Hosted Trainwrecks

V.Smile Update

SpindleyQ — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:11:13 -0500

So, since my last update, I've managed to completely decode the V.Smile Baby's IR format. Those last three bits that were so confusing to me were actually a combination of a very simple "repeat" bit, and two checksum bits! Once I figured out how the checksum worked, everything became clear. I've attached a small document containing the complete decoding scheme, which is actually much smaller now since I can take the raw data out for repeat codes and so forth.

The next step is to write a little script to generate the Lirc configuration file.

The step after that is to package everything up into a user-friendly bundle. Even if I don't have a nice menu or configuration method to start, it'd be good to bundle WinLIRC and automatically start it when you boot up. Not to mention building an EXE instead of requiring the end-user to install Python and the various random libraries that I'm using.

As an aside, my son enjoys AlphaBoogie, but so far he still hasn't really made the connection between pressing buttons on the controller and things happening on the TV.

Dracula Pong

Pizza Time — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:41:25 -0400

This is a belated Halloween game. It would have come out earlier if I had come up with the idea on Friday instead of two hours ago.

This is a game where Dracula and Blacula play tennis.

This game is more in favour of Blacula because he can attack much more quickly than Dracula can. Players who are better at games should be player one whilst people who are not good at games should be player two. When the person playing as player two becomes better than the person playing as player one they should change over. This is what we in the industry call an adaptive difficulty setting.

Decoding progress

SpindleyQ — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:45:20 -0400

It's going pretty smoothly, actually!

I wrote a little oscilloscope program in Python that interprets the raw pulse/space data from WinLirc (pasted into text files), then gathered the data for each of the buttons. Thankfully the encoding was easy to decipher (each bit has a short pulse to start, and then a short or long space indicating one or zero; a long pulse ends each batch of sixteen bits), so it's just a matter of looking at the picture and turning it into a code. I haven't really looked at how to write the configuration file properly quite yet, but I'm sure it won't be too hard after all.

Important findings for game designers:
- The codes are the same whether you roll the trackball up or down. :(
- The "release" code appears to be the same for all buttons, so there's no possibility of holding down multiple buttons simultaneously.

EDIT! For all the V.Smile Baby hackers out there, I've attached a text file detailing the codes associated with every button. If someone is ever crazy enough to try hacking the V.Smile console itself, knowing these codes could help you out.

Unnatural Brutality released

GoreCore — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:18:47 -0400

So here it is. My first ~~game~~ trainwreck ever released. 2 player mayhem full of lasers, rockets, swords, Black Sabbath and sharks. Controls are bit shitty, so don't forget to read the txt. And that it's two player only.

Hope it's crappy enough to place it here.

Next one - Unnatural Brutality Ex - Human Slaying Mechanism!

Raycaster

SpindleyQ — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:18:16 -0400

So here it is. It kind of only works for part of the map for some reason, so I'd need to find a more object-efficient technique, I think, if I wanted to continue working on this.

TEK DEMO is the full game

snapman — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:50:38 -0400

Let me repeat that: TEK DEMO is the full game. (Not a demo)

You are Tek Demo, on a quest to find the missing gems! Marvel at the lush realistic graphics, and unbelievable advanced special effects! Featuring no less than three title screens, Tek Demo is my most ambitious KnP trainwreck to date. By my records, the first version of this game's engine is over 8 YEARS OLD, and was never released online. After hearing about Glorious Trainwrecks on Tigsource (which I heard about for... other reasons) I knew I had to finally complete a game using this engine/trick/technique/whatever. So this is my gift to you, internet. A little bit of knowledge for an obsolete game maker nobody uses anymore. I hope you like it!

note: If the full version starts acting weird at some point, try the lite version. It has less data, which might avoid the collision detection freezing up.

Well if it isn't Confusing Game Day

qrleon — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:25:58 -0400

Still fooling around with KNP. Need to find a suitable replacement but I'm lazy. Construct might be good.

heeeeerrrrreeeee's Johnny (Charisma)!

captaincabinets — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:21:19 -0400

I'm back. This may be difficult to swallow in this age of superconnectivity, but I only got the internet piped into my not-enough-room-to-swing-a-dead-cat-let-alone-have-the-facilities-to-cook-it abode a couple of days ago. Sure, I had my whopping 6mb per day on the university computers, but I felt could not do this site justice by showing up and not being able to download and upload the gruesome trainwrecks. Various other things invaded my life to prevent me from getting the internet - for one, I embarked on yet another "maiden" voyage (boom-tish) which is still so involving that to game-o-bliggity-blog every nuance would require a development team the size of the chariot crowd in Ben-Hur.
A triumphant rhinoceros trainwreck to herald my return will be stampeding its way to your eyeballs and fingers, shortly!

IT'S STUPENDOUSLY GOOD TO BE BACK, GLORIOUSTRAINWRECKS.COM! I MISSED YOU TERRIBLY!

P.S I was on the train platform the other day, and someone actually had a shopping bag which read "Hat World." Don't worry, Six, I served him the cease-and-desist while politely breaking his legs.

EDIT: And here it is, quicker than even I expected! I had the idea for this while outside, pressing 'c'. My gosh, it's lovely to be klikking again.
Presenting:
Oh My Guacemole I Forgot How Big The Internet Was

Yiepipipi World

qrleon — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:15:50 -0400

Vin aalgras vu tin ti yok Yiepipipi dans le schliebillia elus! 6 Etats coovo din di yikko Yiepipipi vus yaggrah. Tel noin?

So, Klik & Play has been kind of crashy for me, and despite that I've continued to use it out of laziness. A runtime error in AMOSD broke the last straw, so I'm gonna try to stay away from it except for KOTM.

The race track uses a SEQUENCER!

Fragment

SpindleyQ — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:02:03 -0400

fragment is a game made in 3 hours or so, in roughly 7-minute increments on the bus. You are a forklift. You shoot pac-men at ghosts.

A Man of Solemn Dignity WIP

qrleon — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:03:12 -0400

AMOSD is the shooter I said I would send to DJKlikster once finished. It's been sitting untouched for a while now, and I thought starting a diary would encourage me to finish it. I'm trying to fix errors on the main gameplay board before I copy it ten or fifteen times.

The attached file includes the engine screen. Please note that it's not a real level and you will easily be overpowered because all enemies are set to spawn indefinitely. The real game will NOT be this dense, except for maybe the final gauntlet. See the debug controls below for help in cleaning up this mess. (or you could wait until I upload a less cluttered WIP.)

Controls

WASD: movement
Arrow keys: shoot
1-9: equip weapons
-, =, backspace, ]: more weapons

Debug

CTRL+Z: wipe all enemies
CTRL+X: wipe all spawn points
Click on any enemy or spawn point to remove it.
CTRL+Shift+Click: Move the player
CTRL+L: add 50 life to the player

(using CTRL+Z and clicking unwanted lairs, you can set up a fight between the player and only a couple of enemy types.)

Main Enemies

Ninja Head: the main enemy. Follows and shoots smokescreen, which affects the player's shot accuracy.

Slime: acid splashes back when you hit it.

Eye: Moves in a swirling pattern and slowly closes in on the player. Later on, they will be created 16 at a time, one every 0.2 seconds, to make a snake enemy.

Yellow octopus with eye: a sniper whose shots go through walls. weak on its own since it doesn't follow the player, but they can make being cornered by other enemies much more dangerous (or impossible to escape). They can also be boxed into areas and be used as permanent turrets. I should probably lower their starting life a bit.

Knight: moves only in the cardinal directions (NSEW), and twice as fast if aligned with the player. Knights are knocked back by the sword weapon.

Exotic Enemies

Orb: a slow ball that splits in half occasionally. these don't spawn from lairs; they're just an additional hazard.

Beetle: Small enemies with 1HP that spawn quickly.

Rocket Launchers: not implemented. periodically shoot 8-16 rockets away from the player, which slow down and then reverse course towards him.

Ghosts: not implemented. they will probably just stop&go through walls.

Robots: move along a set path, usually through a narrow maze. they will shoot smokescreen if you destroy them.

Weapons

(eventually i will set it up so that the player has only 3 or 4 weapon slots.)

1 - Normal
2 - Longer range, lower rate of fire
3 - Low range, passes through walls
4 - Sword, deflects projectiles except for smoke. Slimes don't counter it and knights cannot charge through it. several swords layer on top of one another making for a rudimentary charge-up, allowing the player to destroy some enemies instantly on contact.
5 - Boomerangs!
6 - eggs/pellets. for when things are chasing you in narrow corridors and you want a higher rate of fire.
7 - 'flamethrower'. high rate of fire and low range. useless in corridors as it will hit the walls and disappear. if the player runs and shoots in the same direction, this weapon will make a rudimentary shield against weak enemies.
8 - shower nozzle, very weak with a high rate of fire, only useful against 1HP enemies such as beetles. very bad against slimes.
9 - cannonball, high damage and very low rate of fire. it will pass through multiple enemies.
0 - rebounding shot
-, =, and backspace are rare combinations of the above. \ is a broken version of the normal gun, and ] is a debug weapon.

OTHER STUFF

Sliding spikes: hurt when touched. cannot be shot through.

Sokoban boulder: it can be pushed. these would basically just be used to aggravate narrow mazes.

Dynamite: can be pushed, detonates if shot by player or hit by a sliding spike

Purple walls: can be destroyed by dynamite.

...

See the below comments for more updates on the project.

edited for clarity!

KlikVoxel: a KnP flightsim

snapman — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:41:38 -0400

I've been in a kick of doing strange things with KnP lately. I'm working on a 2vs2 stealth action game (that requires a large piece of cardboard to enforce split screen exclusivity) and I'm probably going to finish up that HUGE KNP TECHNOLOGY BREAKTHROUGH that I've been none-too-subtly alluding to during nearly every single KOTM. But what I have here today is not that breakthrough, but rather something incredibly impractical in KnP, done for the heck of it!

I had recently seen a simple demonstration of the new version of flash drawing an isometric voxel landscape. Since I've never done anyting with voxels before, it struck me as to how simple it really was. After the idea sat in my head for a while, I decided to try the effect myself. On a whim I decided to do it in KnP. I showed it to someone once I got it to render a single static landscape. They helpfully suggested I make a flightsim. So a few events later I had a scrolling isometric voxel landscape flightsim in klik! Since it hits the active object limit almost from the start, it's a little on the small size. Press fire to keep the joust-like plane aloft! Watch out for clouds, their cold air will stall your plane!

MIKE TYSON'S JUNGLE BEAT

SpindleyQ — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:14:13 -0400

UPDATE: NOW MAY ACTUALLY WORK

Do you love Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!?
Do you have a Wii that can run homebrew?
Do you have a pair of Gamecube bongos?

THEN PREPARE TO EXPERIENCE THE GLORY OF MIKE TYSON'S JUNGLE BEAT -- THE ONLY NES EMULATOR WITH BONGO SUPPORT!

CONTROLS
Each bongo has a top and a bottom button. These naturally correspond to high and low punch.
To dodge, clap.
To use your star punch (or to "Press Start"), hit both top buttons.
To block, hold the start button on the bongos.

Unfortunately SD card support does not work in the latest development copy of FCE Ultra that I used as a baseline, so you will have to run the included injector program with your legitimately acquired Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! ROM. Fortunately, this means that running the game from your Wii takes you DIRECTLY INTO THE ACTION!

Download mtjb.zip to get started!
mtjb.diff is the patch from the SVN trunk as of today (June 27, 2008). The hack is pretty straightforward, so it's not very large.
InjectorSrc.zip is the source code for the injector program, in case someone wanted to compile a Mac version or something.

Rapid Prototyping - KlikShot v0.3

PenguinSeph — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:10:47 -0400

New version of KlikShot! YAY! As this is a rapid prototype, new versions should be very rapidly released.

With this game, you are the little white ship in the bottom of the screen. You have to assemble a war machine for the mighty empire, so that they don't kill your dog or something. But the empire never turns these things off, so as you create it, it's going to shoot at you. Get it? It will make sense when you start playing it, don't worry.

The main new thing is that when finished, the boss you made is evaluated. Each T Block is worth 10 points, and each stand alone turret is worth 20 points. If you have a lot of turrets groups right next to each other, you don't gain as many points from it. This should encourage players to try to build a framework out of T Blocks and then stick turrets onto it, rather than just shooting turrets at the starting core.

The name is a bad pun, as you shoot parts at the enemy that click together. Also, the product I am using is a Clickteam product, which are normally called "Klik" products.

Please be brutal in the comments. I'm not going to learn otherwise. Instructions are in-game. Keys used are arrow keys, Z and X (all cactus style, yeah!)

The .caa file is the source code, if you have MMF feel free to dick around with it.

Changes from last version are:
Better help at start of game.
Sound effects added.
When the game is finished, the thing you made is checked to give up bonus score. Each T piece is worth 10 points. Turrets are worth 20, unless they are close together in which case each turret after the first is worth 10 points.
Have added little rainbow score things that appear when you gain points. They are needed for anyone to make sense of the above.

Credits:
PenguinSeph - Game Design, Programming (I used MMF1, but it's still programming. In a way,), "Art"
DrPetter of http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp for making sfxr, which was used to create the sound effects.
Everyone who has commented so far!

Rapid Prototyping - KlikShot

PenguinSeph — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:02:32 -0400

So, I post here again. Don't ask why, just accept it.

I made something. It's not quite done yet, no sound, shit gfx and one or two bugs I suspect, as well as little balance in the score system, but we have the core of something here.

Please be brutal in the comments. I'm not going to learn otherwise. Instructions are in-game.

Snappy Step Simulator

qrleon — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:38:50 -0400

I tried to make a game where you control the rotation of the main character's two stick legs, but the end result was crashing. So I changed it to hopping and alternating feet.

Shift will make you move slower horizontally. Don't let your rocket arms bump into anything. Your feet check constantly for active object overlap, so sometimes it's possible to run across stretches of thin or tiny blocks.

I, uh, need to find a replacement for K&P that doesn't crash. I'm very familiar with the K&P/MMF system and maybe this has been holding me back from switching? I'll look into Game Maker.

Tales of the Magic Bubbles

qrleon — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:25:53 -0400

I started with the idea of missing an enemy with your shots being as bad as being hit by one, and somehow ended up with this game. K&P began to crash whenever certain objects were destroyed, so I made the enemies move off-screen when killed.

If you die, hit F2 to restart. press 1 to remove the game-crashing enemies if they're giving you trouble.

EDIT: oops, wrong version.

CGA Quest

SpindleyQ — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:41:07 -0400

CGA Quest is my entry into the 11th Ludum Dare 48-hour programming competiton. The theme was "minimalist", so I went with a hideous 4-colour aesthetic and glorious 1-channel PC speaker sound. Overall, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I also used this incredible 48-hour time expanse (a dude can make 23 games in 48 hours, man!) as an excuse to give Game Maker a try, which was pretty positive overall. Game Maker and I, we'll be spending more time together in the future.

Anyway, I'm very interested in your feedback. Was it actually interesting figuring out what you had to do? Did the strict timing requirements drive you to quit in frustration? Isn't that ending a total letdown?

Quest LEGACIES ... (aka my love letter to La-Mulana)

DarkTetsuya — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:38:32 -0400

While it isn't much now... I've started work on a multi-screen adventure game the likes of Maze of Galious, and more famously, La-Mulana. Anyone who's ever played those games knows just how epic that they were... I'm hoping to capture some of that essence of what made those games so great.

While there's quite a few rooms (even a somewhat hidden 'secret' room), I think I have a ways to go before it's even remotely finished.

As a quick question, is there a limit on levels in TGF games? I don't wanna be partway through making an area only to run out of room...

Note that the hit detection when picking up the key in that one room is kinda finicky, I'll have to work on that.

EDIT: and a bit of trivia about the name, it comes from a series of crappy little 'choose your own adventure' style BASIC games I wrote in highschool... I'll admit it they weren't very good. :P

Well Well Well

SpindleyQ — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:56:30 -0400

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