Aug 06 2008
Well, it’s been well over a week, time to talk about how things went with Robot Finds Ice Cream.
In general, I’m pleased with the game, but less pleased with the production quality that came out of it. I justify it by pointing out that it was implemented in just a week, and that explanation seems to satisfy everyone except me.
More beneath the fold.
Jul 26 2008
So it’s time to talk a little about the Game in a Week that I’m ostensibly working on.
This particular GiaW is interesting, in that of all the GiaWs I have done, I got the final game idea for this one the earliest in the week (Tuesday morning), but left the first implementation the latest. This was primarily due to work and other real-life factors distracting me. Also, I was introduced to several neat TV shows this week, all of which have conspired to pull me away from the computer. Also also, I’ve been a little distracted by MMORPG Tycoon bugfixes and development. Now I know how Petri feels, trying to do his monthly games while still getting work done on Crayon Physics Deluxe!
Anyhow, this is also the GiaW where I’ve used the most words from the initial quote, in setting the game theme. The initial quote (from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, although I’m sure that the same sentence appears in the less deprecatingly-titled Philosopher’s Stone), I’ll remind, was this:
It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot.
I’ve pulled words from this passage to form my game’s theme, and the game’s theme is this: “It is very hard to move around, because it remembers a lot.”
So. In this game, the player takes on the role of a young boy. This boy has a robot pet/friend/nanny, and is going shopping with that robot. Unfortunately, the robot is being a little difficult today; owing to a minor design flaw in its object-avoidance programming, the robot absolutely refuses to cross its own path, for fear of colliding with itself in the past.
Also unfortunately, the robot has the money. And so the boy must get the robot to each of the vending machines in each level by pulling on the robot’s leash or shoving the robot, but with the robot never agreeing to cross its own path.
This game is strongly grid-based, and there is no time limit; each level is a maneuverability puzzle which players must solve to reach the next level. And it’ll be trivially easy for anyone to create new levels for the game. And I’m hoping to set it up so that the computer can automatically generate new levels itself. Though that might be a bit of a push, by the end of the day tomorrow. We’ll see!
Anyhow, I don’t have a title for the game yet; possible options I’ve entertained are “Robot Pal”, “Robot Goes Shopping”, and my current favourite, “Robot Finds Ice-Cream”. So for right now, I’m just calling it “Robot”.
Jul 21 2008
I’ve gotten very little coding done in the past week; mostly feeling a little worn out and uninspired. So I’m going to kick myself into gear by starting another Game in a Week, as a break from development on MMORPG Tycoon. Not to fret, though; I’ll be back on MMORPG Tycoon after this is done. 
It’s past midnight at the moment, and I really need my sleep, so I’m going to keep this short. The book for this Game in a Week is a hardback edition of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, by J.K. Rowling (as though I had to tell you that). This is a US printing of the book, published by Scholastic Press, and the text is copyrighted 1997. There probably aren’t many copies of the US-titled version of the book here in Australia, but somehow I wound up with one of them, so it’s the one that I’m using.
As always, my topic selection method is to open a book randomly, and take the first sentence which is completely on the leftmost page. From this sentence, I must choose one or more words to take as the theme for the game I’m to design and implement within the next seven days. In this case, I’ve opened to page 132, and the first sentence entirely on that page is:
“It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot.”
In my mind, that passage kind of conjures images of a cross between Concentration and the Three Card Monte. But I’m not nearly cruel enough to inflict such a horror on any of you fine people. At least, not unless it gets to be Sunday and I haven’t come up with anything better. 
My initial thoughts are that good words for starting with would be “remember”, and “move around”. And if I twist it a little, maybe I could turn “lot” into “lots”, and do something with small stones. Or the game could take place in an empty lot. Or there could just be a lot of things to remember or move around. So many possibilities!
Anyhow, I’ll post more thoughts tomorrow, when I’ve had proper sleep.
