RubixsQube

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    915

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by RubixsQube

  1. Posted

    This weekend I streamed a few games, which you can watch here:

     

     

    I played:

    Always Support the Danger Layer (link to portion of the video here)

    This Crazy Robot - Pizza Tonight (link to portion of the video here)

    Shootie Pizza (link to portion of the video here)

    Meet the Kerfluffles (link to portion of the video here)

    Unmasking the Brain Burglar (link to portion of the video here) (I play through the entirety of this game and SUPPLY MY OWN VOICE ACTING FREE OF CHARGE)

     

    ALL VERY FUN, AND ALL WORTH PLAYING

  3. Posted

    So, after a weekend mostly setting up the game, I've been able to spend the last few nights writing it all in Twine. I went and brainstormed a series of interesting ideas to play with for Choose Your Own Adventure style games and for Alexa in general, and I'm (very slowly) incorporating everything into the game. Alexa doesn't have the comic timing that I wish she had (although I think that if I get a chance to do some last minute polishing I can probably program some in with carefully placed break/pause commands), but she's got a fun voice to play with. Right now, much of the game is commanded with "go left" or "go right" or "yes/no" commands, and I will need to go through and fiddle with the intentions so that I can allow for more exciting inputs. Let's hope that I can get things done on the flight out to Europe this weekend. 

     

    The most exciting aspect is that since my Echo is associated with my developer account, I can just turn around and gametest with an actual Echo in my room. I put an early clip from the game up on the slack channel, if you want to listen. 

  4. Posted

    @Synnah - that is the BEST NEWS that I could possibly hear. You've been really helpful with my Jam games in the past, and I definitely will let you know if I run into any problems. What I'd like to do is get everything set up so that all I have to do is fumble around with the Twine2 writing. 

     

    Last night and tonight I:

     

    - Set up my Lambda function, and my core game files, and connected everything. 

    - Tested this using the simulator

    - Fiddled with Amazon's example code so that I could include SSML commands in Twine2. This is VERY EXCITING since this means that I can make Alexa talk in different voices, or loudly, or in a whisper. Also, I can play their like, build in audio files, which are very goofy.

    - Rewrote the example code so that Alexa doesn't dictate the possible choices each time you enter a different Twine passage. I still need to fiddle with this, since I don't want to make a straight-up adventure game, and this is going to mean that I need to really understand the Intents and Utterances. The example code is built with classic utterances, and I'm still a little bit confused as to how a given Twine2 choice is picked from a given voice command. Also, I need to research Alexa trivia skills to see how to program an open-ended choice. I don't even know if that's possible in Twine. 

     

    ANYWAY, it's been pretty fun and silly, it's just disappointing that there won't be any gifs to show in this thread, since my game is entirely audio! 

  5. Posted

    YKkH8qF.png

     

    U P D A T E: THE GAME HAS BEEN RELEASED ON ITCH.IO. I have to do some more tweaking on the amazon echo version, but for now you can play a version in your browser with the game audio. It's ALMOST like playing it with an echo! I hope someone tries it out for the Showcase Weekend! 

     

     

     

    ORIGINAL POST BELOW:

     

    hyzTx5X.png

     

    For my S E V E N T H Wizard Jam entry, I am going to making a game based on Important if True Episode 53 Alexa, Destroy Me. I have to go to Amsterdam for work during the second week of the Jam, but hopefully this weekend and next week I can put something together. These Wizard Jams have always been so much fun, and I wouldn't want to start 2019 on the wrong foot. 

     

    Important if True is a podcast about a lot of things, but I think one of the primary threads was the weirdness of current technology. In Episode 53, Jake and Chris (and glitchy roboNick) discuss the Amazon Echo, and it's Alexa Digital Assistant, at length, focusing on the weird laughing that some users reported. Eventually, the command phrase for triggering laughter became: "Alexa, can you laugh?" Chris brought up the inherent strangeness of asking a tiny cylinder if it's able to laugh. He's correct. The fact that people have tiny plastic boxes in their house now that they talk with on the regular is one of these frogs-in-slowly-rising-temperature-water things that defines modern living. You see, silicon valley engineers seemingly are so preoccupied with whether or not they can, they never stop to think if they should.

     

    So I'm gonna build an Alexa App. And it's gonna be triggered with "Alexa Destroy Me." And it's gonna explore the weirdness of talking with a ladies voice coming out of a mediocre speaker on a black plastic tube. I know that not many people own Amazon Echoes, so I'm trying to figure out how I might build the same program in Twine so that it can be played in browser, but I'd only do that if I can rig it to have Twine speak the lines, since that's more than half the fun. Last night I started my Amazon developer accounts and whipped up a simple adventure game model in order to see whether or not this was even possible, and it looks like it is. I think that I'm mostly worried about actually submitting the Alexa App through Amazon so that it can actually be played on an Echo. 

     

    SO I HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO. I wonder if anyone else has any experience with Amazon Echo development! I wonder if Amazon will approve of whatever weirdness I write! I wonder if this was A Mistake! 

  6. Posted

    I've also been into LttP randomizer runs (and that dope Super Metroid / LttP randomizer run from GDQx a few months ago), but I kind of wish that I knew LttP better in order to try it out. I've beaten the game a handful of times, but I've never sought out 100% of the items, and my knowledge of any of the dungeons (or those giant rooms full of treasure chests) is a little lacking. 

     

    I'd love to see the logic that goes into the randomization - you mentioned there was an Easy mode where no major glitches are required. Is there a place where this is all set out?  

     

    Edit: Oh, I guess I should just go and look this up myself! There are some resources online here. 

  7. Posted

    Ummm, I think that to be honest, they're cheaper brown dress shoes from H&M? I can double check when I get home, but I don't think they're the fanciest. 

     

    EDIT: Confirmed, H&M brown dress shoes. 

  8. Posted

    I got married a few weeks ago. Here are two images that I thought were pretty neat. 

     

    The mountain behind us features the MMT, which you can see as a little white dot on the left side of Lara here (upside down, because it's artistic)

    wnkwyI6.jpg

     

    Also these are my groomsfolks all looking like an ad for indochino. I am 100% sure that I used the code Thumbs at checkout to get my wedding suit. 

    0GfiMIk.jpg

  9. Posted

    On 9/15/2018 at 8:11 AM, dium said:

    (Hollow Knight discussion, see above)

     

    I beat Hollow Knight this weekend, but only the Lame Ending, where I got something like 88% completion, and I AM HAPPY WITH THAT 

     

    It's a good game with a stupidly slow opening that almost made me abandon it out of tedium. Once it opens up and like, you get a little bit more movement options, it's great, but man, that initial hump of like, boredom mixed with one very tough boss fight was not the best. 

  10. Posted

    If anyone wants to hear me ramble about my job working on a space telescope, or about science communication and gender representation in astronomy, I was a guest on the Talk Nerdy podcast this week. I said that Hubble was "almost 20 years old" when I actually should have said "almost 30 years old," because time has a way of continuing to pass and you think that the early nineties is much closer than it actually is. Death is around the corner everyone, so have a good tuesday

  11. Posted

    14 hours ago, marginalgloss said:

    Thanks everyone for your very helpful comments! At some point this is going to be a thing I'm actually doing and enjoying instead of a thing I'm worried about organising, haha, oh god.

     

    Think I'm gonna go for Overcooked and the Jackbox Party Pack. I wonder if anyone has any strong feelings about Overcooked vs Overcooked 2? It sounds like the sequel is perhaps more challenging so I might go for the first game...

     

    I know that this is not going to be a super popular opinion, but another great answer for entertaining people in a goofy, approachable way for a while is the oft decried 1-2-Switch. I have pulled that out at a bunch of gatherings with friends and families and it's been really fantastically fun. Here's a photo my Dad and my wife getting ready for a showdown (on my parent's homemade back patio tiki bar):

     

    f6um3m1.jpg

     

    we had more than a few hours of goofy laughter and fun. Overcooked and Jackbox are fine, but Jackbox requires a group of people who are all at around the same level of humor understanding, and Overcooked requires a bunch of people who want to work together and can communicate well. 1-2-Switch mostly just requires two people to play a simple game together, with people watching. 

  16. Posted

    @Teljoor - I appreciate your playing my game, and I definitely agree that something is a little wonky with line selection. I'm sure that if I spent more time with Fungus, I could make something that worked, but Fungus is surprisingly difficult to fumble around with unless you go and change the Unity assets themselves. 

     

    @Zirrrus - I think that I agree about the shift coming a little suddenly. I didn't want bore my players, but it's hard to maintain a balance in an indie game between keeping things moving and also maintaining a steady tone in a compelling way. I am also glad to hear the game is clicking for people who have no Frasier experience. That's a weird bonus. 

     

    @Nappi - I was ALSO surprised how the markov chain did at making gibberish sentences that kind of seemed like sentences the character might say. I found myself reading the lines in the voice of the character in my head, which was weird. Thanks for playing! 

     

     

    @pdotjpg - Thank you for playing. I have not played David Lynch Teaches Typing, but mostly because I don't have a lot of knowledge of Lynch. But maybe that will make it more weird and fun? I should check it out.

     

    @nkornek - I SHOULD ADD THAT AS A FEATURE. I don't know why I didn't think of that, thank you! 

     

    Thank you everyone who has checked out this weird game! 

     

     

     

  17. Posted

    This game was Very Fun. I had to play it across two parts, although part 2 is just my attempt at creating The Dot Gobbler from the quick shot at the beginning of the game. (And I failed spectacularly.)

     

     

    (I got a very important phone call ending this part)

     

     

     

     

     

     

  23. Posted

    4 hours ago, Atlantic said:

    This was a baffling and compelling experience. :tup:

     

    Thank you! I think that's what I was going for? I think that this might be the box quote for the physical release. "Baffling and Compelling" - Atlantic

     

    1 hour ago, fabian said:

    One should probably have watched Frasier at least once in their life to get it, right? :D

    Since I have never seen an episode, this was quite weird - maybe I should go watch Frasier now? 

     

    I think that, devoid of any Frasier knowledge, this must have been highly inscrutable. I don't know if I'd recommend Frasier, to be honest. In a world where there are so many diverse new things to watch, Frasier sticks out as a weird remnant of a simpler time. Frasier is a spin-off of Cheers, following one of the stuck-up (non working class) side characters as he moves away from Boston). The show centers around this guy (Frasier Crane) and his brother, both Wealthy Upper Class brothers living in Seattle. Both brothers are psychiatrists, but one of them is a psychiatrist on the radio. Essentially the show was like, "A Sitcom For Snooty Coastal Liberals", where it's overly clever and painfully, painfully white. I watched a bunch of the show putting the game together, and while it's charming, and it has it's die-hard fans, it's unnecessary, especially nowadays. 

     

    On the topic of Stream Frasier Online Free,  (and this will have spoilers):

    Spoiler

    I think that in the process of making a game where you select random markov chain quotes from the series, I discovered that "the joke" kind of runs its course early, and mostly it felt like I was fighting with the weirdness for control of any narrative. I tried to make the game follow a typical episode, and hopefully for anyone who does have any familiarity with Frasier, I succeeded there, but once I built an entire episode out of random quotes and played it, I got kind of bummed that it just felt too weird and not interesting enough. That's why I made the decision to break up the flow with the weirdness at the end. Playing through the game felt like being in a dream, similar to how 11 seasons of a TV show about whiny Seattle elitists must be a weird dream for Kelsey Grammar. So, I decided to inject a new story into things, which mostly comes together in the end. Also, it being Frasier, I wanted to do a deep dive into some weird bits of culture, which probably will mostly come off as baffling. That's why Niles starts to quote Quint from Jaws, or Roz starts to recite the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I even put the original version of the game, without any of the ending weirdness, in, if the player decides to slip back into the dream. You can just play infinite random Frasier episodes, if you wanted, until you decide to wake up. 

     

    Now, for the Frasier die-hards out there, you'll perhaps remember where the final scene from the finale takes place to see how my game serves as an alternate finale concept.

     

    TLDR: I spent too much time thinking about Frasier. I am happy to not think about Frasier anymore.

     

  24. Posted

    On 6/27/2018 at 5:32 AM, SecretAsianMan said:

    Metroid discussion

     

    I watched all three of these runs, too! I was especially sad about the fact that Dragonfangs' console died because he is only 47th on the Zero Mission 100% leaderboard, and I was hoping to see him get a result that pushed him up a bunch. Also, it's a good race just in terms of how everyone was getting quite a few major tricks all at the same time, causing the commenters to have a hard time keeping up, which is always fun. 

     

    If you haven't played Samus Returns, you should, but know that Mr_Shasta made the game look profoundly easy. As was said a bunch throughout, everything does indeed "hit like a truck" and for me, I definitely did a lot more meandering around the map, barely clinging to life. It's a pretty good game. 

     

    I was a little annoyed about the 100% Map Completion run because I don't find some of the couch commentators particularly funny, but they think they're very funny, which is always a frustrating aspect of GDQs. There are a few commentators who come back again and again (see: Patty) and like, act like an asshole as a way of Being Funny, and the audience eats it up, but it mostly comes off as shitty.