Games are not generally fond of reality.  For good reason I say, for reality is such a bother, a frustration, and it’s fiendishly difficult to program correctly.  And I am not only referring to that class I very nearly failed (twice) in college that has a lot to do with some old Englishman going on about force equaling mass multiplied by unstable explosives over the rate of change in X, Zeta and sometimes Y.  Yeah I didn’t really understand any of it either, and so there is little chance I will be concerning myself with incorporating any laws, natural or otherwise, into my game mechanics.  Honestly it just takes so much of the fun out of it.

Now I will admit there are games which do a splendid job of approaching real world physics (that’s the stuff) to provide a mostly realistic simulation of the really real world.  All well and fabulous but there is so much more excitement to be had when we leave those annoying constraints to the universities and guys sitting under dangerously unstable apple trees.  A game universe should only be as real as it absolutely must be and not one quantum fudge ball more.  For example, when a character in a platformer style game jumps from one platform to another there must be some kind of force that brings him or her inexorably back down to land on the next platform, a.k.a Gravity, or some kind of cheap knock off that is close enough to it.  However, as is strangely often the case, the platforms themselves need not be affected by this same force at all.  They can just float there seemingly without any support, without any means to remain in place against the pseudo-gravitational forces pulling your hapless character towards the bottom of the screen.  They can be suspended in air by a force no more potent than the sheer and utter laziness of the artist who neglected to illustrate a support beneath them.  Those are the rules, or lack of them, that are so wonderfully common and, as best I can tell, welcome in video games.  Say what is holding up that block that Mario jumps up and hits his head against?  Who cares, it has a mushroom inside it.  Insanity!  Pure bloody nonsense and I love it!

Gravity as applied in a typical Game World

Now, about my little game and the point I was thinking about making somewhere in this post.  This game world is one where the main character is a ship and the world moves past it, right to left, so that it appears the ship is flying left to right across, over and through a variety of wild and colorful landscapes.  Since the ship is moving it must be propelled along by the thrusters shoved up its back-end, but it also flies up and down and even in reverse, with no apparent way to exert force upon it in the direction in which it intends to fly.  Every action is met with an equal and opposite reaction when it makes the game a little more fun to play, but we just carefully set that law aside when it means more programming work or more coloring of backgrounds.  I don’t need to add more detail to the game to make a player accept the motion of the ship right?  I really don’t want to work that hard, for one, but I am also convinced it will not add anything to the game play itself.  Gamers just accept these things if the colors are pretty and the explosions are really, really big.  Most of the time.

So what is needed to make the game convincing enough to be fun, challenging, engaging, and relatively easy to make?  Consistency for one.  If I say remote controlled drones that are blue and have no visible means of propulsion fly quickly across the screen from right to left in a wave pattern they had better damn well always do that.  It becomes the natural law of game world A, all blue colored remote controlled drones set in motion from the right side of the screen must cross the screen from right side to left in a wave like pattern.  Any violation of this law results in a chaos, cursing and damaged controllers.  If the character in the platform game jumps from platform A to B we’re ok, but when he goes to jump from B to C and just keeps floating right up and out of the top of the screen as though gravity suddenly became randomly selective upon whom it forces itself we have an issue, a bug, a violation of the natural law of this game world as established by the jump from A to B.

There are probably other natural laws of game worlds that cannot be broken, lazy artists and inept programmers aside, because it just ruins the whole experience.  The main character can only be killed or defeated by something he or she can see, block, spit on or tickle.  Say a sword swinging nutcase walks into a tavern and for no reason that can be seen or puzzled out by the player he falls dead halfway to the bar, sprawled out and twitching on the common room floor.  Game Over.  Death cannot be random and indiscriminate in a game world, at least not as concerns the fate of the main character.  There that’s one of them right there: Classical Gaming Law #1 – As concerns the fate of the main character, death cannot be random and indiscriminate.  Or at least, it could be one of them.  I doubt I am of a sufficient level of authority in the realm of gamers to propose and ratify any laws, sensible or not.  Oh well, I guess that means random and indiscriminate death for everybody!  Welcome back to the really real world.

Original Ship Design

This was the original design I put together for use in my upcoming (hopefully) Flash game, but I pretty much knew from the start this was not going to stick.  It was intentionally humorous, and really was just a placeholder to use as I worked on the game mechanics.  The game is a classic side scrolling game played by controlling a single flying fighter type ship (think R-Type or Gradius), so the ship design is a bit critical to the overall aesthetic appeal.

One thought I did have with respect to this design was the animated death sequence (potentially sequences) where the ship blows up around the pilot but he is still going forward in just the seat and holding a detached control stick.  Or as the ship is blowing up he goes all kamikaze in one final attack on the despised enemy forces.  But alas, it was not meant to be.

Flash Game Ship Design

We need something a little faster, sleeker, meaner and cooler for the sort of suicidal strafing runs we will be hurtling our fearless hero into.  Upgrade number one, a windshield.  Doesn’t make much sense to construct a ship that can withstand a pounding from enemy laser cannons when the exposed pilot can only take one stray shot to the face.  I would hate to be the commander writing that letter to let the hero’s mom know how he died.  ”Yeah, plasma cannon resistant windshields cost a lot of money you know, so we skipped that part of the ship design.  Didn’t really think about the possibility of the debris from an exploding enemy ship flying down onto the cockpit.  Man was that messy Misses Johnson, a big bloody mess.  You should have seen…well, maybe not.  Sorry for your loss.”  Not cool.  We need a good strong windshield on this baby.

Next up are classic video game ship design elements that seem to add to the over all futuristic, technologically advanced feel of the craft while not actually providing any real purpose or clearly defined enhancements to the vehicle itself.  It has a large booster on the back end that looks like it could take the paint off the ship if it were to be opened all the way up.  Then there are some kind of smaller thruster looking things built into a box shaped add on stuck on the top of the craft because, obviously, that is the most aesthetically pleasing place to put such things.  If all of those were turned up to full throttle (minus the infinitely useful one facing forward) along with the mega booster this ship would undoubtedly bury itself straight into the side of a mountain in under 1.3 seconds flat(tened).

It seems ok.  I might keep this design or I might rework it before the final version of the game is ready to be released out into web prime time.  We shall see (hopefully).

Screenshot of a new Flash Game (potentially)

Another week another project.  This will be the second flash game I’ve attempted to make, though there is some hope that eventually something will come out of one of these endeavors.  The first one was actually coming along fairly well, but it was Dark Purple UFO themed and I had not put it together very well.  With each level I felt as if I was reinventing the whole game each time instead of building a core set of functions to reuse repeatedly.  The design of the game itself was partly to blame for this, as it was a sort of adventure, puzzle solving game and each of the puzzles seemed to need its own unique bit of code to work as I wanted it to.  When I moved on to the next idea I wanted it to be something I could design a central engine for and then make up all the levels I wanted, always working within an established framework.  Of course if you’re a programmer of any level you are probably shaking your head by now – “well duh”.

I had assumed the game concept itself would not be particularly original and the one I am working on is certainly not.  It’s a good old side-scrolling game with a ship that shoots bullets at the wave upon wave of enemies coming at it.  I’ll be adding in a shield function, but aside from that I have no plans to add additional weapons or features.  Mostly because even that simple concept is still a challenge for my mediocre programming skills.  What I hope might sell the game is instead its visual appeal, and some humor thrown in now and again.  For example I am thinking of calling it “Attack of the Suicidal Cook”, with the idea for the story line being the “good guys” desperately need a brash pilot to fly in win some kind of victory against the entrenched enemy forces to help rally the rest of the fleet to try and attack again.  This being a game world the Cook ends up flying in and single-handedly destroying the entire enemy fortress and taking back the planet they had been fighting to win, assuming the player is able to complete the game (which I do not anticipate making all that difficult).

If the game turns out well enough and does even decently in terms of hits or general acceptance I can crank out a couple more as the Cook goes to other worlds where the enemy has conquered some strange planet or another.  This first one will be fairly Earth like in setting, taking place mostly above and sometimes within the fortress itself.  The follow on editions could take place on truly bizarre alien worlds.  Perhaps if that does pan out the ship might even get upgraded with better weapons, etc.

Of course all of that is dependent upon my finishing the first game, which is sadly where all of my projects usually fail and fall flat with a pitiful little splat.  One thing that will definitely change if it is released is the main ship itself, as I don’t like the one shown in the screen capture above at all.

Perhaps I’ll throw a little demo version up here before the end of the month, we’ll see.

We took a wrong turn somewhere

Every so often I get the idea that I can be a freelance illustrator.  Actually I am quite certain that much can be a reality anytime I want it to be.  The part that is a little more of a challenge is getting the word Successful to feel at home in front of it.  At any rate, these ideas usually come quietly stepping into my brain and then a week later I get the idea for an image like the one included in this post.  Some one out there needs an illustration of two kids in the woods, confused, lost, trying to find their way in a dark and dangerous world…where guys with top hats, candles on their staff and no facial features are out strolling around…

Wha?  What is that creepy dude supposed to be?  Is he supposed to be with the kids, helping the kids, or about to kill one of them and eat their pancreas?  He has a book in his hand and is wearing glasses so clearly he must be one smart cookie, but what’s the blue-flamed candle supposed to signify?  How about the coat?  The boots?

I was happy with the trees, and the sign in the foreground of all things, and overall it seems to have a nice feel to it, for whatever that is worth.  It was done entirely in Photoshop CS3, using just the most basic hard-edged paintbrush tool, nothing fancy or sophisticated here.

So what would the story behind this image be?  What sort of tale would be kept beneath a cover like this one?

Timmy and Jennifer went out to buy cigarettes at the corner gas station and were magically whisked away by a flying taxi cab driven by a man wearing a snake for a hat named Boogaboogie.  (What, you say you didn’t see that coming after looking at the image? Hmmmmm…)

The taxi driver kicks the kids out of his cab while telling them smoking is bad for them to which they reply its better than your hat killing you with a poisonous bite as they tumble out into a dark and otherwise normal looking forest.  From there they go in search of civilization of any sort, all the while jonesing for some nicotine, reasoning that the forest cannot go on for very long without someone sticking a sub-division or Wal-Mart in there.  As they walked for what seemed like miles but was actually only about fifty yards they contemplated the stark and terrifying notion of missing prime time television and grew dismayed and sad.  The woods were a lonely and 3G wireless free place making it easily the most unimpressive camp site they had ever read about online and they were nearing the point of being too exhausted to keep going when a clearing could be seen ahead and a road made of stone crossed straight before them.  It was not a divided highway however and so did not look all that promising, but they decided to follow it anyway in the hopes of finding a horse feeding station, which is what they assumed they might find along a path like this and where they further hoped such a place might sell some decent tobacco.

Timmy passed out about thirty minutes later as all the physical exertion, all seventy yards worth of walking they had done thus far, was just too much for the spoiled suburbanite gamer.  Jennifer decided to take some sweet smelling berries from a nearby bush and smear them on him so that the bloodthirsty wolves would have an easier time finding him lying there helpless and then tearing him to pieces (the lazy good for nothing slacker).  She then collapsed about forty feet further up the path.

It was about this time that she noticed a sign was by the side of the road but she could not read it from where she was.  She noticed a tall stick nearby and so used it to help get back onto her feet and then leaned on it unsteadily as she walked over to read the sign.  It said danger and appeared to have been written in blood until she realized it was written by smearing the same berries she had marked her useless companion with.  Upon thinking of him once more she decided to get him back on his feet since apparently something up ahead was dangerous and it would be far more entertaining to send him ahead of her to fall into it first.

Timmy insisted that he would rather be eaten by wolves than get back up and walk some more, but eventually felt the inexorable pull of his addiction urging him to go just a bit further.  He got up and they walked only a short ways before they each felt a rather chill gust of wind push them from behind while also freezing their behinds.  When they turned around to look there stood there something like a man but he had no face.  He was curiously dressed though appeared to be well read and carried around a candle with a blue flame to apparently read by.  They asked him if he was a spokesperson for a natural gas provider and he said nothing because as was previously indicated he had no mouth.  Instead he opened his book and showed them the horrible, gut twisting imagery presented there of black cancerous lumps of malignant tumor goodness , removed straight from the lungs of dedicated life long smokers.  Timmy and Jennifer looked and stared and decided on the spot that they were done with smoking.

The man with no face and a big hat closed the book with a clap and they each blinked once and discovered they were back on the road they had been on originally, just a short walk from home and a longer walk from the gas station where they usually scored cigarettes, booze and on a good day some crystal meth.  Timmy said he could go for some weed and Jennifer said she had been itching to try heroine, but they both realized that meant a lot more walking and so deciding to just go back home and be respectful to their parents and do their homework.

The End.  Smoking is bad for you.