Quiddity Code

This week I worked a lot on the ninja game from last week, I figured out a (hacked together) way of doing one-way platforms. I also gave our ninja a grappling hook to reach places his legs just can’t take him. What I didn’t get to was giving our ninja a sense of pain, or adversaries, or a goal… So next week I’m going to continue continuing this game and finish it off. After that I plan on continuing making a single game every week.

Game: http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=3005
Code: https://github.com/DavidPD/Pico8Games/blob/master/w6_ninja.p8

Hello, long time no see! It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I’d like to say that it’s because I’ve been abducted by ninjas in Antarctica and barely escaped with my life, and fingers, intact. But it’s really because I’m a world class procrastinator. I missed one week after another, barely working on pico8 at all. All because I’d definitely have more time to work on my games tomorrow…

This week (for several weeks really) I’ve been really excited about making a pseudo-stealth/action platforming ninja game. But I kept putting off working on it to the point that all I have is some graphics and copy/pasted code from my first week’s project. So instead of starting from scratch I’m going to continue work on the same game next week. I’ll still be posting the work-in-progress since I said that I’d post whatever I had on Sunday, but I wouldn’t really call it a game just yet.

Speaking of Sundays, I’ve decided to move my weekly deadline to Saturday. I typically have more time on Saturday and I’m hoping that the extra time will help keep me from backing myself into a corner every week.

here’s a link to the game: http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=3005

This week I was thinking about making an asteroids clone, but I ended up making something closer to space invaders. Except without the sideways movement, or different enemies, or powers-ups…

This week I put a lot of things off ’till the last moment, so I didn’t have much time to polish and add things I wanted. I reused several bits from the third week, so I was able to get a prototype running really fast.

You can see the source here: https://github.com/DavidPD/Pico8Games/blob/master/w5_asteroids.p8

and play the game here: http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2899

This week I was inspired by Don’t Starve by Klei. So I made a survival game about not starving and not freezing. I had wanted to play with palette switching, so I came up with the idea of changing seasons to switch the map tiles’ palette around. I only created spring and winter, but I had also planned to make a day and night cycle as well. I was trying to make something extra hard this week, but I ran out of time (technically this post is late as is…), so I didn’t really take much time to balance the game. I’m not really sure if it turned out super hard, or really easy.

Things I would have liked to do include:

• day/night cycle
• Hunting with a bow and managing arrows
• selling wood and meat in villages
• animations and sound

I had fun this week, with palette swapping and graphics.

Here’s the game: http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2869

and the source: https://github.com/DavidPD/Pico8Games/blob/master/w4_survive.p8

This week I made a game about shooting down helicopters with a tank. I had quite a bit of fun this week, learned a bit of trigonometry for aiming and rendering the gun. I also posted the game on the pico8 forum instead of hosting the file on my blog.

Things I would have liked to add:

• Screenshake
• a boss
• enemy tanks you have to shoot on the ground

here’s the game: http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2844

and the source: https://github.com/DavidPD/Pico8Games/blob/master/w3_tank.p8

This week I made a snake clone. I had a bunch of ideas of how to make it more interesting than a snake clone. Like making the mice run away if they saw you, or having other snakes that steal your mice and eat you if they get bigger. But I wasn’t really sure how to make it so you could eat the tail of another snake while still being able to trap them or avoid them. As for the fraidy mice, I let myself run out of time to figure out line of sight and how to make it possible to corner them without running into a wall yourself.

I’m surprised at how many ideas presented themselves, and how hard it is to actually add mechanics to game as simple as snake. I had thought that I could just make a small change like moving targets, but it turns out that’s more difficult to make work than it sounds. So this week I made a snake clone, nothing more. Perhaps I’ll revisit some of these ideas in the future.

Game Source Code

Edit: Sorry about the broken link game link, I fixed it.

After getting home from a long day’s work you realize you left your piping hot, delicious coffee up on some scaffolding. But as you leave your house you are accosted by gigantic roaches. You can’t let the roaches have your coffee, so you whip out your trusty automatic rifle and run to retrieve your beverage.

This week I tried to make a standard platformer/shooter. I was inspired by games like Cave Story for some of the controls. Things I would have liked to do, but didn’t have time for, include:

• Music
• Flying enemies
• A larger level
• Power ups/multiple weapons

Confession time, I left finishing this ’till pretty much the last minute, so I didn’t take much time to polish or ramp the difficulty. I’m pretty happy with how this turned out though. Give it a play and let me know what you think.

Week 1 Game Source Code

Arrows to move/aim, Z to jump, X to shoot

# Hello World
I like the word quiddity:

The inherent nature or essence of someone or something.
A distinctive feature; a peculiarity

This is my blog, I will be blogging about programming, games, programming games and whatever else comes to mind

I’ve decided to challenge myself to make one game every week. I’ll be using the pico8 virtual console to build the games. I’ll start working on the game on Monday, and by the end of Sunday I’ll post it on this blog. The idea of this challenge is to improve my programming and artistic skills, and also my writing as I’ve never kept up with a blog before.

This is a learning experience, so it doesn’t matter if the game is unpolished or somewhat derivative. Even so I’ll try to include some ideas of my own in each game. Constructive critisism is welcomed.

hello_world Source Code

Note: Sound doesn’t seem to work in Safari.