Interview with Petri Purho

I recently got a chance to ask Petri Purho of Kloonigames some questions about rapid prototyping, Crayon Physics, etc.

Q: Introduce yourself, however you like.
A: I’m Petri Purho and I’m probably best known for my extremely bad english, without a spell checker. Also I made Crayon Physics.

An Experiment

This is what happened when I attempted to make a real-time shooter game with just text, and no special libraries. That’s the player and various enemies on screen, shooting +’s at each other. It works great on the Linux computer, but on a Windows computer, the command prompt scrolls up somewhat smoothly, thus ruining the screen updates. Imagine massive screen tearing. But hey, I made it in a day.  I think this type of system would still work for something a little bit slower paced, like a turn based grid strategy game or something.

At some point, I may replace the rendering code with ncurses, and use pdcurses to make it work on Windows. I plan to start working on full OpenGL games again soon, so maybe I’ll port it. We shall see.

TAWS Volume 4

TAWS Volume 4, a network-enabled version of volume 3, is complete. The gameplay is largely the same as in volume 3, with most of the difference between the volumes being in the interface and the game setup. It’s basically the same, though. Go ahead and give it a shot, it’s waiting for you in the TAWS Series section.

Quick note: For those of you who tried running the Windows versions of the other TAWS volumes and were met with an annoying error, this issue has now been fixed.

Update: A new build of TAWS Volume 4 has been uploaded to fix some bugs like slow typing, server quitting when a client leaves, etc. If you downloaded TAWS Volume 4 before January 28, 2008, you have an old version.

Update 2: After more testing, the (I hope) final version of TAWS Volume 4 has been uploaded.  This version is an update to the server only, so if you have a client from before January 28, 2008, or a server from before the 29th, you need to download something.  It is now easier to use, and much more polished.

Have fun!

TAWS Volumes 1-3

As you may have noticed, there is a new page for the TAWS Series under Games. That’s where you can read about the Text Adventure Without Swords games I have made so far. Feel free to give them a try, there are links to Windows executables as well as the source code for each on that page.

Each of the TAWS games have different gameplay mechanics, style, and progression, which I think was a good choice so that I didn’t go over any ground I had already covered, and the games were each fresh. Each of them was an attempt to create a game that had more replay value in measurable time than the working time that it took to actually create the game. I think TAWS Volume 3, coming in at approximately fifty-five minutes, achieves that game, if for no other reason than that a full game simply takes a good chunk of time to play; however, I think people will have no trouble playing it multiple times, taking the total replay time to far greater lengths than the development. I’ve learned what key elements in TAWS Volume 3 let players play it over and over again:

• Strategy Elements: In any good game, the player is given various options to choose from, to determine his next move. TAWS Volume 3 includes such elements, but keeps the game fairly simple at the same time. This lets the player experiment and even change his strategy in the middle of a game if the need arises.
• Multiplayer: It’s a multiplayer game, so whenever you play it with someone, the one who comes out defeated in one match will surely change their strategy somehow in an attempt to best the winner in the next one. Not only that, but you can always find a different combination of players to challenge one another.
• Configuration: TAWS Volume 3 allows the players to configure various gameplay elements upon creation of a new game. Thus, the number of games that could be played, each different from the previous ones, still being an enjoyable experience, is very large.

In addition to being good practice and a great learning experience, I hope some people will enjoy playing these games too.

Let’s play that some more

Happy New Year, everybody! Best wishes for the new year!

I’ve really gone and done it now. I’ve set a fun goal for myself. The goal is to create a game that has a greater replay value than the time it takes to create it. That is, the time it can be played before putting it away and not touching it again for several months is greater than the time it took to put it together (not including the design process). I figure it will be an exercise in speedy programming as well as creative design.

I thought of this idea while I was starting to program TAWS, that little text-based game I posted about recently. In fact, that was my first attempt. The total creation time came in at something like an hour and twenty five minutes (1:25), and I’m afraid the replay value doesn’t nearly match it. I blame this on three things:

1. I didn’t even have that goal in mind when I first set out on it, so I’m fairly certain that the end creation time is not representative of what it would have been, had I really been trying.
2. The entire creation of the game was on a whim, so I kind of designed it as I went (generally a bad idea). Thus, it took much longer than if I had had specific goals in mind, and worked straight toward them.
3. The whole concept of the game is repetitive, meant as a play-when-you’re-bored sort of game, so it is generally only played for several minutes at a time. This is not going to suck anyone in to the point where they lose track of any time.

I have some ideas brewing. If all goes well, I’ll post some results here. If you would like to try this yourself, feel free to comment here, and let me know how your project is coming along. Basically, the rules are that you start either from scratch (which I did with my text-based game), or with a very basic framework (window initialization, basic functions and engine functionality etc). All gameplay and related architecture should be from scratch.  Any additional people working on the project add their working time to the total. For example, if two people work on the project for 5 minutes each, that’s 10 minutes, and if one works for 5 minutes, that’s 5 minutes, and so on. I’m working by myself, so it doesn’t make much difference to me.

Just something I thought would be fun, to kick off the new year.