I'm swearing off health bars for a while. If you see me making a game with a health bar, tell me off

ALTERNATIVES:

1-hit death- I've done this a few times in a few games. It works well, and if you need to give the player leeway you can have it so like, there's a really small hitbox on some things that hurt you, or there's like... Bombs that go off on a timer, and overlapping them makes that timer count down faster, for example

No HP/No death- Speaks for itself. More interesting penalties are: the game's story continues but you are handicapped in some way. Like you're on fire (which doesn't kill you but does inconvenience you on future obstacles)

Getting launched across the map- What is death in most games but simply sending you back a few paces to try again. I think that's why dark souls worked so well, cause there was another penalty on top of that. Anyway, why not cut out the middle man and just launch the player somewhere else as penalty for their fuckups

"Weird Health"- I also had a game still in development where if you get hit dirt appears on you, and once you get dirty enough you have to take a shower (sent back to somewhere else) you healed yourself by physically wiping the dirt particles off yourself. I also tried the opposite where your HP was a petri dish full of bacteria, and whenever you got hit an explosion randomly went off in the dish, killing some of the bacteria. The dirt system evolved out of that. Also you could get different bacteria in your petri dish that changed you into cool alternate "forms"

Anyway that's tha plan

I'm working a lot of graveyard shifts lately, and have found myself turning to ZZT to burn idle time when I'm home and nothing's open. ZZT is technically very simple, but I find myself going OCD messing around with details in KevEdit, and the time just melts away.

I made a handful of draft game/puzzle boards, but I'm lukewarm about the overall story / circumstances I've plotted out. Struggling to make it all fit together. I've sunk too much time into it to stop now, though. The World file is over 100 kilobytes. The recommended safe maximum is about 250KB. I really don't want to split this into two files, so this should be an effective hard limit on what I can put in. I'm going to try and get the game at least mostly laid out by the time I return to day shifts.

I plan to make heavy use of dark rooms for the central hub, and use the black torch/passage effect to highlight contours of what would otherwise be a completely grey screen except for the little torch-carrying player. The problem with dark rooms in ZZT is that torches only last for about 22 seconds, so even if you have a large supply, you have to keep pressing T to light them. So I want dark rooms to play a significant role, but not for the player to be stuck doing too many consecutive tasks at once in the dark.

Indicating all contours in dark rooms is also a potentially dangerous design choice, as it can lull the player into a false sense of security: they may delay lighting a torch because they can "see" the path ahead, even though they may be walking straight into a newly-spawned set of enemies. The solution is likely to make the paths a little more winding within the space between the contours. I'll have to do some tests.

Sometimes I find myself staring longingly at itch.io

I scroll through, looking at the beautiful art and programming genius that takes place.

It makes me sad, but also hopeful.

I love making games, more than I ever thought that I would, but a lack of budget, knowledge, and overall skill makes it incredibly difficult.
I feel a constant need to create, but never the ability.
This blog entry is mostly just a ramble;
Some sort of shout into the void.

I feel insecure about what I make.
I feel inadequate.
I feel like I'm spinning in circles, even though I have only just started taking this seriously.

Ever since I was a little kid, I had a deep fascination for this stuff.
I research and research, never actually applying or learning.
Just longing to create.

I feel hopeless.
I feel petty.
I feel pathetic.

Deep down I know that I am new to this, finally putting my foot down and releasing things that I make. I know I will improve, but don't know where or how to start.

I feel like I should give up.
But I don't want to.

Even recently, when I would lurk on this website for hours, I never thought I could do what some of you do.
And yet here I am. I can't say that what I make is good, or even passable, but Glorious Trainwrecks makes me feel like it is.

I feel accepted.
I feel supported.
I feel loved.

Blog posts tend to not get much attention on this site, so maybe nobody will see this, and maybe that is OK. Just writing this, I feel a little bit better.

here are some graphics from unfinished projects from the last ~12 years. a lot of these never passed the embryonic stage. you might recognise some of these from my collage in the gt x bc zine.
these are released under the "do whatever you like if by any chance you find anything useful" license.

I decided to make a thingy so that you can make a game look like it was made in unity.

Currently it's tuned to knytt stories, but as long as you know how to launch your game using commandline, you can use this tool.

This tool uses pyg.exe (https://www.pygame.org/project-pyg.exe-2830-4560.html) and Noyb's KSCommandline (https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/2162#comment-9674), so credit to those guys for that.

You can delete start.bat if you want to, but make sure that projectname.exe works first I guess. Otherwise get yourself some bat to exe conversion and use that on start.bat. Projectname.exe asks for administrator access, but it doesn't have to, my bad.

The thing is written in python, so python proficiency will help, but you should be able to figure out how to get it to work with enough fiddling. You should probably know that strings in python are either between two quotes or two single quotes.

Open main.py to see most of the code. I've put comments on the lines that I'm guessing you'll want to use.

The first comment says "####NAME OF THE DATA FOLDER" , so if you change the name of the folder from projectname_Data to something else, you should change the thing that says /projectname_Data to /something else.

The second one says "####CHANGE TO THE SIZE OF THE OUTPUT THING YOU'RE TRYING TO LAUNCH". It's less jarring if the size of the splash screen is the same as the size of your game's window, so the option to change it is there. Currently the size is tuned to knytt stories size, so if your game is in knytt stories, then you don't need to change it.

The third one says "####THIS IS THE THING THAT APPEARS AT THE TOP OF THE UNITY SPLASH WINDOW". I've left that blank, but you can put your game's name there if it's more realistic.

The fourth one says "####FIDDLE WITH THIS UNTIL IT WORKS". I realize this isn't a useful comment, but that's how I did it. Consider reading the documentation for KSCommandline and python's subprocess module. If you're doing a KS game, just change the part after LevelBin to whatever your knytt.bin is called. If you're doing an exe, just replace the whole string with the name of the executable. If that doesn't work, try changing the thing that says shell=True to shell=False. If THAT doesn't work, fiddle with it.

Contact me if you are having issues, although I might not be able to help. I'm TheCakeFlavor#4666 on discord, but if I don't exist there or here anymore, try my email at .

You can use this to participate in unity contests without having to use unity! they will definitely catch you, this isn't that subtle.

Because anything can happen in a coma, it's all up to your imagination, and your imagination can simulate anything it pleases.

Knytt Stories: Coma.
Grand Theft Auto series: Chief of police's coma.
Drawn to Life: Self-explanatory. The part where he wakes up from the coma is also part of a coma.
Super Mario Bros.: Coma.
Super Mario Bros. 2: Coma. Everyone just pretends it was a dream.
Super Mario Bros. 3: This was a coma that Mario had while he was watching live theater.
Super Mario Bros. 4: Coma.
Scribblenauts: Coma in English class.
Super Scribblenauts: Another coma in English class.
Knytt: Coma.
Knytt Underground: Coma.
Knytt Nano: Coma.
OFF: Coma.
Scribblenauts Remix: Coma ported to mobile devices.
Pacman Without A Cause: Really short coma.
Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die: Coma.
Cool Spot: Coma in a future where adverts are inserted into peoples' dreams.
Action 52: 52 comas in a row suffered by a complete imbecile.
Doki Doki Literature Club: Coma.
Hello Neighbor: Coma.
Super Mario World: Coma.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island: Coma.
Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle: Coma.
Sokoban: Coma had by a warehouse keeper who dropped a crate on their head.
Chip's Challenge: Coma.
Chip's Challenge 2: Coma. Apparently having too many nosebleeds can really do something to you.
Chuck's Challenge: Definitely a coma.
Ace Attorney series: Coma.
Chuck's Challenge 3D: Coma.
Ben 10 5D Game Generator: Coma.
Aisle: Coma.
You Have to Put the Ball in the Cup: Coma.
You Have to Put the Ball in the Cup Physical Version: A non-fictional coma.
You Have to Put the Ball in the Cup *DELUXE EDITION*: Deluxe coma.
Cactus Block: Coma.
Cactus Block 2013: See, the Cactus Block coma lasted a long time.
Yellow Jogger Laser Platform Madness: Coma.
Yellow Jogger Laser Platform Madness 2017: The Yellow Jogger is never going to wake up from his coma.
Powerhouse: Coma within a coma.
Every .io game: Coma.
Freedom Planet: Coma.
Mario Bros.: Coma.
Sonic and the Yellow Jogger: Coma.
Metal Gear Solid series: Coma.
Pokemon Blue: Blue coma.
Pokemon Red: Red coma.
Sonic and the Green Jogger: Green coma.
Portal: Coma.
Half-Life: Coma.
Half-Life 3: Coma.
VG2: Coma.
Frank Sinatra in "River, Stay Away From My Door": Coma. Not Frank Sinatra's coma, though.
Tile Studio: Coma.
Tile World: Coma.
Tile Factory: Completely unrelated coma.
Family Feud: Coma.
bbycast: Coma.
Keylugger: Coma.
!!!!!! - The Game That Appears First In Alphabetical Listings: Coma had by a man who was strapped upside-down to a ceiling.
VVVVVV: Coma had by another man who was also strapped upside-down to a ceiling.
Within a Deep Forest: Coma.
ModArchive Story: Coma in .mod format, somehow.
MAS2: Operator Status: Coma.
100 Nano Dragon: Coma.
Tetris: Coma.
Sudoku: Coma.
Pong: Coma, in which the ball is the patient and the paddles are abusive doctors.
Breakout: Coma, where someone's trying to wake the patient by slamming them against a wall.
Snake: Coma.
Super Kaizo World: Coma.
Enough Plumbers: Many comas.
Enough Plumbers 2: Many more comas.
Portal 2: Coma.
Snakes on a Cartesian Plane: Coma.
Undertale: Coma.
NetHack: Coma.
ADOM: Coma.
Mystery Dungeon series: Previous coma, but in Japan.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series: Previous coma, but milked for all its worth.
Chocobo's Dungeon series: Previous coma, but... wait, what?
Etrian Mystery Dungeon: What the hell?
Rogue: Coma.
Final Fantasy series: All comas.
Super Smash Bros. series: Basically like, twelve hospitals full of patients who are all simultaneously in comas.
Minecraft: Coma.
Metroid: Coma in space.
Candy Crush Saga: Coma. The person having the coma is being robbed blind.
Super Metroid: Coma in space, and this time you can walljump.
I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game: Coma.
Zork: Coma.
Getting Over It: Coma.
Sexy Hiking: Sexier coma.

well,
what to say?
after 98 iterations of "platonic football" i can only say that "platonic football '99" will be my final take on this game. i am aiming for perfection this time.

this is true football. in its platonic, ideal way.

yesterday evening i did a first, loose take on player movements, not quite happy how it came out... so today i will figure out how to individualize each player, to give them more unique movement patterns.

stay tuned...

tl;dr: a two player football game

it feels real good to finally get a game out again

especially considering the citadel took a year to do

its satisfying

I've updated my game Bedtime Adventure! Changes include:

-Four more things to do before going to bed!
-Expanded alpaca content!
-A new title screen, drawn by me, that doesn't have the title cut off by the menu! (Because I forgot to draw it, whoops.)
-A couple more things in the room, mostly to help with blocking
-Advertised 5-10 minute playtime now more accurate than generous
-Changed a bit of Larry's speech to more accurately reflect the true meaning of art
-And other miscellaneous tweaks.

Please let me know if there are any issues, or you just hate the new changes, or whatever.

i had a goal of wanting to play every game on g.t. from the beginning of 2018 until i couldn't do it anymore. lol. i started off well, but then kinda faltered.

so i realized that i'm playing all of the 3d games, but not all of the 2d games. !!

one of my favourite things about videogames is being able to experience a place that cannot exist in real life. having a first person perspective is the best way to achieve immersion (imo), so i prefer that.. but also, it's because i just love all of the stuff that comes with 3d: polygons, lighting, shadows, draw distance (i actually like that lol), etc. of course 2d can do that too! this also means, typically, that i prefer 2.5d over 2d.

i don't know why, but representing 3d on a screen is just the coolest thing to me. and it's not always about realism, i just really really really gravitate toward it for reasons i don't understand.

my favourite style is low poly. it's definitely not because of nostalgia. i think more abstract designs with less detail affects me more viscerally than anything realistic. this early castlevania 64 model is what i'm talking about, i still think about how eerie it is once in awhile, ever since the day i saw it in egm or whatever!

what's funny is that most of my art in school was 2d, i couldn't really work well in 3d, i'm not good with my hands. but i'm just really obsessed with 3d, though there's plenty of rad cool 2d stuff out there!

(: