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Reposted by Ian Sundstrom

sink @sinksadventure.bsky.social · 1d

My new open world precision "batformer" Vampire's Best Friend is out now on Steam and itch with a 10% launch discount!

Vampire hunters are after a mischievous vampire girl, and it's up to her pet bat to save the day!

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Reposted by Ian Sundstrom

Mr0w3m @mr0w3m.bsky.social · 16h

Sometimes you gotta just chase that random game idea...

What if you were a fly on a lake, how would you survive?
What if you had gnat friends?

#gamedev #indiegames

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Reposted by Ian Sundstrom

G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 2d

I'm going to keep saying "this is fascism" until this platform inevitably bans the word fascism, and then I'm going to leave

Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 2d

CHICAGO (AP) — Storming an apartment complex by helicopter as families slept. Deploying chemical agents near a public school. Handcuffing a Chicago City Council member at a hospital.

apnews.com/article/chic...

Using helicopters and chemical agents, immigration agents become increasingly aggressive in Chicago

Activists, residents and elected leaders say increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest cit...

apnews.com

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

🔴, a #pico8 bounce shooter, is out now!
Play it in browser on itch: iansundstrom.itch.io/redcircle
Development fun facts itt 🧵

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Reposted by Ian Sundstrom

Scary Draconic Bastard 🎃 @deshex.bsky.social · 6d

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 5d

Thank you!

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 10d

Going to release 🔴, a #pico-8 bounce shooter with mostly procedural animation and gfx, sometime this week!

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

Thanks for playing and/or reading. Have a great day!

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

Finally, the game has a 2-song soundtrack that whips thanks to @jadeneubanks.bsky.social. It was his first time using pico-8 and he absolutely crushed both the music and sound design of the game. Please consider hiring him for any of your audio needs: www.jadeneubanks.com

Jaden Eubanks | Video Game Audio

Jaden Eubanks is an audio producer who specializes in creating video game music, particularly 16bit music that sounds like it's from the SNES, GBA, or N64.

www.jadeneubanks.com

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

The title screen was a chance to dust off my pixel art skills. This 32x32 shiny red circle is one of the few actual graphics in the game's sprite sheet. 😆

Game title screen with pixel art of a shiny red circle at top.

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

The score system is also a bit goofy. It's constantly reducing each second, which rewards quick players. You also lose points each time you die! But defeating enemies, passing checkpoints, and clearing stages refills your points. Draining the score helps keep the number below pico-8's max memory.

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

Instead of having UI, I added 🔴's tail to represent your hit points. This also gave the ball much more character and made the physics even more satisfying. It uses vector logic to simulate the tail's physics and is drawn using a series of enlarging circles.

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

Every level ends with this completely over-the-top animation where the level you're in gets sucked up into a ball, bounces down, and then releases into the new level. I tried caching every pixel on the screen but ran up against pico-8's memory limits, opting for storing 4x4 macro pixels instead 🤣.

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

This packing was so efficient that I actually had space for another 11 levels in the map memory (I only used 5). However, I just couldn't fit enough gameplay mechanics on the cart to justify that many different levels 😭

Image of the pico-8 map editor, showing 5 rows of level design and lots of empty space below.

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

I built the levels in the map editor, designing them with simplified 8x8 white sprites that then get blown up in 32x32 pieces of level geometry at run time. Likewise, this is how I placed the enemies and obstacles using their icons. If you load up the cart in pico-8 you can build your own levels!

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

Each level samples a row of colors in the game's sprite texture to determine the level's palette. This helped cut down on my symbol/token count since the data was stored in my sprite sheets rather than written out as tables in the code.

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

The checkpoint flag is also neat. The triangle shape is cut out by converging towards a point. Then pixels that are chosen to be drawn are offset by a sin wave. The checkboard colors are chosen by some modulo logic, something like when ((x/5-y/5)%2==1) draw green and otherwise draw white

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

Of the many procedural graphics of 🔴, the skylines are some of my favorites. The skylines of each level are drawn using different wave functions, like a combined triangle wave, etc. Having written it months ago, I don't really understand how this code works anymore, but it is cool!

Boxy line that looks like a city skyline

A code sample showing functions for drawing different waves

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

An oddity of 🔴 is that it is best played on a keyboard, not a controller. The controls require you to constantly be pumping yourself up and down while also holding down left or right. You can't easily do this using an analog stick or d-pad, but it's pretty natural with a keyboard's arrow keys.

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

The game had humble beginnings as a simple physics toy of a bouncing ball with lots of squash and stretch. Unfortunately, later the ball had to be made smaller to support all the gameplay; at this size it was extra satisfying to bounce.

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 7d

🔴, a #pico8 bounce shooter, is out now!
Play it in browser on itch: iansundstrom.itch.io/redcircle
Development fun facts itt 🧵

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 9d

Thanks!

Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 10d

Going to release 🔴, a #pico-8 bounce shooter with mostly procedural animation and gfx, sometime this week!

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Ian Sundstrom @ian-sundstrom.bsky.social · 13d

I love tofu, but, by god, I hate the packaging it comes in.

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Reposted by Ian Sundstrom

davemakes🔶 @mixolumia.com · 16d

my highly scientific diagram. I think it's easier to get into the "snappy" quadrant with tools that encourage pixel art and make you do more work for tweens n things (gamemaker, pico-8). fluidity is difficult anywhere, but snappiness requires restraint when you have a bunch of tempting built-ins

Four quadrant graph, smoothness on the X and appeal on the Y

High appeal, high smoothness: fluid
High appeal, low smoothness: snappy
Low appeal, low smoothness: janky
Low appeal, high smoothness: floaty

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