CresCoGames

Picsee Pixels

 

Graphic Artist and Mistress of Communication Design: Claire Wagner!

 

The Battle Over Mars! ... 100% complete finally!  This was our first 'learning project' with Game Maker and was thus rife with spaghetti code, so it took forever to sufficiently debug.  Head on over to Fun Stuff for the download link.  Remember all, this is just build 1.0; we have many ideas to make the game far better in the future (first and foremost being a potentially overhauled keyboard control scheme, but definitely the inclusion of gamepad compatibility.)  For now though we think it is a nice little addictive space duel and a tasty first sample of Our Reality, so have fun all!. 

iSnort: Legend of the Fat Unicorn ... ~15% complete. I'm working on the first Unicorn Fight installment for the iOS in ShiVa 3D, so there's some learning involved but I'm loving every minute of it!  Snort has never looked better and I really cannot wait to show him off to the appstore in all his 3D animated glory.  I've got most of my art resources together, I just need a theme song and the model for the Random Hero.  As for the logic, well as I said I'm learning.  I'm totally new to Lua, but ShiVa 3D is an excellent environment so I anticipate no trouble getting used to Stonescript Lua.  Look forward to this one; it will be but the first of many sophisticated Unicorn Fight games to come!

 Surreality ... ~???% complete.  This Flash-based app is actually almost ready to go in that the interface is functional, and that's the trickiest part of the logic side of a semi-visual text adventure.  However, I haven't written all that much of the story yet, and that bit is also just a smidge important for a text adventure game :s  Thankfully I have been brainstorming and I write pretty fast.  Hop on over to Fun Stuff to see a preview screen featuring some inventory items to Look at...  I think the TypeWriter text needs a speed boost though, hehe

Flash Force ... ~95% complete.  I started this project to make a grad school presentation Flashier but didn't get it finished in time... still, I liked where it was going and had some interesting ideas about combining the classic Pong and Arkanoid themes into one game with some extras so I continued with it.  You can head over to Fun Stuff to play a preview version.  The finished app will integrate some particle effects, it most likely will include special bricks with powerups etc., and finally perhaps some enhanced AI.

Phoenix Steel ... Pre-production [Graphics: Got 'em, Music: Yessir, Storyboard: In progress, Game Design: In progress, Level Design: Queued]

  UnicornDS ... 10% complete. At last the beloved 'Snort the extremely fat unicorn' series of rpg-style duels is migrating from the TI-83 calculator to the Nintendo DS!  The Unicorn games have always been expected to be equal parts dramatic tension and rofl-caliber comedy, and so far UnicornDS does not disappoint.  It is being programmed in a BASIC dialect called 'Wee Basic' created by homebrewer Marovada for the nintendo DS.  Its great- you can program on the DS itself or in a windows editor he created that automatically ties in the no$gba DS emulator for testing purposes.  Check it out at http://freescifistories.wordpress.com if you are at all interested in DS homebrew programming!  Anyway, UnicornDS will only be made available for download as a .txt file [wee basic interprets code in .txt format] so you'll need the wee basic interpreter .nds file and a flashcart for DS console play or just download Marovada's PC Wee Basic editor and load up UnicornDS to play on the PC.  Also, good news for coders- the game will be open source... whether I want it to be or not :)  There is no easy way to hide the code if I'm going to program it in Wee Basic since loading up the code in the .txt files for editing and running on different platforms is kind of the point of the language, hehe.     

        ^update-- well after playing around with wee basic for a bit I've decided I might be better off programming UnicornDS in C.  That way I can make use of the DS Game Maker by Invisionsoft and also generate a .nds file so end users won't need the wee basic interpreter.  Wee basic is neat and I still wholly recommend it, but it's only at 0.81 right now and is a little lacking in functionality.  I'll be keeping a close eye on it though as it it develops, that's for certain!   

       ^^Okay, Wee Basic may be back in the saddle, as upon further study of the manual I have discovered some key functions I had overlooked.  I'll definitely be making some stuff with the DSGM and C at some point, but the portable-development ability associated with the Unicorn games thanks to their genesis in TI-83 calculator basic is very dear to me so I expect I'll be keeping on with Wee Basic :)  Ah, I still remember programming the very first Unicorn game in chemistry class seven years ago...

       ^^^Heh, well since I'm being force-fed Java by Montclair State University, UnicornDS has been suspended for the moment.  Instead our fans can soon expect to see GreenUnicorn programmed in the Java game/simulation/learning IDE Greenfoot and deployed in both executable .jar and web applet formats!  Also, expect to see CresCo Games iphone/touch apps appearing in the appstore soon as my tricked out 17'' display MacBook Pro arrives tomorrow!  I plan to get right into GameSalad and Xcode; though Apple may be comprised of a gaggle of pretentious, insufferably "stylish" nerds whose opinion of a fair price is even more deluded than that of the fine folks at Adobe they do know how to make a VERY attractive and user-friendly product.  Anyhoo, Snort the Extremely Fat Unicorn and the Random Hero may find their way onto the iphone/touch as well, so be on the lookout!    

Announcement: CresCode BASIC to exist someday!  I've been interested in the prospect of creating my own programming language for some time now, but I was always a bit overwhelmed by the huge amount of feature planning, application generalization considerations, and compiler theory involved therein.  I have recently however stumbled upon the concept of Domain Specific Languages.  The domain I'd be interested in of course would be 2d game creation, so I could immediately throw a lot of problematic features out the window.  I would like CresCode BASIC to be visual in some way, but that will be a luxury... primarily, it will differ from other game-centric languages by focusing on turn-based environments; contrary to what a gamer might believe, for a developer turn-based games are some of the most difficult to make, so I would love to see a language emerge that was specifically geared towards making tactical AI and handling turns.  Currently I am researching some of the tools out there to help create DSLs [there are many that look rather friendly, unlike the case with general purpose language creation] and I hope to get into development of the language someday soon.  

But lets narrow the domain for now as I'm new to Language Oriented Programming, shall we?  -- 

Announcing the BASICorn project!  The BASICorn language will be optimized specifically for creating low/no multimedia requirement games (not necessarily all text-based, but probably close to).  The name of course goes back to the legendary TI-83 Unicorn games which managed to be both difficult, fun, and hilarious with only text and a few pictures drawn with the grapher. If anyone is familiar with MS Smallbasic, their "~15 keywords can do a lot" paradigm is what I'm going for.  I really like JetBrains' Meta Programming System, though I'm also considering making the language visual using MetaEdit+  Another interesting choice is the Oomega Development Kit; it seems similar to JetBrains' MPS and its devs are extremely amiable and helpful.

^ "Thank you for describing your plan. I fully agree that fun part and being able to operate directly with symbols [sprites] of the game (rather than rectangles) are important and something desirable [in a visual programming language]....If you plan to publish the language you are creating please let me know. I would very much like to see it." That was from one of the MetaCase language-oriented-programming gurus regarding my proposal for CresCode BASIC and BASICorn-- if that's not an endorsement I don't know what is