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[Brentai]

(This post was originally in the Programmer's Wanking Corner but I decided to make a separate topic for people who like to makea da vidjagames but don't necessarily consider themselves programmers.)

It occurs to me that, while I've been doing a damn sight better lately with my gamemakinging than should be reasonably expected (my engine is almost usable now! if you don't like sound), my main problem at the moment is that I've simply been knocked out of the swing of things by work/life/travel/etc.  I think what I need is to get the fuck out of my insanely high level* code for a bit and just make a damned game or at least a minigame in some bullshit app like Game Maker or RPG Maker or, I dunno, Knytt Stories or something.  Anybody got a suggestion for what kind of knockup game generator I could use to produce something quick that you might not actually mind giving a play or two?

EDIT: Alternately I could call for another Game-Making Game but eeeeeh those tend to fail miserably and then Zara sweeps it.


* By which I mean you need to gain several levels in programming in order to grok it, not that it's actually high-level programming.  Because boy is it not.

[Frocto]

Construct is peachy-keen. You can make a shooter in like 15 minutes.

A shooter where you play a pregnant woman.

Who fires babies out of her womb.

[Bongo Bill]

It's probably not as high-level* as you're intending, but rumor has it Pyglet is what PyGame was trying to be. I am investigating it.

*in the sense opposite the one you used

[Brentai]

Construct is peachy-keen. You can make a shooter in like 15 minutes.

A shooter where you play a pregnant woman.

Who fires babies out of her womb.

I tried one of the demos on the site and managed to get my car stuck literally beneath a building within 10 seconds.

Downloading now.

[Catloaf]

I should check Construct out.  I was planning on making a TF2 map as soon as my spring statistics class is over (the final's next week), but making an entire game allows so much more creativity and would be even better practice for what I hope to do much more of in the future.

Eh, I already have the map thought pretty far out, so I'll start with that.  But I'm gonna get a reference book for python now.

[JDigital]

Man makes addictive flash game, earns almost $100,000/year in ad revenue.

I suspect there's more cleverness to this than luck. If this was a desktop app, he'd have a harder time selling ads, and if he charged for it, he'd have a harder time drawing users. If his game was server-based like a web app, dynamic webpage or multiplayer game, he'd hit server processing capacity before he hit big money, which would require him to refactor server-side code to enable load balancing across multiple servers, and then maintain those servers.

Of course, replicating that success still requires you to make something equally addictive.

[Brentai]

Any artist of any medium will tell you that these sorts of stories are the worst sorts of things to tell to people.  It makes people think that they can break into the medium and do the same thing.  Even if they do make something better, market it better, be more popular etc., the sheer fact of the matter is that this sort of thing is dependent on millions of factors and a healthy dose of sheer, blind luck.

Making money with video games is like playing the lottery.

...which is why casual gaming is becoming popular, not because more people are playing them, but because you can buy ten lottery tickets for the price of one that way.

[jsnlxndrlv]

Getting back into designing interactive fiction. To provide the sort of deadline I need in order to ever actually create something I think I'd like to create, I have just entered the Metafilter competition. This cannot possibly go awry.

[Frocto]

I wanted to make a text adventure. Is there some sort of generic utility for this?

[Bongo Bill]

If you don't fancy yourself a programmer, you'd want to use Inform 7, which is an IDE for text adventures using a language inspired by natural language. If you want more precision but less legibility, and/or you want the logic parts to feel less like writing and more like programming, then you'd want to go with TADS.

Both of those systems output to one of several text adventure game formats, which must be played in a dedicated client. Such clients exist on pretty much every platform, but for Windows you'd probably want Gargoyle. It's the prettiest.

[jsnlxndrlv]

Actually, you'll want to use Inform 7 whether you're a programmer or otherwise. It's a legitimate programming language, but it's also the most accessible tool for someone with no programming experience. The compiler is also the editor/IDE, the documentation, and the testing interpreter.

[Bongo Bill]

The point is whether you're more comfortable with a programming language that tries (rather well) to resemble natural language, or one that has a more rigorous syntax that doesn't obfuscate the technical details. Though I guess there's always Inform 7 For Programmers, which explains just which concepts map to which.

[Frocto]

you're such a fag, newbie

[jsnlxndrlv]

 

[Frocto]

 

[Zaratustra]

Inform 7 is pretty good if you have problems reading regular programming code. Otherwise, it's a regular programming language with extremely irregular syntax.

"but zara you can write code in regular english" are you telling me this is regular english

The getting wet rule is listed in the every turn rules. This is the getting wet rule:
    if the player is exposed and soaked is not noticeable begin;
        change the dampness to dampness plus 1;
        if the dampness > 6 begin;
            now soaked is noticeable;
            say "You are now, sadly, entirely soaked.";
        otherwise;
            say "You are getting wet.";
        end if;
    end if.

[Bongo Bill]

There are apparently people who write poems that Inform 7 can compile. I can't find the original example, but....

The apple is a room.
"A winding street in Rome
with monkeys all abloom,
and salmon made of chrome."

The window is a door.
"A smallish boy named Fran,
a mile high and no more."
The lady is a man.

The window is east of the apple.
The window is west of the lake.
The lady is wearing a chapel.
"It looks like a venomous snake."

A man can be happy or sad
A breath can be shallow or baited
A door can be gingham or plaid
A chapel can be overrated

The lady is in the lake,
The lady is holding her breath...
When the lady is sad and the window is plaid
Then end the game in death.

[jsnlxndrlv]

Nice sig coordination. Cute, but I'd be more impressed if the last stanza's rules actually had an impact on play.

[Thad]

As noted elsewhere, stuff like what Zeboyd Games is doing has kind of got me thinking of getting off my ass and actually working on a game along those lines (possibly because it is a dude with my name doing shit I could do).  Whether or not I could actually complete something is an open question, but over the span of about a day I've managed to bang out a structure and a plot, which is more than I've managed to do in a decade of having this premise bouncing around in my skull, so, that.

Ultimately I'd like to do something multiplatform and GPL.  (And optionally be able to release it under other licenses besides, so I could, say, sell an iOS version if the opportunity arose.)

Now, I've got a CS degree; I could build an engine from the ground up but would rather not.  So I'm looking at what's out there.  pygame is still a thing but there don't seem to be many JRPG-style games out there for it.  GNURPGM looks like a good choice but I'd have to see it in action -- and it appears it requires an interpreter, which might be a bit of a barrier to getting people to actually run the thing.  There's a new version of RPG Maker that uses HTML5/JS, which is neat but I'm not sure what the licensing situation is -- there's a vague statement about being allowed to release free or commercial games with it, but something tells me it won't be Affero GPL compatible.

There were a few more I stumbled across but can't find at the moment; maybe I'll put 'em up.

[sei]

I think it'd help a couple of us out if you share the pros and cons of various licensing schemes for self-publishing games, after you've done the research and worked it out.