So, this weekend I mostly implemented a totally general-purpose save/load routine. It required some restructuring, but the save routine is literally one line of code. I say "mostly implemented" not because that line of code is going to get longer, but because it's currently trying to save all of the resources inside the savegame file -- music, graphics, etc., as well as things that are totally unsavable like sound channels -- and I've got to write some wrappers to fix that. All hail Stackless!

I think I may be able to forgo the level editor for a bit, thanks to some game design choices I made last week, inspired by an evening's run-through of Manhunter: San Francisco. I'd tell you all about it, but that would ruin the surprise, now wouldn't it? [ed: It wouldn't, since it will be the central game mechanic.] Quiet, Ed!

Thus far, there has been one small downside to my choice of Stackless Python as a development language -- the standard Python debuggers don't friggin' work. Thus did I spend my entire weekend trying to figure out why my collision detection was stopping objects stone dead, rather than only in the direction that they collided in. (Imagine Mario jumping into a wall and hovering there.) Finally fixed it last night. BLIMEY.

Isaac was scared that I'd already have a game up and so he'd never see my embarrassing home video footage. I'll tell all of you what I told him: Currently my game is a green box on a blue grid called the "Intertrongs" and it can run into a JPG of a castle. I need to write a level editor soon, because specifying coordinates for things manually is going to be painful as hell. The lesson: Don't use a general-purpose programming language, and you will beat me. I'm a masochist who insists on seeing to fruition some manifestation of a general-purpose videogame engine that I first began imagining some six years ago.

Glory be, but I dislike writing physics engines. Just about done with some simple collision detection that'll do what I need for the top-down Intertrongs section(s). It'll probably be sufficient for Mario-like cartoon physics, too, though I'm also considering turning the Box2D engine into a Python extension. Either way I will probably soon turn hax0r into an Urban Yeti-ish version of the single-screen puzzle platformer that I'm secretly dying to make. Box2D would allow for some great network security systems -- just fiddling with the demo convinces me that I'll need to put the sport of Cat Bowling SOMEWHERE in the game. (Not that there is Cat Bowling in the Box2D demo.)

It's beginning to dawn on me that very soon I'll need a level editor of some kind, which, man. Damn. I am going to be forced to upload embarrassing childhood home video if anyone else decides to seriously attempt this with Gamemaker or Klik N' Play, because I keep biting off pieces that are genuine work. If I made an editor and combined it with Box2D I probably wouldn't get any work done, for all the torture devices that would demand to be built in its Incredible-Machine-ish sandbox. (Although now that I've written it down, that sounds like a rather delicious idea, doesn't it?)

Work has not slowed on Hax0r over the past week. Oh, quite the contrary! Unfortunately, it has been put to a less than productive use: IMPROVING CODE QUALITY. Bah! Ptoo! Ugh! You know what this means: OVERTHINKING IT. The cardinal sin of glorious trainwrecking! OH, THE SHAME.

I admit! I still think that much of what I did was necessary -- I can somehow convince myself that the crime is that it was merely premature. But in any case, it's DONE now, and I can get on with writing a game with some motherfucking interactivity. If I have not posted a screenshot of some totally new gameplay within the week, AVENGE MY DEATH.

I'm starting to quite enjoy this.

OH EM GEE.

What is sad is that this program would have taken less than fifteen minutes to write in BASIC on any given 8-bit computer, and the result certainly would not have been over 2 megs compressed. SUCH IS THE PRICE OF PROGRESS, MY DROOGS.

Off to a cracking good start, it is! Download it here!

Booyah! Stackless Python is BUTTER. I'm never writing another videogame without efficient, co-operative green threads, I swear to God.

1. Experience an epic, unforgettable voyage into the soul of hatdom.
2. Find out where hats come from!
3. Unique hat-stacking system provides incredible depth and strategy!
4. Over 50 hours of gameplay!

...Honestly, though? I'm thinking maybe a Llamatron Robotron clone or something. I'd like to do it in XNA, but we'll see how it goes.

TITLE: HAX0R: TEH ULTIMATE HACKING SIMULATOR
PLATFORM: Pygame + Stackless Python

You know the movie Hackers? I aim to be at least fifteen times less technically accurate.

In the grand tradition of gonzo game dev, I've started with only the vaguest notion of what I want to produce (Grids and cubes and pyramids and shit! Robot pirates! I could start with an homage to C64's "Hacker"!), and a neat piece of technology that I want to use (Stackless Python).

Screenshots forthcoming! (Once I've got some code that draws something.)

The site is up and I am excited! NOW LET'S GET DOWN TO WRECKING TRAINS, YOU GUYS.

As an incentive to participate, if I am not the first person to upload a finished project onto this site, I will personally videocapture an excruciating home movie that I made when I was like eight years old or something, in which I crashed my model trains into miscellaneous toys for like an hour and upload it to YouTube for all to see. Yes, all you have to do to make me publicly humiliate myself is to have an awesome time creating a ridiculous videogame and uploading it to the site! WHAT COULD BE MORE FUN?

As an aside, literally the morning after I registered the domain for this site, I got a spam email with the subject line, "Trainwrecks are fun, trainwrecks are loud, trainwrecks are spectacles."

Seriously! SPOOKY.