1. Hand-wrote a naive recursive descent expression parser on a houseboat without any internet access and then wondered why it was so buggy.
2. Spent the next week tweaking it and getting increasingly frustrated.
3. Not much else :(

So I just spent the last week on a houseboat on Shuswap Lake without internet! This is why I was gone.

To apologize for my absence, I give you the name of my next KotMK game:

BEJOWLED

My non-KotMK wrecking time lately has been going into a SECRET PROJECT.

The vision? A game-making tool, built to allow realtime collaboration between designers (think Sauerbraten but 2D and with K&P-like rule-editing), and useful collaboration between designers and programmers (the idea being that programmers can tweak the editor and scripting language to accommodate the kind of game you're making).

As you can imagine, this, uh, isn't a small project. But I won't be happy until it exists, so I'm working on it. There's nothing up on the screen yet, unfortunately, so I don't even have a cool screenshot to show off. I've been concentrating on the data and scripting models, instead. You can comment if you're interested in helping out, though.

Anyway, remember: SECRET.
Shhh.
Don't tell anyone.

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?

I made my wife a Klik & Play Valentine on the bus yesterday. It's like Rod Humble's The Marriage, only the marriage depicted doesn't suck, and there's helicopters. Thought you guys might appreciate it.

So we took the train to Winnipeg and back this Christmas, so that we could walk around with the baby and his ears wouldn't pop and because apparently sleeper class on Amtrak costs the same as flying only you get a bed and free steak dinners. The thing about train travel is that you have a lot of spare time while you wait to get to your destination (36 hours in my case). On the way there, I made some serious progress on a SECRET PROJECT which maybe will be revealed soon. On the way back, I made TRAIN QUEST IV: THE QUEST FOR TRAINS.

It's about hobos, mainly, but I think there are some interesting mechanics that turned out pretty well. I may go back and add music at some point.

As of yesterday, this site has been around for six months! SIX FUCKING MONTHS. Holy shit it does not seem like that long.

It is pretty rare that I keep up with any of my projects with the level of enthusiasm that I have for this website. Glorious Trainwrecks has been pretty well a constant source of delight for me. The Pirate Kart was one of the highlights of my LIFE. Thanks to all of you for keeping this site kicking ass.

So, because next Saturday is my wife's birthday, and my parents are in town, and HEY I HAVE A NEW BABY, I participated in this month's Klik of the Month Klub a little early! Inspired by captaincabinets' brave gamebloggin' efforts, I present: FATHERHOOD, EPISODE ONE.

Most of the balancing effort went into making sure it was possible. Not representative of actual fatherhood.

I have added ALIEN ZIT CLASSIC mode to Alien Zit 2000! This faithfully restores the decades-old gameplay and classic sounds that you have somehow come to love, but brings the visuals into the twenty-first century!

This is one you definitely want to download.

THIS GAME INCLUDES:

• DIGITIZED SPEECH

• NEED FOR INTENSE CONCENTRATION
• QUICK SWICHING OF BOTTLES
• AND A SPECIAL FILE THAT WILL PLAY ANY FILE WITH THE EXTENSION VOC (WE HOPE)
• THE ABILITY TO SKIP IRRITATING CUTSCENES WITH THE ESC KEY
• ACCORDION MUSIC
• THE ABILITY TO SWITCH BETWEEN FULLSCREEN AND WINDOWED BY PRESSING ALT-ENTER (WE HOPE)
• A TOTALLY BITCHIN' CUSTOM MOUSE CURSOR

Oh God, if my 11-year-old self could see me now.

Apparently I was up until about 2:00am whipping my code into shape just so I could share the introductory portions of Alien Zit 2000. I've been having a blast drawing and singing and playing the jaw harp.

Download the Alien Zit 2000 teaser! You may also want to peek inside the data directory for a special MP3 surprise.