Tom 7 Radar:
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Addition to the above:
7. I missed one that I somehow didn't have in my notes: (rot13) "fperjqevire".
8. Bug is still there.
9. Bug is still there.
10. I can't quite reproduce the original behavior: (rot13) V pna fgvyy tb haqre gur punve naq ba gur evtug bs pncgnva Xvex, ohg vs V gel gb gnyx gb uvz be hfr jvgu uvz, gur nyvra abj gevrf gb tb yrsg naq trgf fghpx va n jnyxvat navzngvba fgnaqvat va cynpr ng gur punve hagvy lbh pyvpx gb tb fbzrjurer.
15. I found another bug: (rot13) vs V'z fgnaqvat ba gur evtug bs gur bcra vaare nveybpx qbbe naq nfx gb hfr gur gbby jvgu gur bhgre cbeg, gur nyvra trgf fghpx gelvat gb jnyx guebhtu gur gbc bs gur qbbe va n jnyxvat navzngvba hagvy V pyvpx gb tb fbzrjurer ryfr. Gur fnzr unccraf vs V gel gb teno gur aet jrncba juvyr fgnaqvat sne gb gur evtug bs vg, bayl gung gvzr gur nyvra nccneragyl trgf fghpx ba nve.
16. Another similar bug is that (rot13) vs lbh ner fgnaqvat ba gur gbc yrsg bs gur pncgnva'f punve naq gur pncgnva'f qrnq naq lbh gel gb bibcbfvg vagb uvf obql, fbzrgvzrf gur nyvra jnyxf gb gur pncgnva'f obql naq fnlf "V pna'g tb gurer :-(" fvzhygnarbhfyl. Ur qbrfa'g bibcbfvg gur rtt.
17. A completely different bug that I just noticed is that if you quickly get past the fire the intended way and then go to the left, the game gets into a state that seems to me like a softlock. Speedrunners will run into this one.
18. A minor bug is that the long description of the (rot13) obqvrf fhpxrq vagb bhgre fcnpr vf "fbzr nyvra grpuabybtl?".
19. (rot13) Bibcbfvgvat vagb gurz vf svaavpxl gbb, fbzrgvzrf gur tnzr whfg qbrfa'g ernyvmr jung V'z gelvat gb bibcbfvg vagb.
20. I see that on the other hand you fixed (rot13) Pncgnva Xvex'f ercyl, fb ur ab ybare inthryl gryyf lbh gb "znxr lbhefrys".
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I played through the game before this weekend, after shachaf pointed me to it. Here are some random comments.
0. The Ludum Dare prompt was very appropriate for you after you completed a running challenge.
1. Knowing the game title helped a lot in retrospectfor two reasons. The larger reason is that the opening title screen gives the game title in the alien alphabet. The smaller reason is that when I saw the Diablo-style inventory with four eggs, I immediately guessed a part of the game: (rot13: lbh gbbx gur fbsgybpx oht sebz Pbaarpgbe Jbeyq naq ghearq vg vagb n chmmyr srngher).
2. When shachaf pointed me at the game, I immediately saw the alien alphabet, mused loudly that it must be some sort of simple substitution cipher for English, which shachaf confirmed. That's a small spoiler I guess, but it didn't really help too much.
3. The second spoiler I got from shachaf was that the menu of four commands has a typo. It turns out that it has two typos. One of them you mention in your post, but that one didn't annoy me, because I didn't even realize it until post-game discussion. It seems you have fixed the first one by now: Gur frpbaq pbzznaq hfrq gb fnl "gnyr" vafgrnq bs "gnyx".
4. I wondered how come the alien doesn't speak the Standard Galactic Alphabet from the Commander Keen games, but I guess other game design perspectives overrided the need for realism this time.
5. So when shachaf pointed me to the game on Thursday, I was busy with work, and only played as much of it to get past the first obstacle, the fire that blocks your way. I put it down then. I started to play properly on Friday. I immediately decided to decode the alien alphabet, though it might have been optional. Luckily at that time I noticed the title screen. That made the decoding much easier, since it already gives most of the common letters. Without that, I would have really struggled because I started by decoding the command bar, and (rot13) sebz gur rssrpg bs gur svefg pbzznaq V nffhzrq gur svefg pbzznaq jbhyq or "gnxr", fb "teno gnyr" jbhyq unir pbhashfrq bhg gur urpx bs zr, rira xabjvat gurer'f n glcb, fvapr V qvqa'g unir "t" be "x" be "y" sebz naljurer, "hfr" qbrfa'g uryc gur erfg, naq "bibcbfvg" vf hathrffnoyr.
6. That said, with the title screen and the spoiler warning about the typo (or after fixing the typo), the alphabet puzzle was really easy. Already before solving the first obstacle the game gives you so many phrases that you can decode the whole alphabet and what the four commands do. The ones you can encounter before getting past the fire, I think: (rot13) "Ehaavat bhg bs fcnpr, teno, gnyr, bibcbfvg, hfr" (lbh pna'g "hfr" nalguvat jvgubhg fbyivat gur chmmyr, ohg gur gvgyr tvirf nyy gur yrggref), "vairagbel, ybbx ng zr, ybbx ng plyvaqre" (sver rkgvathvfure), "ybbx ng sver, ybbx ng nyvra" (pncgnva Xvex), "creuncf n jrncba" (gur qrfpevcgvba bs gur sver rkgvathvfure), "fbzr nyvra grpuabybtl" (qrfpevcgvba bs gur sver), "vg zr :-)" (qrfpevcgvba bs lbhefrys), "ybbxf jnez" (qrfpevcgvba bs pncgnva), "V pna'g tb gurer, V qba'g xabj ubj gb qb gung, V pna'g tb gurer :-(" (gnyx gb pncgnva be hfr jvgu pncgnva), "hfr rtt jvgu, bibcbfvg rtt vagb, zhfg bibcbfvg naq rtt vagb n *obql*, uv zr! :-), uv plyvaqre! :-), uv sver! :-)" (fur xabjf vg'f sver ohg ng gur fnzr gvzr pnyyf vg fbzr nyvra grpuabybtl), "V arrq gb teno vg svefg" (gel gb hfr gur sver be gur rkgvathvfure), "V pna bayl bivcbfvg na rtt" (gel gb bivcbfvg gur sver vagb gur sver).
7. So I wrote everything I found in alien language with English under it, which was a subset of the above, and it was enough to decode the alphabet, except for four letters that I have never seen. The third spoiler I got from shachaf is that I will never see the other four letters, except in the game resources. (He had actually linked to the png image containing the alphabet earlier, but I closed it before I could absorb anything, so I don't count that as a spoiler.) Indeed the game is quite short, and I got very few phrases later: "pneq, tengr, aet jrncba, nveybpx, qbbe, cbeg, ohytr, gbby, ehaavat bhg bs fcnpr / gbz 7 2018".
8. The only pathfinding bug I noticed was that when I click on the right side of the screen while the alien is going around the (rot13: fcvxr cvg) obstacle, the alien will go back to the left of the obstacle and try to go around the obstacle on the other side, that is, under if if she was over and over if she was under. This can lead to the alien never progressing if you keep clicking frequently. This was easy to recognize and work around.
9. One random bug I noticed is: (rot13) gur orq jvgu gur pbire chyyrq bire nsgre lbh erzbir gur gbby vf fgvyy pnyyrq n "ohytr".
10. One more bug I noticed only in the postgame testing: (rot13) lbh pna tb bire gur punve naq trg gb gur evtug bs pncgnva Xvex. Vs lbh'er gurer, Xvex vf fgvyy snpvat evtug, ohg ur qbrfa'g abgvpr vs lbh gnyx gb uvz naq lbh pna'g fubbg uvz jvgu gur aet jrncba.
11. The puzzles that took me the most time to figure out were both totally fair puzzles: (rot13) gung lbh pna teno gur bssvpre guebhtu gur tengr (V gevrq n ybg bs bgure npgvbaf qbjafgnvef jvgu abguvat jbexvat, ohg guvf bar vf snve orpnhfr lbh pna abgvpr gung gur svefg pbzznaq vf anzrq "teno" engure guna "gnxr"); naq gur vairagbel grgevf chmmyr.
12. I also spent a lot of time decoding the alphabet, but unlike the other two puzzles, that one was fun rather than frustrating, it only took a lot of time because of a lot of careful handwriting in alien and English.
13. I also spent time (rot13) gb svther bhg jung gur pneq qbrf, rfcrpvnyyl jul V pna'g hfr vg ba jung ybbxf yvxr n pneq ubyr ng gur vafvqr bs gur vaare qbbe bs gur nveybpx. V erfgnegrq gur tnzr gb gel gur grgevf chmmyr jvgubhg cvpxvat vg hc ohg gura ernyvmrq gung vg pna'g nssrpg gur grgevf chmmyr naljnl fvapr lbh jvyy nyjnlf unir n serr fdhner gb chg vg ng nal gvzr.
14. The most annoying part of the game interface by far was how the alien messages displayed. Sometimes an important message flashed up for a very short time and disappeared, so I had to make screenshots. Other times a message instead stayed on the the top message line forever until I did something to display the next one. There didn't seem to be any logic between which one of these behaviors each message had. Sometimes multiple irrelevant error messages got buffered up when I clicked on everything on screen trying to find what I can interact with, and then I had to wait for the message queue to empty and then restart. Sometimes a message popped up partly outside of the screen boundary and you had to scroll the background to get it completely inside the screen. I didn't check how much of this you have fixed since.
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There's a typo in the first link (the one below the picture). It's "runnning" (with three 'n's) |
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If you find your way here after 2018, you can try the final version of this game at
spacebar.org/flash/adventure.html
I abandoned it in this unfinished state; you can't win it, but there is at least a few things you can do. :) |
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You are right. I added the achievement badge for old time's sake!
The reason I didn't post the game immediately here was that I was hoping to fix some bugs and prepare some hints and things like that, since this is kind of the permanent archive of things, and but it's also hard to find the time and energy to do that stuff after a hectic weekend. I'm here to post it right now, though. :)
People may have seen it on Twitter. Probably not on the LD site, even, since my post there was pretty bare-bones! |
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I hope to port it to Free Hero Mesh (after Free Hero Mesh is written enough to do so), which is designed for implementing the kind of games like this. (However, the level size of Free Hero Mesh is limit to 64x64 tiles.) |
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13556. Anonymous (24.207.47.161) –
17 Aug 2018 16:13:31
[ ARST ARSW ]
Do you have a text file with the list of them (including how many of each)? |
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So, I was pointed out that Tom7 made another Ludum Dare game, "Running out of space" at http://runningoutof.spacebar.org/ , but since that requires like two days of concentration, he didn't have the time to post about it on his blog yet, so I don't know where anyone found the link to it. It's not even linked from the Ludum Dare section on http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/ yet. |
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Oops, I forgot to post the most important part of my comment: Congrats, Tom! |
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jonas: considering that, in 2010, Tom lamented "a weird pattern of behavior where I finish or almost finish big projects but then never announce them because my announcement ambitions exceed my announcement wherewithal," perhaps he's lowered his announcement ambitions to cope with that problem, and that's why there's no badge graphic. |
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13552. Anonymous (79.12.218.184) –
07 Aug 2018 18:22:29
[ Running update ]
News Flash: CYBER LEVITATOR PRAYS AND SAVES JESUS??? |
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Congratulations!
I think this post needs an "achievement unlocked" badge graphics like "in http://radar.spacebar.org/?month=1&year=2010" and "http://radar.spacebar.org/f/a/weblog/comment/1/1129". Keeping the Radar active for so many years (whether you post every month or not) is also a great achievement, and making the achievement badges consistent will be another sign that it's still the same Radar despite your changes in posting habit. |
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Your point about simple rules shows up in public health, too. For example, consuming alcohol when pregnant doesn't appear to be a problem in small doses, but the public health instruction of "Don't drink while pregnant" is vastly easier to follow than "Don't drink more than a little bit while pregnant", so it works a lot better. |
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Tristan: I think Deconstruct is planning on uploading all of the talks, so you should eventually be able to see it. But I haven't heard anything about them being available yet. They'll probably be on the web page. My talk was very similar to the Youtube video (with the YouTube video probably being a little better since I could edit it down a little and redo sections), so if you've watched that already, you got the gist. :)
bazza: There are some schematics in the source repository (for kicad):
sourceforge.net/p/tom7misc/svn/HEAD/tree/trunk/ppuppy/pcb/
I'm not offering any support for these, though! (: |
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Hello,
they do not exist diagrams or skematic?
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Hey Tom,
Is your Deconstruct talk available on YouTube or elsewhere? I’d like to see it if possible.
Thanks,
Tristan |
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Yes! Finally some Pac Tom updates! Thank you.
I agree that a strict run through country borders with more than three countries indeed seems difficult, and would probably require more than a marathon distance. If you cheat by considering Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republica Srpska as separate countries rather than a single federated country, then those two and Croatia and Montenegro is probably doable in a single run. But take a passport that is valid for at least 90 days after the trip, and please do your own research before you try this.
Or you could try to relax the rules by running a few kilometers in each of four countries the same day, but traveling on a vehicle (such as a bus, train, ship, bicycle, unibycle) in between the runs once. In that case, it would probably be cleanest to only cross borders while running. |
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So happy to have made that list :) |
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Here via Zoe Quinn's "10 Best Games of 2014" list. This was delightful and broke my brain a little. |
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tom, i can't stop listening to your tunes! i've begun jamming to them in ableton and it doesn't look like there's any end in sight!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNsqN-eyHjc
i plan to keep jamming and incrementally coming up with more complex arrangements!
you're the best! |
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Oh! I wonder if you’d like Opus Magnum? Not anything like any of the other games being discussed here but it really seems like something special that your brain might latch strongly onto. |
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Predicting the PPU is not that hard, but I don't have that many spare cycles to do it. The main challenges are:
- Address reads are noisy, but each address only tells you a little about where rendering is on the screen (nametable/attribute reads are nice and deterministic, but don't tell you the scanline; pattern table reads depend on the tile returned by the nametable, but do include low-order bits of the scanline).
- The PPU does some irregular stuff during "hblank" to read sprites and to prep the next scanline (I don't handle this and I think it's the main reason the left column of the screen is kinda messed up)
- You want each code path to be similar in length, to reduce timing jitter
Ultimately what I did here was pretty simple, but it's also delicate wrt timing, and went through several iterations (some were fancier and worked worse).
For sound: I need to watch this tasbot video since several people have mentioned it! I think making sound is actually pretty straightforward; for me it was just a matter of running out of time (for the project before my talks) and time (within a frame to do significant computation). |
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