Me and a friend, AlexanderZero completed our mini-ld 14 entry! Play it here! Also, don’t forget to try the other entries. It was a pretty fun LD to create, and we sure had some laughs making it.

Different Geyser Phases

As you can see, there are no geysers inside the game! These will be used for a variety of different things in the final game, such as recharging fuel cells, to propelling you to higher altitudes (if there’s a rock on top to protect you from the burst of fire hot steam that is!) Otherwise, they will cause you great pain if you touch them unprotected!

A series of geyser sprites

So, with Windows 7 now live, one has to wonder: when will Windows XP finally kick the bucket for good? Windows 7 is poised to get at least a few of them to upgrade, but will it really be the bombshell release Microsoft needs to get windows users to be paying windows users? In my opinion, there are 3 changes that would be beneficial in getting more people to switch to windows 7 from XP.

1. Let’s face it, a lot of people only use computers for web browsing, email checking, and perhaps a bit of video watching, etc. Why not create a super stripped down version of Windows 7 to allow all these things, and make it free, as long as one has a valid XP or Vista key. Once they have used Windows 7 for awhile, and realize that it’s better, they may decide that they want more out of their OS and upgrade to a home license. This is a far better strategy than just hoping they spend a large sum of money to format and reinstall windows, just to hope it was worth it in the end.
2. The internet evolves. Windows XP has all the features that one needs to access pretty much any content on the internet. If you just use your computer for day to day tasks, and browse the web, you really don’t need to upgrade to the latest and greatest OS. However, if the internet evolves to the point where certain OS features are required to get the most out of the internet experience, people may see the benefits of upgrading. Perhaps integrating social networking into the OS and having a more exciting way to browse the internet such as social bookmarking between Windows 7 users, and built it right into the OS. This way, the people who buy the newer OS will be experiencing a more fulfilling online experience, and those holding on to XP will have to either upgrade or be left out of the loop.
3. Hardware requirements. This is pretty much the long term reason that people will have to upgrade eventually. Eventually having 4-16 gigabytes of ram will become necessary even for business/home computers to function nicely, and although there is a 64 bit version of XP, the majority of XP users are running 32 bit. They will eventually need more RAM, and when this change happens, Microsoft better hope that it has the best OS and marketing to go along with it to catch the storm of users upgrading their OS out of necessity. If Microsoft is wise, they will invest the most in marketing and developing Windows 7, as this shift will most likely happen either during this OS or the next one, and either way, Microsoft should be in the lead to give peoples’ opinions of Windows to shift in their favor.

In the long run, those XP users are pretty much up for grabs, as they will switch their OS when they need to, and be it to OSX or Windows, is pretty much anyone’s guess.

Well, this project is going in all the right directions, and since I have learned quite a bit of programming now I may ACTUALLY finish it! The unwritten goals for this projects are: randomly generated areas (pretty much all that this demo shows off so far) and high score via intense arcade like action (not yet added ) Anyways, you can download the demo here (shows off the map generation I have going in a fancyish way) Also, you can hit ‘r’ while viewing the demo to generate a new random map. This has taken me about… 8-9 hours at this point (to make the generation algorithm, which I then ported from C++ to Java because I wanted to use graphics and I only know how to in Java thus far.) Here’s a screenshot for the only slightly curious:

This is only a portion of the screen, mainly since I wanted to retain the full zoom level and still show what the generator is capable of somewhat. Download the .rar file though to experience all that it has to offer (not much yet!)

I’ve been fooling around with the script some more. Here is the game with a very basic tileset I made.

Added a chance to generate a worn dungeon floor. These basically (for now) are rooms that have been carved away by time, and are less uniform than your average floor.

Just what is my new dungeon algorithm capable of? See for yourself!

So, been continuing to fool with the source, and now there are doors and a recursive checker in place to make sure that each floor is of a desired size (to easily weed out floors that are too small.)

So, I’ve been twiddling my thumbs, so to speak, for the last month or so. However, I have been learning some VB.net and C++ in my classes, and today, decided to get pdcurses up and running. I managed to get a basic terminal output, and began working on a minor experiment of a roguelike map generator. I most likely won’t make a full blown roguelike, but it’s still fun to experiment!

The plus signs in the middle of each room are still left because I am using them as markers of where the middle of each room is. Right now I’m working on making a recursive function to determine if any rooms are disconnected from the main dungeon, so as to exclude down/up stairs from them, and perhaps make them vaults or other special rooms requiring teleportation or digging to get to them.

So, I haven’t updated for awhile, but I haven’t disappeared! Lately, my school work and life have taken over and I haven’t had much spare time to program for private purposes. However, I am taking programming classes, so my skills are increasing in the background! Hopefully I’ll get some time to work on my various projects, etc, in the near future!