Category Archives: Uncategorized

Dink Smallwood on the iPhone/iTouch preview video

Despite working on a ‘secret project’ for the last three weeks (more on that later..), Dink for iPhone is still coming along nicely and I wanted to show it in action.

It truly is a great port, including features not found in the original versions such as ‘full state saving from anywhere’, faster script processing, rewritten graphic/resource handling, native GL support, the full original CD sound-track, and a built-in .dmod downloader/installer.

Instead of the usual screenshots here is a crappy youtube movie to give you an idea of how it runs ‘on-device’. Controls/GUI are not final! Hope to put in my new control idea soon and see how it works.

New Free game: The Hardest Text Game In The World

Last weekend there was a mini-LD coding challenge issued by the legendary GirlFlash – make a game using wikipedia.

So here was my idea: Grab a random page and tell the user the name of it.  Have links from that page falling down the screen (mixed with links from other pages) and see if the user can click the right ones.

So I made that.

thtgitw

Well, let me tell you, it doesn’t work all that great.  The two big problems are:

  • A “totally random wikipedia page” is too hard, you would literally need encyclopedic knowledge to have a chance at 99% of the crazy things it chooses.   This could actually be worked around, like I could limit it to ‘80’s comedy movies‘ for instance… but.. meh.  I sort of like the zany and crazy things it comes up with.
  • Even when the subject is interesting just dumbly grabbing links from the page willy-nilly ends up being ridiculous.  It’s just too crazy.

With all that said, here is an updated version for Windows if you want to give it a shot.

Download the zip here.  Can you score 100 points?

If you like the idea of using Wikipedia for games, be sure to check out the other mini-LD stuff, it’s quite cool.

Mind Wall Reviews, if you speak Japanese

mindwall_in_lifeSome glowing Mind Wall reviews here, in fact, thus far 95% of our sales are coming from Japan?!  I think because it’s tapping into a sort of brain training boom that’s been happening here.

App Bank.net –  “…it hooked me, I love this brain training game” – (English version via google translate)

iPhoneAppMaga.net – “…it’s been awhile since I found something like this.. amazing… 5/5” – (English version via google translate)

I’m pretty sure the high scores are also being dominated by people from Japan although we won’t be sure until the next Mind Wall update – it (and our other new iPhone game that’s almost done) will include a feature Akiko bugged me to put in:  Tiny world flags by your name.

Also, on the web version of the high score list there is now a new section of “ALL TIME TOP TEN”.

LD48 – What are you doing this weekend?

Yes ladies and gents, the Ludum Dare 48 hour game making competition has already begun!

Hundreds of people from all over the world compete in the ultimate intellectual sport for nothing more than camaraderie, practice, respect, and… well, these funny little trophy icons we make for each other.

Do you have what it takes to design and program a computer game in 48 hours?

Watch the action here as it unfolds!  The theme is “Advancing wall of Doom”.

You can watch my game (hopefully?) take shape here.