Development begins!

Time to begin!

So, as I said earlier this months game is something like Braid in a strange sense. Except where Braid was an evolution of Mario, this is an evolution of Sonic. Except hacked together in a week.

And then I'll try to find a new blog theme, because this one is rather boring.

September's theme!

As posted here, the theme for September is "Failure". Setting up low expectations in advance is quite prudent, so I approve.

Anyway, I had a few ideas.

1. A game where the main hard drive carrying the game you were developing gets corrupted, and you have to find the backups before they fail too, as bad luck (or static electricity) seems to follow you today. Then when you finally find a backup, you accidentally release a super-virus on the internet and fail to survive by escape to Mars.
2. Fail for the purposes of insurance fraud/ripping off investors. (Burnout and Stair/Truck Dismount kinda do this.)
3. You're in a class they you're going to fail... but if the rest of the class fails too, they'll scale everyone's marks up! Cause havoc and distract your classmates without getting caught.
4. Bridge builder extreme reverse! Build bridges that fail in as many ways as possible!
5. Nethack + extra cruelty and no win condition.
   

The current idea that I'm likely to do has some similarities to Braid, but could be interesting enough to stand on its own.

Success!

Download TheRedSwitch.zip, 4.03MB

Notes:
Spinning the front wheel powers the helicopter rotor.
You may require the Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2008 redistributables, or the SP1 distributables.
Thanks to Daniel for hosting, a couple of Andrews for testing, 2DBoy for the framework and Erin Catto for the Box2D physics engine.

EDIT: I forgot that you need the d3dx9_38.dll, if you have an error mentioning this DLL, you can either update your directX version here or download the DLL directly and stick it in the game folder, I reccomend the former option although I really should've included the DLL in the zip >.<

Zoom

Well, the game is finished. While I find some hosting for it, here's a brief set of instructions:

Click: Fires rocket
Spacebar: Fires rocket
A: Fires rocket
B:Fires rocket
...

You get the idea.
Also, Escape accesses the menu, Enter and the F keys (F1, F2 etc.) are used in the hacky little menu.

Current list of achievements (Not programmed in, be honest).
Free flying: Hit the goal in the slide level without firing the rocket after hitting the slide
Rocket-car-helicopter-submarine-hovercraft: hover for at least 60 seconds without touching a wall.
Shattered!: Destroy the Red-switch-mobile with a single collision (Not against an exploding wall! [I don't even know if this is possible without editing the levels :P])
Do not disturb: Get to the goal in the maze without knocking down the boulders
Lame, no mushroom: Hit the goal in the slide from the bottom.
Crash landing: Smash the Red-switch-mobile on the goal in any level.

More progress... kinda?

No screenshots today, but then you can probably wait a day for the game anyway.

I added things like a menu and a timer which are quite useful, only real thing left to do is make some levels.

Anyway, it occurs to me (after someone pointed it out...) that this game is quite similar in many respects to moon lander games: You have quite unwieldy controls and have to make precise movements. In this games case it's because you're in a maze rather than a major danger of dying, but it's true nonetheless.

Another update!

I think only 3 people have seen this blog, so the comment about more updates than readers is coming along nicely.

As is the game, funnily enough! You can now die, and more importantly, restart after you die. Even better, there's actually a goal, giving you a reason to restart. Well, kinda. Here's a couple of screenshots:An achievement is to get to this point without knocking down the 3 boulders. I probably won't program it in, but it's about the achievement, not the popup message that tells you, right?

Progress!

Having based this on the 2D Boy rapid prototyping framework and the Box2d physics engine which I had begun combining already for another project, it's not too bad really. Here's a look at the rocket-batmobile-heliglider-whatever itself.