Giraffe Adventures Update #1

I haven't started writing any new content yet, but I've got the project migrated over to Twine, just using the standard boilerplate template. I'll probably dig into Twine a little deeper this summer, but for now I'm just keeping it simple. Here's the Twine-generated node map of what the story looks like so far:

That's the title screen in the upper-left, then you can sort of trace how the story branches from there. This is way easier to make sense out of than the weirdo numbering hierarchy system I was using before.

Anyway, I'm stoked to see where this goes. It feels kind of good to be concentrating on writing & just having stupid fun instead of on programming, for a while at least.

Giraffe Adventures!

Next on the list is a little HTML choose-yr-own-adventure called Giraffe Adventures.

FIRST LINE SNEAK PREVIEW:
"You are a gay retarded baby giraffe. What will you do next?"

As fate would have it, I was recently introduced to Twine, a free & open-source HTML development tool focused on interactive text kinds of things. So I'm migrating Giraffe Adventures over to Twine; at the moment it's just a pile of .html files that I cranked out in notepad. The reason I never finished it is because it got too hard to keep track of branches & everything, but Twine pretty much handles that automatically, it looks like.

Gonna get my copy & paste on for a minute here.

Windows 8 Calamity!

Well, this is dumb. For boring reasons that I won't get into, all of my Game Maker games were crashing on Windows 8 under certain conditions; they seemed to play fine until too many sounds were played simultaneously, then BOOM they're done for. It actually turned out to be a Microsoft problem rather than Game Maker or an I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-I'm-doing problem. Anyway, I figured out how to fix it & I've uploaded updated versions of all the games to the website. #1 CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR THE FANS.

Edit: That's a lie. Only some of the games work reliably on Win8. Here are the ones that still don't:

Dog Catcher Jones of the Future
AlienSexist
Jack Ham's Maze of Tribulations
Jack Ham Zero

They work mostly but they're pretty unstable. #0  CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR THE FANS. Maybe I'll fix them someday.

Sunrise Sunset Official Release!

Sunrise Sunset is finished & available for download at potatoclockgames.com!

About that exclamation point. I'm not here to betray your trust. I'm excited because I'm done with it, not because I'm proud of it.

Like I've said, this was like the 3rd game I ever started & it's a mess. But it's playable, it's short, & I think it offers a few interesting moments, at least.

INTERESTING MOMENTS, SEE. LIKE THIS ONE.

Changing up the Gameplan

Here's what's on the docket:

Sunrise Sunset
Giraffe Adventures
SquareWave
Lucha Cerveza
CockBlockaz

Well, I just played what I've finished of SquareWave, which is very little, & it's just not much fun. So fuck it. I've also decided that, unless inspiration really hits when I get back to work on CockBlockaz, I'm going to reduce the game's scope fairly dramatically: 25 levels instead of 49, no music, boom, call it a day. Lucha Cerveza could be fun but I'm so sick of patching & working around my old shitty code that I'd rather just start over from scratch. So I think I'll make that my first project with whatever new development tool I decide to learn. Actually, I want to learn a bunch of new tools this summer. Anyway, that makes the revised to do list look like this:

Sunrise Sunset (almost done)
Giraffe Adventures (almost done)
CockBlockaz (almost done if I decide to reduce the scope)

My chances of ditching Game Maker by the end of the summer just got a lot better. I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Sunrise Sunset Update #5

I knocked out about 2/3 of my Sunrise Sunset left-to-do list this morning. So there goes all the low-hanging fruit. Still, not much left to do. Mostly optimization work & a few bug fixes.

Development progress has been slow, & will probably continue to be for the next month & a half or so, mostly because of school. Finals are next week, then I have a week off (of school, anyway) before summer semester, which will only be about a month long.

So I'm hoping to have Sunrise Sunset finished by the time summer semester kicks off, & I think I can probably have Giraffe Adventures finished by the time it ends. Giraffe Adventures isn't even a game, it's a half-finished browser-based choose your own adventure story. Anyway, it shouldn't take long to finish.

I'm starting to reevaluate what I want to spend my time on once I'm done with school for the summer. I want to learn some new development tools & I really want to start working on some new games. That being said, I also want to finish what I've already started. & that being said, I am so sick of patching up my old bullshit code. So much work, so little reward.

LIFE.

Sunrise Sunset Update #4

I've finally got the music in the game; took a bit longer than expected, mostly because the game is such a bloated mess. The process of testing the game, watching it crash, fixing the one line of code that made it crash & retesting takes like 5 minutes due mostly to egregious loading times. Anyway, here's the lineup (although most of the in-game versions are edited down pretty hard):

Sunrise, Sunset (performed by Anthony O'Kane)
Razorblade Alcohol Slide (DJ Qbert)
Inner Space Dental Commander (DJ Qbert)
Water Theme from Super Mario Brothers (Composed by Koji Kondo)
Testone (Sweet Exorcist)
World Music (Sifl & Olly a.k.a. Liam Lynch & Matt Crocco)
Invasion of the Octopus People (DJ Qbert)
More Than Meets the Eye (The Shapeshifters)
Laser Eyes (Sifl & Olly a.k.a. Liam Lynch & Matt Crocco)
I Don't Want to Live on the Moon (performed (& probably written?) by Jim Henson)
Sunrise, Sunset (from the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof)

I mean, come on. This stupid game is worth playing just for the soundtrack.

I have a lot of optimization work to do, some audio gaps to fill in, a bunch of little things. The semester's wrapping up, which means I'll be busy with school, but I'd like to have this game finished in the next couple of weeks.