On Save State Hacking

CockBlockaz auto-saves the player's progress whenever a new puzzle is solved. Saving the game state is a pretty simple affair; there are 25 puzzles, each of which is in one of three possible states (locked, unlocked, or solved). So all I have to do is write a 25-character long string (one character per puzzle) to a text file, using the characters 0, 1 & 2 to represent the 3 possible states. For instance, "1000000000000000000000000" means that the first puzzle is unlocked while the rest are locked (this is the initial state of the game).

So that's fine. But, obviously, anyone could open up that text file and edit the string to mark every puzzle as available or completed. My general stance on this matter is, who gives a fuck? There's no cash prize for completing the game (as far as I know?) & no online leaderboards or anything, so the only motivation to hack the save file is for the pure joy that certain flavors of crypto-nerds get from doing those kinds of things. I think that's great. In fact, it makes me want people to hack my save states.

But now I have an unexpected problem. If I'm approaching save state hacking as a sort of meta-game, just a fun, geeky thing to do, then my current save file is way too easy to figure out! I could obfuscate the shit out of it so that only the serious cryptokids could figure it out, but that's not really what I want. How do you encrypt a string, but just enough to make it a little bit of a challenge, something that anyone with the motivation to try could figure out? I'm not sure, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

First person to successfully hack the CockBlockaz save state wins!

Introducing My Final Game Maker Project

So I've been yammering on a lot about quitting Game Maker (WHICH I AM) but after so many years of dicking around with it I've got all of these little demos & anti-games & failed experiments lying around that, you know, I can't just let go to waste. So I'm throwing them all together into a terrible & ridiculous game called Outer Space Future Battle Massacre 1997.

That is the title because I seriously have a game which is nothing but a title screen that says that & a huge design doc describing a game that I neither recall conceiving of nor have any desire to make.

Is the world ready for a game where the screen resolution changes with every level? Where the controls & mechanics are constantly changing with absolutely no explanation? Where you have no idea of what the fuck you're supposed to be doing but if you do it wrong you are harshly penalized?

Is the world ready ... for OUTER SPACE FUTURE BATTLE MASSACRE 1997?

SokoBondage!

Just finished the last 2 puzzles for CockBlockaz; "Homage" (based on a puzzle from Combiblock, which CockBlockaz rips right the fuck off) & "SokoBondage". Oh yeah, all the puzzles have sweet ass names.

I played through all of the puzzles & loosely ranked them in order of difficulty, just to give some logical structure to the order in which puzzles are unlocked. As the dude who made the puzzles, ranking their difficulty objectively is basically impossible, they mostly all seem way too easy. Maybe they are? I can't tell.

The only big thing left to do is to link the puzzles on the level select screen to the actual puzzles themselves, which will be easy but tedious (drunk programming!). Of course, I've also got an ever-growing list of little tweaks & touch-ups & edge-case bugs which will take more than a minute to push through, but still. Getting close.

CockBlockaz Title Screen

Finished the title screen & very limited options menu. I was planning on having audio & video options available, but you know, fuck that. Don't like the resolution? Deal, mang.

 

The hardest part was the humiliating task of googling Justin Bieber's signature without anyone around me noticing. It was nerve wracking.

Even with it's massively reduced scope, CockBlockaz is a puzzle or two short. I've got a fair amount of work to do with the level selection situation as well. But that's about all that's left except the pile of unexpected bugs & last minute tweaks that is sure to accumulate. I'm cutting the soundtrack, so that'll save a ton of time & effort & honestly, it's a puzzle game. The only reason to give it a soundtrack is because it's a video game & it's two thousand & god damn fifteen & that's what you're supposed to do. Psh.

POTATO CLOCK GAMES DON'T MARCH TO THE BEAT OF NO DRUMMER OR WHATEVER.

Back to Bieber

Taking a Giraffe Adventures break & getting back into CockBlockaz. When faced with a long to-do list as a project starts to wrap up, some people like to start with the biggest tasks while others prefer to get the little things out of the way first. Me, I like to waste a bunch of time MSPainting a giant pixelated Justin Bieber portrait by hand.

BABY BABY BABY OH

Summer Schemes

I have a final exam to get through tomorrow, then it's back to work on games. Here's what's left to do:

1. Finish Giraffe Adventures
2. Finish CockBlockaz
3. Throw together Outer Space Future Battle Massacre 1997

I don't think I've mentioned Outer Space Future Battle Massacre 1997 yet. More on that later. These 3 projects all have very different sorts of to-do lists as they are very different sorts of projects so I'm thinking about working on all of them concurrently rather than lasering in one by one, just to keep it fresh. According to no study ever, multitasking is an efficient way for human beings to accomplish tasks.

Other things I'd like to do this summer if I have time:

1. Dig into Twine a little more
2. Play with PuzzleScript
3. Learn ENIGMA & maybe use it to start over with Lucha Cerveza

I also want to learn Haxe/OpenFL & Unity & I've been wanting to learn NES assembly just for kicks but, yeah. Chill out, dude. Now I'm just stressing myself out. Anyway.

Shout out to the fans in Germany!

Giraffe Adventures Update #2

Making a little bit of progress here & there on Giraffe Adventures, but I've been way too busy to really commit any time to it. So far so good, I like where it's going but there's a lot of writing left to do.

Node map update:

There are 19 different endings as of now, with exciting titles like "Exploding Dick Apocalypse" & "You Did Some Stuff I Guess." I'll keep plunkin' away, this might be finished a month or so from now.