In the spirit of Voxatron, I created ANSITron for Petitcom on Nintendo DSi. Here's a short video of me trying to play it through an iPod screen and keep from dying and keep the game in center frame. Hint: The results are me playing extremely bad! Basically, it's Robotron done in ANSI characters available stock in Petitcom, thus really 'blocky' movement of everything. There's only 4 kinds of enemies and 10 specific level designs before it generates random levels until you get a game over. 3 of the enemies (Green, Yellow and Red) are destructible. The Grey enemies are not. They wander around seeking to destroy diamonds, which are your bonus points (and each one you collect doubles in points, so grabbing as many as you can without dying will net you some extra men!). The 3 destructible enemies just move towards you faster and faster. Depending on their color, they take up to 3 hits to destroy. If you touch anything other than a diamond, you lose a life. My highest score was around 500k and I got to the 13th level. There is a bug that causes it to crash randomly and I could not find it because it doesn't show up until after about 30 games...very hard to track!

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Hey All

So, it looks like 0.2.6 will be ready next week. It features the first appearance of modifiers -- a general purpose tool at the core of Voxatron's scripting engine. I've been using them recently to create conditional monster behaviours and attacks using custom bullets and emitter patterns (these will also be available in 0.2.6). I'm really happy with the way modifiers have turned out, and I'm sure level-designing people will learn to love and hate them in equal measure. There's also another dev diary on the way which has the gory technical details.

In the meantime, here's some papercraft Voxatron by @jitterworld that is currently staring at me. Check out some of his other papery stuff here.

(Those drawers are around 25cm across -- it's not a giant life-sized thing)

Finally - if you're in Tokyo this weekend, drop by the Lexaloffle office on Saturday, because I'll be testing out some experimental 4-player Voxatron code on the unsuspecting public, along with a preview build of Towerfall and the newly released and splendid Monaco. For more information, see Pico Pico Cafe's Indie Games Night page.

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I like the way PC88 coloring forces creative dithering...

I took an outline someone else did and attempted the same sort of coloring style...this doesn't have 'tall pixels' but does follow the 8 colors only scheme of PC-88.

I used D-Pixed and layers using it's built in dithering patterns, alternating color/transparent spots in the two colors available.

This one was started from scratch. No intention of finishing it but uses tall pixels and was done using GRAFX2.

It's fun playing around with these methods of coloring...feels almost like weird printing press with CYMK style coloring methods...

Until the 18th of May, Show Me The Games is orchestrating a collective sale of 32 indie games. Show Me The Sales games include Voxatron (50% Off), Scoregasm, Darwinia, Gratuitous Tank Battles, and Offspring Fling. If you haven't grabbed a copy of Voxatron, you can get it this week for just $7.50 (along with a bonus copy of Swarm Racer 3000 Prototype).

The interesting thing about SMTS is that it is not run by any particular portal or distributor; all of the discounted games can be purchased directly from the developers. It has become usual and expected to buy games through some kind of store (e.g. Steam / App Store), and it's easy to forget that there was a time not so long ago when most indie developers didn't need to rely on such middlemen. Apart from allowing players to support devs without losing a big chunk of each sale to the reseller, being able to sell direct has a great influence on diversity and reduces the need to design games around potential sales channels. In other words, allowing indie developers to really be independent.

The current state of the market is not terrible -- it's still possible to sell indie games via channels that treat developers moderately well, and for niche games to find their audience. However, this could turn to custard very quickly and without warning! SMTG is just a way to fight back a little and keep the most indie-friendly channel alive and in the collective consciousness of indie game supporters. That channel is ... The Internet!

>>> View the games on sale.

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its worth it, the corners are the hardest part. It compresses flat along two different axis . go on, why dont you fold-a-hyperbolic-paraboloid

A preview of local multiplayer. The co-op mode follows typical arcade rules: player bullets don't hurt and when one player dies the other is left to play out the game solo. Bullets push the players around quite a lot, so it pays to coordinate your efforts to some degree to avoid inadvertently pushing your comrade into hurty things.

Competitive modes are still on the cards but will probably deviate from the obvious approach of transplanting existing characters into a death-math scenario. Pitting the default robot characters against each other results in quite chaotic play where the best strategy is often to spam bullets and leap around randomly. It might turn out better to have quite a separate set of characters and rules for this purpose. In any case, it will also be possible to invent silly 4-player party games using the editor.

An abstract action game made for LD48#26. The theme was "Minimalism". Press SPACE or Z to start. Move with cursor keys or WASD. To complete each stage, merge all of the dots including yourself. (Wait to load and then click for focus)

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This is exactly the format that Voxatron is designed from the ground up to run on: a 128x128x64 block of voxels. Until now the game has only been viewable on a virtual, simulated display that is projected onto flat screens. That is about to change!

Voxatron Table is the working title of a collaboration between Voxon and Lexaloffle. It is an arcade table supporting up to 8 players facing a volumetric display fixed in the center. The game is based on multiplayer Voxatron, allowing both co-operative and competitive styles of play. We don't have any footage to show yet, but I have mocked up this little visualization aid that shows roughly the format of the table. Unfortunately the mockup is also made in Voxatron, leading to a kind of Russian Doll situation -- the resolution of the real display is much higher than is shown here!

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an earlier poster a little more simple and slightly gothic.

heres a wee poster i made for a local electronic dance/club nite thats starting here in dunedin!

so damn cute! i even chucked a few monsters in there. Its a rough replica of the new bar QUEENS.

I love sloth in my room.
he has nice smooth far and let me touch any time. nice sloth.

beautiful white cat.

the man who works hard every day.

I like animals and want to make more pixel animals.

These are some screen shots from a game im making about a elf who gets shrunk and has to venture through a garden populated by various bugs and creatures to try and regain his size. This game is being made with the help of jumps and functor.

Some of Voxatron's soundtrack is composed entirely digitally (using MilkyTracker), but most of it is starting out as sketches on acoustic piano. Here's a quick sample of music in development for the adventure mode, and at the end you'll hear the title theme for Zoot -- a new demo level coming in alpha 0.3. All of these pieces will eventually become 100% chip-tunes, so the finished product may sound quite different (and usually less melancholy!).

It FINALLY CAME!!! It LOOKS AMAZING. :D

http://www.sculpteo.com/en/

Picotachi is a show and tell event for designers and researchers in Tokyo with a focus on experimental, unusual, personal, half-finished and tiny projects.

Pico Pico Cafe / Friday April 5th 2013 / 20:00pm~ / 500 yen entry (w/ drink ticket)

hi zep, ive been happily trying the new animation and monster settings, totally awesome, thought i best mention a few bugs ive encountered. I will add any more as they crop up. Sorry if already a known issue.... ive dont even know how to do a proper bug report.

When using select tool if i select a whole object with a big sweeping motion ( i mean a circle ) when the edges of the dotted line touch it often crashes. (only when its generally a quick tidy circle motion. But if i draw an angle around the object and dont connect the dotted part it selects fine and doesnt crash. No idea why?

EDIT ( now the select tool isnt doing that at all?? i tried in prop animation and monster but that bug just disappeared but was occuering over and over again so im not sure what was causing it after all )

The reset camera function doesnt seem to be working within animations but works fine if its a prop.

more stuff later....

Swarm Racer builds are back up for Mac, Windows and now Linux and Web. Go here to download / play in your browser.

Something to look forward to on iOS.. a sweet platform shooter by Daisuke Amaya.