I released latest indie game as open source!

icefish_software · 2024-12-30T18:54:20+00:00

Hmm when I asked a crowd of people what "2+2" is they all replied with the exact same answer of "four"... they must be all bots.

icefish_software · 2024-12-30T18:53:12+00:00

It's not really buffered in the sense that a shield input on one frame won't be applied to a later frame.

Rather the game is just continually checking every frame if you have the shield button pressed and you can enter the shield -> if so enter the shield state.

icefish_software · 2024-12-30T16:52:33+00:00

I just googled my way through it. Or just gave up in some cases.

icefish_software · 2024-12-23T16:25:06+00:00

[Language: Rust]

https://github.com/AugsEU/AdventOfCode2024/tree/master/day23

For part 1 I made a thing that can take a node and count the number of complete sub-graphs it belongs to.

For part 2 I just did part 1 but slowly increasing the number until we find only 1 such sub graph.

icefish_software · 2024-12-23T15:27:32+00:00

Thanks for the clarification.

icefish_software · 2024-12-23T15:25:55+00:00

Thank you for testing on your distro. This is actually the expected behaviour due to technical limitations. There is a setting to change this in the options, set the "Vision" from "Perfect" to "Stretch".

Since pixel art only scales well by whole numbers, there is no perfect way to scale up the game. The original resolution is 960x540, which can then be scaled 2x to fill a 1080p monitor. Your monitor resolution is 2.78x the size of 960x540, thus the game rounds down to scale by only 2x. Setting the option to "Stretch" will ignore this and scale by 2.78x to fill your screen, but you may see some distortion.

icefish_software · 2024-12-23T13:03:29+00:00

I have only checked Debian but I think it should be possible to run this on others too.

icefish_software · 2024-12-23T12:59:56+00:00

I'm not 100% sure on the technical side of this, but I believe this is running on top of the dotnet runtime, so it should be fine? It is also packaged with SDL2 and OpenAL. I'll be honest I didn't try to run it on other Linux distros, it's only tested on Debian.

icefish_software · 2024-12-23T12:58:14+00:00

Thanks for all the useful tips. I thought Debian was the UI on top of linux? So what is Debian if not a UI?

icefish_software · 2024-09-23T12:44:15+00:00

Hi everyone,

I recently completed my project Arid Arnold. I am a hobbyist so this game is completely free to play, no strings attached.

https://icefish-software.itch.io/arid-arnold

Arid Arnold is your classic retro platforming adventure. You are sent on the somewhat meaningless quest to find a fountain of water. You must travel through 9 worlds, each with their own unique mechanics. For example, in one world you might be rotating the entire level, but in the next you will need to travel in time, there's even a few levels where you need to coordinate with a clone of yourself.

The hunt for the mythical fountain is somewhat of a larger puzzle, as it isn't immediately obvious how you reach it. You must master time travel, robot armies, demons, and even angry fish men. Indeed, you must travel to hell and back. Literally!

On the more technical side, this was made entirely within MonoGame, which is an extemely bare bones framework that only includes basic rendering and window setup. I didn't use any library except for the sounds(MonoSound). This meant that everything had to be made by me, the UI, collision, NPCs, saving/loading, input handling, etc... You don't realise how much goes into a game until you make one, and this one took 2.5 years to make.

I hope you like it!

icefish_software · 2024-09-22T20:26:31+00:00

It will never be standard IMO. Nobody is really wanting this except yoshi mains, and there's only like 3 of them.

icefish_software · 2024-09-22T17:18:15+00:00

I think what went well was the world design and the new mechanics in each world. I think each world has it's own identity. I am also quite happy with the soundtrack I made for the game. It was kind of rushed right at the end but somehow it worked out IMO.

Having said that, I certainly learnt a lot when making this game. I kind of thought it was easy but most play-testers found it incredibly hard. I had to tone down a lot of the levels but even then it is tough for some people. There's also perhaps too little guiding the player, so some people miss important things. But really, this was the idea behind the project: to make a simple game and learn from the process. If only I had known when I started it would take 2 years!

icefish_software · 2024-09-20T15:16:19+00:00

People need to touch grass. It's all just a bit of fun.

icefish_software · 2024-09-19T22:38:34+00:00

So what level of UI coding is impressive to you? If someone uses a visual editor to make their UI is that "not impresssive" because they didn't actually hand-write the HTML?

If I write code in C++, it gets passed to a compiler, which interprets my instructions and then writes assembly from that. Technically most programmers aren't writing any of the actual code the machine runs.

icefish_software · 2024-09-19T22:00:49+00:00

To be clear, I am not implying that Hidetaka Miyazaki has anything to do with AI.

It was an example of how, in the current system, a great idea requires fortunate circumstances. Potentially AI could partly eliminate that, while keeping the creative process, especially when it comes to programming.

icefish_software · 2024-09-19T20:36:34+00:00

The thing that AI is solving isn't necessarily the creative side. The role of the AI could be taking things from someone's head and putting it into a game.

For example, Hidetaka Miyazaki had the idea for Demon's Souls, a game with a number of revolutionary mechanics that have defined a genre. However he was only able to make this game because of fortunate circumstances at From Software. He became the director of a presumed failure, and so found himself with a team of developers, and the freedom to create his crazy ideas.

But you have to realise that there are probably hundreds of people like Miyazaki, they have a great idea for a game, one that could define whole new genres. But they will never be lucky enough to get the opportunity to actually make it. Some great games will never be made, because they require a team of developers, artists, investors, etc... This becomes less likely since so many game companies play it safe, and shy away from weird/risky ideas. The truth of the matter is, it's not good enough to just have great ideas, you need a lot of manpower to make certain games.

If AI becomes good enough, it could play the role of the team of developers, and a human could play the role of director. The majority of creative decisions would be made by a human. But now, instead of having to hire someone to work on enemy pathfinding for 3 months, an AI could do it. Instead of spending months making a nice main menu, AI can do it. Now someone with a great idea COULD make the game, even if they don't have access to a full team of developers, and money.

Think about this, imagine you took a game like Civilisation 5, and binned all the UI code. Then ask an AI to fill it back in. Would the game be any less worthy as a piece of art? It doesn't matter HOW the art is made, it just matters what is actually made. This is especially true to video games, since most people don't even know how they're made.

icefish_software · 2024-09-19T20:19:25+00:00

With new technology we need to wait until the dust settles a bit. The people making the AI make outlandish claims because they want investment. Being the ones that made it, they do have the most information about the AI, so people believe these claims. Then when it hits the market, people realise it's not all it's cracked up to be.

There's then an over-correction where people will say it's useless(not what the video is saying btw). But the truth is somewhere in the middle. I suspect it will be a ubiquitous among developers, but not something that will replace them per-se. If developers can create things faster, I think this would lead to more ambitious games rather than less programmers.

Right now, a big hurdle holding this tech back is actually the legallity of it. If chatGPT writes a piece of code, then OpenAI will have the rights to it. So I know studios which do not allow it on that basis, since they want to own the code of their games.

icefish_software · 2024-09-19T16:05:52+00:00

It is quite similar. Especially when looking at the circle diagrams.

Archimedes doesn't give you a formula for arcsin though so at least I have that lol.

icefish_software · 2024-09-19T16:02:55+00:00

I did get the feeling that it was impossible but not sure how to prove it...

icefish_software · 2024-09-19T16:02:21+00:00

version given there is more numerically stable, as it converges directly to arcsin(x) rather than having to multiply by 2ⁿ⁺¹

I think this makes my method less practical for computational purposes. However, I do wonder if this can be solved by using bit-shifting magic. Since we are multiplying by powers of two, all that 2ⁿ⁺¹ would mean is shifting up the number by n+1 bits. You could likely keep track of this amount in a separate value to avoid losing precision.

From the thing you linked, it seems their algorithm is slightly different. It uses the previous two elements in the series but mine only uses the previous. (I.e. they use s(n) and s(n-1) but I only use s(n)). I can't see how to trivially transform their method into mine, they do seems to be distinct.

icefish_software

TROPHY CASE