Though almost unbelievable, we still work on our “secret mystery project”.

We’ve divided the gameplay into “scenarios” (which might be called “chapters” just as well)and have now asked people to play and comment on the very first one of these. It’s gameplay is very different to the “main gameplay”, so you might wonder what we’re trying to achieve with these feedback sessions?

The scene we’re talking about is actually the very first scene to the game, so it is especially important, what with all those first impressions. It’s a simpler form of gameplay, in that it’s basically just answering questions (in elaborate ways – it’s not simply clicking on a button! ). It’s, at least thats what I believe, an intriguing scene. Even before you’ve seen the main character, you get a short introduction (=briefing), and then the game just keeps asking you questions, logically advancing the scene. You’re thrown in the game, and you’re bombarded with gameplay.

This used to be very different in old drafts. The main character talked directly to you, and there was lots of text. That kind of approach can work fine, but we wanted something a little more direct and drastic. So we cut all that, and changed the style completely. And now, you’ll have to solve a puzzling case, hopefully having fun along the way and maybe wondering … who wants to know all this? Who am I talking to, who am I playing as?

I believe it is a much better introduction than before. And I can’t wait for all the feedback!

In a way thats also an advantage of this chapter/scenario-based approach. We can take parts of the game and have them tested individually. Now that the main code is done, we can advance scenario-wise with further code. This results in a lot more cinematic experience than we had in mind at first, but I believe the first chapters can be done in such a style

This is going to be quick, since I only have about three hours. But theres nothing on TV, and I have a bit of time. So I might as well try to create a game!

Probably not as good as last time, probably not as many updates, and its probably going to fail a lot quicker. We will see!

7 PM - Man, is this late already. And I haven’t even really started! So I just spent about half an hour or so and played around with several ideas I had. I thought, why not try to turn one of those into something playable? So I’m now trying to do this. So far, there is some kind of camera-movement which so far works really nice. And… thats it. Next up: Drag and Drop! Wish me luck.

7.50 PM - It took me this long to add Drag&Drop? Wow. This shows me how much I suck. Also: My computer freezed completely: once. Thats impressive and annoying! Also, kind of scary.

In other news, I’m getting hungry. I should eat something! If I don’t make it today – and I won’t – I might continue on this on wednesday or thursday or something. Far away.

8.40 PM – I ate something and thought about that one problem. Terribly interesting for you guys, I bet.

9 PM – Current bug: Somehow, the neighbours of the cubes aren’t correctly determined. This isn’t really telling you much since I didn’t say anything about this game so far, but you must admit “Neighbours of the cubes” would be a pretty neat name for a band!

9.20 PM - So now that works, but now the triggering of “please-search-for-your-neighbours” doesn’t work. Also, “Please search for your neighbours” is kind of a sucky name for a band.

————–

FAILURE - No more time today. Will probably continue on this later this week. Stay tuned!

CONTINUE?

3 PM - It’s late again. Well, let’s see how this goes. So heres a bit about the game:

The player gets a few cubes – its always cubes with me, huh? – arranged in a neat fashion. His (or her) job is to drag&drop the cubes in order to reconstruct the whole thing so that it fulfills certain conditions.

However, the connection needs to stay connected at all times. So you can’t just drag that one element out which would disconnect that whole thing. So I have to check if the cube the player desires to remove is actually one that might disconnect the whole thing. This is harder than I thought it would be. Huh. Well, I have a new approach to this on paper, and I’m now going to try to implement this. Since I love you, I’m going to tell you a secret: I’m kind of scared to implement this.

3.30 PM – Case in point: I spent way too much time making that drag&drop-movement smooth, when I should have spent that time doing that stupid neighbour stuff. Okay, no more excuses! I’m gonna work on that now!

… Or maybe I should get myself something to drink first.

4.30 PM – Bugs. Bugs. Bugs. Bugs. Bugs. Keeps crashing. Bugs. Crash. Bug. Error. Bug. Crash. Does this make you happy? This is my “hobby”. God.

5 PM - I think it works!

Wait… is it pathetic that it took so long?

5.15 PM – I told the forum about this. I shouldN’t have done that. Where can I delete posts?

5.20 PM - So basically, I did that because it forces me to continue working on this. Man, clever, huh? But since people might be interested in the actual development, okay: I’m not having a design document – as per usual for these minigames – and the rough gameplaysketch is still permanently changing in my head. The basic gameplay is pretty much decided, but the style is changing rapidly, and there is also that voice in my head which puts the whole thing more into rhythm-game-territory. Which might be fun, but its a lot harder to prototype and do for me since I’m not able to do these things. Aww well!

5.30 PM - Urgh. I should be more careful naming my variables next time. So I can do “X”, when the variable named “fail” (a theme that describes this whole experiment) is “one”, which in my mind means “true”, so basically this reads as “if it failed, it worked”, which makes my head hurt

I could have renamed that variable instead of whining about it here, but you know… this is more fun.

6.30 PM - After a not-very-constructive little “break”, which will now continue (it began already), there will/might/should/could be more! So far, I’ve only outlined a bit of the interface.

This time, I want to use no tutorials. Everything should be explained in the game: So expect bubbles to pop up (without interfering, obviously), these kind of things.

8 PM - Yeah, I took a break. Anyway, the “tutorial” is now a giant text floating around telling you how to do stuff. But its really just one sentence that reacts to your input, so its not like my usual long-winded tutorial texts. And its just the very basic controls, everything else should work without these long texts.

8.30 PM - Current interest in this is zero. I can basically write what I want!

9.30 PM - The best thing I ever programmed was a confetti-effect. I use it all the time. If you haven’t programmed your own yet, you should do so right now, since you can use it in any situation always and it will always be great.

9.45 PM - Will now add another gameplay element. After that: Creating a real endless mode, adding a score and then, there will be reviews. Previews. Playtests. And all that.

10 PM - I’ve used so much stuff from Cubic Colors, it’s not funny. And some of the material from Projection. And a few graphics from older prototypes not released, etc. etc. This is insane.

10.30 PM - Another bug. This time, a barrier doesn’t rotate correctly. Hmm..

11.20 PM - Enough for today. A somewhat playable version is done and will be sent to T for comments. I’m going to sleep.

Let’s start with a picture!

3.20 PM - So here is a shot of the current status. You can drag&drop the cubes and stack the cubes wherever you want in any direction. Your task is it to reach the goals, which are the colorful… shapes floating around. Since it can be difficult to judge the exact position of such an object, I’ve just added this handy line you see above. This makes building stuff a lot easier, and is an absolute must since there will be a timelimit.

5 PM – Whoops, forgot to update. So whats new? That line effect shown above has improved and can now be seen with mouse overs ALL THE TIME. This makes planning a little easier. I fixed a lot of bugs, all of them mainly involving more cubes than in the shot above. However, even larger structures with lots of cubes are now no problem anymore.

In order to be able to play with these, the camera needs to dynamically adjust – which it does now. It moves dynamically and automatically in such a way that you can always see everything. Neato!

5.45 PM - 45 Minutes mostly spent polishing and bugfixing. Among all this, I managed to make the game a lot harder – and fun – by … well, I guess by being an asshole. See, there are certain “lines” that forbid you to place cubes. These will now always be placed so that you have to reconsider. A lot. Mwahaha!

6 PM - And now its too hard :/ Balancing is FUN

See the red lines? You have to remove all cubes along that line. Approximately one million billion in this picture.

6.50 PM - I’ll call it a day for now. Still not finished, so I removed that “Short Edition”-thing. Why is this taking so long? Mainly because I still do other stuff (no Gamedesign? Thats POSSIBLE!?) on the side, and also because this isn’t really prototyping – I’m doing way too much polishing for that. Will now end work on this for today. Thanks for reading, see ‘ya … tomorrow, I guess?

—

4.20 PM – And here we go again! Bugfixing is the name of the game, and I already did that quite a lot! Also: The game is now fun enough that playtesting sessions take a lot longer than they should.

There is still that odd bug every now and then, but they are hard to reproduce. Hmm…

4.40 PM - Finally, I’m going to add the “Round”-structure that the whole game – basically – already supports. But we need to show that to the player, no?

5.30 PM - So now, for some reason, some objects aren’t checked correctly: Some of the lines above (the red things) don’t register if you put something in their way. I think I know what causes this, and the best thing: Said bug will be completely irrelevant, since I change how these lines work, anyway! Hahaha! BEST BUG FIX EVER

6.30 PM - It’s fun to have huge text on the screen, right? At least if it says things like “OH MY GOD ARE YOU AWESOME” and “OH MAN I WISH I WAS YOU”.

… Or, uh, “ROUND FAILED”?

Enough for today!

RANDOM NOTES

I doubt I’m going to use the timestamp anymore. So enjoy random notes and thoughts during the process of gamedevelopment!

—

I’m wondering if “FAILURE” or “FAILED” sounds better, and I am also wondering if maybe thats too harsh? But then, in games you can really have the two extremes between amazing victories (“GREAT JOB!”, “FANTASTIC!”, “EXCELLENT!”) and horrific failures (“FAILED!”, “HORRIBLE”, etc) and it just works. So let’s see how this goes..

It’s not fun. Awww.

Well, it happens. The good thing about prototypes is that if it happens, you didn’t waste all that much time on it. Plus, there might be a way to turn it into something fun still…

So, back to the drawing board, I guess.

Prepare for more posts, maybe. There might be another prototype. There might not. This entirely depends on how much fun it is.

Are you excited? (You don’t need to answer, we know your answer. By now, we really only need to look in your eyes.)

For not updating. I know we should do that, but… you know.

It’s kind of stressful right now. This is a problem if you do this as a hobby. Always those phases in which you can’t work on it! Since gamecreation is something that you need to put a lot of time into, this means there isn’t much progress in code done by me, and I hate myself for that, considering that other people, say, for example, T, work on this – and with great success as well! I love looking at the shots and levels he creates! And even though he has a lot of stress as well. Which makes me feel even more guilty.

So… please consider this an apology to you, dear reader. Sorry for not providing you exciting information. This will become a lot better soon! So hang in there.

Can you believe it? Pappenheimer has finally finished his new game Running food – although its now not longer called like that. You really should check it out, because that game is – there is no better word for it – fascinating. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the few who share a bit of the knowledge about all the code, material and hard work behind it, it boogles the mind to see the whole thing coming together so well. It manages a very nice balance of difficulty and accessibility, and its definately not on the same scale as most “educational titles”. But then, while also aimed at kids, there are so many elements in there that one might not fully understand unless one has reached a certain age – because some of his philosophical messages might just need those rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia – I really think that he managed to create something incredible.

Mind you, I haven’t completed the full game yet — but what I’ve written above is my impression of the playtesting I’ve done.

And with that… it seems that I am now the only one from the group of people I’ve worked with for a long time who hasn’t finished a full-scale project that you can buy. This results in a weird, hard-to-describe melancholy-kind-of-thing.

Siiigh. Oh well.

Damnit.

Merry christmas, everyone! Enjoy the holidays, have a great time, and enjoy the time away from all that stress.

Blah, blah, yaddah, yaddah, whatever. You know you want to torture challenge yourself to something as awesome as my very own Experiment which resulted in PROJECTION – the most amazing puzzlegame ever that you, along with, oh, the entire universe ignored . But whatever, it’s okay, nevermind that. There is going to be a contest this weekend – and it’s no plain ol’ boring contest – it’s a contest that encourages new, innovative games, quick prototyping, and on top of it all, we will see the different workflows of different people and engines. And to make it even better, there are cool prizes up to grabs! Follow this link and see the details – we’d love to see you on board!

Here is a quick overview:

• Create a game in 48 hours or less. You may choose freely what kind of game it is,
• Your game has to fit the given theme in one way or another. It’s up to you to choose how exactly, but others will judge your entry – and they will use their interpretation!
• Post your progress regulary using a development-ticker, updated at least once every three hours in which you worked on the game. This will allow us to see the different workflow, and maybe allow us to learn from mistakes, see how advantageous our planning really is, and also: It’s pretty neat to spy on people.

See the rest of the rules, as well as more exciting info, at this post.

Thanks for your attention, now take part in this contest!

… what did you say? You missed the link? Oh, that’s not a problem at all! Here it is: http://www.coniserver.net/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=242658#Post242658

See the original thread at the Conitec-forums!

It’s time for another game! As you may have guessed, it’s the result of my Experimental Experiment. What are we talking about, exactly?

Projection is a puzzle-game (aren’t most of my minigames puzzlegames?), and, as so often, you will have to build something.

This time, we will show you exactly what you have to build. Oh, and we’ll limit what you can use to do so as well! Pretty easy, huh?

Build something!

We know you love building things, we all do. And since we love you, we will give you lots of stuff to build with! Use Cubes, Pyramides – and more – to build a structure! Simply chose your part and click where you want it to go!

Create a Structure!

Build something special!

Okay, so don’t just build whatever you want. Use all the avaible parts and build something that has exactly the silhoulette specified! There may be more than one silhoulette to match – but you may choose any position to look at your structure in order to reach that. Sounds easy, huh?

Simply click that “SWITCH”-button to go to the comparison-mode.

Compare the silhoulettes

There is a tutorial included, as well as ten puzzles! Go solve them all!

DOWNLOAD: Kindly hosted by Pappenheimer:

http://www.puppenheim.org/Projection-081221.zip – Please also visit Pappenheimers site and buy his new game “Würfels Welt”!

DISCLAIMER: If it blows up your machine, it’s your fault.

Thanks for reading – we can’t wait to hear your comments!

Hello!

This is going to be a small experiment, which may fail completely, or which might be amazingly awesome. I’m going to update this post throughout the day, and I hope that I may finish this today or tomorrow. But before I start, let me give you some backstory.

You may have noticed that there were only very few posts in the last few months. The thing is, we all have lots of stress right now. However, now that christmas is right around the corner, traditionally you get a few days of free time and thus, I want to spend a bit of time with working on the game. That is not to say that I didn`t work at all on it, because I did. It’s just that I didn’t work that much on it. So to get back in the swing of things – and because I really can’t help it – I’m going to create a small minigame. Estimated time for this: One day, not more than two days.

This is going to be the experiment: Create – or more like, change and finish, one small minigame. It’s going to be a concept that I already have explored (but not in one of the released games), and I will try to make it into a playable, fun game. It’s a puzzle game, and we will see if its going to be fun! Expect several updates to this post with exciting news and maybe even lessons from development. I will also mention stupid mistakes and what-have-you. Hopefully, it’s going to be fun!

—

1 PM - The experiment begins! The game is a puzzlegame, asking the player to construct structures that have a certain shape seen from an arbitrary point in space. I hope this will become clearer with future updates. Right now, before I start, I already have a working proof-of-concept, and a main-menu-sketch. For now, I won’t focus too much on aesthetics, although I try to keep it simple, only using black and white (and some red). The biggest problem is that it gives the player too much freedom and doesn’t make things clear enough; for instance, you are ver limited with how you can build the structure – right now, you have to build it from a given amount of cubes – but its very hard to see how many cubes and all that. I will try to change that by making it more clear. I will also limit the cameramovement, because right now its hard to get it lined up how you want it.

There is also a tutorial, but its outdated and I’ll basically have to redo it from scratch. We will see how it goes. I’ll start with it … NOW!

One more thing that I want to mention: For these experimental minigames, I dont have a design document. I know. But for these small projects, its almost quicker to simply just try it out. Even though it means redoing lots of things – which we will likely see soon.

–

1:10 PM – I’ve started by making a backup copy of the earlier stuff. This is already of to a better start than anything I’ve done before.

–

1:25 PM – I’ve changed the cameracode to something thats a lot simpler if you look at the code which also limits the player. It’s an amazing improvement already, even though it kind of limits what you can do with the puzzles. I’m still happy with it.

Originally, the building process (building the structure, I mean) was done very minimalistic – simply click where you want it to be. I think I’m going to lose a bit of that minimalism – sure the player has to click more, but then again, at least he’ll know why he clicks.

–

1:40 PM – Not only have I now informed the forum, but I have also created a few panels using MSPaint. I wasn’t intending it to end up that minimalistic!

—

2 PM – After spending a few minutes in paint, I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe I need to find someone else to take care of graphics. But that shouldn’t be the concern now!

—

2:30 PM - I really try not to use too many buttons, but let it be said that this definately sounds like an easier thing that it really is! My goal is to make the whole thing playable with just the mouse without cluttering the screen with a dozen buttons, so you really have to think how you set the interface up. On the plus side, by doing it like that, you will improve playability, and thats a very important thing. So don’t rush the interface! It is, after all, the way how your player interacts with the world – if your interface (or the controls) are broken, it destroys the entire game.

Also: I couldn’t resist making a neat animation for clicking on a button. Those ten minutes were totally worth it, even though nobody will ever ever ever notice. Cruel world we live in! Also, does somebody have a nice sci-fi-looking bitmap font for me? Pleeeeeeaaaaaaase??

In other news, nobody else in the forum has proven how extremely manly and amazing they are – nobody takes part in this. Probably should have announced that a bit sooner. But! Maybe there will be another of these experiments in the future?!?! Also, the stress is killing me. Now I have to finish this. Yes, I know, thats why I’m doing it. But … but I could also spend those valuable minutes by reading blogs!

—

3PM - I’ve implemented features for which I have no use so far. I’m apparently far beyond 100% productivity. Or, which might be more likely, I’m just really lost without planning. (Okay, so really, I already know what I want to do with it, but… when? Also, why has nobody given me a sci-fi-font )

—

3:30PM - I’m one of those people who just need to listen to music when they are working on the game. What’s important is, that music needs to match whatever I’m working on. Since I’m working on a minimalistic puzzlegame, the amount of possible music for that is pretty limited. Which reminds me – I need someone to create music and sounds for the game, too! Aaaugh!

—

4:00PM – Still working on all selection of different parts, and making it all stable and neat. However, I also ate something inbetween, so there. I will soon begin with the actual creation process of the puzzles – and if past puzzelgames are any indication, that is going to be the most boring part of it all. Protip: Including an editor so that other people can create puzzles NEVER EVER WORKS.

—

4:30PM – I am not used to typing on laptop keyboards. This means I make typos all the time. This is annoying. Also, I think it won’t be too long until its playable – again. Horray!

–

5:30PM – This last hour was spent mainly doing … nothing for the game. Whoops. But now, I will do something! Adding a helpful number so that one actually knows how many parts are left and needed!

—

6PM - The display is not only working, but also looks quite neat! I really notice that not only am I kinda not used to scripting anymore, I am also finding it increasingly hard to concentrate. Thank god that the following is pretty much already done, and the only thing missing is making it easily accessible. Also, I still haven’t posted even one screenshot, which now shall change!

First quick shot

Well. I told you its supposed to be minimalistic!

—

7PM – It’s slowly coming together code-wise, but I still haven’t even started with different puzzles, and I need to add other type of parts other than cubes. I’ve programmed the code with that in mind, so it shouldn’t be that difficult, but then again, it’s programming. There’s always something you don’t expect. Will I manage to finish this today? I’m not sure. Probably not with lots of puzzles.

k, well i decided to give it a shot… i will start now at 12:54PM my time and end at 9:00PM tomorrow! Hope everyone else gives is shot too

- Doof_guy

Awesome! Can’t wait to see what he’ll do!

—

7:45PM - Took a small break, will now continue with creating the game! The last thing I did was mainly polishing the existing parts – these small things have such a huge effect!

Some of the bitmaps I’ve made have sizes that aren’t a power of two. Normally I try to avoid that, but my time is running out, so I’ll keep them like that. I’m sorry. Nobody please ever do that.

—

9PM – OHGODOHGODOHGODITSSOLATEALREADYOHGODOHGOD

Also, I fixed a very annoying bug!

—

10PM – It’s coming together! Quite surprising how far this little game has come. Created a dummypuzzle in order to test and it worked quite well. Will now create more puzzles.

—

11PM - Need. More. Parts. Need. More. Puzzles. Need. Music. Need. Sounds. Need Graphics. Need Food.

—

Midnight – Okay. I said two days, right?

I’ve been working for eleven hours on this, and now it’s time for a small progress report!

I said that when I began, I already had a working “proof of concept”. That was actually the case.

The game is about building structures. The structure that the player creates has to fulfill two conditions. One: It uses exactly the parts specified (i.e. you may have to create a certain structure by using EXACTLY five cubes, and you mustnt use six or four cubes). Two: If seen from any angle (specified by player), the structure has to have a certain silhoulette (or projection on the screen, if you prefer). There may be more than one silhoulette that the structure needs to have.

When I began today, the whole game was working, but it was an absolute nightmare when it came to the controls: In order to specify the viewing angle for the silhoulette, one had to be really close to the final picture (that’s still the case, but due to the limitation in cameramovement its not a big problem), which meant that you had to tweak it for a while. For a new player, the whole thing was basically uncontrollable, and that with the simple example-puzzles!

Now, however, things are different. Just due to limitation of the viewing-angle, the whole thing improved a lot!

I will call it a day for now, but I will keep working on it tomorrow – and I will update this. Thank you for reading, and good night. See you tomorrow!

———-

Sunday

12PM – And there we go again! I’m pretty sure I dreamt of this game that I am working on. While everyone else is dreaming of awesome things – probably – I have to dream of stupid cubes and their damned silhoulette. And since that’s so awesome, let’s work on it again the whole day so that I can dream of it again! I mean, sure that dream ended with a cliffhanger … will there be another cube!?

So for this hour, my goal will be to add several possible goal-silhoulettes. Here is another shot.

There are basically two parts: The building process (pictured in the LAST shot) and the compare-process (pictured here). Move the camera so that your structure looks exactly as the one in the bottom right corner. In the future, you may have to do this for more than one silhoulette!

In other news, there will be a contest next weekend: Create a nice game in a weekend (or less). There are also goign to be awesome prizes, so make sure to keep an eye on the forum!

—

1PM - One day after the start of the experiment. Not quite finished with the “several goalsilhoulettes”, but so far, no major problems with that. Let’s hope it stays like that.

—

1:45PM - It works. IT WORKS. Oh my gosh, it works. Now I “only” need to create lots of puzzles!

—

2PM – Or maybe, lets start with a nice puzzleselection. Also: A tutorial!

… Okay, lets do the tutorial first

—

4PM - I’ve finished what we now may call the “first draft” of the tutorial, and I also had a first playtesting session. These are always incredibly eye-opening, and this time was certainly no exception! I now have a sheet of paper full of things that need to change.

Also, I hate the tutorial already.

—

5:30PM - I am going to send this early version to Pappenheimer of Würfels-Welt-fame. He’s going to tear it apart, I just know it. But, you see, thats all part of the development-process. I’m fairly certain the crying and all the pain in my soul after that is part of it, too. Ah, yes, the joys of your hobby.

—

6PM – He kind of liked it. He also had valueable criticism: Windowmode combined with the resultion can lead to problems, as well as confusing or too difficult cameramovement. I’m not yet sure how to address those.

—

8:30PM - I’m DONE. Now: Writing the Readme-file.

—

8;35PM – Aah, forget it. No readme file. This experiment is over, thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the project-post!

—

END: Thread.