Wizznic! 0.9.1 Released

I've released version 0.9.1 of Wizznic! which features some minor polish, and a more sane level-ordering (I hope), this also fixes a crashbug that could happen when entering highscore (I hope).

For this release, I've also created a facebook group called "Wizznic" go join! ;)

Get the game for Linux/Windows/Wiz here on sourceforge

Here's the changelog in all it's glory.

• Changed Wiz default clock to 500 mhz instead of 400 to improve performance.
• When completing a pack, PACKNAME/finished.png is loaded and shown instead of wall-o-text.
• However, another wall-o-text is shown if there is no finished.png in the pack.
• Moved some levels around, removed some levels. 80 levels total.
• Added optional WxH argument to tools/updatelevelpreviews.sh to generate images of given size,
• while not useful in the game, they are useful for sorting levels (using an image-viewing app to browse them)
• "Commercial" for the pack function. in the start of some levels.
• Level editor now reads and writes all level properties, including optional ones.
• Updated readme.
• Updated data/empty.wzp so it contains all level properties, and comments explaining their function and usage.
• Added another intro level to teleports, added intro-images to those levels.
• Updated the cursor in the NES pack.
• Removed "template" pack, it does nothing that the main pack does not show allready.
• Fixed music changing in intermediate screens ("Level Stats" and "Entering Level").
• Fixed crash that could happen when entering highscores.
• Updated ports list (gee, someone ported it to a phone, neat..)
• Updated changelog and decided to use X.Y.Z versioning.
• Program now calls SDL_Quit() on exit (resets screen-resolution if in fullscreen)
• tools/releaser.sh now generates the src package witout src-graphics, instead it generates a srcgfx tarball seperately.
• moved the unused theme graphics into src graphics..

Wizznic 0.9 Released

So, I've released a new version of my game Wizznic, which is most awesome! ;)
This version comes with a load of new levels, and a fair amount of music! :D
This version also builds on the previous success with getting feedback from the players (all 3), so I've included functionality that sends back stats about the difficulty that you're having with each levels (it sends back the time you used, and how many times you restart/die in each level), this info lets me decide which levels are too easy, and which are too hard.. But the functionality can be disabled when the game start if you don't want it. (but please don't, I need the info..)

Get it at: https://sourceforge.net/projects/wizznic/files/

Changelog for 0.9_feedback_edition:

• Fixed a bug where teleport strings could get too long and sometimes crash the game.
• Added cheat.
• Time spent solving level was reset when player used retry.
• Using cURL(windows) and wget(*nix), wizznic will now upload level-statistics: The game asks you to accept (Ctrl) or disable the function (Alt) on first start, it can also be enabled/disabled from options menu. The info is sent to: http://dusted.dk/wizznic/commit.php and contains the following fields: version, pack, level, score, moves, time, and action (which can be either "check", "restart", "complete", "gameover" or "lost-life") This information will be very helpful to order the levels.
• Script to move levels around. ( tools/movlev.sh (works on .))
• It's no longer possible to place a "reserved" brick from the editor (the "reserved" type is used internally)
• The cursor can now be changed from level-files with cursor=cursorname.png (relative to packname/themes/cursors/)
• Default cursor should now be PACKNAME/themes/cursors/cursor.png, but the game will still fall back on PACKNAME/cursor.png
• 75 levels (around 60 new!).
• Added new Teleport sound.
• Particle effect on teleport
• Added direction-switching delay to horizontal mover, solves bug that brick
• cant be dropped of a mover with a travel distance of only 2 spaces.
• Adjusted direction-switching delay to 500 ms instead of 300

Halp plz!

If you're the self-loathing type (like me) who play games to find out what's wrong with them, read on! If you prefer the shiney, finished, polished product: nothing to see here, move along people! ;)

Anyway, since I've done most of the levels for Wizznic, I have a hard time figuring out which (if any) of my puzzles are "hard", so I'd love for you to help me out here!

Here's what I'd love for you to do!
Download the feedback pack, extract it and put in your wizznic/packs directory (you'll need to download wizznic if you don't allready have it), then play through the levels..
They're all set to 16 minutes, so if you get stuck, just use the restart level function as many times as you want.
Upon completing each level, and this is the important part:
write down the following stats from the stats screen, so it looks like this in a text-file:
levelnum moves time
If you can't complete a level, write down which one.

You're very welcome to add critique (positive aswell as negative) too :)

When you're as far as you can get, please send the text to me, so I can get an impression of how wrong I've got the level-order.
You can send it to my E-Mail at dusted at dusted dot dk, or, if you prefer, as a comment on this post, or as a ticket on sourceforce.
Please fill the subject as: Level Feedback

You're awesome! :)

Wizznic 0.8 Final released.

I've been hardly working, on Wizznic, been doing a lot of levels (that you're not getting yet *evil grin*)
There have been a lot of polish, some of which will only benifit me, but well..
Corrected a couple of bugs along the way, and I think I have a version that's pretty solid..

So anyway, this version is mostly to wrap up the coding part, so I can concentrate more on content-creation, 0.9 will include several techno/trance/house tracks, over 60 new levels, and more graphics, so there's something to look forward to there :)

Because most of the changes are to do with the linux port, I've decided that a windows release can wait for 0.9.

Anyway, here's more or less what's changed:
0.8:
Final 0.8. Next will be 0.9.
Fixed a bug in the level-preview-dump function that made a black image if no start/stop image found.
Thumbnailer works again (on levels that refer to themes that are installed)
Added instructions for using the thumbnailer in the install.txt
No longer blink [MORE] in the level-editor list.
Removed an error message that were printed even though there was no error.
Pack-List is now sorted.
Added Puzznic! Stage 09 pack by KML
Script to make releasing for Linux (Source package) and Wiz automated. This will be extented to windows when I learn to cross compile.
Pre3
More linux-friendly (thanks to PVince81 for patch which was used as inspiration)
Linux specific Makefile based on contribution from PVince81.
Renamed Makefile to Makefile.wiz (to avoid confuzion with the linux Makefile which is called Makefile.linux)
Linux version can be compiled so it saves user files (player & editorlevels) to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME or $HOME (like most *nix apps)
Read more about this in doc/install.txt
Level-Editor menu screen is made a bit less cluttered.
Clone level function (create a new level, with the contents from another level, so it is easier to make variations of existing levels)
Pre2
Player was not asked to enter highscore after "completed game" screen was shown.
Added Silver pack.
Teleports added
Greeter/Credits added to welcome screen
Added a "template" pack (essentially just a copy of the wizznic pack, without the levels/music),
can be used by content creators as a starting point for creating a pack.
Tweaked the ingame interface a bit.
Lots of minor changes.
Changed readme a bit, it's still not accurate though.
Fixed a crashbug due to improper memory access.
Fixed all compiler warnings.

So, 0.9 is going to be interesting, since this was not ;)

Hello World

Hi all, I'm Jimmy aka DusteD, a friend of mine, Qubodup was so kind as to create this blog for my games.
So I'll try and do my best to update it and maybe even provide some interesting reading (though I doubt that).

So, well, in case you are interested in knowing my life story (as a "game developer") here it is..
Male, born in Denmark in 1986.
I've always been a computer geek and I've always been facinated by games, being able to escape reality and enter a world of wonder and magic..
I was fortunate that my parents were not especially rich, so instead of plunging headless into a world of 3D and Windows, I had the priviledge of experiencing the whole home-computing revolution in slow motion..
My first computer was an Olivetti 8086, which I my dad got me in around '92.. On that I played Pac-Man, Sopwith and AlleyCat. The next machine I got was the Atari 2600, though, not the cool one with the wood-panel, it was bought used (I must have been around 8 years old, so this was in '94), and on this box-o-magic, I played Phoenix (still one of my favorite games), Jungle Hunt and Midnight Magic..
After this I used all my pocket money to buy a used C64 (still have it), and on this I played a lot around with all the many disks and tapes with games. It was also my first introduction to programming, however, being 11 years or so, I didn't have the english skills needed to understand the manual..
Finally, around 96 I got a PC, a Pentium 100 MHz with 16 MiB of RAM and 812 MiB of harddisk (when formatted with FAT32).. It ran Windows 95 and I played a lot of Red Alert, Doom, Duke3D, Quake and (after getting a 3dfx card) Quake2, and finally Aq2. On the 100 Mhz box I learnt myself to make maps for Duke3D using the map editor that came with the game, and I convinced myself that I wanted to be a "Mapper", all was fine untill I met WorldCraft and cut my teeth on 3D mapping, I made a few maps for AQ2 and decided that mapping was not for me.

Okay, long story short, I've played a lot of crappy old games, and I've learnt to love them :)
That's what got me interested in making games.. Old crappy games that were simple enough to understand, and simple enough that a few people in a basement could do them.. Only one problem, i haden't the slightest idea how to "make the computer machine do stuff", and with no internet it'd be a few years before I'd be able to learn it.

My life as a programmer started when I was around 15, with PHP (I had done a crude version of Tic Tac Toe in Qbasic two years earlier but that was more a bunch of Ifs than a game).
Nothing much happened, except for a few attempts at C that didn't go too well. That was, until 2007 after having learnt a bit of C for AVR 8bits in school, I decided to try and see if I could maybe make a simple game.. So I played around with C, SDL and OpenGL, and made Simplevaders, my first C program on the PC and also the first SDL and the first OpenGL program I wrote.. or copy-pasted together, more or less ;)
At this point, I'd been a GNU/Linux user for a few years, and had converted my dad to the OS aswell.. Only trouble with him running GNU/Linux was that his favorite game, DX-Ball didn't run well in Wine, and he didn't like lbreakout2, so I set out to make a replacement of DX-Ball for him.
After a few months of writing and learning, i had the first version of SDL-Ball, the code is crude and there are lots of design-flaws, memory leaks and bugs in it, but that's how I got started.

Sorry about the long wall of boring text, I'll try and make my next posts shorter and more organized.

In the future, expect my blog posts to be about ideas, thoughts and progreess on current projects (right now, that's wizznic).

We're live!

Hey there, it's me, qubodup!

I took a Blogspot/Blogger template and tinkered together a basic site for DusteD so that his games get a little more exposure (because I think they're cool) and because he might have some interesting stuff to say (because I'm pretty sure he's cool).

At time of this post, this blog is just a testing environment.