itch.io

Ah, sorry, it's just a text file, let me rename it.

I still play this every year. Very silly and charming.

I don't see any download here? You can download the issue from the Wordpress site though...

Ah, so you could squash or stretch the images? I think that would be in-scope for this, and pretty easy. I've also been thinking about adding a separate command for flipping so you can face the same sprite left and right (and up/down? hmm) and also get a fun card-flipping effect for free (which I discovered by accident when doing the code for Bez's Charlie HasBeen). And I don't think you can walk a sprite off an edge to make it disappear?

So a couple potential expansions, but I've been holding off until I have time to sit down and have a good think about how far I want to go with features. Glad you had fun with it!

Yeah, the plan is to keep it sweet and simple. This was a one-off engine for Fix Your Mother's Printer and then we decided it was useful enough to release for other people to use.

I'm not against revisiting it occasionally to make smaller changes (what did you have in mind?) but it could easily turn into a project that eats up an unbounded amount of time and I'm definitely not looking to compete with Ren'Py or anything.

I'm in the middle of another project just at the moment but I'll see if I can find time to update it for Inky 0.15.0 sometime this week; thanks for the heads up!

Oops, any empty space, looks like. Should be fixed now.

Ah, dustbunnies. Now I see the error in my logic. It's true that hint 5 says that ifthere is a unique solution, it must have this property. But that doesn't help you answer the question of  whether a particular set of hint answers rules out all of the non-unique answers that may or may not have that property. Gah. OK.

Just to see if I'm clear on the disagreement here: it's about whether or not it's valid to use "there is a unique solution" as part of the constraints?

Because I had started by assuming that since hint 5 is the only thing that constrains digit four, in order to have a unique solution, the first three digits must sum to either eight or zero. And that still seems obviously true to me.

But your position is that "there is a unique solution" is sort of an external check and may not be used as an actual constraint? I can see that if you're not allowed to say "there is a unique solution, therefore the digits must sum to 8," then you're left with "IF the OTHER hints fail to force the digits to sum to 8, THEN you don't have a unique solution." And that makes hints 1 and 4 are NOT redundant in the yes/yes/no case for hints 2/3/5.

Do I have that right?

It still does seem very strange to me that unique solution would not be an allowable constraint when non-redundant hints is. So yeah, seems like a "both reasonings are the other way around" problem, and therefore a poorly-designed puzzle. But hey, game jam.

Hrm. I've narrowed it down to two possible solutions and I've used all the information and neither of my possible answers are accepted. I've double-checked my work several times and can't see my mistake.

Edit: Ah, I see, the bug in the game has already been found several times. Too bad: it'd be a fantastic puzzle if it wasn't broken.

Edit edit: Nope, I'm wrong, found the flaw in my logic, see below.

I think I'm going to sleep on this before I start working my way through all the rot13 text to see if anyone has an answer. Is there a rot13 plugin for Firefox? There must be.

If anyone wants to be generous and check my work, here's the clearest way I can find to write out my chain of logic: what am I missing?

Gur ynfg uvag pbafgenvaf gur cnffpbqr fb gung rvgure nyy qvtvgf ner mreb, be gur sbhegu qvtvg vf avar naq gur svefg guerr qvtvgf fhz gb rvtug.

Edit edit: the above is wrong. This hint says that if there is a unique passcode, it must have this property. That doesn't help you answer the question of whether a particular set of hint answers rules out all the non-unique passcodes which may or may not have that property. Gah. Tricky.

Vs gur frpbaq naq guveq uvagf ner OBGU gehr, guvf nafjref gur svsgu uvag va gur nssvezngvir naq GUNG fcrpvsvrf gur svefg qvtvg, znxvat uvagf bar naq sbhe erqhaqnag. Fb gung'f bhg.

Gur svefg naq sbhegu uvag zhfg obgu or snyfr, fvapr vs rvgure vf gehr gur bgure vf erqhaqnag. Gung nyfb nafjref gur svsgu uvag va gur nssvezngvir, fb abj jr xabj gung pbapyhfviryl.

Abj jr xabj gur nafjref gb guerr uvagf, naq gung gur erznvavat gjb pna'g obgu or gehr. Vs gurl'er obgu snyfr, gura gur fhz-gb-rvtug pbafgenvag cnerf guvatf qbja n YBG, ohg gurer ner fgvyy yvxr guvegl-gjb cbffvovyvgvrf. Fb gurer'f ab havdhr fbyhgvba gurer.

Fb rknpgyl bar bs gur frpbaq naq guveq uvagf zhfg or gehr. Naq gur svefg qvtvg zhfg or na bqq ahzore terngre guna bar.

Vs gur frpbaq uvag vf gehr, gura gur guveq qvtvg pna'g or guerr, naq gur svefg cyhf guveq qvtvgf zhfg or fvk. Gung tvirf hf n fvatyr cbffvovyvgl, svir bar gjb avar.

Vs gur guveq uvag vf gehr, gura gur frpbaq qvtvg pna'g or gjb, naq gur svefg cyhf frpbaq qvtvgf zhfg or svir. Gung nyfb tvirf hf n fvatyr cbffvovyvgl, svir mreb guerr avar.

Yeah, that's fair. I think just moving the bow sensor dial and wheel up a bit would have fixed it. And maybe renaming it? Put the dial and the "Hydrophone" light right near each other, and the wheel right near that, and lose the "Bow Sensor" label. I was partly confused by the idea that a bow sensor could turn all the way around and listen backwards, and it took a long time to realize that it had anything to do with the hydrophone light.

That was cool once I figured it out, but I would have liked more information about the controls. Like a warning that it's an audio game and makes no sense without the sound on, and a note that the main thing you can interact with is kinda down in the darkness near the floor where there's mostly nothing. Because it took me three or four runs and 5-10 minutes to discover the main mechanic of the game.

Also some hints about the map icons would be nice: I figured out the whales but the other two...? I figured out through trial and error that the trapezoid with the ring on top makes gurgling noises and the... other one makes wooden clunking noises but I have no idea what they're supposed to be.

Oh no, did I go through the whole development with things backwards?

Hmm. It seems to do what I intended... It's relative to the direction you're traveling, so if you're moving upwards then left grabs the node to the left, right grabs the node to the right, but if you're moving down it's backwards. So the right button always swings clockwise, the left counter-clockwise.

OK, now I'm curious what you were expecting. Global left and right? That totally didn't occur to me, but it seems like it would be possible, though it might be a little weird when you're travelling mostly sideways. I'll have to try that, thanks.

This weekend I was playing around with PICO-8 making a little thing for my Anbernic handheld linux retro-gaming console, and since you extended the deadline I actually got something finished-ish.

But... it's a remake of an old LOVE2d 1-hour prototype from a few years ago. I didn't look at the original code (not that it would have been that much help since I was switching from 1-button to 2-button controls).  So I don't know if it's something I should enter: still the same idea, just nicer controls and a bit more character (a bobbly body that swings around when you change directions, NPCs to send the mail, and they move stars occasionally).

https://joshgrams.itch.io/spacemail-chimp-plus

Hmm... so is The Orange Conundrum a game about a fruit-grower with a mysterious problem? Darn it, I don't have time for a jam right now...

Yay!

Any plans to make it frame-rate independent? It's just about unplayably fast on my machine with the 144 Hz display...

That's kind of charming and fun! Does it have an end, or does it just keep going indefinitely?

Sweet! Thank you! The vertical lines are off by about an eighth of an inch but it looks like the PDF is fine so I'm pretty sure my printer just isn't accurate in that direction, grr. It's still close enough to work.

Any chance we could get the Print N Play in 8.5x11? I'm having trouble figuring out how to print the 8.5x22 sheets as double-sided pages.

Nicely done! I might suggest that you put a special character (or maybe a double-dash or something if the font doesn't have anything good) at the end of each multi-part dialogue so you know you've reached the end without having to loop back around to see if you get the first part again? But other than that it played very smoothly.

Hmm...yeah, we should put that in the description: it was a deliberate decision not to constrain the form that far. So often you'll get complete nonsense. If you make the second and fourth letters the same you'll get rhyming lines since they come from the same source poem.

Very fun! It would be cool to have a way to advance to the next level with the keyboard... Love the letter-based animations: I think the owl is my favorite, though it's a tough call between that, the apatasaurus, the elephant, and Saturn.

This is unplayably fast on my machine. Maybe it's dependent on the framerate of my monitor? I only have a 144 Hz setting, no 60.

Nice! I got to...about 3872 on my first try. Always awesome to see other people translating real-time action to a turn-based setting.

Thanks! I've sketched out story *ideas* off and on over the years, but usually they turn out to be just settings, not plots. I think this is the first piece of fiction I've actually *written* since I was a teenager, so the positive comments I've been getting are like, "Woah! Very cool. Wasn't expecting that..." :)

Yeah, arrow keys might be nice as alternate bindings when you have two people to play it so your hands aren't so close together. But I'd have to actually think about the code to allow multiple bindings for each control, so I'll get that later at some point. But I did change the left player to WASD, since that was trivial.

If things ever get less crazy and you get a chance to play against another person, do try it: some of the strategy ends up being interesting and kinda fun...like you tend to race to drop your piece, but it's often a disadvantage to get there first. And it's neat that you're actually interacting with the other player instead of just dumping junk on them like most two-player brick-stacking games.

Anyway. Thanks again for playing!

Ah, I always forget how ingrained WASD is for most people, growing up we were always like, "that's dumb, put it under the home keys, and then you have more things you can hit with your pinky" and reconfigured things. I could certainly change it. Should I move IJKL over too, or were those fine?

Ha! This is fun. Like the upgrades. Man, those horned bugs that split into 4 are tough.

Yeah...I haven't really touched it in nearly two years, but after the Roguelike Celebration I'm thinking I should find time to make it into a bigger game. Map editor, more enemies, more interesting roguelikey interactions between things.

Re waiting: to some extent you have control over the game speed. If you want it to take less real-world time you can go "slowly" and hammer the space bar, or go "fast" and take fewer turns but more risk. In either case, it's useful (sometimes essential) to turn around ahead of time so you're already in position to stop. And the afterburner can help stop quickly too. You can only hold ten turns of afterburner fuel, but that's enough to save yourself a few times.

Re distance to the wall: yeah, I'm aware of that as a problem, but wasn't quite sure what to do about it. All the collision volumes are a circle that fills a full hex: the size of the shield circle. Except maybe the baby jellies? And this was the font size where the characters all fit, but of course they aren't round. Hmm...maybe an option that shows the circles for everything. All the walls are centered on their hexes, so you can use the background hexes as a guide, maybe?

Glad you had some fun with it!

I figured that one out: you have to get the yellow glowing enemies to zap the pillar, then it lights up and opens the door. But...then later I thought I was going to fight the skull king and the game teleported me to a gray area with a throne in the center and the walls didn't work; I could just walk off the edges in all directions, and no skull king showed up and the display was all glitchy when I did walk off the edge.

Did you actually try it? It's 100% designed around screencheating: your opponent's grid is rotated 90 degrees from yours, but the tiles are still drawn "upright', so it's much more disorienting than just rotating the view. There aren't very many landmarks, and you can zoom-in your display so your opponent doesn't have as much to go on. And of course your opponent is invisible on your screen: you can't see them even if they're right next to you. It seems like you'd be able to get good at it eventually, but I found it very tough to think about the map in two orientations at once.

On Itch, a game has to be created by one person, but if other contributors have Itch accounts and want it to show up on their individual pages, you can do that, though it's a little convoluted.

If the person who uploaded the game goes to the game's edit page, under "More" (from the tab list, after Analytics, Metadata, Interact) there's an Admins page where they can add other Itch.io users as admins.

Once you've done that, each admin can go to their profile (click on their avatar or username at the top right) and choose Edit Theme. At the bottom will be the list of games, and they can toggle Hidden off so it will show up on their profile page as a game that they created.

If you'd rather do Inform 7, I wonder if making some parts a choice-based thing with the Hybrid Choices extension might make that more viable?

Don't hold your breath. IIRC for last year's jam they took about a day and a half after the jam "started" to announce the theme.

What the heck  does the bot do? It seems like sometimes it moves blocks so they're next to other blocks of the same type, but most of the time it just beeps and does nothing.

It would be tricky to fit the mechanical feel I had in mind into a historical setting, I think. It's fine, I don't need a game jam. It just seemed like it might be a good excuse to make this thing now.

Thanks,

--Josh

'Cause I finished up with the GMTK jam yesterday, saw this jam's title and thought, "great! That's a perfect excuse to prototype the mental-calendar-math game I've had in the back of my head for several years." But it doesn't have anything to do with ancient history...

"Curly" was the second level we created and I think we were both still in that "heheh it's fun zooming around the curves" phase.

And the last one...yeah. It really needs two or three levels of tutorializing. There's just no good way to learn the techniques and yeah, it feels like random chance otherwise. And then going forward is so touchy that I still fail it at least half the time even knowing what to do. I thought about making the tail longer to slow it down a little, but we were near the end of the jam and I wasn't sure it would be a simple fix.

So yup. Typical game jam misjudging-the-difficulty stuff. Thanks for playing!