Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes have been a huge inspiration in my life. I remember crying when Bill Watterson announced he was discontinuing the series. But it dawned on me that Calvin’s life and perception mirrors (a bit) what I’m trying to do with my game. He lives much of the time in an alternate reality (his) and only once in a while comes back to the reality of the world.
Limbo
I sat down and played Limbo, newly released for Steam, this weekend. I was blown away by the trailers – it looked dark and intriguing. It looks like no other game I’d ever seen. An I still can’t say it was like any other game I’ve ever played. It’s sort of a rag-doll-physics, meets the incredible machine, meets peter pan, meets Saw – all in black and white.
So visually it was really cool and it sounds like that’s what it won it’s awards for. The game play was fine. It wasn’t great, and wasn’t terrible. It took me about an hour and a half to finally get the jumping portion of the controls down which was really annoying. The puzzles were mostly fairly intuitive, but some were quite hard to execute even if you knew what you were doing. For full disclosure, I got stuck at one point and used an online walk-through to get through chapter 22 (I think). Overall I would say the game is worth about the $10 I paid for it. That’s a better value than going to the movies, though it didn’t move me nearly as much (the environment was cool and I think I understand how most of it ties in, but some of it just seems like fluff).
Did they do a good job? Yes. Is it the best game ever? No. Would I recommend it to someone else? Possibly, if the price goes down to $5. I would recommend Braid first though.
A couple lessons I learned:
Sketches: August 15, 2011
Sketches: August 15, 2011
Sketches: August 10, 2011
Sketches: August 10, 2011
Citrus Engine Build 1b
The idea is that a lens gives you a way to see the world. You can apply a lens to another person (or monster) and see the world through their eyes. So in this case, you can jump over and grab the white lens. Then you can walk to the monster on the left, and if you are in proximity, you can press “2″ on your keyboard – this will apply the “white” lens you just picked up to the moon and the monster. As a result the monster turns white. As I keep developing, my intention is that you would then transfer your control from your character (the hero) to the monster. You would then be able to use that monster’s special abilities to move through the world (maybe extra speed, a extra high jump, etc).
Be sure you click on the flash movie to be able to control the character with the space bar and arrow keys.
Citrus Engine Build 1
Much has changed in the last few days. Yesterday I spent 3-4 hours working with Push Button Engine, trying to figure out how to get started. I watched tutorials, read posts, documentation, etc… but could not wrap my head around actually building something of my own. I had looked at Citrus Engine before and had thought it would be good, but I felt like I need to at least try Push Button Engine once before deciding. After 3-4 wasted hours, I finally decided to use Citrus Engine for (at the very least) this prototyping phase.
Citrus Engine is a god-send. It’s so incredibly easy to set up a game in CE, add components, and view your game from the start. The only issue I had was 1, knowing how to actually publish the game (which was my fault for not knowing Flash Builder mo’ betta’
and 2, the imports not adding properly / automatically (which could be my fault too in Flash Builder). Other than that, it seems like cake. I do wish they had a downloadable version of their API help docs available, but that’s ok.
This build won’t look like much – it won’t looks much better than the last one I posted – but I’m ok with that. By using this engine rather than creating my own, I can rapidly prototype some game ideas and I’ll only have to modify a minimal amount of code. Citrus Engine will handle the physics, player movement, and basic item behavior (platforms, coins, enemies, etc). It also has a brand new level editor that I look forward to trying out.
