Hamumu Games, Inc. Hamumu Games, Inc.
 - Home - Games - Blog - Halloween - About - 
Page 1/2 2 >
  And real work too! 07:38 PM -- Sun February 26, 2012  


Today I really focused on getting the game balance up and working for the first level, and fixing up other minor things. But there's a bunch of stuff you haven't seen in this picture, eh? The cursor is on the game speed slider, where you can speed things up when you get bored.

This is the official first level, and it's good now. Nice and easy, but you do have to actually spend the money you get to win it (well, some of it anyway). I need to start getting into the 'serious' levels, so I can see how balance is when I'm not trying to make it super easy.

In addition to that, for those who missed it, I've made four games for you to enjoy! I'm actually proud of how two of them turned out, and it's not the two you might think (hint: what I'm proud of is the game balance and reasonable tuning of challenge and high score opportunities, not the polish or anything like that). Someday soon I'll get around to hosting them properly up on this site, maybe in a new "Stupid Games" section or something, but here they are:

- Prickly Party - It's Prickly Porcupine's birthday party, so celebrate in style, but don't sink into the depths of despair!

- Best Game Ever 2012 - The name really says it all, but this was inspired by Bowserfan saying he thought I should make a game featuring an actual "pirate kart".

- EAT FOOD super deluxe - Another one with a carefully honed name. You may find extra challenge in this game that wasn't really meant to be there, but it's part of the fun. Which object is flashing isn't random, and you can win via skill.

- Mega Giraffe Rampage 5000 - Is Terry a giraffe or a weed whacker? Why can't he be both!?
10 commentsBack to top!
  The 2012-in-1 GDC Pirate Kart 09:42 AM -- Sat February 25, 2012  

I don't even know if that's the official proper name, it's got so many. Today, I am going to waste my time making 2-hour-max video games! You could do it too! Not just today, of course, but that's when I'm gonna be doing it. What is it? It's the Pirate Kart! Crappy games, and lots and lots of them!

I don't know if I know how to do this right, but it will be a fun experiment in freeing my mind. I will be livestreaming my attempts for a good chunk of the day at Livestream.com/hamumu. Even if I'm not, you'll have the pleasure of seeing Behind The Dumb play there! How exciting is that?

So I have one game idea, and I think I will get started on that. You can suggest others in the livestream chat as we go!
1 commentBack to top!
  Tweaky Bits 08:56 PM -- Wed February 22, 2012  

It's the little things! Not that I worked all day today, but during the portion of the day that I did work on Scout Camp, I was hacking away at assorted little bits. I added cacti and rocks that can make places unusable for building towers, I implemented slowing shots, and I added the ability to control the speed of the game. Well, you can do that by holding a key, I haven't made the UI for it. I thought I had done more than that, but I guess I just spent a while trapped in the world of minor bug fixes! Which is where about 2/3 of development time is always spent. Oh, I also built what is presumably the official map for the first level, a super simple straight line.

And if that's not exciting enough for you, I can also tell you that Gobbluth, my Goblin Warlock, is now my 6th level 85 character! He was the last of the ones that were really close, but there's an 82 and 81 I could be working on if I felt like it. I'm more interested in some of my lesser guys really. Always a good time, though.

So that's all the info you get from me today. My mind is floating away to other places!
4 commentsBack to top!
  Maps, Wait, They Don't Love You Like I Love You! 12:58 PM -- Tue February 21, 2012  

(Without googling, does anybody know what I'm doing there?)

It's the level select map! This is a work in progress. And of course it'll have a trail of dots and X's going across it to indicate the levels. The game takes place in Great Big Hole National Park (motto: "That is a really big hole!"), and so this is kind of like the map the rangers hand out which shows landmarks and stuff. I hope to have it all implemented today with the X's appearing for the levels and whatnot. Should be pretty easy, I imagine.
5 commentsBack to top!
  Everybody Loves Skills! 06:47 PM -- Sun February 19, 2012  


And by everybody, I mean me. Passionately. These are the four skill trees of the scout camp game. I don't think they'll have visible names, but just as a secret for you, the trees are actually named Rock, Snow, Thunder, and Roll. Yes, Roll. That might be one reason I'm not having the game display the names.

In case you couldn't guess it, only the first tree is set up, and yes, the skills will not all have the same icon when they're done!
7 commentsBack to top!
  TV Recommendation 09:49 PM -- Wed February 15, 2012  

I've started watching Prototype This on Netflix. It's very much in the vein of Mythbusters, but instead of testing myths, they arbitrarily assign themselves a random ridiculous product to build a prototype of in 2 weeks. The first episode was giant robots that box each other a la Rock Em Sock Em Robots, but you control them by doing boxing motions (like a Kinect game). The second was a truck that could drive over other cars and parallel park itself robotically, and even parallel park over other cars. That's how much I've seen, but I am intrigued for more. It lacks a lot of the charisma of Mythbusters, and most of the science value, but it's very fun to see what they can do.

Now, the ethos and feel of the show is very much a Ludum Dare kind of vibe. The way they run into problems that set them back and then they have to fix it or just scrap what they're doing and try a whole new approach is exactly the feel of being in an LD contest. The 2-week deadline looks about as tight as an LD48 48-hour deadline, in relation to what they have to do (not a lot of welding involved in game programming). And at the heart of it, it's all the same thing as LD: they're making something ridiculous to have a little fun, and to give other people some fun, and it doesn't have to be great, it just has to work.

So I recommend it for the entertainment value, but I really recommend it if you are into the "game jam" thing. It's pretty much what a game jam TV show would be, except that they have more interesting stuff to show than just programming and drawing. They have welding! Of course, they also do a lot of programming, because the stuff they build has robotic elements. They don't show that though. But they actually acknowledge its existence and vaguely reference that it's happening, which is more than any other show will do!

Update: I started episode 3. It's a Pee-Wee-Hermanesque pod to sleep in, then wake up, shower, eat, and see the news before you exit it.
6 commentsBack to top!
  Snowy Morn 08:44 PM -- Tue February 14, 2012  


Inspired by waking up to a yard sprinkled with snow*, I've added the Snow Fort to the game! However, it currently throws rocks just like the Rock Tower. And I've added tooltips (all numbers are just randomly made up and have no bearing on what will be in there once I'm actually balancing things). That's about it. Not a lot going on today. A new tower should be kind of a big deal, but honestly it was about 20 minutes of work. It'll be more than that when I get into the actual snowball part where enemies have to be slowed down. They currently don't know how to be slowed. So that'll be interesting.

The fort, by the way, is actually styrofoam, which is why it doesn't melt. There's a snow-cone maker inside that the scout is using to make his snowballs. That's canonical, but not mentioned in-game. You have to read the accompanying series of novels published by Del Rey Books.

* Not at all true - I just thought of that as I started making this entry. The snow part is true at least, I just was going to make this tower anyway. And to think, it was 70 degrees about 2 days ago.
6 commentsBack to top!
  Circles Of Various Sizes 07:48 PM -- Mon February 13, 2012  


Some internal stuff going on mainly... added stats to monsters and towers, which paved the way for upgrading towers, which you sorta see here! That's the upgrade 'menu' - the two smiley face buttons will one day instead display the two advanced tower types that Rock Towers can become.

There's also a big circle showing the range of the tower. These towers just toss rocks horizontally, so they don't really have a big circular range (they can't shoot through walls either). Originally I implemented a thing that actually scanned out for obstacles, showing you a true range (it didn't actually account for the fact that they throw sideways though, just got stopped by walls). But there were several problems with it, to the extent that just scaling a picture of a circle seemed like a much better idea! It's a lot prettier too. It's up to the player to actually look at the terrain and figure out where the rocks can really go.

Currently, upgrading the tower just puts those yellow dots above it, seen on the upper tower. I'd like to have the tower actually get fancier looking, but I suspect I won't be doing that in this game. There are a lot of tower types.
7 commentsBack to top!
  Squirmy Camp 09:05 PM -- Sun February 12, 2012  

There's still only one type of tower, but there are two, count em two, kinds of badguys! The Squirmy is the weak, fast badguy to the Beefy's slow and tough. The other new thing is the boxes at the top of the screen. That's the display of the badguy waves. Those boxes slowly inch across the screen, letting you know what's coming up (only two waves in this test level). You can click on a wave to send it immediately if you think you're tough. If there are a whole pile stacked up, you can even send them all at once and get destroyed.

Yep, there are two mouse cursors on the screen! That's thanks to my clever compositing skills.
7 commentsBack to top!
  Big Cat In My Lap 10:59 PM -- Sat February 11, 2012  

That's my current status, and also the most interesting thing I can think to tell you. Saturday is of course a day off, and today was spent in maximum chillax mode. I mean way maximum. The TV has not stopped going through various shows on Netflix all day, while I have been in WoW and Batman and eating eating eating. It's very decadent and a little sickening, but we do like to do it once a week. So no, nothing good to tell you. But tomorrow is a work day! I definitely wouldn't have blogged today if people weren't holding me at proverbial gunpoint. Terrible terrible people.

You know, normally I have thoughts I have been thinking and thought I might share, but no thoughts today. Just a kind of boring, relaxed, malaise. I wanted a second paragraph that would turn this nothingness into something profound and wonderful, but I cannot do it. You get nothing, true and pure nothing, the Platonic ideal of nothingness, empty vacuum.

How about a challenge? Why don't you share your big interesting thought in the comments? What philosophy has been running through your mind? Does the refrigerator light really go out when you shut the door? If you prick me, do I not make a sound in the woods? It's clear I'm not thinking, so you should be.
14 commentsBack to top!
Page 1/2 2 >
Copyright 2021-2023, Hamumu Games Inc.