runhello.com

This is a video game where the only way to interact with it is to write and execute Lua source code.

Download

• Mac version
• Windows version
• Source code

I made this back at the beginning of the year for a Super Friendship Club event, but at the time didn’t release it because I was trying to decide whether to expand on it. I think I’ve decided it’s done. The game requires an OpenGL 2.0 compatible computer to run.

I’ve been circulating this game in indie circles since I first wrote it, and to my knowledge no one has ever beat it. I got reports of a couple of people getting to level two.

Made in 48 hours for the Ludum Dare 23 competition. The game is over when the music stops.

Download

• Mac version
• Windows version
• Source code

You can find the Ludum Dare competition entry page for the game here.

The game is based on this cellular automata. It requires an OpenGL 2.0 compatible computer to run.

A game I made on the last day of Molyjam 2012. I am so, so sorry.

Inspired by this tweet.

• Mac version
• Windows version
• Linux version
• Source code

This game requires an OpenGL 2.0 compatible computer.

Made at the very end of Pirate Kart V for use at their GDC booth (along with the other 955 games).

• Mac version
• Windows version
• Source code

The page for this game on Glorious Trainwrecks (the site for the Pirate Kart jam) is here.

An experiment I created over the last month for the fourth Super Friendship Club game pageant, theme: “Universe”. I would go so far as to call it a “video game”. Arrow keys steer.

• Mac version
• Windows version
• Linux version
• Source code

Notes: These license disclosures apply to the game and should have been included in the attached Readme file. Also, the Windows version of this game currently has two problems: sound comes out of one speaker only; and when you quit, it will appear to lock up for about ten seconds. You can either wait for the ten seconds to end, or force quit it. I am sorry about these problems, this is the first Polycode-based game I have ever released and I am still working out some kinks.

CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO THE PRETTY COLOR-CODED FULL RESULTS

This explanation will look a lot like that of previous years, but:

Every year since 2004 I’ve been hosting this Game of the Year poll for the users of some forums I read. There are a lot of GOTY polls out there, but this one I think is kind of special. Most polls, you’re given a list of four or five options and you’re asked to pick the one you liked best. This poll, people are given a list of a couple of hundred options, consisting of every new game released in the previous year– and asked to rate their top ten or twenty.

This does a few interesting things. First off, we get to see all the information about what people’s second, third etc choices are. Second off, because the second, third etc choices count, people are more likely to vote for the game they want to win, rather than the game they think is likely to win– they’re less likely to engage in “strategic voting”. Finally, because we have all this information, we’re actually able to provide somewhat reasonable rankings for something like the top hundred or so games of last year.

The full results– showing the exact number of voters who ranked each game first, second, third place etc– can be found here. In the meantime, the final results were:

1. Portal 2 (6571) *** GAME OF THE YEAR ***
2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (6253)
3. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (4234)
4. Batman: Arkham City (4134)
5. Bastion (4094)
6. Saints Row: The Third (2547)
7. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2126)
8. Battlefield 3 (2071)
9. Dark Souls (2034)
10. Dead Space 2 (1681)
11. L.A. Noire (1639)
12. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (1515)
13. Star Wars: The Old Republic (1505)
14. Gears of War 3 (1447)
15. Terraria (1421)
16. Dragon Age II (1411)
17. Super Mario 3D Land (1261)
18. Pokemon Black & White (1255)
19. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (1170)
20. The Binding of Isaac (1164)

The numbers in parentheses are the final scores each game got under the poll’s ranking system. Thanks if you voted, and some more elaborate analysis of the results (plus an explanation of the scores) can be found below.

NOTEWORTHY WINNERS

• GOTY 2011:
  

  #1, Portal 2

• Top-ranked Wii Exclusive:
  

  #7, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

• Top-ranked PC Exclusive:
  

  #12, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

• Top-ranked 360 Exclusive:
  

  #14, Gears of War 3

• Top-ranked 3DS Exclusive:
  

  #17, Super Mario 3D Land

• Top-ranked DS Exclusive:
  

  #18, Pokemon Black & White

• Top-ranked PS3 Exclusive:
  

  #21, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

• Top-ranked smartphone game:
  

  #24, SpaceChem

• Top-ranked smartphone exclusive:
  

  #48, Jetpack Joyride

• Top-ranked PSP Exclusive:
  

  #45, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

• Best FPS:
  

  #1, Portal 2

• Best RPG:
  

  #2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

• Best “Indie” Game:
  

  #5, Bastion

• Best Game Available Through A Console Download Service:
  

  #5, Bastion

• “Cult” Award (see below):
  

  #42, Dungeon Siege 3

• Best Browser Game:
  

  #103, Escape from Puppy Death Factory

NOTEWORTHY LOSERS

• Best game of 2011 which somehow nobody considered to be their #1 pick: #23, Magicka
• Worst game of 2011 that at least one person considered their #1 pick: #215, Stronghold 3
• Worst game of 2011: An incredible three-way tie between #251, Rugby Challenge; #252, “Leedmees” (??) and #253, Fishing Resort for Wii. (Each of these games scored only one vote each, each from someone who considered it their 19th best game of the year.)

There were 22 games on the nominations list no one voted for at all.

ALTERNATE SCORING METHODS

The rankings listed above are based on a version of the Borda count voting method. Each vote cast for a game gives that game a certain number of points. If someone ranks a game #1, that game gets 20 points. If they rank it #2, the game gets 19 points. If they rank it #3 the game gets 18 points… and so on. I have a script that checks a couple of alternate ways of ranking the same data, though.

For example, if we rank games only by the number of first place votes they got, we get a wildly different list, with a different first place winner and lots of games listing that weren’t anywhere near the top 20:

First Past the Post

1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (141)
2. Portal 2 (92)
3. Batman: Arkham City (50)
4. Dark Souls (41)
5. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (31)
6. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (29)
7. Saints Row: The Third (25)
8. Bastion (24)
9. Battlefield 3 (17)
10. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (16)
11. Star Wars: The Old Republic (16)
12. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (11)
13. Gears of War 3 (10)
14. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (10)
15. Terraria (9)
16. Dead Space 2 (8)
17. Dungeon Siege 3 (6)
18. The Binding of Isaac (6)
19. Bulletstorm (5)
20. Pokemon Black & White (5)

Most years when I look at the first-past-the-post list a “cult” game emerges that received very few overall votes, but where an overwhelming percentage of those votes were #1 votes (I think of this as the “Persona award”); this year actually didn’t have an incredible standout in this category, but I think the award fairly goes to Dungeon Siege 3, which scored a relatively poor #42 in the overall rankings but made it all the way to #17 counting first place votes only.

I also did two more ways of sorting the rankings: an “approval” vote, where nothing is counted except the number of votes a game received (i.e. a first-place and a twentieth-place ranking count the same– all the matters is if the game was on someone’s list); and an instant runoff vote. Your eyes are probably starting to glaze over at this point, so I bolded the places where these two votes differ from the official rank. A small observation: Although these counts usually don’t differ much from the “main” count, this year the IRV list actually looks pretty different to me, I think mostly due to the number of near ties in the official count. Witcher 2 and Star Wars TOR were only within a couple points of each other on the official list; as were Pokemon and Mario 3D Land; as were Ghost Trick, Binding of Isaac, and Uncharted 3 (barely off the list at #21). One more or fewer ballots for any of these games would have changed the rank order. Another small observation: 670 people voted this year. Not only did more than half place some sort of vote for Portal 2, independently counted more than half placed some sort of vote for Skyrim.

FINALLY: PER-FORUM BREAKDOWNS

As mentioned before, this poll mostly exists for a handful of video game forums where some people I know post. Since a few years ago when I started posting the results on this blog, I’ve tried to actually run some extra results, in each case counting only those voters who– as far as one could tell from looking at the logs– had come to the poll from one particular forum or other.

So, here you have it– these numbers aren’t totally accurate because my logging method is not entirely trustworthy, but here’s an approximate by-forum breakdown of these results. Links go to color-coded full listings.

Hello anyone out there: I’ve got this Game of the Year poll that I run on some web forums I frequent. The way it works is that you rank your favorite games of the year– up to 20, though vote for as many or as few as you want– and the script will sort out the top 200 or so out of everyone’s votes. Here’s last year’s results if you want to see what this looks like (or previous years here). I will run this poll script for one week and then post the results. If you’d like to give it a try:

Vote here

When one week is up I will delete this post and post the results here on this blog. Thanks!

Ludum Dare is a periodically held competition to make a game in 48 hours. For this weekend’s Ludum Dare (theme: “Alone”), I waited until the last minute, started a game Sunday morning, and over about seven hours banged out the first and only 3D game I have ever made. It’s called My Own Footsteps and sound is recommended.

• Mac version
• Windows version
• Linux version (requires SDL and Freetype)
• Source code

Thanks to amon26, Mark and Stephen for playtesting.

You can find the Ludum Dare competition entry page for the game here.

Found out yesterday that (1) a group of indie games folk are crashing the IGF with a “pirate cart” of over a hundred indie games, and (2) Klik of the Month Club is doing a competition today with the theme “violate Atari’s intellectual property”. Of course I had to do something, so I made this little 2-player game. I started it last night at about 10:30, and finished it this afternoon at about 2:30. So that would be about 16 hours, some of it spent sleeping.

It’s like pong, but with more pong.

Download

• pongpongpongpongpongpongpongpong (Mac version)
• pongpongpongpongpongpongpongpong (Windows version)
• pongpongpongpongpongpongpongpong (Linux version, supplied by Ranjeet Jhutti)
• Source code

Playing with sound is recommended.

So this is SUPER arcane, but: I’ve been starting to use DVCS lately, and I sort of hate it, but I hate it less when I can use Mercurial to do it. Unfortunately most people doing DVCS are using Git, which means if you are using Mercurial you basically have to be using hg-git so that you can work with Git repositories while still using Mercurial. One thing I’ve found a little inconvenient about using hg-git though is that once you’ve imported the Git repository in using hg-git, all the revision numbers are suddenly different because they’re calculated in Mercurial format now, which makes it very hard to for example look at the github network graph or have a conversation with another developer about different revisions. So I made a patch that shows Git revision numbers alongside the Mercurial ones when you’re using hg-git and also lets you refer to revisions by Git revision when updating, diffing etc. You can find this on my hg-git fork on Github, and I’ve submitted it back to the main project. Oh, I also put in there a neat little script I made to test my changes, that uses virtualenv to automatically build little self-contained python worlds with specific versions of Mercurial and Dulwich. I’m desperately trying to think of some use for this outside the tiny confines of testing hg-git and so far failing.

…for anyone who couldn’t follow that: Mercurial is a program that lets you download source code, Git is a different program that lets you download source code, hg-git lets Mercurial users download source code from Git users, and I did a thing that makes hg-git easier to use.

I hopefully will get to make some more improvements to hg-git later if I have time, like I’d like to try to take a look at why hg outgoing support keeps breaking. I also really want to throw hg-git into the profiler and try to figure out why it’s so SLOW. If I do take a crack at this you’ll be able to find it at my Github fork linked above.