Thursday 20 November 2008 at 12:54 am
Before I consolidated my ideas into Bureau of Steam Engineering, there was World War Awesome! – Tank Battles. In it, players would construct tanks in a manner very similar to the way mechs are built in BSE, with the exception of a looser “pulse” system instead of the more complicated “steam” system. Bouncing pulses into ports on the side would activate treads, allowing the tank to turn in either direction or move forward. Bouncing pulses into weapons would cause them to activate and fire. Unlike in BSE, external devices (like weapons) could explode when hit, requiring players to implement fallback circuitry by using components like fuses.
The idea never progressed further than the mockups below, but there’s a good chance a game like it may see the light of day at some point in the future. In the meantime, enjoy!
Tuesday 18 November 2008 at 01:13 am
I’m fairly brain dead after cranking out Bureau of Steam Engineering (which you should definitely play if you haven’t already) so I don’t have much to cover here.
So far, I’ve only received one submission for the second and final phase of the Ruckingenur Challenge. With only two weeks left, we’re getting down to the grind, especially if you need artwork created for your puzzle. If anyone is working on a puzzle but has not yet submitted it, you should say something in the comments. Feel free to advertise for the Challenge if you know people who would be interested! Remember – PIC programmer!
I’m going to be working on some new games in the next few weeks, and will post details here as I make progress. In the meantime, though, we need filler content! What would you like to see here?
Wednesday 12 November 2008 at 03:48 am
Over the past few weeks (namely, since finishing the Ruckingenur Editor for the
Ruckingenur Challenge), I've been working on a totally new game. A game that I have just now finished. I present to you, Bureau of Steam Engineering.
Launch Bureau of Steam Engineering (1024x768)
Launch Bureau of Steam Engineering (512x384)
Unlike
any of my previous games, BSE is entirely Flash based, meaning that (almost) everyone should be able to play with no technical problems!
In Bureau of Steam Engineering, you play as an American steam engineer at the beginning of an alternate civil war who must design and duel steam powered mechs to defend the Union!
Enjoy!
A few notes:
- After completing a level, your progress is saved so long as your Flash "cookies" aren't deleted. However, your designs are never saved when leaving the workshop to return to the mission select screen.
- It's easy to find yourself in a situation where your steam design isn't working as you'd like. It's good practice to use gauges to ensure that pressures are building as you expect; things that potentially vent to the outside, such as weapons and control mechanisms. If you're really stuck, you can always post to the comments with your question.
- All the music is from jamendo.com, a really great creative commons music site. The song at the title screen is "En retard!" by Evan, while the rest of the music is by Celestial Aeon Project.
- For the curious: the pressure algorithm works by iterating over all paired connectors, each with a volume estimate and a pressure, and exchanging a "steam amount" (representing n in the equation PV = nRT) to neutralize the pressure between the two components. This is repeated until the pressures between each pair of connectors are neutralized to an acceptable degree (I believe I used a value of around 0.15 PSI). After neutralizing the entire pressure circuit, we advance the simulation by the time delta to flush "steam" from things that "leak", trigger pressure dependent valves, and advance other time-dependent components.
Friday 07 November 2008 at 02:14 am
Sorry about the posting void – I’m working on a new game that I want to have done before Phase Two of the Ruckingenur Challenge ends. I’ll be posting more information about it in the coming days.
Additionally, I’m upping the ante for the Ruckingenur Challenge! If I receive thirty (30) or more complete submissions, I will be awarding a special Microchip PIC prize kit to the creator of the best level, containing the following:
- 3x PIC18F886 microcontrollers
While you’re free to create submissions as groups, only one prize package will be awarded. Pictures of the prize package coming soon, in addition to formal updating of the Ruckingenur Challenge Phase Two page to include this information.
Get to it!
Thursday 23 October 2008 at 11:13 pm
Holy crap! It’s time for Phase Two of the Ruckingenur Challenge!
If you somehow missed, it the Ruckingenur Challenge is a contest where YOU create a level for the not-yet-but-perhaps-one-day-award-winning Ruckingenur II. Here are the conditions for Phase Two:
- Create a level using the Ruckingenur Editor.
- You don’t have to create any artwork, but you can if you want to.
- If you’re not making artwork, create your level fully using stand-in graphics. Then submit your level before the deadline and tell me what you want. Provided you’re not being ridiculous in your request, you will get your artwork!
- If you are making your own artwork, be sure to model it after the graphics in Ruckingenur II. All of my artwork was created with minimalist color palettes and doubled in size to enhance the pixel-ness.
- After collecting all the finished levels, I will sort them by difficulty and release a special Community Edition of Ruckingenur. Everyone who created a level will be gratuitously credited.
- The author of the best puzzle (as decided by me? or maybe by a poll?) will win some sort of small prize, most likely a shirt. If I receive thirty or more complete submissions, however, I will award a PIC Microcontroller Prize Package to the winner, containing a PICkit 2 PIC Programmer, three PIC18F887 microcontrollers, and three PIC18F886 microcontrollers.
The deadline for entries is December 1st, 2008. If you need artwork, it’d be wise to submit your otherwise fully completed level to me at least two weeks before that date.
As always, I’ll be happy to field any questions you have – just post them to the comments!
Wednesday 22 October 2008 at 10:42 pm
When I released Ruckingenur II three months ago, the reaction was pretty epic. One of the most common comments was that there was no level editor; today, I deliver!
Everything that applied to Ruckingenur II applies to the Ruckingenur Editor; you’ll need .NET 2.0 (maybe 3.5?), it’ll probably crash if you’re running a 64-bit version of windows or don’t have a sound card installed, and should be easy to get running under Mono or Parallels.
Download Ruckingenur Editor (12 MB)
The Ruckingenur Editor conforms to fairly standard editor mechanics, so it should be pretty easy to use your first time. Here are some tips:
- The only “hidden” feature is that you can hold down shift while dragging a circuit board, project box, or chip to drag everything that is on top of it along with it.
- While widgets are placed with default DisplayLevel values, you may sometimes have to tweak them to get things to stack the way you want – widgets with higher DisplayLevel values are placed above those with lower DisplayLevel values.
- When two widgets with the same DisplayLevel overlap, they will flicker.
- When running a .ruck level, the Ruckingenur Player searches for a file called “script.lua” in the same directory and uses that as the script. The file “ruckapi.htm” in the zip file provides documentation for scripting Ruckingenur levels.
- Sounds and images that you add should be added to the same directory as the .ruck file.
- Check out the level1-remake folder for a full remake of level 1 from Ruckingenur II built in the Ruckingenur Editor.
- From what I can tell, it’s fairly stable, but if any more bug reports come in I’ll be rolling out new versions and uploading them here.
If you have questions or find bugs, please email me at zachbarth@gmail.com! Good luck!
Wednesday 22 October 2008 at 9:49 pm
After much deliberation, a winner has been picked for Phase One of the Ruckingenur Challenge. Congratulations to Fredrik of Sweden! You can view Fredrik’s submission at the end of this post.
It was tough picking a winner; while I only received 9 submissions, they were all very diverse and generally well thought out. While some seemed to be a little obscure for obscurity’s sake, it seems like most everyone who submitted has a pretty good grasp on what goes into making an interesting and complete level.
In other news, Phase Two of the Ruckingenur Challenge begins tomorrow! I will be posting rules and information then, so stay tuned!
And now, the Wee-CD!
Follow the fold for the rest of this submission!
(more)
Saturday 18 October 2008 at 3:00 pm
Yesterday I released an alpha version of the Ruckingenur Editor to people who submitted an entry for Phase One and everyone else who was on my mailing list. While I intended to wait a few days before releasing it publicly, I figure that I might as well release it now; more people trying it out now means that we can work all the bugs out quicker.
You can download the editor here.
Everything that applied to Ruckingenur II applies to the Ruckingenur Editor; you’ll need .NET 2.0, it’ll probably crash if you’re running a 64-bit version of windows or don’t have a sound card installed, and should be easy to get running under Mono or Parallels.
The editor is fairly straight forward to use, with the only “hidden” feature being that you can hold down shift while dragging a circuit board, project box, or chip to drag everything that is on top of it along with it. While widgets are placed with default DisplayLevel values, you may sometimes have to tweak them to get things to stack the way you want – widgets with higher DisplayLevel values are placed above those with lower DisplayLevel values. When running a .ruck level, the Ruckingenur Player searches for a file called “script.lua” in the same directory and uses that as the script. Sounds and images that you add should be added to the same directory as the .ruck file. Check out the level1-remake folder for a full remake of level 1 from Ruckingenur II built in the Ruckingenur Editor.
You can learn about scripting Ruckingenur levels by exploring the level1-remake and the Ruckingenur Editor API.
If you have any questions or find any bugs, please email me at zachbarth@gmail.com! Good luck!
Thursday 16 October 2008 at 02:49 am
Phase One of the Ruckingenur Challenge has come to an end! If you haven’t emailed me your submission yet, get it to me as soon as possible. I will begin collating the eight entries I received tomorrow after work; we should have a winner within the next few days. In the meantime, start reading up on Lua if you’re interesting in programming a level for Phase Two of the Ruckingenur Challenge.
Wednesday 15 October 2008 at 01:01 am
26: The number of hours left in Phase One of the Ruckingenur Challenge.
6: The number of entries I’ve received so far.
If you’re working on a level and are stuck, you can email me personally for help at zachbarth@gmail.com. If you have a submission finished, email it to me right away!
Thursday, after Phase One is officially over, I will begin judging the submissions; I’ll be contacting the winner(s) soon after that. If you submitted a level or are on my mailing list, you’ll probably be receiving a link to a beta version of the Ruckingenur Editor within a week or two from now. All in all, it’s a good time to be a Ruckingenur.
Wednesday 08 October 2008 at 10:04 pm
With exactly one week until entries are due for Phase One of the Ruckingenur Challenge, I’d like to try to get a feeling for how things are going. So far, I’ve only received one entry – is anyone else working on an entry? Did anyone attempt to start an entry but stop before finishing? Is there anyone who wants to make an entry but needs help with their idea?
I’d love to know how you feel about the Ruckingenur Challenge, so go ahead and post some comments!
Wednesday 08 October 2008 at 12:04 am
Continuing the countdown, there are only 8 days left until submissions are due for Phase One of the Ruckingenur Challenge. Y’all best get crackin’.
Yeah, how about that – an entirely hybrid circuit. The exochip on the left is the brain of the drone controller and dispatches commands to the entire drone network. The exochip on the right is responsible for interfacing to the controls and prevents the drone controller from sending any unauthorized commands. After being brought online through the chip on the right, the chip on the left may be instructed to send a self-destruct message to all active drones. Unfortunately, the right chip will not authenticate this command, requiring the player to kill the chip and fake its signal. Upon authentication, the self-destruct command is sent; across the region, drones shut off and come crashing to the ground.
So that’s it – those are the three levels that never made it in to Ruckingenur II. I’m excited to see what you can do!
Does anyone like these sort of posts? Although I don’t have any more Ruckingenur levels to post, I do have more mockups of old games and games that I never made which might be interesting. What would you like to see here between game releases?
Monday 06 October 2008 at 10:14 pm
Continuing with yesterday’s post, I present level six of Ruckingenur II. Remember – there are only 9 days left until Phase One of the Ruckingenur Challenge is due!
After hacking the drone transmitter, the insurgents are able to successfully radio and then ambush a drone, as depicted in a movie that may one day be used in a future Ruckingenur product.
In order for the insurgents to locate and destroy the drone controller facilities, the player must trick the crashed drone into thinking that it is flying along its stored waypoints until it believes it has returned to the facility, at which point it may be made to give up the proper IFF codes needed to get within range of the base. Players are assisted by the exochip’s stream of consciousness signal, which provides cryptic hints as to what it requires to advance the hacking process.
Did I mention that exochips look like brains on the inside?
Sunday 05 October 2008 at 8:23 pm
As of writing, there are only 10 days left in the Ruckingenur Challenge. If you haven’t started your level yet, get to it – I’ve only received one submission so far!
If you’re lacking inspiration, here’s a special feature to help your creativity along: the fifth level of Ruckingenur II.
As it’s unlikely that I’ll ever implement these levels as designed, I will proceed with full disclosure: the final three (for a total of seven) levels revolved around the exochip as a critical component of the circuits. What is an exochip? As it turns out, the Tangential Forces weren’t acting alone in their campaign of oppression against the Northern Continent; although no one knows the origins of the Visitors, their hybrid biotronics were far superior to any other technologies available, giving the Tangential Forces the military edge they needed to take control. Exochips are the centerpiece of the Visitors’ hybrid biotronic technologies, and consist of a genetically engineered organism capable of interfacing directly to a wide range of electronic signals. While exochips are more complicated than normal integrated circuits and require a constant flow of nutrient-rich exobrine, they are able to trivially learn and reproduce almost any task and can instantaneously communicate with any other exochip via psychic network. They are used extensively in the network of autonomous drones that constantly patrols the Northern Continent, locating hidden insurgent bases and eliminating opportunistic targets.
Level five would introduce the player to exochips, which could be controlled by pulsing various pins mapping to goals, concepts, and positive and negative reinforcement in the exochips’ neural paths. When this drone transmitter was lost, it was disabled; thus, the player’s objective would be to re-enable the device and signal for a drone to return to it, offering the insurgents a chance to ambush the drone when it arrived in an exposed position.
It should be noted that I was unable to create an exochip mechanic that I was happy with and felt properly achieved the same level of reverse engineering verisimilitude as the rest of the game; this is why the last three levels were eliminated from the game.
Sunday 05 October 2008 at 12:07 am
After mooching hosting from my friend Charlie for about three years, I finally have my own web host. I was able to move over my domain to properly point at my website now, too, so make sure you’re visiting zachtronicsindustries.com, and not zachtronics.emala.net. If you’re looking for Ruckingenur II, you can find it here. If you’re looking for the Ruckingenur Challenge, scroll down to the blog post below.
