would that be such a bad thing? B. I'm worried I might disappoint people who see this list and what I'm NOT working on

So here is the list from my iPhone "glorious trainwrecks" memo, with explanations, roughly in reverse chronological order

• space war with rotational inertia - I heard Space War originally had rotational inertia, which is an element usually left out. I'd like to find out what it feels like
• space war boxing - thinking of the old 2600 boxing, overhead view, along w/ playing Little Big Planet. What would it feel like to swing big fists?
• like unfinished swan game demo, but 2d... use paint gun to see otherwise invisible area and monsters - most likely next Trainwreck - http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/10/30/the-unfinished-swan.html but in 3D. I'd almost like to try it KnP, but I'm not sure I know how it handles "invisible" objects. Also I'm total pants at KnP
• katmatari damacy using sprites - I did this a bit with cosmicarkatamari for the Pirate Kart, I think I would want it with more colorful sprites (maybe Atari?) and having the mass of cuaght things rotate a bit...
• like sperm game but you have to lure sperm into contact with something - Preggers was another Pirate Kart game... just my general love of simple smooth motion physics games
• javascript game library - just thinking about what a generalized javascript game library would look like...
• slingshot - I kind of this OLPC Physics Game Jam - which reminds me, I really should use the Java wrapper for Box2D stuff, one of the maintainers of that port was that the game jam, and it would probably be much more solid than my half-assed "engine"
• pick up the phonebooth and die 2600 - if I ever get around to using Batari BASIC, this would be my first game that about 8 people would find conceptually amusing
• atari basic simulator - Atari BASIC Programming is classically weird and wonky, but I admire the effort a few people have made to make playable games in it-- unfortunately i haven't been able to really see the games, because the emulator support is so-so for the keypads, and the keypads used such a weird ass way of entering commands. But an emulator that could let you type in the code might work...
• cellular automata system CAoleslaw - SpindlyQ would love love love to see this.
• life war, majority wins - maybe glider gunner? - a bit like Conway West, but more Life- centric. I was thinking the player could fight the ghost (or, heh, a 2 player network version... dreaming...) in painting life blobs. Normal life rules, but every live square has a team color, and for birth, the new cell gets the color if the majority of its 3 neighbors. It might turn out painting isn't a good enough game, so another variant would be firing off glider guns...
• atari rips..... - I think this is shorthand for "smash bros w/ atari characters", grabbing the sprites from the game... though the motion and attack forms would be tricky.
• heatseeker via repositioning? - heatseeker is this old C=64 game I might still do a Java processing or maybe even Batari Basic 2600 port of -- here I'm wondering if KnP could do it.
• game where firing is done when you collide with object, like a cannon - if/when I do a KnP game, this is a mechanic I might like to try. Typical "run from the monsters" but with cannons that are constantly rotating (or maybe not) and the player running into them fires... just exploring the indirection
• assemble little robots to do fighting for you -another study in indirection. I love the idea of having to craft an army... one idea I've had for a while, but w/o the right interface or gesture recognition, is rock paper scissors, where you draw circle, square, or x, and then fling what you draw at your opponent who is doing the same. Or the way ASCII bots has 1000 robots based on head, torso, feet, having to put together your minions to do your bidding might be an intereting game. Or snowmen from 3 diff sized snowballs? All of this might be tough to implement, but still, not my worst idea
  

I'm thinking about what platform I want to code on.

I think Processing has been pretty good to me, and I might stick with it... it lets me use my Java mojo, I've figured out how to do sounds, it can embed in a webpage and make standalone downloads, it has some 3D primitive stuff going on, it's kind of artsy.

The downside is it has a big footprint, in terms of download size and processing power, and its 3D is pretty rudimentary, plus I have to code a lot myself, though I'm slowly making progress on some simple engines.

I prefer to be conservative in picking up toolkits (which is a bit of a handicap my professional life shares as well)

So, criteria would be:
* should be embeddable in a browser ... I think downloads are a big handicap for people tooling around with your game
* I'd like to find some kind of 2D and/or 3D physics engine

Any thoughts? I'm taking a 2 part Flash introduction class, just to try and get a feel if that's something I want to get into. I think of the games at http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/ -- but then again, that clearly has a TON of love in the A/V department that my games likely will lack

I was considering pygame, especially since professinally I think cementing my python skills would be a good thing, but I don't think that's embeddable.

---

In general I think I keep meaning to get more into the online indy game community, tigsource and all that stuff. And I have a hope with my new move reducing my commute to like 25 minutes, I might find it easier to find the time. But even then it's tough to for me to focus when I'm feeling angsty about my chances of making something cool. Also, it's so easy to get jealous when someone grabs an idea I've been thinking about, like heat seeking missles and sproingy rope physics.

VIRTUAL SISYPHUS! Drag the boulder to the top of the mountain!
VIRTUAL TANTALUS! Reach for the delicious grapes, or duck into the pristine water to slake your endless thirst!
VIRTUAL PROMETHUS BOUND! Drag the bound firebringer away from the eagle that seeks to consume his delicious liver

So my comment on Pizza Time's Monster Mash ideas and my love of Earth Defense Force 2017 has led me to

EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 1817

A KNP effort. The game play lacks that certain something, but it has some elements I dig:
* Robotron style controls
* Looming Alien Ships with Shadows
* Bugs who track you down but have to move around the buildings

I think some of these elements could be used in future games.

In the unlikely chance I can't make it to the KotM I'd like this to count as my entry...

Dance of the sugardum fairies... for the Klikth Day of Klikmas or whatever that KotM is...
you'll think you're getting mad at frustrated at the idiot fairy, but really you're getting mad at the idiot programmer and his bad excuse for a physics engine!

drag gifts to help the fairy jump and get to the christmas star.

For no particular reason other than a bit of annoyance at the difficulty of this game
(actually I got through, because I think for some reason my home computer was playing it a bit below speed) and because I actually like "flap" mechanics (see: Joust, and Balloon Flight), I made a parody mashup of Flywrench and my own Atari 2600 JoustPong in the thrill-a-minute world of: flywrenchpong
(You can also play it online).

It also features a homemade electronic soundtrack! (Made by slowing down and "wa-wa'ing" an Atari 2600 Supercharger .wav)

I think if I died tomorrow, the # of people who "get" the joke because of familiarity with both indy game flywrench and atari homebrew joustpong would go down by about 33%.

And yes, I made this exact same post nearly on TGQ and indygamer.blogspot.com.

So here is my first processing game w/ SFX.

I call it draggin.

It's based on Keith Peter's follow3 demo for processing: http://processing.org/learning/topics/follow3.html
I just liked the movement feel of that, but I'm not sure I did a great job of capturing that in the game.

You drag your draggin around defending yourself and your precious apples from marauding dot villagers.

You can also play it online here:
http://kisrael.com/2007/12/04/

So one disadvantage I have when I use Processing instead of KNP is not having a good sprite class. It's easy enough to put an image or a box anywhere on screen, but collision detections have been a pain in the ass. Also, there's some part of me saying that bounding-rectangle collisions might end up being too limiting. So I want to add a reasonable sprite class to my arsenal before sitting down to KotM.

First attempt is this:
http://kirkjerk.com/features/java/dev/sprat1/

I've decided I'm making sprats instead of sprites. It's catchy and one less letter to type.

geek notes, it first does bounding rectangle comparisons, and then pixel by pixel "alpha channel" comparison, so a transparent gif (or PNG I think, haven't tried) will do what you expect. Then I threw in the idea of manual multiple frames, since a collision algorithm will have to know about that.

I now want to make a "basic physics" sprat, w/ a bit of intertia and what not, the kind of thing that ends up being in at least half of my 'wrecks.

If all goes well I'm going to port one of my old visual basic programs as a proof of concept.

If all goes really well, I'll start seeing about a very basic platform engine.

(I think the biggest bummer with KNP is how few options you have for enemy movement. I kinda wish they put on some basic "Platform" and "8 direction" or whatever movement.)

AND BE WARNED -- I JUST FOUND A KICK ASS SOUND ENGINE FOR KNP^H^H^Hjava processing - sorry for the confusion SO MY KOTMS WILL BE EMERGING FROM THE MIME-LIKE, SILENT GHETTO THEY'VE BEEN SITTING IN FOR SO LONG. Hell, I think THIS engine even understands MP3s! (though I don't think it does any kind of streaming, so I'm kind of afraid of it.)

So i know I spent way too much time whinging about being the only guy not writing stuff in KNP for the Pirate Kart, but still I'd like to ask the (ir)regulars here: assuming I can get to a computer in time for this weekend's KotM, should I do something in Java Processing or Klik N Play?

Both have their pros and cons. I can do more and more interesting stuff in Java, though I haven't yet worked up getting the sound libraries going. KNP is more in the spirit of what everyone's doing, and I'm more like to get the abuse of clip art and sounds going.

(at some point, I'd like to get into trying to build engines more than games. I guess I'm more of a Carmack than a Romero, if you know what I mean, or at least aspire to that.)

this is so much a work in progress it's not even funny, or fun.

So one year "rince"'s entry in the Obfuscated C Contest (I'm not your damn Google, but see http://www.ioccc.org/1993/ , the "rince" files) was a program called CABBAGE, Cellular Automata Based, Beautifully Abysmal Game Environment. I'm taking an inspiration but not an implementation (on any level, and probably losing most of the elegance) from him and trying to do something similar in java. If it works you can share really lame games just by cutting and pasting strings and I have all sorts of weird debugger ideas in mind but right now it's just a heap of Java bleh. Download and fire up processing if you want to see it; I'm posting it here to try to kick my butt into finishing it, and so I can download the file instead of having to carry it around with me when I do want to work on it.