Where are all the games?

It only took me three games to realise I can't keep up to the game a week thing.
It is so much more work than I envisioned.

Don't get me wrong, I am not quitting, but I have to change the premise.

I'll be putting up games whenever I can, but it won't be regular, and it won't be 52 in a year.
(When I was inspired by Mindy, I should also have been inspired by her putting up things she wanted to make, not make things to meet a deadline & quota).

Kinda guts this whole learning experience I know, but with work & life (thanks to having a wife, I happen to be a lot more social then when I was a lazy student!), I just can't put the time into this project it needs.
Before anyone I know speaks up, don't worry, I know, I would have made other excuses back then too! (But this time, I mean it!)


At the very least, I hope to be able to put up at least one or two games that meet the original goals of a complete game, which means I need to someday figure out how to fix sound in python-ogre for linux.

One or two good, polished games would make me happier that I didn't fail here (well, not completely at least!).


I am still open to good game ideas too.
I have a couple, but most of them are too big for me to work on in my spare time.

Lazy Week

No game this Monday morning.

I had an idea, I started on it, but was a bit slack.
Then I was very very productive on the weekend, but nothing to do with coding!

My Wife & I cleaned up, got a whole lot of tasks checked off & tried to set up our little swimming pool (but stuffed it up, so next weekend will be try 2!).

I have been thinking about this project, and ever since week 2 (the breakout that never was), I realised that I probably won't hit the full 52 games for the year.

I have decided though, not to give up and instead to compromise.

I am going to try to get the bulk of the games done, but I will need a break every so often.

This week I am counting as a break, and after next week's game, I will be taking a one week holiday (from work & this project).

After all, this whole project was meant to be a learning experience for me. I was hoping to refine my skills from coding to time management. Along the way I have learnt some other important things (even though I am only 5 weeks in) such as when to move on and that non-stop work in not maintainable (which has encouraged me to take a break from work too).

4 - Sokoban

Damn, I'm not good with these deadlines!
I could have had this one done & up yesterday, but when I got home I got lazy.

So, as painful as it was for tetris, I have gone back to lugging my heavy windows laptop to work.

Currently I code on my EeePC which has been great, so light and easy to throw around.
But when it comes time to making the game work on windows, it comes down to my 15.4" laptop that looks & feels massive after a week of using the eee.

Anyway, enough explaining & apologising, on with the game.


Sokoban is a great puzzle game where you must move the crates to their location by only pushing.
You can only push, and only push one at a time.

I only made the game, the levels come from:
http://users.bentonrea.com/~sasquatch/sokoban/ which were made by David W. Skinner.

Which I found from the linux KSokoban game. I hope David doesn't mind, through KSokoban, his levels where my first introduction to the game, and I thought they would be a good base for mine.

So to start with, here are some screenshots:




The target zone shouldn't be black like that, it isn't under linux, so I will need to find out why. My first guess is that Ogre made a change in how they handle material scripts between versions (my linux one is a little older).

Anyway here is the game:

Download for Windows

3 - Klickity

Another clone, but at least a complete game.

This will be short (I'm playing spore for the first time once this is done!).

This is a clone of a clone. Klickity is what I have always known it as from KDE (a window manager for linux).

Click the blocks that are connected to other matching blocks, and try to clear the field. The lowest score wins!



Here is the game:

Download for Windows

2. Breakout - Cancelled...

I had to make a hard decision last night.
Breakout still isn't where it needs to be, to be up for download.

I was deciding between trying to get it out next Monday, and just moving on.

I have decided that to keep moving is more important, so I don't get bogged down.

I am hoping that some time in the future, I will be able to complete breakout & put it up, but for now, for the rest of this week, I am going to work on a small game that will be up on Monday.

Breakout - Delay

Last time I made crappy code that I was ashamed about.
Last time I didn't do enough during the week, which lead to a crunch on Sunday (with even more crappy code).

This time I designed some nice code & abstractions.
I spent a lot of time during the week working on the code.

Saturday I realise I had a lot of nice code & no game.
Weekend crunch & by Sunday, some crappy code mixed in.


In otherwords, I am behind again. A bit worse than last time too, but I hope to have breakout up in the next day or two.

Then the next week game will have to be a simple one.
I'm thinking 2D only (I could use a change!) and a bit mind numbingly simple.

Well, this is a long road ahead, so it's important for me to keep pushing on, learning to make compromises and keep going. Which is what I plan to do.
I'm not giving in this time.

Week 1 - Tetris

Tetris!

The first of my year of games, and it is a clone of Tetris!
The code isn't as good as I had wanted, but I was a bit slack, and a lot of the game was made the night before!
The only thing saving it from looking as bad as the code does, is the fact I am lucky enough to have an artist for a wife!
She helped make some nice looking blocks, a great background done from scratch, and some touches to the GUI buttons, so they don't look so bleak.

It has been a while since I last worked to a deadline, and I didn't allocate my time all that well.
I did a bit of work each day on the train ride to work, but little on the way home.

Saturday I got some more done, but still not enough by that point for what I wanted.

Then at 4am Sunday morning, I woke up & realised I was going to miss my deadline, and this would be another failed project.

I worked all day, from 4am to 10:30pm almost completely on the game.


It was at about 9pm that I found that my sound libraries weren't working, so I rushed to get an update, but I was too tired once I fixed it, to actually get sound working.

I was still even working on the game this morning in to work, and it must have been the most productive I have ever been!


I spent a fair bit of time at work this morning, trying to build a package for windows & linux.
Linux has been a pain, some things missing, so the first release will be Windows only, but hopefully I can fix it later today & add it to this post (Considering I developed it all on my eeePc with xubuntu on it, I really want a linux package!).

I am getting my wife to test the windows version now, and when I know it is working properly, I'll make an installer and post it here.


I am also hoping to get a chance to add a few missing features today (such as sound & special effects), as well as fix up the GUI, which needs some work to be complete.

Tonight is the final deadline though for changes, and then it will be whatever I had working last!

Then I will be on to my next game for the week Breakout.

(This will be updated through the day...)





I haven't been able to verify that it works on other computers (just my own laptop).
I'll be checking it tonight when I get home, but until then, give this a try, I think you might need to install the latest directx (although I will try to remove that requirement later)


Instructions:
Extract the zip on to your computer.
Open the extracted folder and run "game.exe"

UPDATE:
Here it is, the final version.
It doesn't have sound, an installer or a linux version...
I have learnt some lessons though, and the next one will be better organised and less rushed!


Download for Windows

You might also need to update your DirectX install before the game will run:
(If you have errors about "d3dx9_35.dll" missing, you need to update)

DirectX Web Setup

When you are sick of the game, just delete the folder, it doesn't write to anywhere else on your system.