Voxacastle by Jumps

by Jumps

Cart #1613 | 2011-10-31 | Embed ▽ | No License

9

Here's some forest & castle levels made with the editor. Feel free to doodle with it :D

To play BBS levels in Voxatron, go "play" then "bbs levels" - simple as that!

And to upload your own levels, go to the Voxatron page on this site and "Submit a Level".

All the level data is stored as a single .png image file so you can post levels freely on the interwebs & wotnot.

dreaming of a world where i get home from work and play voxatron ... then build a few new levels just in time for dinner!

Another test level. Nothing to see here!

Testing level submissions..

If you click on the thumbnail you can see what a Voxatron level file looks like. Most of the image is just a preview, taken from whatever you were looking at when you save the file. The noisey pixels at the bottom encode the actual level data.

Punk

by zep

Cart #1592 | 2011-10-25 | Embed ▽ | No License

3

Hi everyone,

I am excited about Voxatron, checking blog everyday, looking forward to alpha and I have a question regarding that matter.
But firstly, let me note that I am from Czech republic, have learned my english at school and on the internets, so sry if I hurt you language sensibilities.

Voxatron is undoubtably a game with potential. I think that the difference between it being a great and godly game could be in the approach to user content.
You see, the posibility to create your own worlds is probably the reason many of us are here, but this function has two problems, that are usually not widely acknowledged.
First is, that there are not that many people, that are willing to create a thing so big and devote so much time to it, that it is really worth downloading by others. The second problem is, that there usually is still so many of these people and their great mods, worthy of playing, that the field is very fragmented and orientation is difficult, more so because some of the mods are the wishes fulfilling kind, that are not making the game anymore challenging or interesting.

I saw this situation in the Fallout 3 and vegas modding communities and I think that it is a expression of a general function. The problem here is preciselly in the fact, that each modder is there on his own and can only pull off a project of certain size. Also ordinary people would love to make a few maps, but are not going to finish big projects. And I see that the biggest loss are the people, that would love to devote themselves to a certain element - lets say map building, but are not interested in others, scripting and vice versa.

I do not think this is necessary. I think we are by our human nature able to work in communities, I think many of us like more to take part on a huge work, than doing ourselves something mediocre. Why did we not than already, unite in any way, on other occasions? The problem is in distribution of authority. Basically, there is a need for somebody that would make this happen, take care of the project and responsibility, manage the people, someone to become the authority on this.
The feeling of entitlement to authority comes from two things. Either from your certainty of ability, earned by experience in the field, that makes you someone who knows what he talks about, or by being a bit naive and submitting to your ambitions, blind to the problems and responsibilities. But people who have the first kind of authority do not usually aspire to lead, because it is really not worth it in the end.

And even if they wanted to lead a bigger project, they still feel to be on the same level as others with same amounts of experience and so the field is still a ecosystem of competing works.

Words like authority and management sure sound lifeless and no fun at all, but they do not have to be. In this instance I think there could exist a hierarchical system of management, that would be fun for everyone and would allow even a guy that wants to devout fed dozens hours to playing with the editor a chance to be a part in a big work, widely played, a small part, but still a meaningfull one.

Because playing with editors is fun, but in the end it feels a bit meaningless, if you do not reach the level of complexity, that makes it interesting for others.

The solution of the problem lies in an act, performed by the creator of the game, the highest authority, that would divide the responsibilities between people that want them and give them official support. Only by this act, there could be an effort, to make something that stands alone above others, even if wacky and chaotic and strange. the point should be moving the competition into the work and limit it, instead between projects. The point should be making one chaotic user created project, instead of users creating singular projects in chaotic unregulated environment.

The only challenge is to invent such regulating frame, so that it ensures maximall efficiency of integration of user submitted work, while leaving maximum freedom to imagination and intentions of the user.

I in no way suggest, that people should be dettered from working on their own project. The whole point is creating a environment of work on singular project, very helpful and open to newbies, so there would be a chance to make your work count and supported from official authority, so it would grow quickly and could become a leader and growing project.

The idea of freedom in creating has its limits, it can be a misleading one. We are never fully free, we are humans limited by our abilities and time and other things. We can only feel the joy of accomplisment only if our work is meaningfull. The intention of leaving maximum freedom to the users is noble, but would be a waste not to give a meaningfull alternative to those, who do not need really that much freedom, that need help but can also help others. It would be a waste not to send a message that if you want, your work of any kind is welcome in an official project under the management of experienced people, for a price of abandoning a bit of freedom you can not really use.

There are numerous question about how this structure of work would be best organized, but there is something that has to be made clear first.
The official support is necessary. I do not think, that I am a person that could pull this off even with it. So the problem has to be understood, acknowledged and dealt with, or judged as unimportant and forgotten about. The responsibility/authority is held by the author of the game.

And so, this is my question. How will the user submitted content work? Completelly free of organization? Is it a good idea?

It has been a while now since the first preview trailer for Voxatron came out. At that time it quickly became apparent that I should recklessly suspend everything in my life to make this game, and apart from a couple of months clambering out of contract work and some other minor distractions, I've been hacking away on it non-stop since then. It started as a cut-down arcade game to alleviate my long-burning desire to make something set in a virtual display cube, but is now growing back into the potentially expansive adventure game it originally came from ("Felix and the Firebird"). It looks like it will grow even larger and absorb much of the design of Felix.

I don't yet have a fixed schedule for the final release as the design is still evolving. But what I do have is a very playable alpha that will be available shortly for anyone who's keen to pre-order the game. The alpha also includes a map and voxel editor with which it is possible to make almost everything you can see in the following trailer:

[ Continue Reading.. ]

Anyone who upgraded to OSX Lion and plays games made with SDL might have noticed a lot of programs crashing all over the place recently. Including mine. The problem is with SDL's fullscreen support using code that is no longer supported in Lion.

It looks like there's a new stable version release on the horizon to address this, but my solution was just to use an opengl surface instead:
SDL_SetVideoMode(0, 0, 32, SDL_FULLSCREEN | SDL_OPENGL);
And then update a single quad texture using glTexSubImage2D each frame. It seems to be reasonably fast on modern macs.

If you're a registered user, you can get the Lion-compatible versions here:
https://www.lexaloffle.com/games.php?page=my

Another minor feature in these updates is the ability to get a larger window in windowed mode. You'll have to manually change the configuration file to do this though. Look in ~/Library/Application Support/Game Name/config.txt (Mac OS X) or C:\Program Files\Game Name\config.txt (Windows) and change large_window to 1. This will give you a window scaled up to 960x720 for all games.

It's been so long since I played CC, that I forgot all the "cutie things" you can do, e.g., send my solutions; find a solution; etc. I just entered the BBS for room 38- easy and found my own solution. I'm stuck there, but I can't read my own solution.

I high-lighted it, then press "ctrl+c" but now I have no idea what to do with it. There's a "clipboard", but honestly, I don't remember where it is, how to access it, enythin! It's like if I were playing CC for the first time.

I appreciate any help given! Thanks!

I love writing tools. There's always one more nifty time-saving feature to add and the constant promise of the whack things you're going to make with it. Lately I've completed a fairly intense block of tool development and am reconfiguring my brain to shift back into creative content-manufacturing mode. So now might be a good time to show a few things I've been working on. Also to confirm to RSS subscribers that the feed is actually working (first post!).

Most of my tools are quite hacked together and behind the scenes. Voxatron's sound synth designer, music mixer, BBS code for sharing and previewing levels, and my trusty sprite editor are all gangly monstrosities that noone else should be exposed to. The thing I'm most excited about is the Voxatron editor, which is starting to feel like a user-friendly piece of software. Rather than considering it a peripheral feature that hard-core users can engage with, I'm hoping to make it a central part of enjoying the game. It should be possible for an average player to plonk some monsters, items and blocks into a level and still have fun playing it. Here's an example room that took about a minute to make:

[ Continue Reading.. ]

I made this video for a freestyle rap band. The stills were captured from a screen that has a lamp behind it (backlight was broken) which is why the lighting fades out towards the top.

Click here for video!

You mentioned in your blog post that you plan to ship a more advanced version of your voxel editor with the game, and considering that your games are very user-generated-content-friendly, I was wondering if you know yet if there will be much opportunity for users making things for Voxatron. Granted, I still have virtually no idea what gameplay will be like, but the bright, flashy, and color things in the sword video are inspiring and make me want to create my own little world. Are there plans to allow things like mods or other forms of user-generated playable content?

How do you transfer Zen garden to a new computer?

the title says it all the game looks epic from the video

None of the pickups in Voxatron are as useless or as fantastic as the sword. Choosing to use one against oncoming hordes is much harder than any of the robot's long range weapons, but at least if you die, you can go down with a bit of honour. It's also good for smashing scenery up, and comes with a two piece set of dandy armour.

The first half of this video shows the voxel editor I'm using to make models for Voxatron. Something similar will ship with the game, but with a nicer interface (at the moment it's like a cross between Blender and Emacs).

[code]
Title: My Castle
Author: Anon.
Difficulty: 3
Wall: 3
Floor: 3
Validation: 0
-----------------------------
W W . . . . . . . . . . F F f 
w W . . . . F F F F . . F F F 
W W W F F . . . . F . . . . . 
. . W F F . . . . . . . . . . 
. . W F F . . . . . . . . . . 
. . W W W W W W . W W W W . . 
. . . . W # # W . . . . . . . 
. . . . W # # W . . . . . . . 
. . . . W W W W . . . . W W W 
. . . . . . . . . . . . W # W 
W W W . . . . . . W . . W W W 
. . W . . . . . . W . . . . . 
. . . . W W W . . W . . . . . 
. . . . W . W . . . . . . . . 
. . . . W W W . . . . . . . . 
-----------------------------
    
-----------------------------
[/code]

Cart #1402 | 2011-04-18 | Embed ▽ | No License

Play this Games ok :)