CockBlockaz is at the point where I'd feel Ok about releasing it but there's still a lot that I could do. There are a few missing sound effects, a couple of puzzles I'd like to replace, a lot of placeholder text still hanging around. Also, at the moment nothing happens when you 100% the game, aside from a number on the screen unceremoniously changing from 96 to 100, which is a bit of a let down. I'll just keep working down the checklist until I get to the end of it or get bored of it. Either way, I'm saying one week to release.
GET READY TO BLOCK SOME COCKS.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Friday, August 7, 2015
Surprise Double Header!
STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES.
Head over to potatoclockgames.com to snag 2 of the worst games ever made! These were going to be part of Outer Space Future Battle Massacre 1997 but just didn't quite fit in, so I'm releasing them on their own.
Revenge of the Vengeance from the Future of Outer Space is a short (like, 1 small level short) first person shooter made in Game Maker. PROTIP: you should not try to make a first person shooter in Game Maker. I can't believe it works at all. The music is pretty good & the enemy models are homemade stuffed animals but somehow that doesn't make up for the horrible controls & even worse level design.
HyperLincoln is an almost sort of cool fake computer hacking game. It's actually the first of like 10 levels that I just never got around to making. I'd kind of like to finish it but I had no idea of how to really program when I started it & the code is a god damn nightmare so this is all you get. It's winnable in about 2 minutes once you know what you're doing.
Head over to potatoclockgames.com to snag 2 of the worst games ever made! These were going to be part of Outer Space Future Battle Massacre 1997 but just didn't quite fit in, so I'm releasing them on their own.
Revenge of the Vengeance from the Future of Outer Space is a short (like, 1 small level short) first person shooter made in Game Maker. PROTIP: you should not try to make a first person shooter in Game Maker. I can't believe it works at all. The music is pretty good & the enemy models are homemade stuffed animals but somehow that doesn't make up for the horrible controls & even worse level design.
HyperLincoln is an almost sort of cool fake computer hacking game. It's actually the first of like 10 levels that I just never got around to making. I'd kind of like to finish it but I had no idea of how to really program when I started it & the code is a god damn nightmare so this is all you get. It's winnable in about 2 minutes once you know what you're doing.
Monday, August 3, 2015
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!
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!
Saturday, July 25, 2015
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?
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?
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
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.
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.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
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.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
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.
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| BABY BABY BABY OH |
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