Block Drop

I created a retro-style video game called "Block Drop" in my Advanced Game Development class at camp the last couple of weeks in C++. It's a pretty basic game where you can create blocks by pressing space. After you have created 6 blocks, it will then loop through and destroy the first block you created to make the new block. You can jump on the blocks and use them to reach higher places in the levels. There are three enemies, each with different ways of movement and different properties. The largest enemies can not kill you, but will follow you around to the left or right and stop when you are on top of them. The second largest enemy will move back and forth, but is able to kill you if it hits you. The last enemy hops around and is able to kill you if it lands on you, but you can turn it into an extra block if you land on it. Below is a picture and the installer for the game:
Also, I'd like to point out that you can edit levels inside the game. There is a file in the "levels" folder that outlines the rules to making levels, and you can copy paste it into a file. I did not include this, but the grid size for the levels is 13x10 grid points. Go at it and please post your levels in the comments! Here's one I put together just now:
00.e....0E...00.00001+....00.e.00++00..00.000000....00.e..01+....00.0000++..0000.e...00....00.00000X....0P.e...001+..2++002++0++..
I think it's the hardest one I've made!
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Zombie Shooter (Sewer level!)

I've created a sewer level for this version of the game, but I won't tell you how to get to it! Try to find out how, and in the mean time, here's a screenshot of the actual sewer area below. There are three new levels added to the game, and the last has a road on it, alluding to what is to come with the setting of the game later on. I've fixed a problem with the previous version where I forgot to take out my debugging cheat which shoots you into the church area.

Download Links:

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Zombie Shooter (Music < 4 MB)

I did a bit of editing and with the introduction of the SuperSound DLL, I've been able to reduce the file size down to a mere 3.22MB, significantly down from the previous 10MB with little to no quality loss on the sounds. With the changes come bugs, so it would be great if you could test out room transitions between the church and the underground levels to make sure the music flows in and out smoothly. Also, I've added many more types of enemies, ranging from one-eyed to missing part of their skulls so you can see their brains. Also, inside the church there are zombies with priest hats! Please tell me what you think, and check out the below image for a look at the the new priest-zombies.

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Zombie Shooter (Background Music)

I've just finished adding three different ambient tracks from FlashKit to the game that will appear at different levels. Rather than just have the music abruptly change, I have the different music fade in and out between levels. Look for the changes when you enter/exit the underground levels, as well as the (new) church level. I've added two new levels, including one where you find the church and one inside the church. Controls have not changed at all with this update, so I won't include a new list, but I have made the achievements that you have not earned show up in the pause menu.

Download Links (Sorry for the enormous file size, it's the music...)

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Zombie Shooter (Pause Menu)

Once again, because of camp, I've been unable to make any large updates, but today I put together a small menu that will show you which achievements you have obtained. I've also solved one of the small glitches where if you jump out of the large cavern, you will not be able to jump off of the ground until you drop down. I hope you enjoy!

Here you can see all of the possible achievements after they have been unlocked.
Download Links:MediaFireWillHostForFood (currently under maintenance)

Zombie Shooter with Achievements

I've decided to do a small update with some basic achievements for the game. So far there are 12 different achievements (okay, a few of them are similar, but generally they're different) which I will not say (except for the one in the screenshot) and I hope you can find easily enough. I haven't had enough time to thoroughly test them all, but I believe you can get them all without errors. Please do a little test run through and if you get any errors, post them in the comments at the bottom of this post. I'll release the full list of achievements with the next post, as well as how to get them, so hold tight! Also, comment with which achievements you were able to find!

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Zombie Shooter v1.3

I finished up version 1.3 today with many updates. I took Draco and NT's advice with fixing as many bugs and glitches as possible, along with adding some gameplay elements. Below is a list of the main additions:

• Fire Shot Pickup: You will be able to light enemies on fire when shooting them.
• Explosive Crates and Barrels: These will blow up and spurt flames, lighting zombies on fire in the process.
• Cobblestone House: I added a new level which has a house that you can enter.
• Body Parts: Zombies will explode into 5-6 pieces when killed, adding some gore and fun to the game.
• Sounds: I added a few home-made sound effects to the game for shooting and such.
• Health: You can finally die! If you avoid zombies for a little while, you will spawn green glowing balls that will heal you.
• Death Animation: If you lose all your health, you will fall over, be eaten by zombies, and the game will restart.
• Three More Roomes: I've added a few more levels to the game, so enjoy!

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like when you are killed (much more fun to see fully animated!)

Controls:

• Left Mouse Button: Shoot primary weapon.
• Right Mouse Button: Shoot secondary weapon (when you have dual-wield).
• Space: Switch weapon.
• WASD: Move.

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Zombie Platform Shooter: Lots of Changes!

I made several changes and additions to the platform zombie shooter I started a couple of days ago, including:

• Pistol and machine gun shots do not go through enemies.
• Sniper rifle added.
• Sniper rifle and shotgun bullets go through enemies.
• Pistol, Shotgun, Machine Gun, and Sniper Rifle are all pick-ups.
• 12 playable levels.
• 2 different graphics for enemeis.
• Enemies will lose their heads when hurt.
• Dual-Wieldable weapons (all of them are dual-wieldable).
• Instructions at the beginning of the game given to you from a zombie (oh, the irony).
• Double Jump unlockable.
• New background graphics.

Here shows the shotgun right after I shot it at an enemy with the new enemy graphics.

Download Links:

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Zombie Platform Shooter

Today I decided to mix it up a bit and try out something I've never done before. Rather than go with my traditional top-down shooter view of a zombie game, I decided to make it a platformer. Using this new view, it enabled me to utilize my wonderful platformer AI engine and plug it into a real game. This worked out wonderfully (save for a few glitches, which I believe I fixed) and now I have a fully-functioning shooter! I created three weapons for the game (pistol, shotgun, and gatling gun) which all work great. The shotgun requires 5 ammunition to shoot, but deals more damage than the pistol, which uses only one ammo per shot. The shotgun is also able to kill a zombie with one shot if the zombie is close enough (as a shotgun should!) The gatling gun, which is definitely my favorite, can plow through hordes of enemies with its 15 shots/sec speed. It's slightly less accurate than the pistol, but that doesn't matter a whole lot when you are ripping through the enemies at that speed!

Above you can see the full moon (custom graphics) as well as the player facingoff against a zombie. The building to the right is a mausoleum and will spawn anew zombie whenever you kill one.

I decided to use a global ammunition meter so the player doesn't need to think about how much ammo he has for each gun, which helps to make things easier. By far the hardest and longest task I had to do was create each level's terrain by hand. This makes for a cool effect (walking through long grass and the like) but does take some time, and thus I only have 4 levels. All of the graphics were custom-made by me today, as well as all the programming (save for the platformer AI).

Controls:

• [W,A,S,D] to move
• [Space] to change weapons (cycle through the three)
• Mouse to aim
• Left click to shoot (hold with the gatling gun to continue shooting).

Download Links:

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Also, I managed to catch up to Guy in the Medium difficulty highscores on Unhinged! Yay!

Updates All-Around

I've done many small updates in quite a few different areas, which I will mention below.

Website

First off, I've updated the website with new graphics, those being that it now has a few colored gradient off to the sides, as well as a more defined barrier between sidebar and the main section. Also, both of the respective areas have a light bi-linear gradient across them for yet more color. The header was also changed a bit to include colorized blocks, rather than the old green ones.

Exploration Game

I added 15 new levels to the now 31 level exploration game that I've been working on with Lewa. I also added another tree and faded scenic background element. It's not a lot of new stuff, but it is enough to screw around and have fun with! Lewa also made a few nice updates to the wall-climbing, so it works much better than before (although there are still a few known bugs with it).

The new tree!

Download Links

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Blast

This isn't actually as much an update the actual game, but more of an update to the status of development. I've decided to hold off on working on it (not that I have anyway) until the next yoyogames competition has started up. I've heard from unofficial sources that it will start soon, and it appears to me to be true. I'm going to enter Blast into the competition (as long as it fits the theme) to see if I can win the $1000 first prize. Also, I have begun searching for music and sound effects for the game. If you feel at all inclined to help me out, please post in the GMC topic or here!

Unhinged

This is very insignificant, but I placed second in the standings for Unhinged on the hard level highscores! I'm catching up Guy!

Out of the Vault: Water Engine

I made this engine a little while ago and was quite proud of it at the time. It simulates 2D water waves on a quite processor-heavy scale, but gives a pretty cool effect. Upon closer inspection, you'll notice that the waves do not spread outwards in a normal manner, which was the ultimate downfall of this project. As you can see, the waves do not stay constant and move outwards, but rather force is picked up along the line, and it seems to act like more of an absorptive jello. Anyways, the controls and such are all listed in the game, and there are many sliders to screw around with to help you achieve your own effect.

Download Links:

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If you look off to the bottom right of page (below the affiliates box), I have added the online highscores list for Unhinged, so if you play you can find them!

Platformer AI

I've become obsessed with making AI opponents recently, which led to my development of a platformer AI for enemies. They hop, they walk, and they go after the player, and you can use it if you want! I've put up a .gmk version of the game as well as an executable with fully commented code for your programming usage. If you feel the need, I'm allowing full access to the sprites/images and such as well (although they aren't incredible on any scale). Here's a screenshot of gameplay below (includes a flying sword that you can use to defend yourself and pelt the enemies with repeatedly until they die):

Controls:

• Arrow Keys for movement
• [Space] to toggle the sword.

Download Links:
.gmk

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.exe

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Also, if you'd like to look to the bottom right of the sidebar, there is an affiliate section. I've been picking and choosing sites to try and get a little advertising to get this blog out. If you'd like to become an affiliate, please e-mail me at c.ullmann@hotmail.com with the name of your site, the URL, and the image for your affiliate banner (88x31 image). I will send you my banner as well, which will appear as below:

Life Simulation: Major Update! (Might be finished soon!)

I have renamed the simulation to "Genesis."

I think I'm about done with this simulation! I added a new creature (a small "velociraptor" as I've begun to call it) that will attack in groups against the herbivores, who will also attempt to stay in groups to avoid being eaten. The largest creatures, as always, lumber about killing anything smaller than itself. The night and day system has also been improved as I added a nice time-measurement at the top (a sun that moves across the screen that turns into a moon at night). The animals can only sleep if it is night-time, so once they have been injured during the day, they need to stop and wait until sun-down to regain their health.

To elaborate on my earlier mention of "groups," I spent much of today creating a pack mentality among creatures (the velociraptors and herbivores) which is based off of a few simple rules.

• If a creature is close enough to another creature, a leader will be chosen from among them.
• If a creature strays outside of a radius of the leader or can not see the leader, they are not part of the pack any longer.
• If a creature moves away from the pack, but is still close enough to the pack to be part of it, they will attempt to move closer to the pack.
• If a creature is not in a pack, it will move towards the closest member of its species to attempt to start one or become a member of that member's pack.
• *Carnivores only* If the leader chooses a target to attack, all of the members of the pack will attack that creature as well.

These simple rules dictate many of the actions of the animals in the game, and make it a little more interesting. The velociraptors are weak and vulnerable on their own (they are lucky if they can take down even one herbivore on their own) but as a group they are able to take down a couple of them at once. This addition really added a little more reality to Genesis because it made the animals more interdependent rather than stand-alone.

Here's a simple screenshot of this version featuring the moon/time-keeper as well as the velociraptors (and their small footprints):

For those of you who are unfamiliar, here is the foodchain of the simulation:

Grass -> Herbivore -> Velociraptor -> Large Predator

The large predator will eat herbivores and velociraptors, while velociraptors will run from large predators and eat herbivores. Herbivores will eat grass and avoid all carnivores.

Slight controls update:

• Left click and drag to select units.
• Right click to make the selected units move towards the mouse.
• [Shift] sets the current time to sun-down/sun-up.
• Press [D] to toggle the different debug options which are:

1. See the target movement positions of each animal.

2. See the ranges for running and walking for each animal

(vary by daylight).

3. See the pack memberships

(lines are drawn from each animal to its leader).

4. See all of the above at once.

Download Links:

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Life Simulation: Update!

I decided to add a little update to "Life" since I got bored today. Generally, it is graphical with the addition of trees, nicer graphics for the herbivores, and footsteps for the carnivores, but there are also a few changes with the actual AI and overall concept with the addition of a night and day system which limits sight among the creatures (i.e. their walking ranges and hunting ranges are decreased to be much smaller) as well as a fun little random rain here and there that I thought would fit in nicely (effect by Game Cave Effects Engine). The herbivores also take a few bites by the carnivores to kill, and they will run a bit quicker when injured because they're more scared. The emotion-signs that the creatures display will always stay inside the room, making it easier to track them once they're outside the window. Here's a screenshot of what I've got:If you look closely, you can see the carnivore's tracks, as well as the new sprites for the herbivores. There's also a tree or two in there, and you can see that one of the herbivores is hurt and sleeping. The emoticon for sleep is also a new addition above the predator.
Download Links:MediaFireWillHostForFood

Cube Runner Clone

This program was my second venture into using Game Maker's 3D functions. I am still quite inexperienced with Game Maker in this regard, but I hope to get better in the future. As for some background on this game, it was created as a clone of the game "Cube Runner" for iPod where the player is a small object that runs forward dodging cubes in the process. The game runs forever and the player has to try and top the highscore. Using simple spheres, cubes, and textures, I put this together one evening just to try out making 3D games and it went pretty well. Below is a screenshot of gameplay:

Download Links:

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Exploration Game

I began a short time ago making an exploration-type game based off of Knytt Stories by Nifflas' Games with the help of Lewa from the GMC. We've worked on a couple games together and we seem to do pretty good work as a team. I've pretty well dedicated myself to being just a graphics designer for this game, rather than a programmer, but I have done some work on it as a programmer. Here are a couple of screenshots of the game (no color or shading on the player yet, but we're just trying to get the engine going):

More [1][2]

I've been trying to get a nice feel for the game rather than having it be a lot of running around and punching enemies, which can be shown by the fact that we haven't even started graphics or programming for any of the enemies!

For anyone who is interested, Lewa did the wonderful ambient music for the game (only one has been put in so far, but he has more coming!)

Download Links:

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A Generic Tower Defense

I decided to create "A Generic Tower Defense" to show some people in my programming class how easy Game Maker is to use as opposed to using Visual Basic and C++. This game I consider pretty well finished (unlike some other people who think I should keep working on it) and I'm glad to put it out here. The controls are very simple to use, consisting of a lot of left-clicking on things, and pressing [space] for the next wave. There are 6 different towers to choose from:

(Below pasted from the Game Maker Community topic)

• Basic Tower: Starts with a mid-level attack range with an AOE shot and upgrades to higher range, shooting speed, damage, and AOE.
• Ice Tower: Stops enemies that it shoots who come within its very small range. Upgrades to longer lengths of freeze.
• Poison Tower: A tower that shoots poison darts that will poison enemies into being hurt for a period of time. Upgrades to longer poison time and a higher shooting speed.
• Flame Tower: Blasts flames in a radius that will damage any enemy nearby. Good early on, but can be near useless later on. Upgrades to shorter times between explosions and more damage.
• Epic Tower: An expensive tower that shoots quickly and with very damaging bullets. Does not upgrade.
• *NEW* Darkness Tower: This tower spits out small enemy-seeking missiles that will continue to hunt down enemies for a period of time that can be increased through upgrades.

Screenshot:

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Unhinged!

I released Unhinged a while back, but I decided to put it on here because it is one of about 2 or 3 games that I consider "finished." I really like it because it has a full set of sound effects and great background music (in my opinion) unlike most of my games. I've released it on yoyogames and it has had good feedback and several plays. Also, there is an online highscores list for each of the three different difficulties. Here are a few screenshots of gameplay:

Features an interactive menu with an unfolding controls list

(click on it to watch it open and close!)

Download Links:

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Blast

I have been working on a large platformer adventure game for a couple months now called "Blast." This has been a fun project that I have also created a blog for to show progress. It is currently on its 17th update and I'm hoping to finish it by the end of the month. Due to a lack of motivation, I haven't done any real work on it, but I hope to get this all finished and wrapped up soon. My ultimate goal is to enter this in a Yoyogames competition sometime in the future in order to get some actual money from all of my time spent making games!

If you would like to view the blog, here's the link!
http://gm-blast.blogspot.com/

Gravity Grid

Addition - Open Source Download

This is a springs system developed by another developer I met online whom I've made a few games with. He created the initial program, while I tacked on a system of springs that was slightly more advanced and also added four "modes" to show. You can use "points" mode, which will display the points as... well, points. You can also used the grid mode, which will draw it in a grid with different colored vertices depending on stresses. The texture mode and color mode are my two favorites, as the texture mode can display it as a distorted image and the color mode looks a bit like water. Controls are shown during play.


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The Blog! (...And a Life Simulator!)

The Blog!

This is an all-purpose blog created as a showcase for my Game Maker works over the last couple years. I have created everything from top-down shooters to platformer adventure games to artificial intelligence simulations to softbody physics examples and I want to show them off! Most of what I have worked on I do not consider finished, but I think it is still worth putting out there for people to see.

"Life"
To start off this wonderful new blog, I've decided to post up a little simulation I've been working on un-creatively named "Life." This simulation is made to simulate a small habitat with two large monsters, up to twenty small "prey" creatures, and abundant food sources for the prey.

Rules of the Simulation:

Predators:
-Will only eat when they are hungry.
-Will become slightly hurt by whatever they eat depending on the number of spikes on the creature.
-Will only hunt prey that they can kill without being mortally wounded.
-Will sleep when they are hurt to regain their health.
-Will only eat other smaller animals.
-Will walk around if they aren't sleeping and aren't chasing food.
-Will display exclamations of their feelings (pictures below).

From left to right: Hungry, hungry and looking for food that has hidden itself, hungry and chasing food, and not hungry.

Prey:

-Will run away from predators if they see them.

-Will look for a mate if there aren't too many prey on the screen at once.

-Will eat grass if they can see it.

-Will gain spikes if they eat grass (and will deal more damage to the predators as a result when eaten).

-Will walk around if they can't see grass, a mate, or a predator.

From left to right: Baby prey, looking for mate, running from predator, and spiked.

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