Like too many indie game blogs, I have been doing little more than obsessing about Kenta Cho, Blast Works and Budcat Creations. This is all wrong. This little poorly kept and rarely updated website is not about indie games the same way tigsource.com is. No, this is supposed to be about the development of little hobbyist games.
Originally, it was supposed to be about a specific mode of making these little games. I was going to do my best to make weekly, then monthly, games based on user input. Almost as soon as Garbage In, Games Out was up things changed, got a little more complicated, and I could no longer devote the time necessary to that end. And somehow I started talking about Kenta Cho. So let’s move past that. From now on, even if it means extremely sparse entries, there will be more posts ONLY about game development. More posts complaining about SDL 1.3, more posts about Blender, about quirky design elements, about the brain lust that drives me to waste hours in front of this damned machine.
August 15th, 2007
So Spencer has exchanged a few words with Kenta Cho about Blast Works and console development in general. Pretty interesting, but also sad in the sense that Kenta Cho has become a spectator in the development of a game he originally designed.
July 25th, 2007
More Blast Works noise. Spencer of siliconera has played an early build of Blast Works and says that Budcat is working on including “more of Kenta Cho’s shmups into Blast Works as unlockables. rRootage is going to be included for sure.” He went on to say that “Gunroar and Torus Trooper are possible additions.” Unless they do something very interesting with these games, I’m pretty sure I’ll just stick to the freeware versions.
(Source: Siliconera)
July 14th, 2007
A few months ago there was a bunch of noise about one of Kenta Cho’s games Coming to the Wii omg!. All caused by a GameFly listing for a game of the same name, with Majesco as the publisher. This had to mean one of two things: Kenta Cho’s Tumiki Fighters was going to be one of the first games to appear on Nintendo’s XNA mii-too or that it was confusion.
Today: Nintendo confirms plans for WiiWare Downloadable Content, and Majesco Announces Wii New Wii Exclusive, Blast Works, which seems to be a Tumiki Fighters sequel…but it’s developed by Budcat…which is in Iowa. I don’t understand how Kenta Cho has much to do with this.
Is he even being paid?
UPDATE: GameSetWatch explains that Kenta Cho’s games are released under a BSD license, and that Kenta Cho has given permission allowing Majesco to do pretty much whatever they want. Here’s hoping they do Tumiki Fighters justice.
June 28th, 2007
Title is correct. So much for magically making more games in my free time. Time to rethink this. I could set a more realistic goal of one small game per month (per season?). After all, I still find time between passing the Yoshi and looking at webcomics to daydream some code up. Just gotta code up the daydream.
EDIT: In a related matter, I got a job doing just that. Can’t offer these projects like old couches on moving day though. I hoped that this site would help me to get paid for games. I imagined that once that happened, I’d continue makin’ the games to let off extra creative steam. Looks like that plan was ill-fated to be consumed by a more pragmatic use of time.
May 10th, 2007
That’s a screenshot of an early Tank!Game3 in progress. It is one of 3 projects I’m working on right now. Probably the least important. I’ll post more about this and other later.
So no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Sometimes games and websites have to take a back seat to other things. Lame excuse, right? I should be more than capable of doing those things and making time for this, too. Maybe!
March 8th, 2007
Betrayal! Failure! Right. So there won’t be updates weekly for a while. Cannot make time for gigo on a regular basis for such as few months. Simply cannot make that promise. Is a good thing no one reads this site yet!
A short list of things currently half-finished: Tank!Game3, PongRemake2, SInvaders1, and a game about crashing through walls.
June 1st, 2006
To view this content, you need to install Java from java.com
Oh boy, it’s Pong! You know what to do. Click to start. Use the mouse to move the green paddle up and down. 3 points to win. After a game over, click to restart the game. I trust I have not insulted you by explaining that.
May 19th, 2006
This is the current iteration of Tank!Game. IMPROVEMENTS ARE: player tank models, directional radar, combo system, and a “No sound” option in the settings.txt, along with several serious bug fixes. I consider this game fun and worth 5 minutes of a discerning human being’s freetime.
I will suffer no shame if you download and play this game. In fact, I would be delighted if you did so! But you know what you could do to really make my day? Tell me how I should improve the game. I’ve already started Tank!Game3, which is turning out to be a major revamp. I’m elbow deep in code so if you have any bright ideas, tell me now so I can throw them in before I close her up!
Download Tank!Game2.zip (1.5 mb)
May 12th, 2006
More History of Tank!Game:
This is the first major improvement on Tank!Game. I believe I finished it sometime in early 2005. It took me way too long. But I had succeeded in making it at least a little fun to play. However, it was still too buggy. Don’t bother downloading this, seriously.
Here’s the description I wrote when I posted it on gamedev.net:
That red ! bar to the left is the warning meter. It goes up as enemies approach. Use it to search and destroy. The Pink bar is Life. Blue is energy.
Things I’ve improved include a weapon system. After you kill a tank, you can pick up its weapon. However, the last weapon you equiped influences the stats of the current weapon you have. For example, if you had Yellow (bouncy bullet) and then you pick up Blue (power shot), you get a weakened Power shot that bounces. I’ve also included spit-screen 2 player modes you can use if you have a joystick. Other differences include reduced difficulty, more variety of levels, particle effects and more sound effects. I would love to have the old verison of this game to allow you to see the difference, but I dont have the webspace for both.
The controls are:
WASD moves the tank. The mouse rotates the turret. Left click shoots. Spacebar jumps.
About the “version number”: The “1.5″ was tacked on after I finished what I called “Tank!Game2″, which was actually the third iteration of the game. Anyway, the point is that these aren’t version numbers; they refer to the iteration. So while in most cases “version 2.0″ software is mature, for my games “iteration 2″ is still very green.
[Don’t] Download Tank!Game1.5.zip (1.6 mb)
March 10th, 2006
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