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VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

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Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#151

Post by MattRix »

jandrese wrote: post #89
nurbel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed, Ethan Lee's portfolio is impressive ! http://www.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?page=Portfolio/Ports I wouldn't have thought linux games were such a small thing, for a single person to have worked on so many of them

That's an impressive collection of Indie games. This looks like the classic example of a consultant gig. You have some specialized knowledge of how to solve a problem that's easy when you know what you're doing. Indie devs can hire you for a day and check off that "Linux support" box so they can show up in a Humble Bundle and make a little more than you spent on the consultant with those 5% or so Linux gamers. > Drea…

It was a very popular game!

Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#152

Post by lojack »

ehsankia wrote: post #109
klodolph wrote: post #58

It’s always great to be able to study the source code for successful, released, real games. I will note that this is actually the source code of the C++ rewrite! The original game was written in Flash, and this version was apparently written by Simon Roth. My impressions: The source code is a bit of a tangle here. There are magic numbers ( https://wiki.c2.com/?MagicNumber ) all over the place, plenty of god classes (…

> This is not really out of the ordinary for successful, released, real games Well said. A lot of people will nitpick and talk big about how they would use proper abstraction and write very clean code, but probably none of those people have ever had a successful indie game out.

From a pragmatic point of view I would actually expect it to be pretty common for games to sacrifice code quality. You build a game with a set end date, and do a small amount of maintenance on it moving forward. As opposed to an engine where it's a product you're building on and you want to grow over a much larger timeframe, and those unfamiliar with a piece of code are likely to maintain it down the road.

Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#153

Post by MattRix »

dwild wrote: post #97
toper-centage wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also great Javascript platforms for all kinds of purposes these days. As a former flash developer (hobbyist level) I do not miss Flash at all.

> There are also great Javascript platforms for all kinds of purposes these days. Except nothing replace it in a one-stop do it all like Flash was able to do. You open it, you had a timeline that could contains both graphics and code, you could easily reference them on the IDE directly, and then when exported, it was a single binary file that could be shared everywhere and could easily be made quite secure. That mean…

I don't really have anything to add... But as a former professional Flash developed, and now nearly 10 years doing game dev (with Unity), I agree 100% with what you said.

It's not really about the language or about the Flash player itself. There was something special about the direct integration of the code and the visual design/animation tool with Flash. Nothing else really comes close these days. Nothing else allows such rapid development.

Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#154

Post by MattRix »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #98
tombert wrote: post #22

You know, people like to crap on Flash (and there are valid reasons to do so), but I really miss how quick you could get a game built with it, while it still felt like "real" programming. With Flash, I felt like a nice "one-stop-shop" in a lot of ways; you could draw your graphics, animate them, and code them, and you could get a simple game made in an hour or two. I haven't tried Unity or really any other dedicated…

And Adobe let it rot.

This is the saddest part. Even with the Flash Player being killed Adobe could have done so much more with the authoring tool. Instead they did little incremental updated and basically let it (and the vibrant community around it) die off.

Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#155

Post by tills13 »

pdpi wrote: post #72

Oh gods. VVVVVV's core mechanic is that you don't so much "jump" as you just flip gravity, and you only get to do so when your feet are firmly on the floor. This leads to some very interesting designs. The stage "Veni Vidi Vici (Doing Things The Hard Way)" is possibly the evilest level I've ever completed in a video game. Just a tiny little block, trivial to jump over, but the lack of a jump button means you have to.…

How those rooms are implemented: https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV/blob/master/desktop_...

Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#156

Post by bscphil »

ranger207 wrote: post #54

The Awesome Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon [0] ran this game this morning. I didn't get a chance to see it, but I wonder if they mentioned anything about its tenth anniversary? Watch for the video here [1] after today's stream is archived. [0] gamesdonequick.com [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/ek9zmz/agdq_vod_t...

Awesome, thank you for posting this! 100% glitchless is what I do myself when I want to have a little fun, but I can't compete with speedrunners, my best time is 28 minutes and change.

Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#158

Post by SubiculumCode »

pdpi wrote: post #72

Oh gods. VVVVVV's core mechanic is that you don't so much "jump" as you just flip gravity, and you only get to do so when your feet are firmly on the floor. This leads to some very interesting designs. The stage "Veni Vidi Vici (Doing Things The Hard Way)" is possibly the evilest level I've ever completed in a video game. Just a tiny little block, trivial to jump over, but the lack of a jump button means you have to.…

that was the task where I put VVVVVV down. lol

Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#159

Post by koonsolo »

lojack wrote: post #152
ehsankia wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not really out of the ordinary for successful, released, real games Well said. A lot of people will nitpick and talk big about how they would use proper abstraction and write very clean code, but probably none of those people have ever had a successful indie game out.

From a pragmatic point of view I would actually expect it to be pretty common for games to sacrifice code quality. You build a game with a set end date, and do a small amount of maintenance on it moving forward. As opposed to an engine where it's a product you're building on and you want to grow over a much larger timeframe, and those unfamiliar with a piece of code are likely to maintain it down the road.

Exactly this! I was a mobile game developer for several years. The technical dept at the end never needs to get paid .

Re: VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now

#160

Post by NoodleIncident »

umvi wrote: post #121
pdpi wrote: post #72

Oh gods. VVVVVV's core mechanic is that you don't so much "jump" as you just flip gravity, and you only get to do so when your feet are firmly on the floor. This leads to some very interesting designs. The stage "Veni Vidi Vici (Doing Things The Hard Way)" is possibly the evilest level I've ever completed in a video game. Just a tiny little block, trivial to jump over, but the lack of a jump button means you have to.…

> is possibly the evilest level I've ever completed in a video game That was the case for me too, until I recently picked up the game Celeste . Some of the C-sides were so evil I just gave up and never beat them (I have a wife and kids, time is limited). This is coming from someone who generally likes hard games (big fan of Dark Souls series, for example, and yes, I know "hard" is relative). The Celeste Chapter 9 gol…

I got sucked back into Celeste recently; as of last night, the only golden berries left for me are 5B-8B, Farewell, and the dashless winged berry for 1A. (I also haven't gotten the moon berry yet, I kind of forgot about it when I was polishing off the red berries earlier). At the same time, it's easy to believe that this is as far as I'll ever make it; part of what makes going for golden berries so addictive to me is that each new level has seemed pretty much impossible before I start practicing it, so I guess we'll see.

The subreddit r/celestegame tries to keep track of everyone who's gotten the Farewell golden berry; the official list only has about 20 people on them. Of course, you have to record and post your gameplay to be eligible for this list, but there can't be many more people than that who've done it.

But from the other side of things, there's actually a speedrunning category for collecting all 202 berries, including the Farewell berry. TGH just set the world record on Christmas Day, I believe, completing that chapter's golden berry on his first attempt, along with the other hard golden berries. I think this really puts into perspective how skill curves work in games; not only are there very few people who ever approach the top level of skill, but the individuals at the very top are separated by wider skill gaps than you can imagine. This is why matchmaking at the top of a ranked ladder is so hard!

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