distractionware: devlog

Thank you very much for the all the naming suggestions for my library! In the end, I went with Haxegon, which was suggested by a number of people (including Tom and nuuup). Cheers!

Zeedonk isn’t that project. Zeedonk is something else. Coming soon!

Hello internet! I need some suggestions!

Recently, I’ve been working on a big programming tutorial – it’s for helping total beginners get started with game programming. I call it Learn to program badly with Terry, because names are very hard.

As part of that project, I’ve also been working on a beginner’s game library. Right now, that’s called TerryLib. Because, again, names are very hard.

The thing is, it’s starting to look like this library could actually be pretty useful – a thing that might be good for more than just learning to program. A thing that others might like to use. So, it’s a bit limiting to call it TerryLib, right?

But names are very hard. What should I call it?

Making a thing for Ludum Dare’s YOU ARE THE MONSTER theme. Already looking like it might take more than three days D:

 

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This week, I’ve been working on: a first person shooter in Pico8! This one’s been a lot of fun to make. 😀

 

Still working on this thing…

I’ve very happy to announce a brand new version of my beginner’s music making tool Bosca Ceoil! This is version 2.0, the first major update since it was released in 2013. This new version of the tool is a significant update, and adds lots of features and improvements. Head to boscaceoil.net to download it!

If you’re totally new to Bosca Ceoil, the new site should tell you everything you need to know about what it is and what it can do. If you’ve used it before, here’s what’s changed:

A major problem that Bosca always had is that it was kind of a dead end: if you made a song with it, you could save it as a .ceol, or export it as a .wav – but that was that.

So one of the most important things that’s new is support for exporting as a midi file! Midi files are supported by lots of popular music applications, so this means that it’s now possible to, for example, use Bosca to compose the actual notes, and then later import the song into something like FLStudio so you can add VST instruments.

Also, in addition to midis, Bosca can now also export .XM files and .MML files, thanks to contributions by Rob Hunter!

I made Bosca Ceoil the same way I make games – with a fixed resolution, running at 60FPS. Which is great for games, but not so good for an app that you might want to leave running in the background while you work on other stuff, say.

The new version of Bosca has a proper resizeable window, so you can see a lot more of the song you’re composing. It’s something it should have had all along, and it makes it infinitely nicer to work with!

It’s also gotten some major performance boosts with caching and CPU throttling, and is generally just much happier about running in the background than it used to be.

Bosca’s GUI has had a makeover. Things are generally brighter, clearer and more responsive!

Thanks for Chris Kim, you can now use Bosca right in your web browser, without downloading anything! Try it here!

At long last, Bosca has a built in tutorial, with nice, clear little pop up windows! This is something I’m really happy about – Bosca’s a beginner’s tool, and this does a lot to make it that bit more accessible.

Bosca Ceoil is a completely free, open source project, and I’m very grateful to the contributions others have made to it – especially Chris Kim for his flash web port, Rob Hunter for writing the .XM and .MML exporters, and Damien L, who forked Bosca back to Air 2.6 so that it could be used on Linux. Thank you so much for your help!

Hope you enjoy the new version!

Been working on a little game in Lexaloffle’s fantasy console Pico-8 recently! No idea where it’s going yet.

An image from chapter one of my programming tutorial, how to make a visual novel. The tutorial starts from scratch, and each chapter teaches you how to make a game in a new genre!

Since I last posted, I’ve mostly been working on that beginner’s game programming tutorial, and the beginner library that accompanies it. That library is already out in the world, on Github, but isn’t quite ready yet. It’ll be done when the tutorial’s done!

My main reason for writing this thing is because I’m a self taught coder myself, and when I was younger I benefited a lot from reading tutorials not unlike the one I’m writing. Writing this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time – it feels important.

Along the way, I’ve been talking to smarter people than me, and learning new tricks to hide confusing codey ideas as much as possible. Hello world in my tutorial looks like this:

import terrylib.*;

class Main {
  function update() {
    Text.display(0, 0, "Hello World");
  }
}

This is probably going to take another few weeks, but I’m gonna stick with it until it’s done. Then, back to making my own games! Woo!

Boo, getting a little out of the habit of making blog posts again. Well, here’s what I’ve been up to!

My main project right now is my untitled stealthy action roguelike, which started for 7DRL and then got seriously out of hand.

I needed a break to do other stuff, but I’m trying to avoid my usual trap of starting lots of stuff that I never finish – so, I’m finishing stuff. I made a list of non-game stuff, and I’m working through it!

Been adding some cool new features to this over the past week or so! Things to look forward to include: new file format support, performance increases, some nice interface additions like transpose buttons. I’m also hoping to include a built in tutorial, to replace the out of date online one and make it that bit more accessible to beginners.

DONE! This was a pretty fun thing to work on! I guess at some point I might do a little more work on it so that chatbots can face off against each other…

Since it was getting pretty obvious I wasn’t going to get around to this myself, I put out a call for help. That’s going great!

I’ve been very won over by Haxe and OpenFL, which is what I’ve used for every game I’ve worked on this year. I wanna make a tiny programming library in it, aimed at beginners, which gives you a simple, BASIC like starting point for making games. That’s almost done! It’s actually part of another project I’ve been working on lately, namely:

I’m thinking of calling it “Learn to Program Badly with Terry“. Or something else, probably.

There’s this message out there right now: “you can make video games even if you’re not a programmer!“. Which is very true! But it implies something about programming: that it’s a lot of work. That’s it too hard. That it’s somehow in the way of you and the game that you want to make.

I think this message, without intending to, scares people away from programming – people who might really enjoy it! Programming can be a lot of fun, and can give you a lot of freedom to approach things in new and unique ways. The problem is just that it’s really inaccessible. Getting started from nothing is tough, and it’s getting tougher.

Programming is a big subject, for sure, but the amount of it that you actually need to know to make stuff is surprisingly small, and isn’t as scary as a lot people make it out to be. So, I thought I’d have a go at making that case – a total beginners guide to game programming. Coming soon!