Games – lobstworks.com

Monogame Test: Text Formatting

Depicted here: A series of rapid-fire test cases for my MonoGame script interpreter’s message box; written on Linux, captured on Windows. Effects include:

Multiple spritefonts per-line
Multiple colors per-line
Movement effects: jitter, sine wave
Color effects: “Spooky”, “Rainbow”
Cues to speed-up/slow-down
Icons/emojis inserted alongside text
Numerous effects can be combined!

(The color effects will be used in non-HtM visual novel projects; all future versions of HtM will still be in 1-bit, or a close approximation thereof. It looks like I’ll have to manually write the shaders to make it happen and look nice, though.)

7/24/2017: Quick HtM Update

Progress has been slow going (I’ve had commissions and other comic projects that needed to be taken care of first), but I’ve had my nose to the grindstone learning C# and XNA for Hit The Motherlode’s MonoGame port over the last week or so. I’ve decided all forthcoming versions of HtM – as well as all other game projects, for the foreseeable future – will be in 960×540 resolution, as opposed to the demo’s 720×400. Pictured above is a quick mockup I made to prove to myself that the added screen real estate wouldn’t be ultimately harmful to the game’s presentation; nothing in it is final, save for the fonts and buttons.

I have a bunch of other things planned for the port (which will still have the same amount of content as the demo, just with a bit of polish), but I figure I should save them for when I have footage of the new build in motion. Additionally, the quote in the lorem ipsum Omicron’s belting out here is from the first prose book I had on hand, and I only now realized that the date quoted is the same day of the year as today. How ominous!

A couple of quick Omicron full-body portraits…

A couple of quick Omicron full-body portraits, in service of finally developing the character from the neck down! I’ve decided they’ll always be rendered without color or grayscale shading, to avoid stepping on anyone’s personal color-canon. (Their facial portraits will show their shirt collar in the final game, I think.)

Release: Hit The Motherlode (Alpha Version)

With the conclusion of the 1-Bit Clicker Jam, a highly-incomplete version of my new idle game, Hit The Motherlode, is uploaded, patched, and ready to be played! A couple of notes:

– Windows-only, for now. I was initially planning on a simultaneous release on PC, Mac, and Linux, but discovered only at the last minute that I didn’t have the requisite modules in my version of GameMaker Studio. When the final version is ready I’ll pick up GameMaker 2 Desktop, which should allow me to make the full game available for free for just about everyone with a computer.

– As mentioned before – the game is very incomplete (it’s barely even a game at the moment), and has been uploaded in its current state only because I spent three solid weeks on it for a game jam. When the complete version comes out you will most likely have to start over, but I plan to expand what’s there enough to make starting over feel worthwhile.

Future development updates related to this game will be made available on the Tumblr made exclusively for this project: @hitthemotherlode. Enjoy! (^ ~)