Monday, August 19, 2013

Project 4: Snake Version 0.3.1 - now with a little less crashing.

Version 0.3.1 of the snake game fixes a problem where pressing the 't' key to give yourself points before the game starts caused the game to crash. All the cheat keys (and the control swap key) now only work while the game is playing.

All the other features introduced in version 0.3.0 remain unchanged.

You can download it here:

  • The Windows Versions (32-bit, and 64-bit)
  • The Mac OS X Version
  • The Linux Versions (32-bit and 64-bit)
  • Friday, August 16, 2013

    Project 4: Snake Version 0.3.0 (Almost Undetectably New!)

    The Snake game has still been holding my attention, so I've put together the newest update. This new version however is primarily changes to the design and organization of the game.

    Does this mean you won't be able to tell the difference from version 0.2.0? Not entirely. The new structure has made it easier for me to switch things in and out and make things a little easier.



    The biggest change is that now the controls are modelled after those implemented in Nibbles. This means that when you're heading in any direction you can now only turn to the side rather than back on yourself. However if you liked the original controls, all you have to do is press 'k' to switch between the two controls.

    Furthermore if you want to make things easier or harder on yourself there are some cheats available:

    • Press 't' to add a point to your score, this moves the target and is just like you hit the target on your own.
    • Press 'y' to add a level. This levels you up, speeding up the game.
    • Press 'u' to turn off collisions, so you can go on forever without worrying about running into yourself. Press 'u' again to turn them back on again.
    That's pretty much the update for this time. Lots of changes that mean more to me than you, but it should make it a lot easier to do the things I'm thinking for the future. Speaking of which Version 0.4.0 will be along in a little while and should bring a GUI and different kinds of worlds to play.

    But for now you can download Version 0.3.0 below:

    Edit: See the Patched Version 0.3.1
    • The Windows Versions (32-bit, and 64-bit)
    • The Mac OS X Version Edit: There seems to be a problem with the Mac OS X app. I will investigate as soon as I can.
    • The Linux Versions (32-bit and 64-bit)


    Tuesday, August 06, 2013

    Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 36) - ZeFrank Special

    This volume of my favourite YouTube videos is a bit special, first of all it marks the point in time where ZeFrank had just started doing a show. This is special in and of itself, and caused me to have several of his videos in my favourites in a row, but somehow I managed not to favourite "An Invocation for Beginnings" which is possibly my favourite ZeFrank video of all time. So I decided to slip that one in and add in one extra to give us a totally ZeFrank focused volume.

    I'm going to let each of these stand alone.

    • "An Invocation for Beginnings"
    • "Thinks Like Me"
    • "Make. Beleive."
    • "TMMTO :: Comfort"
    • "2601 People Wrote This Song"

    Thursday, August 01, 2013

    Project 1: Third Season of The Blog

    Happy Birthday!

    Well, not birthday. Happy Project Ending Day and Happy Project Start Day. More precisely, Happy Blog Start and End Day!

    Today is the last day of the Second Season of the Blog. Today is also first day of the Third Season of the Blog.

    The Second Season of the Blog was not all I'd hoped it would be. I wanted to be really good about regular updating, which I haven't really been. I've managed to post in every month of the second season, ranging from 1 post to 11, but not as regularly as I'd hoped.

    By far and away I've been best about posting my "favourite YouTube videos", managing 27 of them in total. I've also managed to post 5 "Thoughts on Games", which is fewer than I'd hoped. Finally I tested out "Cool Things of the Week", before deciding that it would be better served living on twitter.

    I'm glad I've managed to post as much as I have, although I would like to write more and more regularly. I did manage to finish my PhD coursework and my candidacy during that time, which certainly has more priority.

    That being said, I've managed to keep up with the blog for a whole year and for that much at least I'm pretty happy.

    The Third Season of the Blog starts now. I'm not planning to change my content that much although I'm hoping to change my schedule/quantity and improve my quality.

    Ideally I want to post twice a week for the foreseeable future. This would mean one favourite YouTube videos post, probably on Friday and one other post sometime during the week (hopefully on Tuesdays, but no promises). This other post will be thoughts on video games or something else, if I happen to have a project update (and ideally I'll have more of these than I have so far) then that will count too.

    As far as quality, I'm hoping to spend a bit more time writing each post. I also hope that my quality will naturally improve simply by getting more practice.

    Hopefully I can keep this up for another year. So the third season will last until August 1, 2014.

    Thanks for reading, and keep getting excited and making things.

    Reading

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