RobotAcid

AFAIK, even getting the "good" ending of Red Rogue does not stop the time loop, and Red is pulled back into the dungeon by the Time Rune when she eventually dies. The only way to truly end the game is to wear the Balrog's face. The choice between an eternity of ultimately hopeless struggle or a release through surrender to evil seems a rather bleak one. Were you making a deliberate philosophical statement with this dilemma?

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:48:53 +0100

duh

So following up were we left of. The insta killing RNG has actually happened to me twice, the first time I didn't even knew what killed me, the second time was obvious since I was playing in dogmatic. The strange thing is that It said I was killed by quickening (second time there were no enemies around) and soon after it became obvious. The thing is that random RNG gives you the same random effects that shrines give, still their quickening must count as an offensive missile, a very fast one.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:54:33 +0100

There is no code in the chaos bolts to kill you with quickening. And it is an entirely different branch from the altar.

It is possible there may be an entirely unrelated bug causing this effect. I will add it to the queue of complaints, but with out guaranteed steps to reproduce a bug - it cannot be solved.

Furthermore, you should check out the F.A.Q. for Red Rogue. It has some harsh words about my feelings on spending the rest of my life maintaining it.

The End is Nigh

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:17:29 +0100

I’ve reached that point where all that’s left is polish. The endless cycle of small adjustments and shit suggestions (like adding text or a tutorial).

I’m tempted by the idea of doing a trailer or by setting up a website. I’m more tempted just to sneakily squeeze it out there and see who notices. Is my game stinky enough to turn heads on its own or does it need great comical trumping noises?

The fundamental concept in Ending is pretty simple. It’s not changed much from the initial build. I’ve tried to make non-random generative levels and to add hyperspace mechanics.

It’s just that when you work on something so simple you think, “wow - I could use this as a springboard to tackle some big problems in game design!” Which misses the point - if the basic mechanics are fun on their own, just leave them be.

Ending’s strength I believe is its lack of song and dance. I’d like to see that through until the C++ port. Then we’ll see if there’s enough of a fanbase to make a big deal about its re-release.

Can I join you in making whatever game you plan next? I'm a pixel artist and I really loved Red Rogue.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:25:37 +0100

It’s good to work in teams, but it’s a nice change to not have to make concessions to someone else’s dreams when I work at home. Maybe when I’m in a job where I’m not always paired up with an artist already.

So about Red Rogue (also please excuse some spelling mistakes). I love the game I played it alot, love the chalenge, love the fact that it requires several playthroughs to find secrets that help you defeat the balrog, and love the dificultie. Its a hard game no doubt about that, but I always felt that it was fair, execpt on one thing that made me stop playing the game (yea really). When you are in Chaos sometimes you get insta killed by the random RNG gears with a lightning fast shot, PLEASE FIX

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:19:58 +0100

I see. That’s not happened to me. Steps to reproduce?

i really like your game frame-up! i've played it for ages now!

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:48:36 +0100

did

not

make

any

such

game.

D- must do homework in future.

Hi, I am using your class at for pathfinding in Processing in a project for a mobile cleaning robot. So far the routines work great. I just want to use the program under Processing 2.x and there is this class "Vector" (e.g. Vector openlist, closedlist;) which I could so far not figure out how to replace to make the transfer to Processing 2.x (I must add also that I am not a very experienced programmer...). Do you have any recommendations which could help solve this? Thanks Arasch.

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:03:09 +0000

The last stuff I wrote on that old project used ArrayLists not Vectors: http://robotacid.com/PBeta/AILibrary/Pathfinder/index.html

A* needs a dynamic list of open nodes to work. So the standard Java arrays don’t work unless you already know what a dynamic list is.

Here’s a StackOverflow on the subject: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1647260/java-dynamic-array-sizes

The End

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 18:12:00 +0000

I wasn’t planning on making another Flash game at home. I was going to get on with painting and finish what C++ I’d started to learn (because let’s face it, the only useful thing the Flash Player has added since version 9 is bug fixes - no one gives a shit about Stage3D when tools like Unity are more accommodating). But it occurred to me I was going to need a project to build in C++. Something small and quick. A game would be best because it would give me a UI and graphics framework I can use for other projects. I had just such an idea that had been rolling around my head since I made Turnament for Nitrome (pro-tip, don’t name your game after a popular mis-spelling, Google will bury it). Prototyping in Flash and then porting would be the best route. And so now I’m making Ending, a puzzle game about movement punctuated with Kurt Vonnegut quotes. I’m quite stunned at how addictive I find testing it.

Red Rogue - Ad Mortem

I’ve still some bugs to fix. I’ll get round to it, just not right now. RPGs are massively high maintenance. Squash one bug and two rise in its wake. If your favourite RPG dev seems a bit lax, trust me, they’re fucking exhausted.

The reception to Red Rogue, whilst never award winning, was good all the same. I never stumbled upon a review after release that simply said, “eh, it’s a bit shit”, or words to that effect. Certainly I got comments saying that but I’ve worked in entertainment long enough now to dismiss the idea of universal appeal. I never set out with Red Rogue to make everyone happy - certainly some of my favourite bands that I listen to don’t subscribe to that ideal. Imagine fellow heavy metal listeners if our bands started saying, “we feel we’re not popular enough, so we’re going to sound more like Nickleback from now on.” Not everyone will accept you for who you are, but it is better than being a fraud.

*I should add that the highlight of release was finding a TV-oh-god-there-went-five-hours-of-my-life-following-links-Tropes page for Red Rogue. You’ve not entertained someone unless you’re on TVTropes. And then, later on, in Russian, this review. Nice of them to translate the FAQ. God forbid I should receive bug reports in my own language.

Thanks yet again for all the kind words and reviews.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

I walked into the Crown in Islington a month ago and mentioned to Ed Key that I was feeling the fatigue of Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome. I simply don’t like a lot of popular indie games. It’s not that I need to play them more (I tried that with Swords and Sworcery on everyone’s insistence and now I fucking despise it). Ed took it personally because I’m possibly the only person to fall into an impotent rage whilst playing the Proteus beta. It locked me out of my computer - I couldn’t figure out how to tab out and it seemed to have this “forced immersion” thing going on. I was fucking livid - it was like some trumped up hippy malware.

But now I’m seeing everyone else using The Emperor’s New Clothes to refer to Proteus and I feel like I should clarify exactly what I meant by this story:

In Eric Berne’s What Do You Say After You Say Hello he proposes the idea that we structure our lives after popular stories. That these story archetypes help us to explain to others our adventures and also help us envision ourselves as the heroes of our own tale. And this is what I meant by The Emperor’s New Clothes. The need to point out something wrong, not because it is wrong, but because doing so makes you the hero of the tale.

I could certainly tell everyone that I don’t like the controls in Super Hexagon, that I got 30 levels into Offspring Fling and found no challenge whatsoever, that FTL is a bit too much like Diner Dash for my liking. And what would I be? The hero? Would everyone come to their senses and congratulate me for speaking my mind? Or should I just let everyone carry on having fun?

Proteus I found quite charming in the end. It’s currently the best this new Look-Em-Up genre has to offer. And it won’t be the last.

Hi, I was drawn to your site while playing Red Rogue. I really loved the style and uniqueness of the game. I am a fledgling flash game programmer and I have been using Adobe Photoshop and Inkscape for the art work and Stencyl for the development environment. I was very curious as to what you used to develop Red Rogue. And I was wondering if you have ever tried using Stencyl. If yes, do you have an opinion on it? Thanks for taking the time to read my question!

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:43:45 +0000

I used Actionscript 3 and FlashDevelop as my programming IDE:

http://www.flashdevelop.org/

I haven’t used Stencyl, mostly because with any library of code or tool that “does it all for you” you’re forced to do it their way or not at all.

That’s not to say you can’t be creative or make something good - but if you decide you want to make something really experimental, something you haven’t seen any other Stencyl game do, then you might become stuck.

At the end of the day the best tool to use is the one you’re most comfortable with. But you should endeavour to be able to use all tools - it makes returning to your comfort zone that much nicer.

Red Rogue Released

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:18:02 +0000

My quest to prove I can spend ages programming something and eventually finish it is over. I’ve completed work on my roguelike-like. It looks a bit like this:

And can be downloaded and whatnot here:

http://redrogue.net

Thank you to everyone for your support and critique over the years.

New Surrealist Piece

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:18:26 +0000

For the Cephalapod Salon 2012 (a gallery some friends are setting up in their house in Homerton) I’ve made a new drawing (click for bigger):

This is in the same vein as my other surrealism work.

The roguelike is still in development. Thanks to indiegames.com for another mention thanks and to indiegamemag.com for having the best url mentioning my game ever. Also thanks to everyone who’s played it and let me know they had fun or found bugs.

Well This is Nice...

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 10:59:00 +0000

I’m rubbish at updating this blog aren’t I?

Well, since Steamlands I’ve been working on some great projects at Nitrome and also continuing work on my platformer-roguelike Red Rogue at home. I even had the balls to submit it for the IGF awards just as the deadline closed. I usually don’t have the self esteem for such things but I thought, “what the hell, in-it-to-win-it”. At least I’ll put some effort into getting it finished now.

Off the back of this IGF entry page it got noticed by the Indie Games blog, who said nice things about my game. Off the back of that it got noticed by Rock Paper Shotgun, who also said nice things. It doesn’t stop there.

Off the back of the RPS review I got contacted by a musician named Nathan Gallardo who offered me some music for the game. I was like, “it’s good but sounds a bit too modern”, he was like, “no worries, I’ll remaster it.” Awesome. I’ve got one track installed but I need to have a sound engineering session to get the rest in and change all the sound effects to suit. You can get the soundtrack here along with the album it’s based on.

I got to talk to Nathan at London Indies last month. A games developer meet up held at The Crown in Islington on the first Monday of every month. People were complimentary about the game and I also got some great feedback that I’ve implemented since then. If you’re an indie-developer around London on the first Monday of the month you should head along to it and meet a lot of nice people. It gets quite busy there and there’s the odd show-and-tell going on. I find it great for getting some professional gameplay feedback.

Finally, yesterday I got to see a Let’s Play of the game. Which unfortunately ended with a rare yet game-breaking bug. Ah, we’re all playing buggy-betas these days aren’t we? Big thanks to wetpasters for helping me fix this issue - Red Rogue is a very difficult game to debug. Also big thanks to everyone play-testing it from TIGSource, you guys are great.

TLDR: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Also, game journalists and play-testers are brilliant.

Steamlands is Out!

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:32:50 +0100

See title.

Play it here!

A Well Deserved Rest

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:51:16 +0100

Steamlands is finished and already has managed to entertain people before it has been released:

indiegames

jayisgames

Thank god for that. 9 months well spent I hope. It was certainly entertaining developing AI for the men and the tanks in the game, as well as enlightening learning about how the PNG datatype works so I could make a flag designer that saved extra data into your flag without affecting the image (tech here), and exhausting making my own physics engine to cope with masses of blocks (tech there). Out of all the game engines I’ve made it’s definitely the most fun and challenging. It’s like working this huge machine with dials and levers and stuff. Kinda like this:

And I’m not just talking about the aesthetics (though I’m very lucky to have worked with Stefan on the project - he didn’t stop at simply making the game beautiful). There’s quite a lot of voodoo that the player’s going to take for granted in this beast. Especially in the secret level editor.

Thankyou to everyone who play tested it and gave me feedback. Your advice has made the game so much more fun to play.

I’m back to working on Red Rogue now (I installed Parallels and FlashDevelop - just about bearable but still better than any other OSX coding IDE), though I’m making very slow progress. I’m just mentally exhausted really.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:18:21 +0000

A CUP OF TEA

A New Blog

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 20:53:43 +0000

Well, because I can’t quite be arsed with writing my own blog tech from scratch, I’m going to go with tumblr for the time being.

Old Blog here

Well what’s happened so far:

The roguelike I’ve had to put on hold because I’ve got a new machine and it’s a mac. Unfortunately I’ve not got bootcamp set up and can’t use my favourite IDE (FlashDevelop). This makes programming at home, to put it mildly, utter crap. I’ve not been impressed with any of the Mac programming IDEs (Flash Builder 4 was the worst, reminding me how easy I have it in FlashDevelop). Currently I’m working in Komodo Edit on some Javascript. Since they maintain Perl, I’m hard pressed to have an issue with those guys.

In Javascript I’ve been trying to make as many mini-puzzle-games as I can. Here’s the TIGSource thread for it. You can inspect the code easily with Firebug or opening the Javascript console in Chrome and Safari.

At work at Nitrome I’ve been working on a beast of a game. It’s been months in the making, and has changed my workflow to resemble something more like MVC. One of the big problems in the Actionscript mindset is extending DisplayObjects. You lose control of the rendering. By shifting over to a pure copyPixels model that’s separate from your object updates you get full visual control and you no longer have to waste time updating objects simply because they’re wired into Flash’s rendering model.

The gameplay of the game I can’t go into, but here’s the screenshot we released on Facebook and the Nitrome Blog:

Clicky

It’s the first RTS by Nitrome. I honestly thought I hated the genre, but I’ve discovered that RTSs are fantastic fun to code and my homework (Plant vs Zombies, StarCraft 2, Eufloria) have converted me to the cause. I can only hope that this is the beginning of a franchise.