Battle Box: Online!
The original intent for Battle Box was to be a cloud based game you could play against other people (at random). That dream is now a reality.
You can play Battle Box Online here!
I have a bit of clean-up for mobile browser fitting and hooking up the two versions so you can switch between them on the title screen, but other than that, it’s done! Enjoy!
Note: Due to restrictions on the Parse framework, Battle Box online won’t work in IE, try playing in FireFox, Chrome, or Safari. Thanks!
Mikeware Enters ‘Battle Box’ into Ludum Dare #26
For those of you who may not know, Ludum Dare is a 48 Hour game making competition. A game must be made from start-to-finish in the 48 hour period. Entries are then played and voted on by the other participants in the three weeks following.
Originally, I wasn’t going to enter, but had a brainstorm for a simple game yesterday morning. That turned into the ‘Battle Box’.
You can see my Ludum Dare posts and entry here.
You can play Battle Box here.
There’s still some more work on it to come, but the two-player hot-seat version was ready to go, so seemed like a good announcement.
Update 4/30: Online version is now live.
‘Pellet-Man’ in GridWorld Materials
As mentioned previously, we recreated a classic arcade game in the Advanced Placement Computer Science case study GridWorld.
GridWorld involves programming ‘Actors’ within a grid system. This was a natural fit for ‘Pellet-Man’ and is a good exercise for students to work on something exciting and challenging while reinforcing their new knowledge of inheritance and practice using the system found on their AP exam.
[Release] Gamius Type IV (v2) ships on OUYA
Mikeware is happy to announce that “Gamius Type IV” will launch exclusively on the OUYA as it ships this coming weekend. The ONLYOUYA game will be available, in full, for free during the launch period.
Gamius Type IV is a unique, retro styled, truly one button/one switch shmup (no analog sticks here). It is primarily meant as a multiplayer game and includes both co-op and asymmetric play. Players must navigate their ship using only the single button to avoid terrain and enemies as they try accumulate the highest score. Those of you familiar with Mikeware previously, may remember the Gamius Type IV prototype (available in our old project section). The game has been significantly revamped with bug fixes and added features for the OUYA.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term or genre of ‘Shmup’, then checkout Gamasutra’s or Racketboy’s great articles on their history and evolution.
Gamius Type IV was developed in C# using XNA and ported to OUYA using the Xamarin tools and MonoGame. Want to thank ‘slygamer’ from the MonoGame team for his quick replies and assistance in using the framework on Android.
‘Pellet-Man’ in GridWorld
GridWorld is the Advanced Placement Computer Science case study acting as a project culminating the knowledge students learn over the course of a school year before taking the AP exam.
In this year’s class, we’re providing a ‘Pellet-Man’ framework to aid student’s learning about inheritance in computer science. If you are an educator and this is of interest to you in your class, please contact us for more information.
[Preview] The Gauntlet – Minecraft Skill Challenge
This is an older Minecraft project of mine from over a year or so ago. Figured it was about time to post some more info about it. Enjoy the video!
The Gauntlet is basically a series of tasks which two players can perform in parallel (spectators can watch from above as well). The idea is that it never ends, you can just continually add to it as your challengers become successful. Each challenge gets more difficult as the race progresses. The last player ‘standing’ wins. What makes this a little different from other Gauntlet’s we’ve seen is that each combatant has a mirrored track and can occasionally see one another without interference while spectators can watch the action from above.
Once the 1.5 Minecraft update comes out, I’ll look at making sure it’s compatible and adding some Command Blocks to make it a little cleaner before posting. Probably expect some more videos in the meantime before a posting of the server files in April.
[Preview] Dead Wool – Minecraft Zombie Apocalypse
Welcome to Dead Wool!
Set in a city ravaged by a zombie outbreak, the player must survive as they trek though the infested streets and reach the only escape – a helicopter at the top of a skyscraper across the city!
Many hours were put into building the city from the ground up and even wiring triggers for in-game-events over the course of 4-5 weeks. Players are given the option of exploring the city or fast tracking it through to the escape route. Players decide at their own pace when they want to complete the level. Exploring the city yields interesting side-quests that supplement the main story and many item-drops will give the player an advantage against the undead citizens.
This project was completed by four of us for a night class in game design. It was completed by myself (Michael A. Hawker), Melissa Henry, Howard Smith, and he who shall remain nameless…
Hit the jump for more project details and a breakdown of responsibilities of each team member. As well as additional photos.
Ships in Space
Over the course of the past couple of months, I helped out at my local high school and my fellow teaching friend in a project for his AP Computer Science class. We had students create autonomous robots which had to navigate a space simulation and collect Baubles while avoiding obstacles. It’s important to note that students wrote the logic for the ships and were completely hands-off for the duration of the tournament.
The video clip shows a round from our final tournament. The server was written using Python and PyGame.
Impossible Figures
Well, it’s been a while since posting any news. I’ll have an entry about that later.
Good news is amongst teaching and taking classes, some things get done. Of course it helps when part of that is because it’s a project for class. As in this case, the Impossible Figure Creator was born.
It’s the final project in my Visual Communication class which wraps up my graduate certificate in User Centered Design.
Try it out, create a masterpiece and save it for the world to see.
Road Construction!
Another game emerges. Appropriately for a continually under construction site, there’s a game about construction. This was an entry for the Game Crafter’s Vehicle contest. I’m happy to announce that it’s finally the first board game published by Mikeware with high quality printing thanks to The Game Crafter.
I’ll have to write a post about the state of development later and what’s happening with Time Master. However, Road Construction is a great fun random game about racing your fellow opponents in hybrid solar electric/gas cars! First to the finish wins if you can get past the construction.
Complete with a passing mechanic too. Manage your energy wisely as you manage your team of cars.
questions at mikeware dot com
