August 28, 2015

Wow, the weeks when I play a NealCruco level make for a pretty darn cryptic blog title, don’t they?

To break it down:

FBF = Feel Bad Friday, where I attempt to be a level a player has made in the Electric Shocktopus.

C05D = the level I attempted this week.  By NealCruco, of course… which we can tell by the fingerprints left on the title.  Always with the hexadecimal titles, eh?  Or are they?  Mind = blown.

Click here to watch on YouTube

You can find the original level-code here, if you want to give this one a try.

It’s a very nice level.  What surprised me *most* about it, though, was how straightforward it was.  Don’t get me wrong, it was still hard — just not ultra-hard.  So it was a welcome relief 🙂  Fun to play, with just the right amount of frustration thrown in.  Thanks for sharing it with us, NealCruco!

-Andy

August 21, 2015

Here to finish off another week – another Feel Bad Friday!

This time I take on ‘The Ocean’ by A Random Player.  Click here to watch and see how I do.

Click here to watch on YouTube

Whoa.  This is a level *not only* with pixel art (because, hell yeah, pixel art)… but it’s also animated.

What?!?

Give this one a watch, even if not to see me suffer (and believe me, there’s plenty of that!), but just to see what I’m talking about.  Fish, sharks, the works.

Don’t let looks deceive you, though.  Aside from being pretty – it’s one heck of a tough level.  If you’d like to give it a try, you can find the code for the level here.  Big thanks to A Random Player for sharing the level with us!

-Andy

August 14, 2015

Sorry for the couple-week break from Feel Bad Friday.  There was some travel, as well as a couple illnesses that came up (so fear not, my Fridays felt bad indeed!).  But I’m back in town… healthy again… and ready to rock!

So I took on a whopper of a level: 8D2A by NealCruco.  It is tremendous!  … and tremendously hard.  Pushed me near if not past my breaking point.  But(!) Did I make it? Did I throw in the towel?  You’ll have to watch the video to find out!

Click here to watch on YouTube

To play this level yourself, you can grab the code that NealCruco posted in the forums.  A big thanks to NC for sharing this level with us.  I think it might be my favorite that you made.  The non-linearity helped keep me going in spite of (nearly) countless deaths.  And I felt like I was improving.  (Up until the point I started getting tired, but hey, that’s par for the course.)  Anyway, great level!  You should all check it, and the video, out.

-Andy

August 11, 2015

The forums were quiet.

…too quiet.

In this neck of the woods, Andy knew that meant trouble was brewing.  It was then that A Random Player walked into the room with a problem.  And that problem’s name was Shocktopus.

.     So I heard you made a game about electric fields.

.     That’s right, Andy said, looking up from the line of impeccably tilted test tubes that covered his desk.

.     And I heard the game is scientifically accurate.

.     Well, aside from the questionable marine bi   ology, I sure aim for it to be, Andy said cautiously, memories of Velocity Raptor’s bullet-conundrum swirling like a mist in the back of his head.

.     Then how do you explain *this*? Random said, throwing a picture down on the desk:

Andy had seen volcanoes before… and they never looked like this.  There was nothing on the top of the screen, but there was an electric field emanating from it.

That was five nights ago, and Andy had been hitting the pavement ever since.  Looking for clues in a town full of shadows.  Where did he go wrong? Was this a bug?  Or worse: not a bug?  Either way, he knew that an understanding wouldn’t come easy.  Where did all this trouble begin?  Oh yes, with the Relaxation Method, which, as it turned out, was anything but.

The Case of the Relaxation Method

Back when he first started out as a gumshoe – programing the first prototypes of The Electric Shocktopus, the world was a simple place.  Electric fields were easy to come by, so long as you knew how solve a simple equation.  And with a computer at his fingertips, solving equations was one thing Andy could do.  Find all the electric charges in a level, find where the Shocktopus is, and you’ve found yourself the force.  Perfect forces.  Perfectly easy.

But, like all things in life, it was simple precisely up until the point when it was not.

And that point was when Andy took on the case of a grounded Conductor (who, incidentally, had been sent to the sleeper car without his supper).  As Andy pieced together the puzzle, he realized that you couldn’t just add conductors into The Electric Shocktopus.  There’s no simple rule for figuring out the forces, then.  No easy equation to solve.  For the fields affect the charges in the conductor, just as the charges in the conductor affect the fields.  You may as well try to track down a criminal who knows you’re on his tail.  Each move you make changes which way he’s running.

But, just like with that criminal.  There was a solution.  You just needed boundaries.  Walls, gates… or in this case, an electrified fence would do the trick.

If you’ve got a conductor all around the outside of your level, you’ve got a way to hunt down the electric field.  It’s called the Relaxation Method.  And just like playing a game of cat-and-mouse, it involves a lot of guessing.  But with each guess, you get closer to the criminal.  Or closer to the final, true electric field.

A Found Field

There’s only one problem.  By putting a ring of conductors up, you’ve changed things.

It just wasn’t the same anymore.

So, how can you put up a ring of conductors around the level, while at the same time not having them affect the level?  In all his years watching crooks melt into the shadows, Andy knew that everything leaves a trace.  Footprints. Cigarette ash. Or warped electric fields.

But there had to be a way.  And Andy had to find it.

To be continued…

August 5, 2015

Some belated news about TestTubeGames:

Sometimes it’s hard to go-it-alone.  So, why not go-it-alone… together?

The Indie Game Collective

Back in January, I joined a group of game developers here in Boston called the indie game collective.  Basically, a whole bunch of local game devs found themselves working alone. Which is tough. And they *really* enjoyed the monthly meetups where they’d get to chat with each other, bounce ideas back and forth, and just be near other homo sapiens.

So a collective was formed!

It’s filled with a bunch of very rad game developers, and I encourage you to go check out the things they’ve worked on.  (For those of you into educational games, The Counting Kingdom by Jenna Hoffstein will be of particular interest.)  It’s a real honor to have been invited into the group, and I’ve had a lot of fun working alongside all of them.

What does this mean for TestTubeGames?

I’m still on a quest to fill the world with neat interactive science experiences.  It’s just that now, when I do it, I’ll be getting input and advice from a bunch of other game developers.  And I’ll be more well-adjusted as a human.  So… win-win!

-Andy