Patching of Games and the Implications

A friend brought it to my attention that Monster Truck Power Fantasy, among other Game Maker: Studio games I've made, would display a black screen on his computer running Windows 10. This appears to be a rare bug, but it's one I've since fixed. Monster Truck Power Fantasy, Gewgawlicious, Bloodjak, and Digital Toilet World should now run on Windows 10 with no problem.

The Morphine Western Revenge already had the fix applied, most people shouldn't download and play Darcy's Yurt Adventure, and Empty Chambers and How to Fly were made in Game Maker 8, so I ain't touching those anymore. Everything else was made in Unity or Twine. 

I know I'm late to the conversation about the permanence of software as a medium, but I'm becoming increasingly aware of just how fragile it is. Text can always be transcribed and preserved in a dozen different ways. Music and film can always be digitized to a playable format indefinitely. I'm starting to come to the realization that my games may no longer be playable on Windows, maybe not even ten or twenty years from now, and there isn't much I can do about it.

This particular black screen bug, from what I've read, was caused by the Windows 10 Creators Update, and it affects fullscreen Game Maker: Studio games indiscriminately. There's a simple fix that can be performed from within the program. So far, so good. It took an evening for me to go through nearly every game to perform the fix and re-upload it, but it's worth it to make sure that my games can run, let alone run well.

The scary thing, though, is that Game Maker: Studio is no longer supported by the developer, as it has been replaced by Game Maker: Studio 2. GM:S, in its final version, was capable of circumventing the bug. I certainly can't count on that being the case in the future, or on Game Maker: Studio properly running in the future.

So, it's possible to port all of my games into the new program. From what I hear, this requires the games to be reprogrammed, to an extent. I've made six Game Maker: Studio games so far, and it would take some serious time and effort to port them in Game Maker Studio 2 to make sure everything continues to work on current software and hardware. Not to mention, every time I have to make a change to fix a bug across all of my games caused by, for example, a Windows update, I have to fix and re-upload all of my games.

I make about two or three games every year. Let's say Game Maker Studio 3 comes out in five years. By the, I would hopefully have at least 16 games that I would need to port into that program... the workload required to keep my work current will snowball over the decades.

Of course, who knows how long Game Maker will exist as a program in any iteration? Nothing lasts forever. Maybe the last version is released, say, fifteen, twenty years from now, the company goes bankrupt, and I lose the ability to make any changes to my games' source code?

Of course, you can run any outdated Windows program in compatibility mode, and it should run correctly. But whether it does or not depends entirely upon the competence of Microsoft engineers. The ability for anyone to play my games over the course of my lifetime is largely in their hands. Not to mention, it won't occur to the typical player to run a game in compatibility mode, or to run it through an emulator.

This is probably going to be a widespread problem as operating systems undergo countless iterations over the coming decades (get hyped for Windows 40), and I may be pleasantly surprised by the solutions the IT community develops, but in the meantime, it is unnerving.

Monster Truck Power Fantasy v1.1

I updated "Monster Truck Power Fantasy" to version 1.1. It is now downloadable from Gamejolt and Itch.

I fixed some bugs, adjusted the spawning patterns and scoring to be fairer to the player, and made some slight graphical and technical improvements.

Here's the complete change list. Cheers!

v1.1
Features:
-Tire damage dealt is now based on the percentage of tire integrity remaining.
-The minimum tire integrity is now 1.
-Tires deflate and wheels start sparking at a tire integrity of 34.
-The tire integrity bar now flashes red when tires deflate.
-New building textures added
-Score at end is now outlined in black.
-Rooftop fences no longer spawn in proximity of tire spikes.
-The spawn rate of sharp objects increases during last 30 seconds.
-The truck now shakes when hitting things.

Bug Fixes:
-Removed developer feature where truck height could be adjusted with the arrow keys (oops)
-The speed of game is now unaffected by frame rate.
-The truck now continues traveling in the correct direction after game ends.
-The game no longer immediately ends if you begin a run within a second of opening the game.

Monster Truck Power Fantasy

Here's a new game for ya kiddos: "Monster Truck Power Fantasy." I made it for the 2017 Sekret Santa game jam at Glorious Trainwrecks. My gift recipient asked for a game with a giant monster truck that destroys an entire city, among other things.

So, I made a game about a monster truck. I could describe it further by genre, but why should I? It's a video game about a goddamn monster truck.

I've always been enamored with the idea of music games in the style of James Earl Cox's You Don't Know the Half of It: Fins of the Father. So, I decided to write a song for the game with conventional structure and lyrics, as opposed to an instrumental loop. Imagine Jon Spencer, Sleater-Kinney, Shakey Graves, and the frontman from Arcade Fire getting together and making a baby. A song baby. This is that song.



I was given a month to work on the game, but due to the work on "The Giant Robot Blues," hospitalization, and holiday cheer, I've only had a week to make the game. Three of those days were dedicated to the music. This didn't leave much time for game design.

I'm pretty happy with the results, given the short development period, but a post-jam version with bug fixes is in the works.

You can download the game for Windows from Glorious Trainwrecks for the time being. Release on other platforms is impending. Thanks for playing!

The Giant Robot Blues

I am releasing a piece of interactive fiction. It is called "The Giant Robot Blues." You can play it here.

It's a comedic sci-fi tale about a test pilot trapped inside of a giant robot suit that is about to explode. It is also about other things: 70's rock and roll, mass media, secrets, hallucinations, mistakes, laughter, futility, and regret. 

Twine's inception, and the interactive fiction renaissance that followed, have dismantled a lot of my preconceptions about interactive art and how interactive systems can be compelling outside of overcoming challenges, completing objectives, or winning "games." One of the few elements that IF - a medium of text and hyperlinks - shares with conventional videogames is choice. By removing the mechanic of player choice from the tropes of games, and evoking the tropes of literature, I think that IF causes developers and players to re-imagine what kind of experiences digital interactive art can provide.

I've also long admired interactive fictions' accessibility. Contemporary IF can be played on nearly any device with internet access, by nearly anyone who can read, regardless of previous experience with games. This is my first mobile game! The more I make games, the more I am interested in their development into a broadly accessible and artistically diverse medium. So, naturally, I've long been interested in finding inspiration to write a piece of IF with Twine myself. While I previously made a tiny game in an hour with a professor, it was time for me to undergo a serious project. 

The chance came during Artscape last when, when Steven Thomas and I decided to create games for the winners of a high score contest we held during the festival. The winner of the Bloodjak high score contest asked for a text-based comedy about a person trapped inside of a mech, among other criteria.  I was pretty excited about the prompt.

I wanted to be able to evoke the tension that comes with the play of a conventional game, but I didn't want to bring along the skill ceiling that typically accompanies it. I don't want to spoil the experience, but I think was able to achieve this with the systems I put in place.

Despite being a game made for another person, "The Giant Robot Blues" eventually grew into one of the most personal games I've ever made. Inside jokes, previously unrealized project ideas, and experiences and places from Baltimore city all find their way into this little story. I hope you enjoy it!

Bloodjak Design Interview

I can't believe I forgot to post this, but last month, Greg Livingston interviewed me about Bloodjak! I talk a bit about procedural difficulty, the game's unusual scoring mechanic, and emotive game design. The discussion gets pretty good, especially after the five minute mark.

It includes game footage from both me and Greg - if you ever wanted to watch me reach 10,000 points and die, here ya go.

It's always wonderful to be given an opportunity to talk about your work. Greg records a ton of great interviews with Baltimore devs and posts many videos on design theory - you can watch them all on his Youtube channel!

Artscape's Over; Games Got Patched

screenshot of the finished Underground Arcade launcher program for festival exhibitions

Thank you all so much for stopping by our humble little table at Artscape! It meant a lot to both me and Stephen to see yinz playing our stuff and duking it out for high scores! We're definitely looking forward to showcasing our work at more festivals in the future. If you're looking for more of Stephen's work, you can find it here.

As promised, the winners of the Bloodjak high score competition will have a game made by me - I already have one winner's wishlist and am starting to pump that game out. If, by any chance, you participated in the competition and did not get an email from me, please let me know.

As I prepared the games for festival exhibition, I noticed that all of my games were running slowly on my laptop hardware. I won't go into the technical explanation (sleep margin! *shakes fist*), but Gewgawlicious, The Morphine Western Revenge, Bloodjak, and Digital Toilet World have all been updated and should be running at peak performance on all hardware now.

Furthermore, after the first day of festival, it became immediately clear that Gewgawlicious, the least playtested of my games, was way too long. I've since shortened the game's length by 45 seconds. I also fixed a minor bug in Digital Toilet World in which the android sprites would blur.

After I finish making the prize game (stay tuned!), I should be able to seriously redirect attention to Monsterpunk.  

Underground Arcade at Artscape!

This is old news to those of you who follow me on other social media, but I am pleased to announce that the Baltimore Game Collective (consisting of Let-Off Studios and myself) will be showcasing our games at Artscape in Baltimore this July! Together, we are presenting Underground Arcade, which consists of eight games, half by me, half by Let-Off. Check out the trailer above!

Artscape advertises itself as the largest free arts festival in America, so I am grateful to be able to showcase my work in this setting. If you're in the area, do stop by and say hi!