6/10/2010

I figured I may as well start another devblog for this new game I'm doing called jailbreak. I think it's pretty obvious what it's going to be about. I know I said I was going to do solo projects in the past but this time I really am going to try to do the graphics myself, no matter how bad it turns out.

The game is going to be brawler/acrobatic platformer, but you can't really tell that from the demo at this point. It's really alpha and bad, I apologize. I'll have more to show next week.

Also, remember this game I was working on? http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/8f 68368d8a236d04ad9aa87266c3a6e3

I need someone to replace the artist I had on it before :(. It would be cool if you could do things that fit the style of the game as it is at the moment. That version of the game I linked is an early version, and I have a bit more done on it at the moment. There is no rush at all, so if you can't do anything right away there's no problem.

Also since I'm on summer break I have lots of time. Don't hesitate to contact me about something.

Also all my friends are getting pregnant/making people pregnant.

Also Valeford, I am going to pm you soon.

Also I'm very afraid of what life will be like when I need to get a job during the summer.

Also I r baboon.

So I've got all these huge games going on (Well, I've got 2 huge games) that aren't going to be finished anytime soon. They're not moving THAT fast and I want to do a few smaller games in the meantime.

So if you have any ideas and you're a decent artist who wants to make a game, don't hesitate to tell me. When I say smaller, I'm thinking along the scale of Best Friends Forever, a puzzle game or something of the sort.

I think I have a few ideas but I'd like to hear yours too. I'm starting to get the hang of the flixel engine so if that interests you (FROZENFIRE) tell me. Also, I'm interested in doing a Pico Day game too.

Uhh, that's it. If you need some kind of reference, check the games I have in the portal. They're not OMGAWESOME but you get the idea.

bye.

So uh, I don't really have anything to say here about stupid ideas or conway's game of life or anything. I will say that I have been enjoying all the stuff that hit the front page since the turn of the year, at least in the game category. Except the point and click games, I haven't been able to play those. For some reason I've always had an aversion to them, although I like the stuff Lilg does. I especially liked Score, I love those old style text games.

But that's beside the point. I haven't gotten much done, but if you want to play a really early version of my new game, you can play it here.

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/8f 68368d8a236d04ad9aa87266c3a6e3

I'm trying to put some effort into the small things, sound, ambiance. The game sounds a lot better when I don't compress the audio to shit, so later in production I'm going to mess around with that.

I don't need any complaints about what the characters say or the art or anything basically. I probably know all about it. I was thinking about doing another devblog with this game but that was stupid.

So yeah. You can blame those amazing backgrounds on JonBro.

Ok no I haven't but I think we could do it.

Before I start, you should look at this. That's Conway's game of life. It's a basic little cellular automaton. I'm gonna be honest and say that I don't know much about cellular automatons but I don't think that matters.

Conway's simulation lays down a set of rules for a 2D array. Based on position and neighboring cells, a cell either lives, dies, or multiplies. Basic rules but put into practice it looks really interesting. Now, when you think about it, doesn't our world work the same (in theory)?

We live in a 3D space with rules that are laid down (Atoms, String Theory, all that stuff). In the beginning, assuming that the big bang is true, matter was just scattered everywhere with no set pattern. And from the madness, planets formed, life formed, and we formed. All these occurrences happened from a random scattering of matter that eventually created sentient life.

So what if we scale up a game of Conway's game of life to be on par with the size of the universe? Or what if we scale up any cellular automaton? What if we make a 10 trillion by 10 trillion game of Conway's game of life, randomize every individual cell, make it so the game moves 5000 steps at a time, and let it go for an undefined amount of time. Would sentient life eventually pop up? I mean, the conditions are a lot like what started our universe, except with different physics. What would happen?

What I think is eventually a universe would form like ours formed, except it would be under the rules of Conway's game of life, not under the rules that our universe follows. Given enough time, and the right random conditions, maybe the dots would form into something that could sustain itself. Life would form, the dots would make a pattern that would allow something to be stored inside of them. Anything is possible, right?

We would basically be looking at a digital universe that we created that we have all powerful control over. We could pause it, manipulate cells and whatnot. Could you imagine? We could have digital life.

But you see what I mean.

Also Best Friends Forever 3 came out, check it out. The Bow Game is coming along and I think I've settled on the name Mt. Covonaco, but it's not settled. A little deeper information could be found on my forum, and eventually I'll put a demo for Shark City/Covonaco up there </shameless advert>

Doesn't requiring a password to have a number in it actually decrease the different combinations of characters that make up passwords? Consider this.

Each password can be, uh, lets say there are 60 characters on a keyboard that can go into a password (There's probably more, this is talking about case sensitive, with numbers and symbols allowed) So if a password requires that you have uh, lets say 6-8 different characters in it, then these are the amount of different passwords possible.

(60^6)+(60^7)+(60^8) = 1.70807616 × 10^14 (Thanks google calculator)

The amount of possible passwords. Okay, that's cool and all, but this is without the crazy number restrictions. If we go back, and count the possible passwords when limiting one digit to be a number 0-9, this is what happens. According to probability, the easiest way to do this is to subtract all the possibilities of passwords that don't contain numbers whatsoever. That would be 50^6 or 50^7 so on, so forth for each length of password. Because there are 60 possibilities for each character in the password, and there are 10 numbers, we just subtract 10.

((60^6)-(50^6) )+((60^7)-(50^7) )+((60^8)-(50^8) ) = 1.30948241 × 10^14

That's not extremely significant but it's still a loss. Which means that it would be easier to brute force a password of this type. Especially since most people just put a 1 at the end of their password when required to put numbers in. I know, no one REALLY brute forces passwords but this just makes it easier for them if they wanted to. It's best to just allow the person to put their password in and SUGGEST that they put a number in, or at least, it makes sense to me. If there is something wrong with my math tell me.

This is just something I was thinking about lol.

Also I was just thinking about how I never made anything for Newgrounds. I mean, I have a few movies that I only uploaded here but those are shit. I really should make something for Pico Day, even if it's small. I'll try and think of something.

And Shark City and that Bow Game are coming along. I'm gonna post a screenshot of Shark City. If you're gonna say something about how it looks like Miami Shark, go ahead and say it, but I don't really care.

So, my last 2 submissions have been elstevo's Gay Pride Dog (Something I made in a 30 minute car drive) and Shark Valentine (Something I made in 30 minutes while watching Zombieland) And what's funny is I like the engine I made in 30 minutes for Shark Valentine better then the engine I actually used in Shark Mountain. I guess that's because I started Shark Mountain almost 3 years ago.

Best Friends Forever 3 is 100% complete, at this point I'm just waiting for the sponsor to get back to me. It was supposed to come out last Thursday but I haven't heard anything from them. I would like to hope someone is anticipating it. We made a lot of new things for it, and quality control was turned on. As far as I can tell I've stomped out most of the bugs in the previous versions. Since I made all the levels myself I know that they all work. And JackSmack is right, level design is no joke. There's about double the amount of levels in this one then there were in BFF2.

Shark City is coming along. The only thing I'm worried about are the accusations that the game is a ripoff of Miami Shark. Just to try to clear any of that up, Shark Mountain and Shark City were ideas we came up with 3 years ago, sitting around a lunch table in our junior year of high school. We sketched out ideas for Shark City and Shark Mountain years before we heard of Miami Shark, and we don't really plan on stopping with the Shark related games just because someone else had a similar idea.

I'm also working on a game with JonBro, and I think it's gonna be something great. I don't really want to say anything more about it, at least until I get more done. It's gonna be a full sized game, kind of like Crash Landed, but I'm putting a lot more time and effort into it. It'll be better then some of that stuff I pumped out last year. Trust me.

And I'm trying to get a website going at www.thesharknation.com. It's not 100% done yet. Later on in the week I'll post some stuff there about Shark City and the game me and JonBro are doing.

Yes, that's right. I'm whoring my website out. Here goes a screenshot from the game.

Hey.

BFF3 is coming out soon, Shark City (Sequel to Shark Mountain) will be here before the end of April. I hope that Miami Shark won't impact it, and I also hope there's no other shark games released around the same time.

But I try to provoke some kind of discussion when I make a front page post (and I feel like a narcissist when I just post and update on my stuff) so I'm going to talk about Huje Adventure.

A lot of times, at least from personal experience, making new concepts for games is hard. It's something I really suck at. I have a lot of respect for Glaiel, Edmund Mcmillen, Johnathan Blow, Tom Fulp, 2D Boy, Komix, and all those other guys who make these games with entirely new gameplay mechanics. There are a lot of them so it's hard for me to list.

Looking over my past games (the ones that I came up with the concept for), a lot of them are just spins on old game genres, without much originality in their gameplay. They don't do anything new. It takes a lot of creativity and skill to come up with ideas like Closure, Braid, Tower of Goo and Gish. Well, at least, I lack some of that creativity.

Which brings me back to Huje Adventure. Well, not Huje Adventure by itself but games that are like it. It may not be a perfect 10 game but I thought the mash-up between Tower of Goo's mechanics and Gish's mechanics was something I would never be able to think of. Using the goo to make towers that you use in platforming was pretty fun, and could make for interesting puzzles (I haven't played through the whole game yet). But it seemed to be getting flak in a few reviews because of the fact that it was a mash-up.

So what do you guys think about games that are mash-ups in between two other unique gameplay concepts?

Well, to start off, most of my family lives in Georgia and New Jersey. Most holidays we go and visit them, but this one we decided against it. Money and all that stuff. So we're sitting here, waking up on Christmas Eve, and my sister calls. My sister lives down in Georgia too. My mom starts talking to her and she says that my 2nd cousin died by cancer this morning.

My cousin, Dominique, had a battle against cancer for some time. She had leukemia and after seeing her go through chemotherapy and all the troubles that ensued, they decided against putting on her chemo again. When they took her for a checkup, they found that the leukemia was in remission. I can't tell you the full story, but she had another type of cancer that she needed treatment for, and that's what got to her this morning. I don't know what to do honestly.

To be truthful, I wasn't extremely close to my cousins down in Georgia. Since 2003, the most I've seen them is from going down south to visit every other holiday. And it was nice, you know. Being surrounded by family, all the kids around. So when the news hit me, I dunno how I felt, or how I should feel. 30 minutes ago when I heard my mom get the news she was almost in tears, and now I hear her joking around with a co-worker on the phone. I hope to God none of my family ever finds themselves reading this.

But I'm not trying to be judgmental. Cause I'm here doing the same thing. My baby cousin dies and my first response is to write a blog about it. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's funny how people react to things. It's almost as if my family KNOWS we should be depressed and grieving, but it's not truly sincere. I'm not saying I didn't love my cousin, it's just that it feels wrong to hear news like this and go right back to watching House on Hulu as if nothing happened. I loved my cousin just as much as I love the rest of my family.

So Perry and I are working on the next Best Friends Forever, and it's 90% done. Just a few more bug tests and about a dozen more levels and it's done. Right now I'm working on levels and I thought I would share my method for making levels in Best Friends Forever.

This BFF (Best Friends Forever) is being made in AS3. Unlike the past BFFs I've checked every level for bugs, and I've took on beta testers to make sure every level is beatable. AS3 allowed me to make the levels bigger (Well, rewriting the engine made it so I could make bigger levels), made the code cleaner and is just faster overall. The only problem is that the level editor is in AS2, and this makes some big problems.

See, I've been using the same level editor for about 2 years now. The level editor that's in BFF1 is the same one that I used for BFF2, Crash Landed and Adventure Al. I also have a few more games in the works that use the same level editor. I should probably rewrite it now that I use AS3, but the one I have right now is so damn reusable. I just do a few changes and bam, I have a tile based level editor for any game. Since the level editor exports arrays in basic L = [[0,0,0,],[0,0,0,],[0,0,0]] format, I can use it for anything. It also has support for events (up to a certain amount). But it's in AS2, so there's no way for me to easily test the levels for games made in AS3.

I have to go into the code of each game, put the level in there, and export a version of the game that skips specifically to that level. This means that I can't put the level editor in the game, and I can't really share it with anyone. Whats the point of making levels if you can't play them? I'm also having a hard time trying to find any friends who want to make levels due to this lol.

Not just that, but the level editor also isn't very user friendly. Some things only work if you do them in a certain way, and there are many rules you have to follow to make sure things don't bug out. Even though you can save levels, when the levels load up a few things freak out. You can't put more then 2 boulders in a level even though the editor allows it, sign posts don't show up through ground so you have to give them 5 squares of space above their placement, among other things. This level editor is really only fit for a developer to use.

So yeah. I don't really have much to say past that. Here goes a link to the editor so you can see how horrible it is, but keep in mind I'm not going to use any of the levels you make, you can't test the levels and you won't know what the hell you're doing with it.

Now to get back to what I was doing.

http://mikesidelka.com/fs/Skeik/swf/Ed itoe.html

I'm trying to be cool and innovative, so I'm going to make a game in 3 days and see what comes of it.