ASCIItude - PlayBasic Game

[balaporte]

I've just finished my first game using PlayBasic, available here:

http://www.box.net/shared/n7pa8bcuz1

The download includes the executable and PlayBasic source code.

It's called ASCIItude and was written for the Experimental Gameplay Project (experimentalgameplay.com) February theme of "ASCII". I did not get to submit the game in time, which is unfortunate because it seems different enough from what was submitted that it might have stood out a bit. This being the first PlayBasic game I've completed, though, I had more to learn about finishing a game and compiling than I realized.

The theme called for all game assets to be made out of ASCII characters. I took this pretty literally and used ASCII art (pictures created using ASCII characters) as the theme. I also create some other in-game art (a couple of banners and a loading screen) at run time by layering characters. If you look at the source (and can make sense of it - it's a little sloppy), you might notice that I cheated twice by using the box and circle drawing commands, but I decided this was okay with me.

What I liked:
- creating different in-game art each time the game is played, and the look of the art
- the game selects the best window size based on the size of the display, which sounds boring but was pretty interesting for me
- I actually finished and uploaded it

What I'm not crazy about:
- the game is based in American English and iconography, when I prefer games that can play well in other cultures
- there are still some little details to fix, but I wanted to get it done
- the game is fixed to run at 60 FPS, so it's slow on older computers

I learned a lot about getting a project to completion within a time frame (even though I didn't make that goal this time), so hopefully you will see something else coming along soon...

[ATLUS]

Nice game ;)
me score points 6800

[Laskiapina]

Didn't honestly expect it to be that entertaining :) I liked it a lot.
Scored 10900 with the first try. Had to use Finnish-English dictionary with toucan and clothespin. I don't think that's cheating ;)
The loading screen was awesome.

Only two minuses were that you couldn't turn fullscreen off while in-game and "Press any key" didn't register "any key" :P
Considering those are very little points I would say well done!

[balaporte]

Thanks to both of you for the feedback. Good scores, by the way...

Laskiapina, I'm very happy to hear that you found it more fun than you expected - sometimes it's hard for me to tell while I'm making it. I was mostly trying to just get something done. Using the dictionary is definitely not cheating. (Although it will be cheating in my next game...)  ;)

I will look into the "press any key" problem. That should be working. I debated allowing switching from fullscreen to windowed during gameplay (there's really no reason it could not happen), but decided to leave it out since each game is so short anyway.

Please let me know if anyone tries the two-player mode...

[Laskiapina]

Okay. Now we played with my bride-to-be the 2 player mode... And she kicked my ass... I hate this game!
Just kidding. The two player mode works. But I still think the other player wins no matter what you do :D

[BlinkOk]

awesome! haven't played it yet but kudos to you for posting the source code

[balaporte]

I've uploaded a new version of ASCIItude addressing the "press any key" issue (I changed it to "press [SPACE] for menu"). I also fixed another issue that no one probably even noticed but that bothered me. The new file is available at the same link in the first post.

Laskiapina, thanks for trying two-player mode. I'm married, so I make sure my games always let the wife/girlfriend/significant other win...  ;)

I'm looking forward to the Easter competition, and I'm encouraged to finish up another game I started a while back, so hopefully I'll get something new up here soon.

[micky4fun]

hi balaporte

great game , me and girlfriend played this for quite a while last night , i thought it was really good and something i aint seen before , and girlfriend said she thought it was good to which i am really jealous off as she never said any of my games are good , just they are ok

nice work and great coding with hopefully more to come
mick ;D

[balaporte]

Thanks, mick. It's cool that people are using the 2-player game or at least playing the game together - I didn't get to test it much myself that way. Tell your wife thanks for the compliment. :)

[OldNESJunkie]

I like this game, simple, yet lots of fun. Great job !!! Now if I could only finish at least one project  :P

[BlinkOk]

i just played it.
presentation is first class. very very professional. i am totally impressed
gameplay is excellent, i played for over an hour.
if i may ask; where did you get the ascii images?

if you translated this game to flash i am sure you could get a very good price for it at the portals like kongregate or newgrounds.
i'd be happy to help if you wanted to go in that direction.

again, first class work!!

[micky4fun]

hi all

i just played it.
presentation is first class. very very professional. i am totally impressed
gameplay is excellent, i played for over an hour.

yep sure is a nice game , quite differant from the run of the mill games i have seen

if you translated this game to flash i am sure you could get a very good price for it at the portals like kongregate or newgrounds.
i'd be happy to help if you wanted to go in that direction

yep my other half plays pogo games and like i said she was impressed by it , would not at all be out of place on a site like that
good luck whatever you decide

mick ;)

[balaporte]

Thanks again for the support, Mick. I like your new "House Hunter" game. BlinkOK, I don't know much about the portal sites so I want to look into that, but I may take you up on your offer.

This biggest issue I have with ASCIItude and another similar project (I'll post about that later tonight) is that I generated the ASCII images myself but used source images pulled off the web. Some of them I know were public domain or licensed under creative commons, but others I have no idea who owns the images. Though I significantly changed the original images, I'm concerned that someone might claim ownership of the original if I try to make money off of it.

So last week I decided I either need to purchase the rights to images or make my own. I'm looking into the cost for both options, and once I get that settled then I will feel better about moving forward with something like you suggest. I'm also kind of bothered by the lack of good free source images for people to use, so I'm hoping I can contribute something there.

OldNESJunkie, good luck and just keep going. It's taken me a while to get to this point, and I'm discovering there is so much more to know, but I'm learning to just keep working at it no matter what.

[balaporte]

I've found a free stock photo resource which allows personal and commercial use, and that has more than enough images for ASCIItude and the new game. I'm currently working on replacing all the images in ASCIItude. I'm also going to post the website in the Resources section. It looks to be a fairly popular website, so it may be more well known than I realize, but maybe someone can get some use out of it.

[BlinkOk]

here is a proggy that converts images to ascii as well. i had to remove the background to get a decent result but it worked ok after that. (there are actually a few of them)
http://printeresetter.blogspot.com/2010/04/convert-pictures-into-ascii-text-images.html

sorry. i just noticed that you already said you generated the images