Hello!

Have you ever looked at a webcomic and thought wow, this person is really talented? Have you ever then hit the First Comic button and seen where they started out, and how long ago? Have you been amazed at how their writing, illustration, layout, world, and any number of other things I don’t know about have developed in such a short time? I have. And because I like making games I’ve wondered if there was a way to do that with game development. And so I tried.

I’ve failed to make highly episodic games many times already, but nonetheless remain positive. Whereas Polychromatic Funk Monkey: The Series never got to the prototype stage, my flash (and now Haxe) skills are now strong enough that I can actually finish things. Whereas Little Sh*t Planet took hours of work per episode, the focussed code-only workflow I used for TickyTacky let me create something playable in just a few minutes. Whereas TickyTacky was finicky to code in and tedious to publish with, GameSketch is as easy as writing a blog post. In fact, GameSketch is a wordpress plugin, so it’s exactly as easy as writing a blog post. The game code is written directly into – and you might be able to guess where I’m going with this – a blog post. Like this one.

Tonight I’ll take GameSketch (I skimped on the name, but since it’s an internal tool I think that’s okay) out for its first run. Tonight, I’ll try to make, and publish, Pong In An Hour. Lan has suggested that I present it as Beavers playing Badminton. We’ll see how I go for time.

Speaking of time, it’s now 7:26pm. My time starts… after the jump!

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I made a game! This statement is true where “I” is defined as me, John Martz, and Big Giant Circles. Persons rejecting this definition might like to know that a game was made by group of people, of which I am a member. That game is Cumulo Nimblers.

Grab Cumulo Nimblers from the Games page, or follow the jump to read about its development and play some early online builds.

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Unloading at a refinery

If you’d like to mine some asteroids – and I can’t think why you possibly wouldn’t – you can do so right now. That is, you can do so right now if you’re a captain forever supporter. If you aren’t, you can rectify that right now also!

<3 Farbs

Boom!

Boom indeed! For years people have asked me to add asteroid mining, and for years I’ve thought yes, that would be great, as soon as I finish the critical features of the game. First I wanted to finish alpha 0.6, wherein players can explore a vast network of sectors rather than the one or two I’ve been releasing with each update so far.

While planning 0.6 I read a book on quest narratives, and realized the value of part of the archetypal hero’s journey – the return home. The way I see it, the point is to show the hero’s metamorphosis by contrasting how they interact with their original environment before their quest with how they interact with it afterward. It also bookends the story nicely, much like a melody returning to the root note or a sitcom episode ending with a reference to the first joke. So, now 0.6 will end with a return to the origin station. Seems good.

The trouble is, by the time the player returns to the origin station their ship is substantially larger, and probably won’t fit back through the cracks and crevices of the first asteroid belt (*cough* threshold *cough*).

So I added mining.

<3
Farbs

I’m holding a sale!

The perceived value of indie games has dropped, so I’m trialling a lower price point. For a limited time only, Captain Forever supporter access is discounted from $20 to a mere $9. That’s a saving of 55%, and a perceived difference of an entire order of magnitude! This is an as-long-as-it’s-profitable sale, so as soon as income (sales x price) drops below regular levels the sale will end. If the games sell well enough then the sale could go on indefinitely, but it could also end tomorrow. Buy now or you might miss out!

If you’re already a Captain Forever supporter then you’re a paragon of humanity, a model of perfection to which we all aspire. You’re probably not interested in the $9 as-long-as-it’s-profitable sale, unless you’re one of the incredible few who asked for a Gifting mechanism. I’ve added gifting to the payment system, so now you can purchase supporter accounts for family and friends, each at the probably-temporarily low price of $9.

The third barrel in today’s announcement holds a bullet marked 0.5. I’ve just released the latest build of Captain Jameson – the massive RPGish successor to Captain Forever I envisaged when I first started the CF project. This build smoothes out a hundred rough edges, eases the first step in the difficulty curve, adds another two ship modules, and opens up three new sectors of varying size for you to explore. If you’re already a supporter then you can play it right now, otherwise, you know what to do.

Buy! Buy! Buy!

<3
Farbs