RubixsQube

You know what's fun? Having that little crowd there cheer you on. It feels good man

S O G O O D

I want to play your game, but I only have access to a mac! Yours is so, so much prettier than mine.

OK, I'm done. You can find it here. Again, "z" is the only button that really does anything. I apologize if you're not from America, as the opening is going to make a lot less sense. My post-mortem is: For my very first game, I'm pretty happy with the final product. Stencyl, it turns out, is not a great way to make games, as it's prone to crashing, it's pretty tedious to work with, and it's overly simplistic, which limited what I wanted to do. I'd love to make something else in the future, and I had a lot of fun, even if my final game is not exactly as robust as I had originally hoped it would be. I hope it makes someone chuckle! I'm really happy to be included in the same game jam as a lot of really wonderful concepts and games, everyone here has so, so much talent. THANKS GUYS. AND GOOD LUCK. (Oh, also, while it's not the one linked from the game jam, so playing it this way won't tally any statistics, I like it framed in the GBA like I did on this page)

Instead of working on my Wizard Jam game, a friend came over tonight and we played a bit of Affordable Space Adventures, a downloadable indie game that is FUCKING GREAT. Do you have a WiiU? Do you have friends who enjoy multiplayer cooperative puzzle play? Do you have twenty bucks? THIS IS THE GAME FOR YOU. Seriously, you know how you felt playing co-op Portal 2? This gives you the exact same feeling, AND, it's got a fantastic sense of humor, to boot. Essentially, you and a partner (or a third) are the polite and engineer (and science officer? I think, in the case of a third) of a tiny spacecraft on a mysterious planet. I won't go into too much detail on the storyline, but one player uses a wiimote and nunchuck, or WiiU pro controller, to pilot the actual spacecraft (it's 3D rendered, but entirely contained on a 2D plane), while the other person has to fiddle with the ship's systems from the gamepad. For instance, it is necessary from time to time to turn off the engines, which has to be done manually, from the gamepad. Or, let's say the ship has to push some large block, well, this requires more thrust from the engines, which is a thing the gamepad player has to do. The engineer also controls the direction of the ship's sensor, it's external light, and the direction that flares are shot (this is what is done by the third person, which I did not have available). The pilot actually presses shoot on the flares, and maneuvers the ship. The game ramps up in difficulty, such that the pilot and engineer have to really work together to accomplish tasks. Eventually, there are sensors that show the temperature of the engines, and the amount of electricity currently being drawn, and the noise being made, in order to pass by alien emplacements that require very specific sets of conditions. We ended up making through a big chunk of the game, I think, on the "tourist" difficulty. There's a harder mode, although I don't actually know what that entails. The game looks great, and plays really well, and most importantly, showcases the type of game for which the WiiU is ideal. I 100% recommend it, especially if you've got a friend and want to play a fun, atmospheric puzzle game that's not too punishing for mistakes. Great time with some beers.

I donno, the book is the thing I go back and think, "yeesh, this has not aged well at all." I think that the "Dr. Grant doesn't like children" attributes actually tracks far better for some scientists I know. Kids love space, too, and I'm constantly finding myself agreeing with Grant. It adds humor to the film, and his arc throughout is pretty believeable. Also, I've always been ok with Tim not running over to help Sattler, since it's quick, and he's probably still wigged out from almost being murdered by velociraptors, so perhaps he's not keen on getting near another one. As for the T-Rex, but this implies that the T-Rex is "sneaking." There's a bunch of explanations for why he could have been there, potentially day sleeping when the gang stumbled from the overhead vents as they were being chased by raptors. I refuse to see Jurassic Park as anything but perfection.

1) I think that the bullet bill should be a "you are really lagging behind, let's put you back into the scrum" item. I'd change the balance so it's only really seen in 8 - 12th place, and only after a certain amount of time has elapsed. I don't know how it currently works, but it doesn't seem that really powerful items are given to players within the first half of a lap. I agree with you, it's got a kind of weird frequency as it stands. 2) This is a really interesting thing. Mushrooms, to me, are pretty importance since traditionally they allow you to access the shortcuts, or cut across corners where you'd otherwise slow down. I think that's a really great aspect to Mario Kart track design, actually, you can get back into the race if you get a specific item and you're a skilled driver. On its own, however, a mushroom is certainly not as powerful as a green or red shell, to be sure. Golden mushrooms are really, really dangerous, since in most people's hands they're used to catapult themselves off the side of a track. 3) I'm ok with tracks being punishing for new players, since there are so many tracks as it stands that you can play across a wide range to suit all players. But I guess I haven't played close enough attention to shortcuts (I don't play online) to realize their importance. I was still operating under the assumption that shortcuts were only accessible to those with mushrooms, is this not the case? I'll go investigate. 4) You're saying "fuck red shells" because they're not good enough at homing in on opponents? 5) This is a real annoyance, exactly for what tegan posted. When it rains, it pours, sometimes, in Mario Kart. And man, oh man, is that not the most frustrating thing.

Gah the new courses are so fantastic. I'm a real fan of Ribbon Road, it looks so great. I've been thinking about Mario Kart and item balance recently, especially with multiplayer. As we all know, in the single player, the way that the game's AI works is that when you get too far ahead, the other racers will have a higher top speed to keep things competitive ("rubber banding"). This, combined with the fact that a top finish can be snatched away at the last minute by getting sniped by an item near the finish line, means the game creates unsavory frustration at the 150cc and, I presume, 200cc, levels. This is the game artificially keeping things exciting, and I think that the crank has been tightened a little too tight - it's really annoying to get blasted by a series of red shells right near the end of a race and find yourself dropped down the rankings by an unrealistically fast Toad, or whatever (as a side note, it's interesting to see how the game picks a series of characters in each cup that are going to be The Fast Ones, at random). It feels "unfair," which I know is a loaded term, but stay with me. This rubber banding doesn't happen in competitive multiplayer, however. In order to keep things exciting, the game has to just mess around with the item balance. What types of items will someone in first place get? How about second? Last? I don't know if I like the current balance, although it's fine. What I've found from playing with my friends is that the item balance all too often means that one player zooms out to an unreachable first place, while the others kind of jockey for second place. And I don't know if that's a "fun" experience, for either the person who consistently gets first place (it just becomes a boring time trial, essentially), or for the people who find first place out of their reach. Granted, there are items that punish first place (like the blue shell, which punishes them exclusively, or the lightning bolt, which punishes them for longer than the racers behind them), but Mario Kart 8 introduced a way to outright destroy the blue shell (the horn box), and my buddies have realized that generally, falling off the track incurs less of a punishment than just eating a blue shell. As for the lightning bolt, I think it's mostly good at tightening up the back half of a race. So, what is my point? Well, I wonder how the item balance can be shifted to better keep matches close? I think that the ideal is that, given a set of equally apt racers, each would be equally likely to get first place on a given race, and it always came down to an exciting finish to the race. Perhaps this means more red shells for second place? More blue shells when a racer is out to a sizable lead? I used to be rabidly anti-blue shell, but I'm of the opinion now that they're actually a really wonderful design choice towards engineering an exciting race experience in the Nintendo fashion, and I actually think that Mario Kart 8 doesn't have them with enough frequency. Nintendo's often dances along the line between skill and random outcomes deciding their competitive matches (the Mario Party series is what happens when random chance wins, and it's frustrating as hell, I really love how much control you have over item frequency in the Smash Bros. series so that you can find a good balance for your friend group), and I'm someone who realizes that a good night of Mario Kart play isn't like a night of Counter-Strike K/D ratio comparison bs. I'd much rather just have a night where I can remember times when victory was snatched from me in the same session as I managed to barely get a win myself. As it stands, I think that the game is close, but not quite there. I'd love to be able to look at the data for online matches to see what the time difference is between first and second place finishes, vs. second and third, or third and fourth. I'd love it if the item frequency could be messed with, but Mario Kart has never been about Smash Bros. levels of fiddling. I wonder if there's some sort of clever algorithm that could look at the results from an evenings worth of matches and subtly adapt the item frequencies in order to better engineer close finishes? Am I just a whiner? I mean, whatever, maybe you're so good at Mario Kart that this is beneath you, but I'm hoping to talk about this from a design perspective.

I have been playing it! It's pretty straightforward, but there have been a few challenges. I really like the little costumes. I love a good portable puzzle platformer, and I'm happy with this one. I'm excited to see how it plays out!

Oh, whew. I definitely came down with an illness this weekend that put me out of commission. THIS IS REALLY APPRECIATED, THX

There's another trailer! The movie still does not look good! At least Nick Miller is in there wearing a cool throwback Jurassic Park shirt

The Wizard Jam has resulted in the best gifs. I hope that Sean's weird gifstalker has just been sending him these non stop.

I think that out of all of the trailer, the Harrison Ford bit was the part that made me the least happy. I hate thinking that the fate of the Star Wars universe continually requires some snarky smuggler and his furry buddy to constantly keep reappearing. Similar to what was said above, I hated how interconnected everything was in the prequels. This is also a reason why Star Trek Into Darkness (and to a lesser extent, the first Star Trek reboot) were cloying. There are other people out there, who also have stories that need to be told. I really don't think that it's necessary to have old man Harrison Ford (he is seventy two) trot out and play Han Solo. They've done it before, and it was dumb, they're doing it here, and they're planning on doing it again. That being said, like, seeing Oscar Isaac yelling with excitement in an X-Wing? That's thrilling! There is so much possibility there!

Oh man, I am so excited for all of the pizzas that are going to get shot.

I like the cockpit, although I think I need to fumble with the rhythm more. The game is still far too straightforward. I have a surprise that I'm working on with another board member which should add something significant to the game.

Is John Boyega just from an alien species with tiny lungs and he's always gasping for air

Oh, shoot, elvaq, I should go and do that, yeah. Making a quality vine might require some video editing, though. Let me see if I can whip that up. In the mean time, not to jump on the 90s cockpit bandwagon, but I'm not super happy with the turret situation, so I threw together a little pixel cockpit: And I think I'm going to make the pizzas a little more pixelated, as well, to fit the theme.

NICK BRECKON SOUNDBOARD

The updated Baby Park doesn't have the ability to shoot items that cross over the divider, thus removing some of the wonderful chaos. However, it's all hover-mode, so you get that weird boost when you crash into another racer. Pluses and minuses, I guess.

I like how with his unchanging gaze, he looks like he's hurrying to use the restroom. This Wizard Jam has proven that this message board is full of really talented folks. It's the best.

I thought the game was a solid B+. It kept me engaged, and the writing was clever in places, but it felt a lot of the time like the writers were REALLY HITTING YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH THE CONCEPTS. I get it, everyone, I get it. That being said, there were some really wonderful moments that pulled me into some of the emotional ideas behind the game. Those floating islands you mentioned, Merus, were also affecting to me. I don't know if I agree with Cordeos, while some of the puzzles had specific solutions, there were many where you could kind of fumble around and get it. If I had a problem with it, it was that too often the puzzles required you to restart the levels, which reset everything in the world. This was annoying when you were trying to go for some weird easter egg or a star puzzle. Also, it's not fun to have to restart when you get stuck. The sheer number of easter eggs in the game, though, yeesh. So, so many.

Is there anyone with a strong background in pixel art who wants to help me update the (currently terrible) assets I currently have in my (dumb) game? I'm hoping to make it look like a GBA game, if possible, and I'd also like some help with another aspect. It shouldn't be too much trouble, although maybe it might just be easier for me to try things out myself.

Here's a "playable build," but I have more that I want to do later this week. You press "z" to shoot, which is the only real input. Also, it's a flash game, since of course that's what stencyl makes, so hopefully you have flash installed. On my browser, chrome requires me to click an icon to allow flash animations/games to even load.

Oh man, I love how the game shudders, that's some sick friction bro.