Stopgap game in Lite /  by Allison James

Since I'm bored of waiting for Softwrap, and can't continue with IOTAS until it's sorted, I'm now working on a stopgap game in which I'm trying to get as much out of Game Maker 7.0 Lite as I can. It's currently called Lite Town Wars, and is comparable to MINDRAPE and my Fake 3D Pyramids example.

I'm surprised lengthdir is a function available in Lite, actually. It's so damn versatile, and is way more useful in my opinion than stuff like image_angle. Its availability in Lite is one of the only reasons I'm making this game.

Anyway, here's a screenshot of what I have so far (click it to see it in full).I won't be hyping this game much since it really is just while I'm without Pro for IOTAS - if I get Pro again before this game is complete to a reasonable percentage, it'll likely be scrapped.

So, yeah. That's pretty much it for now!

~NAL

Waiting on Softwrap /  by Allison James

I was unaware, but apparently I'd hit my GM7 registration limit when I did the XP reinstallation (see previous post). So, at the moment, I'm having to wait for Softwrap to respond to my email asking for another registration.

Until then, It Only Takes a Second will have to lie untouched - I can't work with it in lite since it uses so many pro features, including D3D.A couple other weird things occurred with the new installation, mainly that Windows Media Player won't work. There seems to be a broken version in its directory that can't be deleted, and you can't specify where it should be installed (nice one, Microsoft), so it just keeps running into a brick wall. I've started to get used to Winamp, though, so meh.

Anyway, thought I'd post an update on that. Prior to the reinstallation, IOTAS was on 13 levels, so provided Softwrap help me out in the next couple of days, I should be able to finish the game for the August 31st deadline.

~NAL

Reinstalled XP /  by Allison James

...which may mean it'll be a day or so until I work on IOTAS again (progress is fine, though - three levels done in the Underwater section).My reason for reinstallation? Well, several months ago, I did a clean install of Vista over XP. A month or so later, I started to wonder what the hell I was thinking when I did that - most of my GM .exes had stopped working (GM6 incompatibility), my PS3 was incapable of connecting to the internet (the connecter I use won't work with Vista), and UAC was more depressing than the new Transformers film.Wanting to keep Vista, though, since clean installing it had killed off a lot of my lovely files and downgrading from Vista to XP won't work without a clean install, I made a 10GB partition, and put XP on that.Anyway, I very quickly filled that 10GB, and many programs still insist on installing to the default drive as opposed to asking where they should go. Earlier today, I got annoyed with it, so I put my precious files onto my 640GB external hard drive, and clean-installed XP to the 220-odd GB "main" C: partition.So, apart from the fact I'd customised the eyeballs off XP before so have to do it again, it's convenient.Anyway, there's your news. Usual, obsessive posts about IOTAS will resume shortly.Goodbye for now!~NAL

Summary of Underwater in IOTAS /  by Allison James

The development of It Only Takes A Second is going fine at the moment. I'm currently working on Underwater levels in it.As some of you may know, Underwater will be levels 6-10 in the full game. Metal, which is 6-10 in the current alpha build, will be pushed to 11-15. This was mainly to address possible difficulty issues - the Metal levels are pretty hard, and I'm aiming for at least 20 levels. I want the game to be hard but not to a point it makes you want to break things.Anyway, as with the exclusive deadly spinners and disappearing blocks in Metal, Underwater will have its own exclusive item - shards. To complete a level in Underwater, you have to collect all five shards first. Since you're already being asked to complete levels AND remember the time, their positioning will, for the most part, be relatively straightforward. To remove another possibly annoying interaction, though, hitting the finish without all the shards in a level won't make you lose it. You'll simply pass through it.Here's a screenshot of Level 6, the first Underwater level, and currently the only one. I'll probably upload an updated build when I've completed all five of these levels and have started the Hell levels enough to show you - probably be a couple of days.So, yeah. There's an update for the day. See ya in another blog entry!~NAL

IOTAS 0.7 & Site down /  by Allison James

On Game Jolt, I recently released an alpha version of It Only Takes A Second, featuring ten levels. This can be found here.Also, since so many people apparently can't work out how to play it (despite clear instructions in the alpha), I made a video guide which should put the controls in plain English. That can be found here. It's recommended you watch it with annotations as I used them to pause the video when text descriptions of the current situation are shown. They're good for three reasons - I don't have to upload a longer video (with manual pauses), you don't have to buffer as much video, and if you're done reading what's being said before the pause is up, press "Play" and the rest of the pause time vanishes.On another note, my main website is down. This blog, of course, is up since it's hosted on Blogspot's servers, not 110mb.com's. I think this is 110mb's fault - registrations are down for maintenance. I certainly didn't break any of the site's T&Cs.Anyway, that was the "thought I'd letcha know" of the day. I will now be adding more levels to It Only Takes A Second. I'm tempted to put the metal levels AFTER the underwater levels, and make the underwater levels easier than metal. The fourth area (and probably final) is planned to be "Hell", in both the visual and difficulty aspects. At least Unknown Gamer will get his red levels, though :PToodle-pip!~NALUPDATE: 1:56pm GMTThe website is back up.

Return of YoYo Games /  by Allison James

Well, after YoYo Games took pretty much the entire of yesterday to have a little down time, I was glad to see it back up. But, oh look.

Innoquous 3 and Head Candy have lost their screenshots. Hopefully that's temporary, and they'll come back. Still, at least the games themselves appear to be intact.It appears to have affected many new releases too, including the recent, amazing game Purple.

Sigh.

Progress report /  by Allison James

Didn't get much done on It Only Takes A Second today. Relatives are round so I spent a lot of time in preparations, roast meal etc.

Sigh. :P

Anyway, by the end of Sunday 9th I hope to have another demo out. I'm aiming to have around 12-15 levels done by then.

Well, anyway, thought I'd post, since I've not done so yet. Oh, and one more thing - I'm addicted to The Shins - Sea Legs. Awesome song.

Ta-ra!

~NAL

And another! /  by Allison James

I feel like kindness tonight! Like kindness tonight!No chicken.Anyway, here's a four level demo of It Only Takes A Second, with the gimmick now intact. Since it's there for all to see, I may as well explain it here:The axiom chosen is "A stopped clock is right twice a day" (or however it's worded).It's called It Only Takes A Second because you have to finish the level with one second left on the time limit.However, the time limit is broken/stopped. It will stick on one number of seconds for the entire level.When the actual time left hits the displayed "time left" (the time the broken clock is right), the time is displayed in green. You then have to count the seconds down while you finish the level so you can complete it at 00:01. It beeps at you every second to make it easier to count.I've made another couple of changes. The biggest is that, instead of the ball switching "z" value every time you change a plane, the planes themselves swap over, so the one you're on is always at the front. This should eliminate the "which plane am I on?" confusion.With that in mind, see if you can complete these four levels.Download (2.51MB)~NAL