[PhD] Last update for the evening: Title Screen!

Just a quick update, I've added a title screen with some simple instructions! I still don't have a name for the game, so that's the last item on my agenda. Let me know if these instructions are self-sufficient enough for a new player to understand.

Can you guess where the title is supposed to go?

 Click here to play the game!

[PhD] Falling Blocks Update!

Thanks again to everyone who tested and commented on my game! I have now successfully updated the game to include the "falling blocks" mechanic common to many other puzzle games. I think that this adds a layer of strategy to the game that wasn't present before, and makes the player feel like they're a bit more in control of their score.

Play the game here.
Read the instructions in my previous post here.

Cascading Symbols in action

[MMc] Playable Solar Golf

The game is now playable (but not winnable...there is no hole). I left the debug visualizations on because they look neat to a developer. I'm temporarily hosting the game here, try it out!

Debug visualizations while working on coordinate system issues.

[MM] Shockingly my hour estimate was off...

But 1:15 in, I do have infrastructure in place and the main simulation loop done. The snake even does the classic "start as a single block and extend" at the beginning!

[MMc] Solar Golfing UI Done

I've created planets with appropriate gravity and randomized terrain, a ball with the desired physics, and a UI for hitting the ball. The atmosphere is not just visual--it indicates the region within which the planet's gravity is constant, to allow somewhat normal golfing around the planet's surface. Gravity then falls off quadratically outside of there.

Solar Golfing in development with all rendering and physics done

[SAD] Mobile Digging

For this game jam, my main goal is to make a game that is natively mobile. So, not a web game that happens to be playable on mobile devices, but an actual android/iOS (but not really) app. What this means is that I probably want to use some library to abstract away annoying packaging details with making an app for any platform; I also didn't want to use any tools that would put me under restrictive licenses in case I wanted to actually release (or polish, and then release) my game.

[DF] Rendering things and playing audio

First Build

You can't do anything, but there is definitely a pixel or two being drawn on the screen.

I would really love to have a Python Script that automatically writes every git commit I make to an Amazon S3 bucket... I might write that at some point today because it seems like a useful thing to have. That would probably throw me off my schedule though. :(

Selfie Thread / Jam Begins!

We're off! Good luck to everyone on the jam.

Since we're distributed at multiple sites, I encourage you to mail me a selfie at mcguire@cs.williams.edu that I can add to this post. That way, that everyone can put names with faces and see each other's development setup.

Chris (VT)

Dan (NY)

Mike (CA)

Morgan (MA)

Sam (MA)

Kyle (MA)

Tony (MA)

Nigel (MA)

[MM] 3D Snake

Hello! I'm Michael Mara, Williams Class of 2012, Stanford PhD Student, part time researcher at NVDIA, and developer at Casual Effects.

I have negative time for this jam (yay SIGGRAPH deadline...), but it's been a while since my last game, so I am still going to do it. However; in the interest of keeping it short and sweet; I am simply doing a clone of an old classic; with an overused cliched twist!

Enter Snake. The cliched twist is making it 3D, instead of 2D. I should hopefully have a prototype done within an hour of starting. Any other time spent will be on polish.

One interesting thing to note: in classic snake you use the arrow keys to turn; but at any point in time, two of the arrows do nothing (forward or backwards along your direction of travel). In 3D, you can take advantage of this to still use the four arrow keys; if you make the controls relative to the direction of travel (since you don't need keys for forward or backwards). Then the tricky part is just the display.

[DF] Runner with Queued Actions

Hi, I'm Dan, and I'm a developer at Amplify Education in NY. I graduated ages ago, but I've always loved a good excuse to try to program a game in too short a period of time. I'm usually overly ambitious in my game jams, so let's try to keep this one simple.

[KC + YT] Momentum Game

Hi,

We want to make a game that introduces a new way of moving around in a world.  Instead of the typical wasd movement controls, players will control a ball and a grappling hook.  He/she will shoot the grappling hook and use the momentum of the spike shot to move around in the world.  We also hope to introduce destructible terrain in the world.

Kyle + Yitong

[PhD] Game is Running! Please give me feedback!

As I said in my previous post, I have started a day (or two, but who's counting?) early in making my game, and I have finished implemented all of the major gameplay elements! That means that, while I would not call the game "finished," you can now play it here.

Not trying to brag or anything, but that's a pretty good score...

[CW] Caves of Mars starting point

Figured folks might be interested in seeing the base from which I'm starting - this is more or less the result of following the coding cookies tutorial, plus a few extensions of my own:

http://christopherswarren.com/rogue1js/

It is playable (and winnable... and lose-able), but not entirely bug free (e.g. healing over time is not working at all).

Have fun!

[TL] Game Idea: Music-Based Platforming

Hi everyone! My name is Tony Liu and I'm currently a junior. My game idea is to take the simple mechanics of an "infinite running" platformer and mesh it with music and rhythm. I envision platforms and obstacles appearing in the players way in time with the music. My main inspiration is this great little game called 140 created by some of the Limbo designers:

[CW] Caves of Mars

Hi folks! My name is Chris. I graduated from Williams in '96, and after doing various other things I ended up back at the mothership, working in OIT as a developer.

I have an ongoing fascination with rogue-like games, starting with Moria, then Angband (and a number of its variants) and ADOM. As a coder, game designer, and GM I've long toyed around with the idea of putting one together but somehow never quite gotten around to it. Over the recent holidays I decided that it was time to do more serious hacking around and I tracked down some good tutorials. I recently finished a decent javascript-based tutorial over at Coding Cookies and now that I have some basic functionality and understanding of the coding domain my general goals are a) add more functionality, and b) make it my own game instead of a more-or-less generic product of a tutorial.

[PhD] Game Idea: Set meets Boggle

Hey everyone! My name's Philippe, and I'm a grad student at the University of Waterloo who used to go to Williams College and hang out with Morgan. Originally I was not going to participate in this month's Jam because I have decided to take a Graphics course this term and thus have little to no free time. However, last night at around 2:30am I had a sudden bolt of inspiration, and so here I am.

[SAD] Game Jam 1 - a card game

So, I did successfully make the game, just not as fully featured a one as would have been desired. The game is a fully functioning game, with playing and winning and losing, the following are the main successes of the jam:

[MMc] Solar Golfing

I'm Morgan, a professor of computer science at Williams. My jam games are frequently space-themed and usually driven by a graphics or input idea. I'm staying with my science fiction obsession for this jam, but this time I'm going to lead with a mechanic instead of I/O.

[SAD] Winter Study Game Jam 1 - Card Games

In addition to the public machinis ludo game jam, Nigel Munoz and I are doing 3 48-hour game jams this month as part of our Winter Study course. For the first one, beginning very soon, I plan on implementing an idea for a card game that I have been working on for about a month. So, the following are the things that this game jam will entail:

Machinis Ludo 6 Game Jam

Machinis Ludo 6 is an invitation-only three-day game jam hosted at Williams College by Sam Donow, Nigel Munoz, and Morgan McGuire with participation from around the world via this blog. It is the latest in the Machinis Ludo series. The jam runs Friday, January 16, 2015 at 9 am though Sunday, January 18, 2015 at 9 pm (Eastern time, but who's counting?). You're welcome to work as much or as little as you wish during that period. E-mail Morgan if you'd like to join and didn't receive an invitation, or are having trouble posting to this blog.

There is no theme and there are no technical restrictions for the jam. However, it overlaps the following game jams and you might want to participate in multiple ones:

• JamGame (Jan 10-Feb 16), make a pun on an existing game's name 
• TAG Jam 8 (Jan 14-Jan 18), three themes announced on Jan 14
• One Game A Month January (Jan 1-Jan 31), optional theme "resolution"
• Awesome Music Jam (Dec 20-Jan 20), make a game about music, theme "wonderland"
• Jam for Leelah (Jan 17-Feb 17), based on interests of Leelah Alcorn or trans and gender-identity-positive themes

The process follows our previous jams:

1. Prefix your post titles with your name or initials in brackets, for example "[MMc] Star Lance Vortex: Added enemy ship AI".
2. Post an introduction and your game idea to this blog at least the day before the jam. Earlier is better, because then we can give each other ideas and feedback.
3. During the jam, post at least once a day...although more is encouraged! Show us screenshots or movies as well as talking about what you're doing. These posts build camaraderie for our distributed jam and get you support and feedback.
4. At the end of the jam, give a post-mortem post and a link to your game (or video, if you don't want the game to be public).

Anyone on the Williams campus is welcome to join the local meetup in the graphics lab, where we have connections for laptops, WiFi, some spare monitors, and sometimes music and takeout food. Because guests who are not members of the graphics group must be accompanied in the lab, Sam or Morgan will be in the lab hosting most of the time.