RubyWeekend #3
Voting Post on official rubygame forumsrubygame.org/forums/viewtopic.php
#1) Ant Frenzy
#2) A Tiny World
#3) Mite Makes Right
Ant Frenzy was my wife's favorite. Quick action and easy controls, but still very challenging.
A Tiny World was fun in a squish little guys and watch the blood splatter kinda way. The physics on the house blocks felt a little off and the blocks could have squished the little guys too.Overall I liked the game and the sound effects were great!
Mite Makes Right ran a little choppy for some reason, but was such a fun idea that I had to vote for it.
I didn't vote for Droplet, not because it wasn't a game, but because it didn't feel complete. I am apparently the only voter that thinks simulations count as games. The sounds were kinda fun, but to just be able to grow and kill trees didn't feel like enough to play with. I do however love the fact that Jacius was able to successfully navigate the unexplored waters of Gamebox. I received great feedback from both Jacius and kiba on this contest, most of which has already been added to Gamebox.
I felt that 72 hours was perfect. I was able to sleep full nights, keep the wife happy, and still hit the beach and go surfing. Because of all that, I found myself sweating in the last 40 minutes to complete and my level design suffered because of it. I definitely think the games came out better because of the open art/music policy. Being that nobody actually participated in teams, I feel we could probably drop that clause and have individuals compete for the next RubyWeekend.
This being my first contest helping to run and first to participate in, I think it turned out well. Look forward to the next one!
Here is my timeline during the competition:
Timeline:
Thu Jun 25 17:43:02 PDT 2009
- idea FreeRadicals
- research started
- got initial github account
- got atom actor on the stage
Fri Jun 26 09:21:04 PDT 2009
- two bug fix releases of gamebox
- got mouse clicking/holding setup
Fri Jun 26 16:57:23 PDT 2009
- got electron rotation working
- added free sound effects from flashkit.com
Fri Jun 26 19:16:36 PDT 2009
- got bouncing electrons
- atoms now flag themselves as inert
- atoms attract electrons
Sat Jun 27 12:14:18 PDT 2009
- added scoring for inert atoms
Sat Jun 27 15:30:33 PDT 2009
- cleaned up nucleus drawing
- added element abbr to inert elements
Sat Jun 27 15:50:59 PDT 2009
- added loading of actual levels
Sun Jun 28 17:00:37 PDT 2009
- added timer
- inert atoms now repel
- fixed score passover issue
- added intro/help "level"
- added credits "level"
- submitted final w/ only 3 levels :(
The new game created: github.com/shawn42/free-radicals/tree/master
Snelps gets a level editor 2
After more than a year of work on the game (wow it's been that long), Snelps finally has a level editor for doing the tile layout portion of map editing.
rake edit
will bring up the editor, you will be prompted for a map name to load. You select the tile group and tile they want to "paint" with. Then, you click all over the map to stamp that tile all over.
To select transitional tiles (ie from sand to water), you just click on sand, then shift-click on water. This will bring up the tileset of transitions from sand to water. To turn on the grid you use the G key and to save you use the S key. Saving isn't quite finished yet, so it will just save to temp.yml in the maps directory. This editor should really help Snelps graphics designer and map builder, Sirgazil.
Its Cold Season again
A four day run of working on a new game, cold season, has resulted in new knowledge of chipmunk physics and git/github.
Cold Season:

Cold Season's goal is to infect a kid and keep him home from school. You (the bacteria) must infect all the red cells, while avoiding the white blood cells. It has unique and fun controls in a constantly moving and flowing environment. Levels are defined in SVG format, allowing for any SVG editor, such as Inkscape to operate as a level editor. I would like to thank Karlin Fox for remastering the graphics, and David Crosby for lending me SVG loading code.
Why:
What about Snelps:

Rubygoo making progress.
For those of you that know, I have been working on a little video game using Rubygame, called Snelps. Snelps has a long way to go, but it's GUI framework needs cleaning up. So I started Rubygoo. Release 0.3 will be out shortly. It will be my first gem publicly available via the gem command. I am hoping to get it running in Rubygame and Gosu to boost its popularity. Visit the site for a full feature list, but here is a screen shot:
rubygame strikes again
Here’s a little sample app for os x (intel) that shows off how simple it is to whip up a game using rubygame. I wrote a silly Jeopardy clone for use in my church small group. I paired my Wiimote w/ my mac book pro (DarWiinRemote), bounced my MBP out to a TV and had a great time. The controls are ESC to quite, TAB to show the scores, +/- then team number(1/2) to modify score. ENTER selects the questions and the arrow keys move around the board. Take a look and play around.


