Pixelles Follow Along – Week 3

A week filled with failure!

So last week I felt like I was getting somewhere. I had my cards placed (if not in the right way) and I was able to make them disappear (if in a simple way). There weren’t detailed homework steps given out this week, the main goal was to get a prototype working, so for me it was to figure out the central mechanic of my game.

So I did some reading in Stencylpedia. I watched some tutorials. I Googled what I was trying to do in as many different variations I could think of. And I was still coming up blank.

I eventually found a tutorial on displaying a randomized message. This is a mechanic that I need so I spent a good full day trying to get it to work and eventually I did! When I applied it to my scene, this happened;

What are you doing cards? Go home, you are drunk.

I laughed when I saw this because the top left card just slowly slid up there and that angled card was so unexpected. I quickly realized that it was just because I still had collision settings on so the text was colliding with the cards. Easily fixed. Text now shows up on top of cards.

So while this is all well and good it isn’t actually doing anything because I haven’t found a way to link the displayed text to the appropriate card. I’m just displaying words that change with every click. What I really want to be able to do is to build a table and then just work with the fields of the table as Attributes but I don’t know if that’s a thing that can be done in Stencyl. I may have to come up with some new complicated ways of using it’s simple tables. I did however make a Splash Screen which can be arrived at when ever the player hits Enter. This is one of the easy things I would have saved for a finishing touch but since I hadn’t felt like I accomplished anything this week I quickly threw one together.

New “features” can be tested out in my now broken game here.

I want to keep working on this today but sadly weekends and Mondays are the only days I really let myself work on video game homework. School homework is slowly taking over. I feel like I’m slowly running out of options on what to do so a few days ago I posted on the Stencyl help forums and I’ve gotten one promising reply so far. This is what a posted, if anyone has any suggestions I’d be super happy to hear them;

I’m trying to create a scene behaviour that will first present the user with a randomized line of text (taken from a pool of previously established poetry lines). Which ever line of text is displayed dictates which card on the playing field the user should click on. If the appropriate card is clicked it is removed from the playing field. A few seconds later the next randomized piece of text will be show, continuing onwards until all the cards have been removed form the field. What I need is a way to link the displayed line of text to it’s paired card.

Ex. If ‘Meow’ is displayed click on the card of a cat.

Pixelles Follow Along – Week 2

So I’m falling a fair bit behind on my video game making homework. Mostly because I had a fun fling with HTML and CSS this weekend. Completley almost a months worth of Web Design homework in 2 days. Mostly because I really enjoyed doing it. So that was 2 nights in a row of staying up till 2 watching video about cool things you can do in CSS. I put a dent in my final project for that class which is to make a web version of your CV.

Look at those sexy rounded corners. And that weird cloud shape on top. Pure CSS, no images used!

This is a version of my resume for looking for jobs in the video game industry. Could definitely use some touch ups, and I’ll probably switch to a more general version of my CV for the final product. I wanted to do a rotating image on top that switched when you moused over buttons but I couldn’t get the links to appear in a horizontal line. Will have to try that again some other time.

1. Pick a game-making tool for your game

I’m actually having a really hard time with this one! Mostly because of the games I want to make I think they’ll all need a different program to make. And my laptop doesn’t have room for all that software.

Time laps to 5 hours later. Sticking with Stencyl, I’m going to make it work!

2. Get your game environment set up — have the tool, basic scene, and your placeholder data ready to work on for next week. It’s OK if your character doesn’t move, for example, but have a placeholder image (if your game has characters) to represent it.

Well these problems kind of all go together don’t they? I’m trying to go around collecting stock images but my usual stock sites have watermarks all over everything or are two small to use. Sorry copy right rules, I promise I won’t use anything officially. I’ll try to draw my own in time D:

Time laps to 5 hours later. Done. Got an semi-illegal yet royalty free image for the background and made 4 cards to work with.

3. Write a concept document for your game using the example template. Remember you can and should use lots of images, even ones from Google image search, to get your point across.

I started a GoogleDoc that pretty much any can read with my game ideas in it. So far I have;

• Karuta – Card Game (see GoogleDoc or Wikipedia for explanation)
• Tower Defense: Now with Z-axis
• Quest for Aurius – Side scroller
• Political Text Adventure

It’s pretty bare bones at the moment as I have only recently jotted down basic notes on paper and have yet to scan in any images.

Karuta is probably the most thought out concept wise, but the need for 100 cards/sprites will be time consuming and I’m not sure which software to use for it. So it will take a little more research. And the biggest draw back; no one would want to play it because they don’t know Japanese! Soooo, I’m tempted to go around collecting English poetry and making an English version of it, that way people would actually be able to play it.

This is an example of an English version of 1 of the 100 cards needed.

What I need to keep reminding myself is that what I’m making is a prototype. My goal shouldn’t be to make and upload 100 cards (though it will be an excellent task to do during class to stay busy) but to figure out the basic mechanics of the game. To figure out how to get everything to work in Stencyl before aiming to make this on a full scale.

4. Create a level from scratch in your game-making tool of choice (for example, Stencyl or GameMaker) OR create a short interactive fiction story! You can use Twine, Inklewriter, Story Nexus, or any other tool you like.

I really… didn’t think  I was actually going to be able to do this. But I did it. It’s still kind of broken coding wise but there are cards and you can click on them.

Click image to test prototype.

So yes, things have already progressed much further then I expected them to, and pretty much all in one day! I’m afraid I won’t be able to find the mad rush to get something clumsily put together such as this again, but here’s hoping that I can make some progress over the course of the next week! Either line display or card randomization. And more precise clicking/disappearing controls. I think that’s what I should focus on.

Game Rec of the Week

If you’ve read this far, here’s a game recommendation. I spent a few hours playing it today. I’m not going to spend to much time thinking about what it means to be a person who spends hours playing a game where you try to cleverly destroy the world.

I can’t remember if this was on our list of games to try, but gosh is it perfect for your inner villain. Pandemic 2: “Customize your disease and wipe out the population!”

But Can I Eat It? – 46

With last semesters meals out of the way I can move on to some of the exciting dishes made much more recently. A recent inspiration for has been Smitten Kitchen and Laurie wanted to try their version of gnocchi in tomato broth. We didn’t necessarily need to make the gnocchi from scratch but that was an important part of the experience. Cut to: Giant mess in my kitchen/living room.

It started out simple enough, big pot full of vegetables to make the broth in. Carrots, celery, onions, garlic, the basics.

Throw in a can of sliced tomatoes and soup broth and things started to take shape.

I can’t remember how long we let that boil gently for but it came out looking at lot like the above.

Here’s Laurie making sure that the broth is properly seasoned. After we had to migrate it over to a Tupperware to free up the large pot for gnocchi boiling.

So all the while that the broth was getting started we had all the potatoes cooking in the oven. I had forgotten to pierce them before putting them in, so one exploded. No casualties thankfully (except the one potato that exploded). And another thing that was going on was onion rings. I had been looking for corn meal for a few weeks and finally found some so I was excited to start breading things.

So the first step to the onion rings was a really thick batter. I’m thinking I could have thinned this out with water but I didn’t want to deviate from the recipe too much.

Then came the coating mixture. We got a nice assembly line going on from batter to coating to cookie tray. Yeah, it was pretty crowded.

Now onto the potatoes.

Sara and Kara got the fun job of potato grating.

We were instructed to grate the potatoes so they would be soft and fluffy, thus easier to turn into a dough.

Steve was right to be concerned, it was a daunting task.

Everything got mashed together with an egg and some flour and thus noodle dough was made!

Steve almost got all the credit for the gnocchi rolls, Kara’s hand wouldn’t stand for that.

All those rolls were then cut into small squares. As you can imagine we’re already approaching the 2 hour mark on how long we’ve been cooking.

We then threw the sacrifices into boiling water.

Once the small squares were coated in flour they were thrown into the large pot to cook for all of two minutes a piece. Making it a race between cutting more squares and scooping out the ones that were done cooking to make more room in the pot.

After what I believe was a full count of 2 and a half hours of cooking we finally neared the end. The onion rings were completely devoured as appetizers (which I would definitely recommend if a little demanding to make).

The recipe actually told us to remove all the vegetables from the broth but we felt like that would leave us very little broth for 5 people. It also would have made the dish a little boring. Having all those vegetables was pretty necessary in breaking up the monotony of the gnocchi (there was a lot of gnocchi). We had even made a back up sauce out of fear of running out of the original broth. Keeping the vegetables in also made this into a much heartier meal then just using the liquids would have resulted in.

This recipe is definitely worth trying and making gnocchi is fun, but it’s not something I could ever imagine making a habit out of!

But Can I Eat It? – 45

So Pad Thai has quickly become a favourite of mine when eating out. Finding a can of Pad Thai sauce at the grocery store tempted me into making it at home.

As the sauce is probably the more complicated part of this meal I didn’t have many more ingredients to pick up since that part came pre-made. Just noodles, carrots, bean sprouts and shrimp. I kind of regret not looking up other recipes online instead of just following what it said on the can. I feel like there could have been many more other ingredients.

I don’t think I’ve ever cooked shrimp before and I may have underestimated how simple it is. I just wanted to heat them in some oil but I ended up over cooking them.

Noodles cooking in the proper rice noodle way of removing them from the heat when the water boils. Then sauce and carrots added to the shrimp.

The noodles and the sprouts were thrown right on top and mixed in. At which point I was still unaware of the shrimp being over cooked. So while the noodles were tasty I ended up eating around the shrimp, yes, that’s how bad it was. I make this pretty often now to varying levels of complexity. On days when I don’t have any other ingredients it’s often just sauce and noodles, the poor student way of making Pad Thai.

Pixelles Follow Along – Week 1

Let’s talk about video games!

In November I tried to get into a local Montreal game incubator (A weekly evening class that would teach you the basics of making video games). I didn’t get in (which might be for the best, school and other projects keep me pretty busy) but they’re posting their weekly lessons online so I’m going to do my best to follow along until school takes over.

This is week 1 – Mostly getting familiar with the types of games being made and with some programs.

1. Check out the games from our inspiration list

I Wish I Were the Moon – This one is cute and creative. Your goal if to figure out all the possible endings which you do by taking a picture and moving the characters/objects. I’m missing the last 2.

I Can Hold My Breath Forever – This one reminds me a lot of Dear Esther. You travel around though underground water tunnels reading notes left behind by a friend who went into the tunnels first. I wish it had just been a little longer with a slightly deeper/more emotional story through the notes.

Elude – I really like the games that are coming out of Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab, this one is a reflection of an experience of dealing with depression. I really like the look and feel of it.

Yet One Word – You type words to navigate the world. The words start out very negative and slowly work their way towards positive ideas. Pretty simple except for a few locations where movement gets complicated so there is a level of difficulty to it.

2. Have a look at the games girls have made in another incubator to get an idea of what level of game you can expect to make.

I did this a few months ago. Got sucked into a indie game void.

3. Install GameMaker Studio (Windows only) or Stencyl (OSX/Windows)

Done a few days ago, went with Stencyl because I was hoping that it was smaller and would take up less space on my laptop.

4. Do some of the tutorials in either Stencyl or GameMaker to get a better idea of how the tool works.

Done. Made the first Crash Course game in Stencyl and followed along to another tutorial to learn how the drag and drop coding section works.

5. Modify a template in Stencyl or Gamemaker. Change the template to make it “your own”, whether this is by changing the game mechanics, modifying gravity, adding more objects, change the player’s goal completely. Use this assignment to really explore Stencyl/GameMaker. You can find GameMaker’s examples just by clicking File->Open — there should be one called “treasure” and one called “street racer”.

Didn’t do because I got too distracted trying to make art for which ever game I try to build over the next few weeks. Because I fear making graphics will be more of a time sink than learning the programs. As I tend to get really frustrated with GIMP very quickly when having to spend half an hour to figure out a technique I already know in Photoshop. There are some pretty expensive learning tools out there so I can figure that stuff out as I go.

6. Start conceptualizing your game: what kind of game you’d like it to be, what player’s goal will be, doodles, sketches

I made a pixel Aquabat for a possible underwater exploration game. Basic concept is that the water will be dark and murky so your character needs to use echolocation to try and  navigate areas. But if I can’t figure out how to do that it might turn into a simple side scroller. Journey to Aurius or something.

As is pretty obvious my thoughts are still all over the place for thing. All I know is that I want to make something Shadowlack centric. I also have an idea of a political drama esque thing which would be more text base, but I don’t think Stencyl is really the software to make that with. So I’ll have to wait and find a different way to execute it.

But Can I Eat It? – 44

So I have a bit of a backlog of posts to get through from before break. As usual November gets crazy and December just flies by.  So here is food from the past, which also exist in the present.

Now this is something I’ve been wanting to make since I tried it when I was in Buenos Aires a few summers ago; Pumpkin soup. I wanted to make it around Canadian Thanksgiving or Halloween but I missed both marks by not getting to the store early enough in the season to get pumpkin filling. And I didn’t want to do the whole process of baking a full pumpkin and cutting out the filling. So instead I waited till the stores finally restocked.

I followed this recipe for Roasted Pumpkin soup pretty closely. Minus the whole pumpkin part.

I had a rather gigantic sweet potato so I only used about 2/3s of it as I didn’t want it to over power the pumpkin in the recipe.

Sweet potato, onions and garlic were thrown in the pot to soften. While that was going no I cut up the apple.

After a bit everything got thrown in together. Then added the spices and a few cups of water.

Not the most appetizing looking dish at the moment. After everything was mixed and well heated it was time to blend it all.

I really don’t like using blenders because cleaning them is a pain. But I’ll admit that this is a very necessary step. I had so much soup made that I had to do this in about three different bunches while transferring the contents into different pots.

I probably didn’t blend for as long as was needed as I still had a few chunks of apple and potato swimming around, and the whole thing could probably use more water as the mixture is still very thick. But overall this came out tasting delicious.

But Can I Eat It? – 43

After a few busy weeks I’ve fallen behind on both blog posts and cooking. So here is a very brief one to fill space as I work on writing a more exciting meal for later this week.

This recipe is one that’s actually a continuation of the Cheese Buns that I made last month. But this time I tack on this pizza bun recipe to it. The pizza bun recipe wanted me to use pre-made dough, which I would have been more than happy to do, but neither of my local groceries stores had what it asked for. Which is why I just re-created the dough from the first recipe and then did the tricky bit of adding the pizza component.

As usual, making these can be a bit of an ordeal, it takes over my entire table and gets messy rather quickly.

So instead of just a block of cheese I put down a layer of pepperoni, a dollop of tomato sauce and then the cube of cheese. I’ve started to experiment a fair bit with the dough. I add all the spices to it before hand since I don’t have a fancy butter brush to add things to the top of the buns before cooking them.

For some reason these buns were much more explosive than ones I’ve made before. I’m thinking things may be packed too tightly. Less cheese perhaps? Either way, turned out very well and I took them off to DnD for a potluck to keep the traditional aspect of DnD alive. (The traditional aspect is eating pizza).