Introduction

Chess was occasionally criticized in the 19th century as a waste of time. Intelligent Qhess encourages this notion.

Intelligent Qhess is here to elevate the meaning of Chess. It is a new beginning in the world of intellectual thought.

In Intelligent Qhess, you will have to reconsider all of your preconceived notions about Chess, Imagination, and Life.

Getting Started

To begin playing, download, unzip, and run Intelligent Qhess.exe. The menu and gameplay of IQ are controlled completely by the mouse. On the main menu, you will have two sets of options: player modes, and gameplay settings.

Choose a suitable player mode: IQ can be played by 1, 2, or 0 people! If you are playing by yourself, I recommend having a match against CPU L2 to start with. But nothing will ever be more strategic then the wit of another human opponent... When you are ready, click on the "BEGIN MATCH" button!

The game will begin immediately. On your turn, simply click on a piece to select it. Then click anywhere on the board to attempt a move. Further, more detailed instructions may be found in the README.

Linux Compatibility

You can play this game on Linux using WINE!

If you are using 64-bit Linux, and the game starts without any sound, you might be missing 32-bit libraries for your default sound device. As a common example, if your setup is PulseAudio on 64-bit Debian/Ubuntu, you can install 32-bit libraries using the apt-get utility:
apt-get install libpulse0:i386

Credits

Game design, music by Nikki Bee
Announcement voiceover is by Decky Coss
Graphics and sound effects by Clickteam
Title art ripped and edited from I.Q.: Intelligent Qube
Made in Clickteam Fusion 2.5
More detailed credits are available in the README.

Dolphin Preserve is my jam in this entry.

This Katelabs map features a school of magic, a quest with multiple components and a villain with a nonsensical arc. Enjoy :)

Instructions

(1) Download and install katelabs version 2.02 from https://thewaether.itch.io/katelabs
If you use a newer version of Katelabs: bugs may have been fixed and features may have changed, this may break the RPG progression of this map. I highly recommend using the version of Katelabs that this map was tested on.

If you are on Linux (like me) then see https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/12135

(2) Copy dolphin_preserve.kl into your Katelabs folder.

(3) Start this map with edit mode DISABLED. If you fail to do this then everything will be laggier and you will be able to perform some game-breaking magic tricks.

(4) Make sure the sign in front of you where you start the map looks exactly like the sign in my screenshot. If the text is different even slightly (or cannot be read): please post a screenshot in the comments. I'm half worried that text might change between Linux & Windows.

You're now ready to play. Tips:

• Press 'E' to look around
• If you find movement too slow: press V
• This is an RPG adventure. It's janky and full of holes.
• There is an actual ending. Good luck getting to it. Subtle hints are scattered around the place, but probably way too little to make it clear.
• I've done several experimental things in Katelabs that I have not seen in the (few) other maps I've played. Not all things work well. Some may strike terror into your sensible heart, others you may not notice.

Frequently Questioned Answers

Q: What do I do with the "friends" when I find them? A: This probably isn't completely clear. You need to press Enter when near them to activate them, they will react and the map will progress.

Q: I'm stuck! A: Check the clues. If you're still stuck then post the names of the 'friends' you have found so far, I'll reply with some more hints. I may have been completely troll with a couple of the placements.

Some backstory and Way Too Much Detail into Katelabs 2.02 bugs & features

I made most of this map over a weekend whilst sick. Katelabs turned out to be a really enjoyable way to spend an otherwise cruddy time. Big thankyou for Kate for publishing Katelabs.

Move-once alien morphing

The "Move once" function feature does not implement rotation correctly, instead it sometimes morphs objects in crazy alien-like ways. For a demo try this:

1. Create a box
2. Resize it into the shape & size of an ordinary door
3. Give it a texture (so you can see it better)
4. Add a 'move once' function and try to make it rotate (any axis will do).

Looks weird, eh?

I suspect the box is being transformed like this:

1. Apply rotation matrix (from attached functions)
2. Apply scale matrix (from normal editing)
3. Apply rotation matrix (from normal editing)

This keeps the function'd rotations working in local coordinates, but it means any object that has been scaled in a non 1:1:1 way does weird stuff when rotated.

The order of operations should probably instead look like this:

1. Apply scale matrix (from normal editing)
2. Apply rotation matrix (add angles from function'd rotation & normal editing together)

This means only a _single_ rotation matrix is applied and all rotation coordinates are kept in local coordinates (as I suspect Kate intends).

N.B. if you're multiplying your transform mats together then you may need to do them in the exact opposite order of I list above. Don't trust my 3d graphics advice I'm not a convex object.

Waypath following chaos into 4D darkness

Waypath following seems to randomly turn into chaos and I'm not sure why.

Try visiting the classroom in this level and observe the books on the shelves: they are supposed to follow nice neat straight paths once activated, not randomly bang around like mad. Not that I'm complaining, this definately adds to the atmosphere :D

I tried to put a lady-beetle on a waypath in this room to hint to give the player a hint about where to go, but didn't pan out too well either.

All of my bees seem to follow waypaths just fine. Not sure if it's a model specific issue or not.

Deleting a .kl file breaks the game

Katelabs auto-loads the last .kl file you played when you start the game. If this file is missing (renamed, deleted, moved, etc) then the game crashes on start.

Locked framerate & de-sync

(This is just a curious note, not a complaint)

It looks like the game is locked to 30-ish FPS and the physics depends on frames elapsed rather than time elapsed. This means that when the FPS drops the gameplay gets slower.

Sound effects have to run on their own timer/counter (samplerate), so I was not able to properly synchronise the end of sound effects with scripted/function'd actions in-game. This kind of reminds me of adobe flash animations where long audio recordings would de-sync with the animation over time (especially on slower computers), the workaround was to use lots of smaller recordings triggered at different points instead.

Having the gameplay slow down when the FPS drops is a bit annoying, but I can understand why the game was written that way. It can be easier than dealing with float timesteps and (for example) corner-case bugs like 0-length frames (eg when running >900FPS on 1msec resolution time sources).

Level saving seems to be very resilient

Katelabs crashed several times on me, but my level file never became corrupt. Kudos to Kate.

The worst that happened was I lost my last few edits (likely because autosave only occurs every X edits/objects).

Nonetheless I kept making copies of my level as backups. Nothing scares me more than the thought of losing a pile of work that's only stored in a single file.

Sources of lag

This list might be of use to other people making maps.

A few things that seem to contribute to low FPS:

(1) Being in edit mode (thanks Kate for pointing this out)

(2) Having any UI window open, especially the textures window.

(3) Adding lots of objects with transparent polys to the map. Eg you can add as many boxes as you want to the map without causing much lag, but the moment you add lots of trees (and maybe even textboxes?) things start grinding.

Possibly a transparency (alpha-test) depth sort issue? Not sure how that's usually handled in DirectX pipelines, but I presume it's CPU side.

Complements to Kate for this engine seemingly (?) not suffering physics complexity lag. Ie I can scale lots of objects down to a tiny size and make a little tiny world, but then not suffer lag when walking over them as a big person.

One-sided requests

If I have not bored you to death yet Kate :P here are some requests that might (?) be easy to implement.

(1) An easier way to switch between the main tools (move, rotate, scale, properties). I'm constantly swapping between them. Key shortcuts might be the easiest to implement solution for this?

(2) Make the axis-lock key bindings consistent between all tools! X should always be X, Z should always be Z and space should always be Y. Many times I've rotated or moved objects the wrong way right after scaling them, it gets very frustrating, I basically have to guess and try each axis every time I switch tool.

Perhaps it might be possible to remap clone-object (whilst using the move tool) from X to right-click? Ie tap right click whilst dragging an object to clone it.

(3) Add a way to return to the game after accidentally pressing Esc. I do this often, muscle memory kicks in when I want to close a dialog. After pressing Esc I'm stuck at the main menu with no way to return to the map other than starting from spawn/editspawn again.

(3) More sound effects and ambience.

(4) Add an "only trigger once" checkbox to both the Action Prompt and Player Collision functions. At the moment there is no way to (for example) make a door that opens only once. I worked around this by making objects instantly travel off in the ether after being interacted with, but this isn't always suitable. Sometimes the player would get dragged along with the object into space :O

Misc

Thanks for reading this far. Don't trust anything with a tail and no feet. Wait, aren't I a whale?

Title: Dolphin Preserve RPG v1.0
Context: Made for Kate's Informal Katelabs Jam 2021 https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/12033
Authorship: By Whales 2021, gloryofthetrainwreck at halestROm dotnet
License: All the in-game assets are probably Copyright Kate Barrett, but what remains of this map I put under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (CC BY 3.0).

Made by SpindleyQ.

Maybe you should
do something else.

You've spotted Solid Snake!! As a guard, it is your duty to take him out with your trusty six shooter! Don't let him get away! Don't try to leave the area, or you will fall into an endless abyss!

WASD to move, mouse to aim and shoot

The hit romantic visual novel RPG gets a whole chapter of DLC -- on the day it was released! LUCKY YOU! It usually costs ten dollars, but this promotional copy sets you back ZERO DOLLARS. You could also get it by just buying the collector's edition, along with a digital artbook.

NOTE: This DLC was produced by Inchworm Studios; atuun software enterprises maintains no responsibility for the quality or content of the DLC product.

doodled the graphics while listening to the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0NYFVYiOzc

no jumpscares game

it has no jump scare

NOTE: This game grabs your mouse, I apologize for the inconvenience.

windows: to run the game, run start.bat
other: to run the game, run the python script "__main.py__"

move your cursor through the black corridor to the red thing

don't get scared!!!

press esc to exit

credit to Fir0002/Flagstaffotos for the image used at the end of the game, i added the text to it though

credit to cameronmusic on freesound.org for sound effect

I'll make ports for other oses if people want them

TERROR TOWER

SPECIAL TRICKS:

1. RANDOM COLOUR PALETTE
2. SLUDGE
3. SECRET MUSIC

END OF FILE

From the streets of Raleigh, North Cackalack comes a new challenger.

Ya boy on Production and Design.
Young Tizzy AKA TAP on the beats.

The team is The Great Society.

So I've been interested in making some platformers in LÖVE / Love2d for a while, but haven't produced much of anything so far, until this month. To get the ball rolling and reduce procrastination, I started writing more: jotting notes on paper, keeping a personal diary, and writing up public-facing devlogs with weekly goals. (Warning: unfocused ramblings about platformers). I found that writing about ZZT here helped a lot in the summer.

It is my intention to get something playable out the door between now and the end of the year. It would be a mistake to take on something larger than I can realistically pull off, so I've put my current ideas on the backburner, and I'm setting a goal to make something small but wholly realized in about two weeks. This would help me find issues in my current codebase, get familiar with packaging LÖVE games, and also give me something tangible for my efforts.

I wrote up an idea that has been in the back of my mind for a while, started a simple XM soundtrack, and outlined how gameplay would work yesterday. But I'm realizing today that I won't have the energy to pull it off in two weeks. So back into the cabinet that one goes. Started on another idea, but upon review, its workload requirements are also too high for this timeframe. Think smaller, damn it!

I need to take a few steps back. There are platformers with very little to them that are still very enjoyable. I'll post some more once I've got something that's scaled appropriately.