00:00
00:00
I-smel
Hey look man, my name's "I-smel". What I lack in smarts, I at least pay back in honesty. Boink!

Tom Brien @I-smel

Age 32, Male

England, MAN-CHESTer

Joined on 3/2/06

Level:
1
Exp Points:
10 / 20
Exp Rank:
> 100,000
Vote Power:
1.50 votes
Rank:
Civilian
Global Rank:
> 100,000
Blams:
0
Saves:
17
B/P Bonus:
0%
Whistle:
Normal
Trophies:
12
Medals:
473
Supporter:
11m 29d
Gear:
2

kids these days spend too much time reading and not enough time uploading video blogs to youtube

Posted by I-smel - December 8th, 2008


No game update this week. All I did was finish the boss 2 death animation, and it's not really a big enough change to talk about.

But I don't want to waste a space here, so let's play a different game.

This is a side side side project I've had on the side for a while. You control it by moving the mouse:

Play

It's fun and pretty, but I don't know what I can do with it. Surely there's a game in this somewhere, but I can't think of one that's good enough. I can image most people sayin I COULD JUST PLAY THIS, and yeah so could I, but that'd be such a waste. Here's one idea I had: The variable called LENGTH counts down and you have to keep getting dots fast enough before you run out of- black stuff:

Countdown

And that's a bit more fun. At this point I've got things to collect and a score (the length of your tail is your score). So I've got the foundations of a game here. I want to pick it up and run with it, but I got nothin.

I thought of an aesthetic: Some scientists are developing a living symbiote that can cure diseases. You play as a tiny little nanobot that carries the symbiote to it's destinations. That's a nice concept, but I still need a game to go with it.

I noticed how the game makes it feel like you're growing as you collect more aswell. As you get bigger, the camera zooms out; a side-effect is that it makes your confinements more and more apparent. When I got to a decent size, I found myself smashing on the walls even though I knew it wouldn't do anything, because I made it.
The process of outgrowing your surroundings- Is there a game in that? This is some crazy Ed McMillen shit we're talkin about now, I better go lie down for a sec.

I made a right fuckin geek out o myself in this. Stop readin my thing, Marlon.

kids these days spend too much time reading and not enough time uploading video blogs to youtube


Comments

creepiest game of snake ive ever played.

I never thought of it as creepy.

maybe you could include enemies, or powerups, and then you could make it exactly like every other game along these lines out there!

I hate you.

Wait I don't know whether this is sarcastic or not.

I-Shmel

I don't get what joke you're trying to make.

o ya and what i meant in the last post was the space inbetween each hallway that you look down. the perspective gets a little weird.
.
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \

where the little dot is. imagine thats the hallways, and sorry if im posting too much.

OH the 3D background thing? Yeah, I meant to change that.

The countdown thing is fun. I like the idea of outgrowing your surroundings... perhaps after you reach a certain size, you can charge the wall and they will break down, letting you into a larger, more challenging area with different enemies etc.

You could even complicate it a tiny bit by, as the game progresses, having indestrucible spaces that you need to be smaller to get through, before growing again to burst out of yet another prison. The level design would be a bit complex, but you could have it so that as the game goes on, the point you started at is always within the game, just getting tinier and tinier compared to you...

Oh. Those are some good ideas.

Although I throw up in my mouth a little everyime someone mentiones "enemies" or "powerups". Cannoncrotch, Crunchdown and YeahBabyGoYeah are powerups and enemies, this is something different. This is more like Co-operation, but even more unconventional.

Fitting through small gaps is a pretty good idea. I can imagine shrinking down small enough to fit through a tunnel, but running to the other side of it quick enough to get the next thing before you run out of- Stuff. As you get close to running out, a green light on the nanobot could start blinking faster and faster. When you're dangerously low it'd be like BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

It's funny how you called the room a prison, I've never done that.

I'd like to have the origin point allways visible, but the framerate starts to wreck after you get really really big.

I'm going to guess you used masks for the ball thing.. but that's just me guessing.. I want to mimic that now, for the sake of seeing if I can do it c:

Yeah I used a mask to make the ball look like it's rolling. There's a tutorial on that exact thing somewhere. Good luck with doing it on your own, it's fucking hard.

Great idea...
and some McMillen touch would really complete this...

Maybe your a horrible disease...
and the round ball is a healthy cell...
at a certian point when your big enough...
the cell is turned into a bad cell and you are allowed out...
to wreak havoc on more cells...
it would have to be more than that...
Maybe each different cell has a different types of balls...
some have multiple balls...
some have really fast ones...
stuff like that...

You conform the disease to a different cell by smashing into it- That could turn into something fun.

And the design behind Ed McMillen's games is that he makes each element based around the original idea. What I'm doing here, asking around for ideas, is kind of like the opposite of that.

Oh!
Another idea...
make it like snake so when you touch your tail you die...

Nah I don't like that. It make the tail look less pretty when you can't go over it, and the controls aren't built for precision turning.

that's very pretty indeed. and yeah, I agree... I feel like there's a potential for something really great and really well-made here, but it needs something else. using cells is kind of cool, and my thought on that is when you get big enough, maybe you take over the circle you're in and that circle itself BECOMES YOU. infinite universes bro

idk but I think if you do expand it into something bigger, keep it black and white B)

Yeah I thought of consuming the circle pretty early on. Conceptually it's cool, cos you're like YEAH I TOTALLY FUCKIN ATE THAT CIRCLE. Visually though, it doesn't work that well, cos you're like WELL NOW THE CIRCLE'S GONE AND I'M JUST A LINE. IT WAS A PRETTY COOL CIRCLE.

Thinking about it though, it might work if I tooke off some limitations when you consumed the circle- like you suddenly got way faster and could smash through shit.

being serious this time -

maybe you could have it like one of those ball revamped games! those are fun!

No.

just kidding. but i had to double post or you mightve found out a bit too fast. anyways, you should have it so that way the little dot you eat is a little different color, because when you get big enough, it's easy to get lost as to where the dot is, even with the arrow pointing the way. secondly, i hit a glitch where i waited around a little while before i ate the dots, and after i ate the second dot, everything all of a suddenly enlarged to about... somehow more than 1600% (or maybe it was 1600 and it was just where my screen was).

P.S. improve your .jpg quality

Now is not the time to report glitches. Jesus.

Exactly my thought when you said outgrowing your surroundings "Edmund McMillen copy..."

This prototype looks really good but yeah it needs 'something' to make it more interesting.

Yeah man I'm totally rippin off everyone, cheers.

Enemies = bad. The game works already, the mechanics don't need fixing. I think all you need to do is make levels. I wanted to know what was beyond the edges of what you already made, I think if you played with that aspect of it, it'd be really fun. I loved the idea of shrinking and expanding for certain areas (some walls you have to smash through, others you have to squeeze through). I think a timer for shrinking would piss me off though; they always do. Timers make it feel like you have to hurry, but in a game like this where you're just supposed to figure it out as you go, hurrying is just a frustration. Instead, have another type of dot to eat to make you smaller. It'll have an Alice in Wonderland vibe.

You could play with that too, like collecting enough red dots until you catch fire to burn through something, or collecting triangular dots to turn into a wedge that can pry a wall open. I'm thinking of it more like a puzzle game than an action game.

cool, reminds me of the cell stage in spore.

Never played it.

You should make the tail/points in a defrent color, at high levels it's hard to see them cause of the tail

I like that, it curves your progression.

I think the ideas ditocoaf came up with are great. It ould also be like a vareity game where different levels have different shapes and need you to do something different while keeping the same basic gameplay.

Like one level may be a curved M like shape and you have to collect a certain amount of (x, y, z) without touching the walls.

Another awesome thing would be if you had to push or move certain objects to reach the (x, y ,z)

What a lazy fucking douche you are.

http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/3 608/6 2013_boxhead.php

I'm in way over my head and this stuff is getting complicated so I'm thinking of starting something new.

Don't give up... what you've made so far is so fucking good, you don't even realize yet. It's serious professional quality. Yeah things get really frustrating when you've got a shitload to sort through to fix one little bug, and then more bugs keep popping up... but in the end it'll be completely worth it.

in all honesty, i think for the style of game it looks like, you shouldn't really pause the game for every new level, maybe just keep the game going as you progress, with maybe a new level name or something like that, sort of like how half life and gears do it.

Oh, you would look at my userpage.

More Results