Dinosaursssssss

Due to the nature of twitter, I can't find the specific screens that got me really thinking about it the other day, but here's a few things I've dug recently in the same vein: This blog of 3d models of electronics Stuff from the upcoming game Overland Matt Duhamel / Dualhammers thingies

Definitely ambitious, but I really like this idea!

Ah nice, I'll check that out! I found this guy last night and thought his stuff seemed OK

I started modelling a big dog last night. My goal for the jam is to rig/uv/animate a thing for the first time which is probably ambitious on its own, and even more so because I picked a weird quadruped with crazy legs. Woo! edit: heres a really good BigDog video from Boston Dynamics

go

I actually got hooked up with beta access via a friend and played a couple hours last night, and had a great time. The new gore system looks fantastic in slow motion and it seems like blood splatters persist forever in levels so after a couple waves the map is just bathed in blood. It seems like the biggest changes in 2 are the graphics (which are vastly improved) and in how character progression works, which I haven't really dived (dove? doven?) into yet since I don't have that much XP yet. KF1 was a go-to LAN game for my friends and I for many years, so I'm really looking forward to the wider early access release so I can play with folks I know.

The cast this week reminded me that I don't think I ever actually mentioned the Wizard Jam in this subforum, mostly 'cause my goal was to get folks who aren't already game developers involved. So uh in case you haven't been checking Idle Banter, don't hang out in IRC and haven't listened to Thumbs yet this week, we're doing an idle forums game jam over here --> https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9962-wizard-jam-idle-thumbs-game-jam-interest-gauge-chit-chat-corner Starting tomorrow and running for about 2 weeks. Should be a good time, come make somethin!

A bunch of folks will be in the IRC channel (#idlethumbs on QuakeNet), come hang out while you're working to ask questions/find teammate/share your progress! Instructions on joining are here, there's even a handy web client so you don't need to download anything! https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9177-idlethumbs-%E2%80%93-join-the-idle-thumbs-irc-channel/

Folks who are looking for teams, you should post whether you have an idea (and if so, give a short pitch), what you're planning on doing during the jam (coding, art, etc), and what sort of folks you need for your team. I'll try and post some of that in the OP as people do it. Also I'll probably make a separate IRC channel at some point this week that people can use to find teammates in and ask questions and such.

On a recent Bombcast Jeff said "I once ate three [Taco Bell] steak stacks" and Dan said "That's cool" in a way that made me think he really thought that was cool. There was a tinge of genuine respect in it. I like Dan.

I just started poking at setting up the itchio page, if anyone wants to do a banner/make a pretty jam page, let me know in a PM and I can make you an admin! Otherwise it will probably look...only ok. Edit: Coods sent me a banner so I put the page up http://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam It's real, it's really happening

...is it supposed to stop refreshing frames and leave crazy trails behind everything that moves? if so I'd love to see the source code

Clydes sample project has reminded me that I put the source for my Public Domain Jam game up on github under a CC0 license. It's a little bit of a mess if I remember correctly, but if anyone has questions about the code or wants to know how to implement anything from that game I'd be happy to chat about it. source: https://github.com/ChrisMaire/surfenstein playable: http://dinosaursssssss.itch.io/surfenstein And actually I think most of the games submitted for that jam are CC0 and include source code, so it might be worth looking around and..erm...borrowing features you like. http://itch.io/jam/the-public-domain-jam

By strange coincidence, the Giant Bomb forums are also running a jam soon! Its ending the week before I'd like to run this one (they end the 5th, we'll be starting the 10th) so if you're overflowing with video game podcast based game ideas you can do both. http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/organizing-a-giant-bomb-game-jam-1766467/

Yeah! In earlier builds I had you start with a gun, but I think the strength of the game is in the dodging and trying to get cars to hit obstacles/each other so I put the focus more on that. You can buy weapons and car upgrades as you go, which you need as bosses start showing up and enemies get stronger. It's starting to feel pretty good I think! On a sorta related note yesterday I read this post on Gamasutra about complexity and depth in Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga that was pretty neat. A lot of it isn't really directly useful to me for this game, but I found it very interesting regardless. It talks about how the complexity of each game (represented by the number of weapons and enemies) affects the players ability to create interesting strategies for dealing with encounters, and how the reduced complexity of Ikaruga actually gives players more possible solutions to problems, increasing its depth. http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LukeMcMillan/20150312/238506/The_RLD_Handbook_Sometimes_its_not_about_the_metrics__Depth__Complexity.php

I haven't done a screenshot saturday in a while so I made this gif of Mile Age today

Cities: Skylines> Workshop > Sigrosa's Workshop > GabeN Heightmap http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406973777 Anyway I made a map of my own face

Do people generally just switch to incinerators/crematoriums when they're available? I've been keeping some landfills and cemeteries around because it's more...realistic or something, I guess, but I don't know if there's a reason not to completely switch and free up some land. Something else I've been thinking about is the 'end game' and if there is one. I've sorta just been spreading wider, but it doesn't feel like I have a lot of goals aside from unlocking all the special buildings and once I get a city on the right track, there's not a lot of challenge. I'm really enjoying the game, but without a bigger goal like the Arcologies in Sim City I feel like I'm losing steam.

Oh wow, I don't know how I missed that. Thanks! If anyone else is like me and didn't know this was possible, you can click on the building and there'll be a little icon of a house with two arrows that lets you relocate buildings for a fraction of their cost.

I think off the bat you really can't build much in the way of big 6-lanes or highways aside from maybe one to extend the existing highway. I start with small 2 lane roads and slowly upgrade them as money starts flowing in. The only real downside to this is if your services are on 2 lane roads that need to be upgraded, but even then once you have decent cash flow rebuilding a $10k school isn't a big deal and you can plan around it by keeping your services off major roads (which I do cause I think it helps with congestion anyway). The starting money is just enough to get your basic utilities...in fact my first couple cities, I ran out of money before building one of the needed utilities and had to restart. I think your starting resources are super low for a reason; that process of fighting the limitations you had while building is the most interesting part of the game to me. Seeing your tiny town full of two lane streets slowly grow, watching traffic start to pile up and scrambling to upgrade streets while moving services around as needed, and trying to optimize while dealing with what you built out of necessity before is an interesting problem. It's made me think a lot more about why streets where I live (Boston, an old and notoriously shitty city to drive in) are so haphazardly laid out and now I have a little sympathy for whoever had to turn horse paths into highways here. Anyway here's my current city, Jurassic Parkdale. All my highway on/off ramps are a goddamn mess cause I built too close to highways/train tracks and couldn't fit in good looking ones.

I was carrying a large bottle of beer on the train the other day and felt weirdly bad about it. I couldn't remember how open container laws work and sort of thought that even closed bottles have to be in bags (they don't).

We got this sweet cat tree recently

Yeah, I'd like to do April 10 - 24 to get a little out of the way of Easter. I think I mentioned this date a couple pages ago but it was the last post on a page so I don't think anyone read it. Anyway I put those dates in the op along with some other stuff (people willing to help / looking for teams, free tools, theme stuff) Ooh, and Ludum Dare is smack in the middle of those dates (April 17th - 19th).

http://www.gamekb.com/playgame/rigby this is fun, but the highlight is that really nice studio logo animation thing up front (which I assume you did yourself)

I actually haven't tested it at all on tablets, so let me know if there's any weird behavior and please send me a screenshot! I built it with 16x9 portrait in mind, but the play field *should* expand to accomodate 4:3 or other wider resolutions. edit: In fact I just checked with a friend (whose phone is 16:10 I think?) and some of the barriers are placed off screen. Whoops! I'll probably patch tomorrow.