Robo House is a ‘game jam’ entry, written in Lua/Love2d over the course of about 10 days. The game jam was Redefine2021, themed ‘Future Tech’. The player has to stop robotic vacuum cleaners gone bad. The music is from PlayOnLoop.com and the sound effects were made using Bfxr. The color palette is the Pico 8 palette as found on Lospec. The game was rated 6th best out of 25 entries.
Max Downforce is an arcade racing game and also the spiritual sequel to Grand Prix. The goal is to complete each of 10 laps before the timer reaches zero. You get fewer second for every next lap, but part of the remaining time is carried over. This game is written in LÖVE, a great framework for making 2d games in the Lua programming language. The music is by Filippo Vicarelli of PlayOnLoop.com. The cheering crowd sample is a fragment of a recording by Stephan Schütze during a World Cup Rugby match.
Grand Prix is a racing game inspired by Pole Position and other racing games from the previous century. These games do not use a complete 3d system but rather a fixed view on a track that is accomplished with 2d game techniques, as explained and illustrated on Lou’s Pseudo 3d Page. In Grand Prix, the ultimate goal for the player is to try and complete 8 laps, winning the gold cup. This is quite a challenge, with the clock ticking down and opponent cars getting in the way. The car is controlled using the arrow keys. (Alternatively ‘A’ and ‘Z’ can be use for throttle/brake, and ‘<‘ and ‘>’ can be used for steering.) The music in this game is by coda (coda.s3m.us). Sound effects were made using SFXR, and the game was programmed in Blitz Max.
Deploy your army of warriors, archers and giant trolls in an attempt to beat the enemy wizard and reach the other side of the battle field! Launch fire balls and special wizard attacks to take out the enemy troops. As more of your units reach the other side, your army will grow bigger. If your wizard makes it across, you win! This game was programmed in Monkey and is the sequel to the original Wizard Battle (2004) which does not work properly on newer computers any more. The texts in Wizard Battle 2 are displayed in the very nice and freely available font Rapscallion by Ryan Splint.
January 2012 | Monkey | HTML5 | Play at itch.io (keyboard required)
Cars with guns. Prepare for a battle all the way to the finish line. After the first lap, the guns are activated. Earn extra points by destroying your opponents, but make sure you finish high enough to continue to the next race! This game was programmed in Monkey. Other tools used: Graphics Gale and Paint.net for graphics, SFXR and Audacity for sound effects, Fruity Loops for music.
May 2011 | Monkey | HTML5 | Play at itch.io (keyboard required)
A fire has broken out at the local cat and dog shelter! Help two cats save the day by positioning the stretcher just right and bouncing the doggies into the ambulance. Use keys 1, 2 and 3 to move around. Doggy Bounce is a remake of Bouncing Babies by Dave Baskin (1984).
Mano Trooper is a remake of Greg Kuperberg’s “Paratrooper” (1982). Try to set a high score by shooting down enemy helicopters, paratroopers, jets and bombs. Every shot will cost you one point, so don’t waste too many bullets! The two dogs Noah and Merlin are helping out by attacking landed paratroopers, but after each attack they have to rest for a while. Once four paratroopers have landed on either side of the gun, they will take out your gun. Music in this game is by coda (coda.s3m.us). Sound effects were made using SFXR.
Minimaster is a chess game. It uses the “minimax” algorithm to decide which move to play next. All moves of the game of chess have been programmed. The program sometimes makes rather bad moves, this is probably a bug in my implementation of the algorithm that I have not yet been able to locate. Still, if you are a beginning player this program may well beat you if you’re not careful! Chess enthusiasts who can also read Dutch may want to check out this nice blog maintained by my dad: Alberts Schaakblog