A Demo Release for the ASCII Game!
Wednesday Jun 10th, '09 @ 10:13pm
posted by mike
Somewhere in the neighborhood of a year ago, I released a short demo of my ASCII game. The game didn't have a very wide range of enemies; it primarily offered a series of platforming challenges. Thus, I don't believe I even posted the demo on my website.
Today, though, the ASCII game has reached a much better point in its development. The game has added vertical scrolling,
grabbable objects, new enemies and new world types. (I especially like the "winter world" and its cool snow effect.) All of these additions provided more than enough fuel for a second, more robust demo of the ASCII game.
Having run a beta release revealed a couple of small but corrigible bugs (my favorite: the game crashing at launch if you didn't have a joystick attached... oops!), I can now present you with the new demo of my ASCII game!
If you run Windows (any version), I recommend that you download the binary version. You can run it without any prerequisites. If you use Linux or a Mac, you can consult the
Demo 2 forum thread if you need help with the dependencies.
Windows Binary download (5MB)
Source download (2MB)
For a quick peek at what kinds of levels to expect in Demo 2, you can check out the
ASCII screenshot section; I posted a fair number of new images this evening.
I hope you enjoy the demo! If you have any problems running it, just mention it in the thread and I'll do anything I can to help you out.
Bad Guys and Dialog Boxes
Saturday May 30th, '09 @ 9:17pm
posted by mike
I'll begin with a quick update on Errro: Errro has been sitting on the back burner for the last few weeks. I am still working on getting some upgraded graphics. Hopefully I can finish up with that in the near future; afterward, I will need to retouch all of the levels using the new graphics. After that, I will release the game! =)
Let's talk about the ASCII game for a minute now. If you've followed this project (any of my projects?), you know that it has moved along with all of the consistency of a teenager driving a stick shift for the first time. For now, I've resumed work on the project and the cylinders are clicking nicely so far.
Recently I've concentrated on adding some new (or "some at all") enemies to the game. I probably have somewhere in the vicinity of half a dozen enemies altogether as of this writing. As inspiration allows, I'm going to work on getting some more friends for this sextet.
I also finally got around to revamping the control customization dialog. The game does not feature a particularly overwhelming number of controls, but I had reached a point where separating the customization dialog into separate sections (for "movement" and "actions") seemed appropriate. I hemmed and hawed my way through the process until I got something satisfactory.
Lastly, if you didn't notice, I recently posted a new screenshot called "A Spooky Forest."
New ASCII Game Screenshots
Tuesday Jan 13th, '09 @ 2:18am
posted by mike
Now that I think about it, I don't think I ever officially introduced my ASCII game on my website.
I've been working for a while now (intermittently) on a game that uses letters and numbers (ASCII characters) for all of the graphics. Everything from the various worlds to the main character appears as an arrangement of ASCII characters. I do apply color to the characters, though. It would surely look glum otherwise!
I just added a couple of new screenshots to the game's section; these shots display a few new scenery objects that I've added to the game.
At this point, the game has a good code base. I still have plenty of coding to do, but it has certainly reached a playable state.
