Holiday Post thing

Whoa, it seems like forever since my last post. Since the Bit Bazaar ended, I've been focusing my attention on many things, some regarding Gonna Catcha and some not. But there's no time to explain them all here, so I'll pick the most important one.

As I mentioned in my last post, Gonna Catcha was played in an arcade-style environment at the Bit Bazaar on December 7. Players weren't be able to read the manual to figure out how to play the game, as it wasn't available to them. So in an attempt to minimize confusion, I added the instructions screen below, which was shown just before the first round started.

Crash course in spirit catching.

It explained the basic rules and goal of the game, i.e. what you can and can't touch, what you should and shouldn't shoot and how to progress.

I didn't arrive at the Bit Bazaar when it started, so I might have missed some of the early birds playtesting the game. The first people I saw playing didn't seem to have too much trouble figuring out what to do, but as the day went by and more people played, it became apparent that the instruction screen wasn't doing its job very well. My guess that it was too brief and too detailed at the same time, and that confused people about the rules of the game. It presented all of the shooting and touching rules for each NPC type all at once, but due to the lack of space, the descriptions of each rules were too laconic. By the end of the day, I was back to my old ways, explaining the game myself and skipping the instructions screen, and things went by a lot smoother.

In retrospect, the instructions screen was more of a band-aid solution than a real fix to the problem. Since it was a bust, I figured that I need to go to Plan B, which is to use demonstration cutscenes to explicitly show how the game is played. As such, on my to-do-list I've promoted "Demonstration cutscenes" from "Optional" to "Necessary". I also grouped it together with "Attract mode" because the two have one thing in common: the ability for the game to play itself. But before I get into that,

INSTRUCTIONS SCREEN, YOOOOOUUUUU'RE FIRED!!

Or kicked upstairs, whatever.

Ahem. So anyway, I've started working on the new instructions delivery method: new tutorial cutscenes that will replace the old instructions screen. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like so far:

Don't fear him.

Essentially, it's just a half-size level that plays itself to teach new players how to play the game. And speaking of playing itself, I've also started on making the autoplay system too. I think I've got the playback system working pretty well, the recording system on the other hand, which is only here to help me record gameplay to be played back by the autoplay system and may not be part of the final product, has a few bugs to work out. For starters, it generated a 500+ MB output file when it was only supposed to be a few kilobytes in size.

I feel bloated... ugh.

The recording code is working much better now. I'll go into more detail about in a later post, because this one really needs to get out there. I don't know when, because it's the holiday season, with the whoop-de-do and hickory-dock. And don't forget to hang up your sock, 'cause just exactly at 12 o'clock, he'll be coming down the chimney, down.

P.S. Now that I think about it, Donum and Pohena bears some similarities to Sinterklaas and Krampus of Alpine folklore.  Krampus punishes naughty children while Sinterklaas rewards good children. Pohena and Donum does the same with spirits, according to the supplementary material.

Gonna Catcha v.0.8 Post-Mortem (Oh no, somebody catch its spirit!)

Gonna Catcha is gonna be shown in the Arcade at the Bit Bazaar Winter Market on December 7 (the day after this post was originally published). Being an arcade-style game played in an arcade-style environment; Gonna Catcha will be put to the ultimate test in its own element. I've been working hard to get it polished up for public playing. Here's a list of changes and improvements I made between v.0.7.4 and v.0.8.2:

High Score Tables and Name Entry

Your name registrated

This is no doubt the biggest change to the game since the latest update.  Instead of only keep track of one high score value, Gonna Catcha now keeps track of twenty high score values: the top ten for single-player and the top ten for co-op.  Not only that, it also keeps track of the highest round reached for that playthrough and, of course, the player's initials, so that your valiant efforts will be remembered forever for future generations to admire, until someone bumps you off the list. Hmm, better stock up on quarters and snacks.

AAA - the undisputed champion

Instructions Screen

Crash course in spirit catching

As I mentioned earlier, Gonna Catcha will played in an arcade-style environment at the Bit Bazaar. As such, players won't be able to read the manual to figure out how to play the game. Heck, they won't even get the luxury of instructions printed on a cabinet. Sure, I'll be there to help people out if needed, but frankly, after explaining the rules to the many new players to the game in previous playtesting sessions, I'm getting tired of it.

To minimize confusion and delay, I added the above instructions screen, which is shown just before the first round starts. This explains the basic rules and goal of the game: what you can touch, what you can shoot and what the heck is going on. The game's "hidden" rules can be learned through experience. Hey, at least I'm not charging anyone multiple payments of 25¢ to learn the game by trial-and-error.

High five! I mean, ten!

Last week, I updated Gonna Catcha to v.0.7.4. It was pretty much a knee-jerk response to some issues I encountered when playtesting it last night at Bento Miso. It added an option to toggle a fullscreen mode, to hide your desktop and other windows behind black while you're playing, and a few bugs fixes. Unfortunately, being a knee-jerk response, I didn't test it properly and there are a couple of bugs with the fullscreen mode, though the bugs don't interfere with normal game operation.

In addition to fixing these bugs, the next version, v.0.8.0, will replace the single high score of the current version with a high score table (or two). Here is a screenshot of what it looks like so far:

In addition to keeping track of the top ten scores, it will keep track of the other standard high score information: player initials and the highest round reached. I am considering a second, separate high score table for co-op mode, which will also keep track of which character the player used.

Well, that's all I can do to make this sound bigger and more important than it really is. I'll be doing another meatspace test this Friday. I should really try to finish this before then.


In other news, when I woke up today, I was greeted by this on /r/gamemaker:

As someone work mainly works with vectors for higher-resolution artwork (i.e. not low-res retro sprites), I am pleased by this turn of events.

My time at the ROM and Gamercamp 2013 - Part 2 [Updated 11/19/2013]

UPDATE 11/19/2013 - For some bizarre reason, I linked "Samegame" in the description of Pyramid Party to the Wikipedia article "Banshee" instead of "Samegame". That has been fixed. Also, I totally left out one Gamercamp Official selection: A Fishing Game with Actual Water. You can now read about it at the bottom of this post.

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Last time, I talked about my experiences playtesting Rise & Fall at both the Royal Ontario Museum and Gamercamp. In this post, I'll talk about some of the other games that were featured at the two events. Sorry for the lack of pictures; all the ones I took didn't do these games justice.

First off, I'll describe some of the other ROM Game Jam games. Unfortunately, I forgot to make note of the teams' names that made the following games.

Pyramid Party

Sort of like a cross between Wario's Woods and Samegame. (Note: you'll be seeing me use these fusion-of-two-games comparisons a lot in this post.) One or two players each take control of a pharaoh who run and jump around a SameGame-like playfield to give commands to their workers to run, jump and move blocks around. When four or more blocks of the same color are joined together in any way, they become fixed brown blocks that fall and acculmulate at the bottom of the playfield, while the blocks below them bubble their way to the top of the stack(s). The goal of the game is for the player(s) must build as much of a specific structure (shown before the start of each level) on the playfield out of brown blocks before time runs out. Each level has it's own specific structure and quota that must be met.

This game is quite addicting and also difficult if you don't have some sort of strategy planned out.

Relic Ravage

A multiplayer competitive platformer for up to four players that's divided into two stages. In the first stage, players play as warriors who must fight and defeat each other to score points. When a player is killed, they drop an artifact where they died. After a time limit, the first stage ends and the game builds a pyramid on top of all the dropped artifacts. In the second round, the players play as archaeologists/treasure hunters who must dig into the pyramid to collect artifacts and other treasures and bring them back to a pack mule for points, the artifacts dropped in the first round being worth the most. After a second time limit, whoever has the most points is the winner.

What really made this game special is the enthusiasm of the dev team behind this game when there were playing it with the patrons of Gamercamp.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Afterlife

A trivia game that's pretty much exactly what it say on the tin. You play a recently-deceased character who has to navigate the underworld while answering trivia questions from Anubis and Set, the latter being fond of trick questions. When you answer a question correctly, the weight of your character's heart decreases, and conversely, an incorrect answer make your heart heavier. At the end of the game, you meet Osiris and he weighs your heart against a feather (as per the myth). You win the game if your heart is lighter than the feather, otherwise, you get a bad ending.



Next up, here are some of the games from the Gamercamp official selection that really caught my attention. I have also provided links to the games' and developers' websites.

More public spectacles

Gonna Catcha has been updated to v.0.7.3. This update added a new maze to the game, allowing me to bump up the round cap to 12. This also had the side effect of unlocking an enemy type that wasn't in the previous versions (because it didn't appear until Round 9). NPCs now also gradually speed up after each bonus round after you've played through each maze once. Oh, and there are some miscellaneous tweaks and fixed here and there, yadda yadda yadda.

I will be showing off Gonna Catcha in meatspace at Bento Miso on two occasions:

• At Games with Friends #45 on November 18.
• At the Bit Bazaar Winter Market Arcade on December 6.

Since I enjoyed looking at and playing all the games that were showcased at the last Bit Bazaar in May, I thought why not participate this time? The Bit Bazaar offered two options: submitting a game as part of the Arcade or getting a table, which requires you to sell something physical as well (e.g., merchandise, Steam keys or preorders printed on something). Since this is my first time showcasing at the Bit Bazaar and I have no ideas for what to sell, I decided to play it safe and go for the Arcade submission. Perhaps I'll get a table next time. I'll get you next time , Gadget... next time.