Platypotamus

Imagine for a second that I'm working on a kind of old school game.  Imagine further that as I'm working on said game, I'm open to suggestions and other sorts of help from the Internet at large, rather than going it alone.

Now, if I were going to do that, it's possible that the game would feature a sort of overhead-ish perspective for some/most/all of the game.  There's a decent chance that this game would feature sort of arcadey actiony gameplay.  If that were the case, a combination of my indecisiveness and the fact that I'm just not an authority on visuals might lead me to be unable to choose a perspective.  So imagine you're in the position that you're imagining that I'm in.

Here's some screenshots of some older games with some  overhead perspectives that I think might be good for visualizing what perspective this imaginary game might take.  This hypothetical me could definitely use some feedback here though, as this isn't my area of expertise.

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I've started making quick prototypes of games out of captchas, because really, "why not?"  A general post mortem follows.

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Gamasutra - Features - Making Games On The Side: Development In The Real World.

Great article that profiles a couple of folks working on game projects in their spare time.  A pretty inspiring read, particularly if you are trying to do the same sort of thing.  Good advice from the developers too.  Read it.

"I guess my main thing is I try never to force it, I don't try to stress myself out doing it," he says. "If I feel like I have something to say or a game that I really want to make, I'll take the steps to do it, but I'm not 20 anymore so I don't really feel like spending 24 hours of my weekend jamming on a game so much. I do have a wife, so she wouldn't be too happy with that.

I've been working on a little something for a bit now, and have gotten it to the state where I could put a little demo together for you. It generates random titles, and while the demo allows you to title yourself, it's main purpose is to generate titles for monsters found within the dungeon. Check it out!

For this project, present the user with the option to play any of the following three games:

1. Hangman, pick a word from your wordlist. Display it with dashes in place of the letters. Allow the user to guess letters (or the complete word as a separate option). Give them a finite amount of guesses. After it's over, allow them to play again with a new word, or go back to main menu.

2. Scramble, pick a word from your wordlist. Display it scrambled. Allow the user to guess the word. After it's over, allow them to play again with a new word, or go back to the main menu.

3. Mastermind. Generate a four digit number using only 1-6 for each digit. Allow the user to guess. Indicate how many numbers are correct, and how many are both correct AND in the right spot.

You can make additional combo options of the above for extra credit.

I saw this over at devbump and it looks like it could be really awesome.  It's a texture mapping technique to make it appear that there are interiors to your buildings, even if the building has no interior polys.  So instead of seeing an oddly opaque window, you'll see into the building.  Screenshots, and tutorial stuff is at the link.  Anyone want to give it a shot:

http://interiormapping.oogst3d.net/

Since I was on vacation in the Bahamas over the past couple of weeks, I don't have a big Dungeon Generator update ready. Not to fear though, I've been meaning to do a slightly related update for awhile now, and this gives me a good reason to do so.

First, a small sidebar: I think the blog is an important part of this process, particularly once things get far enough along that there's actually something for you to play with. It's a great way for people interested in the project to know what I'm thinking, and eventually, me to know what they are thinking.

So as I started this project, I committed to maintaining a development blog alongside it, both to keep my thoughts organized, and to share the project with folks. I probably wouldn't have, though, had I not been inspired by a couple of similar blogs.

Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is a truly remarkable indie project that has seen a number of releases and is about to see a new one. In the game, you manage a small expedition of dwarves in a bid to create the next fantastic fortress with a functional economy, defense, etc. It has possibly the most detailed procedural world generation I've ever seen. It also has a fantastic development blog, updated daily, with news on exactly what was accomplished that day.

Zero Gear

Zero Gear is a kart racing game currently in development by a friend of mine from back in the Troika days. He's also behind devbump. I'm not sure if he ever sleeps. He and his cohort have been working on Zero Gear for awhile, and they've kept up a blog covering their advances. One of my major goals for this blog is to get to the point where I am posting a lot more video/images/interactive updates, the way they do over there. Also, it looks like from their count down that they are attempting to enter the IGF. Good luck guys!

For a couple of different reasons, it became a really good idea to break dungeons apart into regions. So I did.

Building a Bigger Dungeon

The first of those reasons is efficiency. By breaking the dungeon apart into regions, and placing rooms via those regions rather than seeking a great spot in the entire dungeon, it becomes a much more streamlined process. Not pictured here (unfortunately), I've successfully generated dungeons roughly 6 times larger than are supported with the build here on the site. Unfortunately, the process is still really unstable for large dungeon sizes. I've got a couple ideas for ways to fix that, but they're all massive pains, and I've decided to push them back for now as honestly, do I even need dungeons that big... ever? I see little advantage to it, honestly.

On to some better news, however...
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I spent all day Sunday making some improvements to the random dungeon generator (for great justice). I had wanted to release a new demo build for you to play with, but it's not really there just yet, so I've captured a screen shot:

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Today I'm going to talk a little bit about how I got started on the dungeon generator. The first step in any programming process is establishing your project's requirements. That is where I began as well. Here are some of the capabilities I required of my dungeon generator.
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