By GBGames, on August 27th, 2010
Last year I posted about my shopping trip to a hobby store to buy game design prototyping tools. Some weeks ago, I bought even more items, such as tiny wooden barrels and glass beads. These tools are great for doing quick and easy paper prototypes of game designs.
I’ve been keeping them in small plastic bags, and all of those bags were in a larger freezer bag. While this was functional, it felt a bit lame. I’m a game designer, and some of my most important tools are in plastic food bags? It’s not right.
So I went shopping again and found a nice toolbox for less than $15. It has these cool compartments that I can move about relatively easily, and when the lid is closed, everything stays in place.
I put all of my wooden pieces and glass beads in the toolbox, and each gets its own compartment. I realized I had a lot more star-shaped wooden pieces than any other piece, though. I even had room for more things, so I put in some dice. My dice collection isn’t much, but I had them separate from my prototyping tools before. Now they’re all together.
Here’s a shot of the toolbox opened.
And here’s a shot of the closed toolbox.
The plastic bags were a bit more portable. I could put the entire collection in my bookbag when I left home, but this toolbox is its own luggage. By and large, I don’t find myself going out to do prototyping, so it isn’t that big of a deal.
What’s in your game design prototype toolbox? How do you store your physical paper prototyping tools?
By GBGames, on August 25th, 2010
I’ve updated my LD final entry page, but I wanted to let you know that I finally created a Stop That Hero! Windows port (2.2MB)!
Now you have no excuse not to play! Well, assuming you don’t use a Mac. Or some other OS. Then you have an excuse.
By GBGames, on August 23rd, 2010
By GBGames, on August 23rd, 2010
I apparently needed sleep and a third day to get this game completed, but here it is!
So far, the Stop That Hero! Linux version (1.6MB) is all I have. I just started using CMake for my build scripts, so please let me know if the game won’t run on your computer.
Get the Stop That Hero! source
I’ll work on a Windows port, but for now, I’m going to relax! It’s been a grueling 72 hours!
UPDATE: Windows port (2.2MB) created and available for you!
I also updated the Linux build. It’s the same code, but the build was done on an older Linux-based system, so it should run on more systems without a problem.
By GBGames, on August 23rd, 2010
I’m at the final iteration!
Basically, the tasks I have left:
- create instructions screen
- add sound effects
- package this baby up!
In the last iteration, I was play testing and balancing as best as I could. I decided that the bat was too expensive, so I moved it down in front of the slime in terms of costs. I lowered the starting health of the Hero and gave him fewer lives. I also tweaked the level design a bit to accommodate the AI’s inability to see too far ahead. There are also victory and defeat screens now.
I finally got the AI working well enough that I realized that I wasn’t just debugging the program anymore. I was playing the game! And it’s actually not that lame! B-)
