Ananasblau Games

On devlogs

tomk32 — Tue, 07 May 2013 21:14:00 +0200

Benedict’s blog (@Dev_Hopps) has some issues with accepting comments so I dump my comment in here.

High Five for making a version 2. I did that in April with a game I made two years earlier. Nothing better than showing how much your skills have improved since.

Re dev diary, I’m finally in the habit of posting whatever interesting stuff I just created. With LiceCap I can easily create an animated gif and not spend 10 minutes on a youtube video that gets only 50 views (still a lot). Try it out, you’ll have to streamline your publishing workflow but it’s totally worth it. I got it so much streamlined, mailchimp is taking my RSS feed and makes a weekly newsletter. All without my doings.

Quick: I need game music

tomk32 — Sun, 05 May 2013 20:54:02 +0200

Or so we often panic in the last hour of a gamejam. Here’s what I do.

GreaseMonkey has an awesome python script to create mod tracks for us. Download it and on your terminal run this bash command to generate a few files.

for i in {0..10}; do python atrk-bu.py ; done

Now throw all those .it files into VLC which is pretty okay to listen to them, you can even change the audio speed but it won’t sound as good as in a proper modtracker. That’s what you need for the last step, open the files you like in your modtracker (I use Schism), change the bpm and speed to match your game’s tempo better and export as wav, mp3 or whatever the tracker is capable of.

Here’s one of the tracks I generated with this method.

Upcoming: Summer Tubing

tomk32 — Sat, 04 May 2013 08:10:00 +0200

GIGJam, the rules on the theme aren’t that easy but that one idea I had in mind, Tubing, works. Here’s the start of my README (I always do that first). I only found a snow tubing game on google play and a 1988 arcade/NES version, so the idea is unique enough. If you like it and maybe you are a small game publisher or studio, I’m still auctioning the game and it stands at $100

Summer Tubing is a sports game where you sit in a pumped up car tire and raft down a wild water river. Experience a sunny afternoon drifting down the stream or race against others.

Controls

Your feet and bum in the water for keeping the direction leaves only your hands for paddling. Slide down the sides of the screen to move your arms and paddle.

I'm auctioning my yet to be created GIGJam entry

tomk32 — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:06:45 +0200

I'm auctioning my yet to be created GIGJam entry:

Dont laugh, Im serious with this.

I’m giving my next game to the highest bidder (current standing is $100) so the winner can market the game much better than I could ever do. I get some money and keep my freedom, the game gets an audience and the winner the chance to make a small game and take it to stardom.

Lua/LÖVE code to open urls, cross-plattform

tomk32 — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 06:53:00 +0200

If josefnpat asks to copy these lines they must be good. Opens an URL (or file:///path) on any of the three systems LÖVE supports.

function openURL(url)
  if love._os == 'OS X' then
    os.execute('open "' .. url .. '"')
  elseif love._os == 'Windows' then
    os.execute('start "' .. url .. '"')
  elseif love._os == 'Linux' then
    os.execute('xdg-open "' .. url .. '"')
  end
end

Where is Pixel?

tomk32 — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:21:00 +0200

Easy one this Ludum Dare, no panic on the Sunday, got a stable game, a minor bug in the first release and people demand more levels. Sounds like I’m on the right track with this game.

Here’s the dedicated website with downloads and everything and also enjoy my walkthrough.

Where is Pixel - first day

tomk32 — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 20:32:00 +0200

It’s Ludum Dare again, and I’m in. The theme is Minimalism.

With my good foundation of previous games in love2d (all of them on github for you night-time reading) I managed to get a great start. Some brain went into abstractions so that the level files. Now they are filled with anonymous classes and methods and do everything from generating a random background to entities to the moving character called Pixel. I’ll have a Doctor Who break now before writing the code for end-of-level and some other game elements like a timer and a score counter. Tomorrow will be all about new levels and putting living things into them.

Draft of a few levels I want to make. They’ll all get animations like clouds, volcanos or UFOs.

First animation from the game, you see that little figure marching though the snow from the top left to the center? That’s Pixel.

Presenting at GameStage @ AEC. 2013-05-17

tomk32 — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:58:00 +0200

I’m attending the nearby GameCraft group fairly regular since last year, a mix of gamers and gamedevs. They started to host a great event at the Ars Electronica Center and at the next GameStage on the Friday 17th of May I’ll present my games.

My old friend Ben will show his 2012 SGDW winner Elle and the Spooky Arrow.

The event is happening in the evening and it is free to attend. Meet us there.

A few days more work, lots of new graphics gimmicks and a first...

tomk32 — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 13:28:55 +0200

A few days more work, lots of new graphics gimmicks and a first bonus multiplier if you swipe blocks of the same colour.

Download for your Android

subotron live pitch finalists

tomk32 — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:26:42 +0200

subotron live pitch finalists:

Sadly without me, and my submission didn’t really fit either category they say. Oh well, I guess I just have to keep making games then.

Unstack 2 - and a week of CoronaSDK

tomk32 — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:01:00 +0200

Actually less than a week of corona development and I kind of like it. The last half year I developed in LÖVE only but for a remake of Unstack (it’s already available in the google play store and the amazon store) I wanted to go mobile. My puzzler Unstack is exactly two years old, originally MacRuby and never really hit off. It wasn’t appealing visually but for the new game I think after just a week I got to a point where it’s starting to be interesting. At least my g/f who was first “What’s that shit supposed to be” now keeps playing it for 7 levels and more.

Corona, I must say, with the storyboard, scenes and listeners, it’s not that easy to start off. You gotta be super clean about removing listeners when you switch scenes. I don’t want to spend the extra money just to use the analytics so I’m using the API of GameAnalytics, also a bit quirky but it will show you errornous api calls on the website, something I can’t remember having seen elsewhere.

Announcing #GPCv17

tomk32 — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:28:28 +0200

gameprototypechallenge:

With #GPCv16 passed and 24 new games made, it’s time to start thinking about our next Challenge. We’ve got plenty more fantastic theme pairs for this year, so mark your calenders for #GPCv17!

Begins: Noon EST on Monday, April 8th, 2013

Ends: 11:59pm EST on Monday, April 15th, 2013
Thoughts? Comments? Just wanna say “hey”? Rather than having the conversation spread over Twitter, Facebook, or email like we used to, use the Disqus system below!

APRI50 devlog

tomk32 — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 19:45:39 +0100

APRI50 devlog:

My upcoming game. Space, exploration and stuff.

New game: Poppy

tomk32 — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:42:02 +0100

My game for March is finished and it’s called Poppy. Downloads are available for mac, windows and linux.

Apathy and refunds are more dangerous than Piracy.

tomk32 — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:21:00 +0100

Apathy and refunds are more dangerous than Piracy.:

Tommy from Super Meat Boy on piracy. I’m still far away from experiencing refunds, but I’m sure I’d be more proud of my work if someone would put it onto piratebay than ask for a refund. Once that happens I’ll spend the day laughing, because even if you have to pay for my games, you can still find the source code in my github account.

tommyrefenes:

I think I can safely say that Super Meat Boy has been pirated at least 200,000 times. We are closing in on 2 million sales and assuming a 10% piracy to sales ratio does not seem unreasonable. As a forward thinking developer who exists in the present, I realize and accept that a pirated copy of…

February game: Space Race Earth

tomk32 — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:17:00 +0100

A bit late to publish news about my february game but to be honest, it isn’t much and it isn’t 150% finished. It’s called Space Race: Earth and it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

I took the moonlander from december, threw decent graphics on it and made it two-player which I think is awesome. Features I want to add sometime in the future are an online leaderboard and more, different spaceships.

In other news, I polished my games page a little.

The LÖVEr keeping track of his progress

tomk32 — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:26:00 +0100

Just a few lines of those who never make screenshots of their progress when working on a game. Plug those few lines into your main.lua and the game will make a screenshot everytime you start (after the first draw) and when you quit.

madeScreenshot = false

function love.draw()
  -- draw your things

  if not madeScreenshot then
    madeScreenshot = true
    makeScreenshot()
  end
end

function love.quit()
  makeScreenshot()
end

function makeScreenshot()
  love.graphics.newScreenshot():encode(os.time() .. '.png', 'png')
end

The ambitious LÖVEr will of course add a keybinding

function love.keypressed(key)
  if key == 'f2' then
    makeScreenshot()
  end
end

Work on Rogue Beach, CA is going great, I got my seeded map...

tomk32 — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:56:00 +0100

Work on Rogue Beach, CA is going great, I got my seeded map generator and some very nice waves. The todo list is incredibly long but there are still three weeks left to finish. Or two weeks, I’ll spend the last one with marketing and maybe get it into some store.

One Game A Month

tomk32 — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:21:11 +0100

Creating games is exciting, in 2012 I released five and started a few more that I won’t mention again. For 2013 I’ll join over 2000 over devs who will release one new game every month. 12 games in total. Thanks to gamejam master McFunkypants for that idea and website, I humbly maintain a group on github where you soon should see dozens if not hundreds of repos popping up. Even a few complete git beginners are among them which makes me very happy as I always advocate for using git or any other version control.

The game for January is already in the making, loosely based on the löve2d codebase of Kollum: The Pressure Valve it will be another roguelike, about surfing. Yes, Rogue Beach, CA will break the limits of the genre just like FTL did last year.

Other plans for OneGameAMonth are to develop my existing code bases and get each game good enough for IndieDB and, most important, make at least a bundle or sell singular games over the year.

Kollum: The Pressure Valve

tomk32 — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 23:46:39 +0100

Possible the most complete game I released this year is Kollum: The Pressure Valve which I created during LD25 in the usual 48 hours.

The löve2d codebase borrows some code from the previous game Cross Country Runner, making this already the 3rd re-incarnation with a 4th coming in January. Unlike the previous games it is strictly turn-based, meaning the NPC won’t move unless you do (not everyone understood that). This is the first game where I used a proper noise function (Simplex Noise) to create the map, place items and players. With those two new additions to the codebase it is in the strict definition of a roguelike, one genre I was always tempted but at the same time shocked by the level of detail some roguelikes have. Best of all, map generation is completely seeded, meaning once I add the input fields you can give your friends a number and they can play the very same levels you did. Isn’t that exciting?

Kollum is also the first game I’ve put into IndieDB, my confidence is clearly growing, and I intend to keep working on it as the simplistic gameplay has huge potential.