If you didn't see my blog post from 2 weeks ago, I
created a website where users can upload their experimental games.
Each month there is a theme and users must create a game that
demonstrates a completely new type of gameplay that matches the theme.
The Submissions
January's theme was "GRID", we had a total of 4 submissions (which I
think is pretty good for the first ever jam, especially considering
this jam was only 2 weeks instead of a month).
Here are the submissions!
The first submission was a really cool puzzle game called
"Knightventure". In this game you have movement like the knight from
chess and you must solve puzzles using your limited movement. Despite
not all the puzzles being fully implemented, this game was super
polished and the puzzles were actually very well designed!
You can download the game here.
The second submission was the game that I submitted. Like the last
submission, it is also chess themed. This game is a roguelike with
chess based movement. You can combine different segments of your chess
piece to alter your movement pattern. Looking back, I probably
could've designed this game better because the UI is very confusing
and cryptic.
You can download the game here.
The third submission was a neat little puzzle game involving pushing
boxes. The twist is you have you control multiple characters and boxes
of the same color will move together. This leads to some great
and challenging puzzles.
You can download the game here.
The last submission was Creoterra. This is a sandbox terraforming
game. The world will grow on its own as you play (grass will spread,
bees will pollinate flowers, etc). Also, bonus points for the game
being on a hexagonal grid!
You can play the game here.
February's Theme is "Ingredients"!
Ingredients can come in many forms... what ingredients will you use to
cook up the perfect game?
Experimental Game Jams
is about discovering completely new types of gameplay. Each month
there is a new theme and users must create their game to match that
theme. The rules are that each game must be made by 1 person and
within 1 month, and the game must demonstrate a completely new type of
gameplay never seen before.
I created this website as a spiritual successor to the now defunct
Experimental Gameplay Project. This website will hopefully motivate
myself and others to experiment and create new forms of gameplay never
seen before. I've always had a problem with focusing on story, art
style, environment, etc first without even thinking about gameplay.
Hopefully this new project will force myself to prioritize gameplay.
The first jam is GRID!
Some of the greatest games were built on a grid based system. Games
such as rogue and Tetris have created entire genres and new forms of
gameplay. Grid based games even originate from ancient times, look at
Chess/Chaturanga for example, which was created sometime around 600
AD. Also, creating a grid based game does not confine you to 2
dimensions, look at Minecraft for example, which is essentially a 3D
grid based game. Old school 3D dungeon crawlers also have their maps
generated on a grid. Now the question is, can you create a completely
new form of gameplay based around a grid of some sorts?
Feel free to make an account even if you dont plan to participate in
the jams, you can always leave comments and feedback on other peoples
games. Also please note that there are currently no games on the site
yet as it has only just released.
I haven't released any screenshots of my upcoming game Cocktail
Exotica in a while so I've decided to show a small teaser image of
one of the locations in the game.
Shop Exterior (click for full resolution)
This is going to be the shop in the game. After the end of each night
working in the bar you can choose to visit the shop to buy items for
yourself or for your bar with your earned money. I won't reveal too
much but these "items" will either be purely cosmetic or will have a
certain functionality. Since it is now summer I will hopefully have
much more time to work on this game, so you should be seeing more
updates in the future. As always if you have any feedback or comments
feel free to send me an email (scarbox@proton.me).
NOTE: Things in this image are subject to change
New Design
May 27, 2022
You may of noticed that once again, the site looks completely
different now. My previous site wasn't very good. The design aspect of
it was alright, but the code was a complete mess and the website was
pretty wonky looking on mobile.Take a look at these two code snippets
(old site on the left, new on the right):
Both these snippets of code are for the navigation system of the site.
The previous site had a more complex navigation system that conveyed a
lot more info than the new one, however the code is still terrible.
Look at how many <div> tags there are nested inside of each
other! Now compare this to the new design which uses only one
<div> tag (in the entire document!), and is much more readable
and manageable. This new design is also easier to adapt for mobile
devices since the layout will stay exactly the same no matter what
device you're on. There's also some cool new spinning gears (very
important). Another thing I did was optimize the size of the webpage,
the old website's homepage was a whopping 8 megabytes, now it is only
around 200 kilobytes.
I'm Making a Game in the Godot Engine
May 22, 2022
I'm starting to get tired of making crappy ascii games written in C
that run in the terminal so I've decided to start developing a serious
game in the Godot Engine. The game is called Cocktail Exotica
and in the game you play as a bartender and serve drinks. I've just
started working on the game so it's currently very unfinished but I
thought it would be nice to make a blog post to show what I'm working
on. Here are some screenshots of the game (all the assets/art is
created by me):
Cocktail ExoticaPouring drinks into a cocktail shakerShaking and pouring the cocktail shaker
Godot has a very easy to use pathfinding node, so it was very
straightforward to set up pathfinding for the NPCs. Currently, the
NPCs are just placeholder for now, but I do plan on them looking
stylized and strange, rather than humanoid.
NPC pathfinding trails
Why Use Godot?
Some of you may be wondering why I'm using the Godot Engine to make a
3D game. I'll list my reasons below:
Godot's 3D Engine is very capable, the physics aren't the greatest,
but I'm not really using any physics in my game.
Godot is
free and open source,
so I don't have to pay any royalties/fees, unlike with Unity and
Unreal. This means no mandatory "Made with xyz" splash screen as
well. Since Godot is open source I also know exactly what is (or is
not) being bundled in with my game, this is a fact that people often
ignore, but shouldn't.
Godot is very easy to use and the
documentation
is very good.
GDScript
is an easy language to learn and use. Also, if I need to I can use
C++ or even C# as the language.
Godot 4.0
is in the works which will make the 3D engine even better. The
physics engine is also getting overhauled as well.
Why I've Started Learning C
Feb 21, 2022
For a while now, I've wanted to expand upon my programming skills.
I wanted to learn a compiled, low level language. I've never been a
big fan of languages like Python or Java, which are pretty slow and
require you to install an interpeter (or the JVM for Java) to run
programs written in these languages. I feel like these languages are
like training wheels that I've never taken off. Modern software is
starting to become pretty bloated and slow, and these high level
lanuages that attempt to simplify programming aren't helping. In
languages like Java, you're at the mercy of the garbage collector and
JVM. For things like game development (which is what I want to get
into), it's very important to have the power to manually manage memory
and optimize your game so that it can run on a large range of
hardware. I do understand that a lot of jobs use these languages, but
I still feel like learning a lower level language will help broaden my
understanding of programming.
After looking into a few low level languages like Rust and C++, I've
decided to just start with good ol' C. Even though C is quite old, I
still feel like it's relevant. C's syntax serves as the basis of a lot
of modern programming languages and I'll also be able to quickly start
learning C++ afterwards, if I feel the need to. I would also like to
know the exact differences between C and C++ rather than just "C++ is
just C but with objects". Anyways, learning C will hopefully teach me:
how to approach problems without thinking about objects as the
solution
memory management and optimizing programs
good programming practices
a better understanding about how programs work and how they interact
with the hardware
Hopefully I'll soon start experimenting with writing programs in C.
I'll post some programs that I deem worthy if I write any, if not
you'll probably end up seeing a blog post titled "Why I've stopped
learning C" instead.
New Year, New Site Redesign
Jan 10, 2022
To Start off the new year I decided to redesign my site once again. I
liked my previous design, but I felt like it was a bit dull and lacked
color. The entire website also felt a bit empty and barren (mostly due
to my lack of complete projects). Hopefully in the new year of 2022
I'll actually be able to show some cool content on my site. In the
meantime, enjoy the pretty colors. I hope everyone that's reading this
has a great 2022!