Riot at the drug store. Calling all cars.

Some friends are making an iphone game and have an Indiegogo campaign that just launched!



http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pawtergeist

Help them out if you can!!

Relevant for Kjorteo and David:

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Let's Play! > Okay, what the hell is this!? Let's Play Hatoful Boyfriend!

In high school I used to count the number of times I'd hear people use "gay" to describe something stupid or disagreeable in a day. It was always in the double digits before lunch.

A good 5+ years later I should probably start doing the same thing with videogames online.

Today this anonymous person described some event in game as gay and I told him not to. I have been doing this more often lately. Sometimes people stop, sometimes they don't. Nearly every time somebody whether it be the person I call out or another stranger feels they are clever and says something along the lines of "Offensive language is gay". Brilliant. Once I had somebody say sorry, that they didn't mean to offend and that they wouldn't do so again. I'd like to imagine that being told that it's not cool got them to stop and think and hopefully actively avoid using gay as a pejorative. Maybe it just got them to stop while they were on that TF2 server, but even that is a start.

Regardless, the person today I spoke with got offended that I was offended. He believed the burden was on me, and that I chose to be offended. I told him that it would take such little effort, and that all I was asking was for him to be respectful of others. He said something about "P.C. Police". Another person said how the meanings of words change over time, and even brought up the point that "gay used to mean happy so technically gay people stole the word first".

I continued to argue with him and on the map change he thankfully left the server silently. I hope he doesn't come back. Another player in the server added me to their friend list and thanked me for putting things more eloquently than he would have.

Gay is a three letter and one syllable word. Despite this, people cling to using it derogatively as if there was no alternative. As if that by thinking about the words one uses, they will become the oppressed. Somehow I doubt that this guy ever counted the number of times in a day something that identifies him was used to describe something negative. Somehow I doubt that if he had, it would be in the double digits.

Sometimes I wish people would take the effort to be more respectful of others rather than angrily shout of their right to be offensive. I wish people would try to improve themselves rather than do everything they can to avoid admitting they are not perfect.

My thought process when watching Doctor Who:

1) I will watch ONE episode.
2) Well, a second won't hurt.
3) Okay now I'll do something el- wait a minute this next episode has Daleks!
4) Oh it's a two parter, I refuse a cliffhanger one more.
5) Man aliens and alien technology really don't like loud noises over these sound systems the doctor keeps getting control over.

It is a crazy flood around here! I left my apartment for my parents' house and am doing fine here. As far as the news has reported my town hasn't had any flooding yet and likely won't (or at least not enough to hit the first floor) unless the dyke breaks.


Here is a photo not too far from where I am now.
http://i.imgur.com/ulr2u.jpg

Here is the 8th Street Bridge which is far above the river normally.
http://i.imgur.com/JvRE7.jpg

Here is what I am reduced to doing to be on my computer right now:
http://i.imgur.com/0O4u2.jpg

http://speeddemosarchive.com/

Summer Games Done quick is going on!

Be sure to watch awesome people playing awesome games awesomely fast.

Be sure to give them money too!

And if they happen to be having donations for filenames of Zelda games be sure to give double to name them "Lunk"! Lunk came so close last year and I bet he can win.

The game is done! Well, other than only having 3 levels. But it's done in the sense that I can just add more level files!

There's a 9 page manual. A title screen, a level unlocking system so you can work your way through the game in multiple sittings and replay any previously beaten level whenever. Fire departments do nothing and wound up becoming part of the "plot".

There's a high score system and an ending which was totally improv but wound up being my favorite part of the game.

I'm really pleased with it and tomorrow I will spend my day making more levels (I'd love to hit 10 or so but who knows how many I'll get) before uploading the final build.

It looks like there will be a lot of leeway in how you solve puzzles after the first two because once they get big, you really do wind up with some

So 10 days into the contest and I'm getting close to having all the raw mechanics implemented.

Districting and undistricting a tile correctly checks if you can do so.

I started working on the HUD and changed the graphics from "swiped some public domain icons" to "it's like a 1988 dos game that somehow runs at 800x600!" style. I also threw together a crude javascript based level editor. The game now looks like this:



Next up I need to finish the hud and then make that scary FINALIZE button submit your districts and run the election.

After that I just need to implement those special buildings (and umm decide what all of them do exactly).

Then I get to make a bunch of levels and polish.

(Tile shades are my bad wording. There are 4 levels of support for each party possible on a tile. The stronger the support/disapproval the more voters actually turn up and vote, giving 10, 5, 3, or 1 votes.)

Late night ideas:
Schools - Not having one of these in a district will cause those in a school free district to get really upset with your party which is currently in charge. The other party will receive voting boosts as if they were the next tile shade up.
Police Depts. - Having one of these in a district will make the voters think of you as tough on crime. Your supporters will support you more, making them the next tile shade up.
Fire Depts. - I have no idea.
Hospitals - That other party keeps insisting these things are necessary. Give them one and they'll have less to gripe about. The other party will receive a penalty as if they were the next tile shade down.
Prisons - Not in my back yard! Dangerous criminals better not be found around here or else your party will be fed up with you. Your party will receive a penalty as if they were the next tile shade down.
Voter Registration Drives - One vote won't make a difference unless these guys are around. Whichever party is losing the popular vote (number of red tiles in the district versus number of blue tiles in the district) get motivated to get out and make a difference. All apathetic voters (tiles worth 1 vote) are bumped up to being worth 5 votes.

(These penalties wouldn't effect the maximum supporters, those people are fanatics and don't care about anything other than the party)

So every year for the past like 6 years SA has done a game development challenge where individuals and teams are tasked with making a game fit to a theme over a single month.

This year's contest just began today and I figure I should post about it since I'm entering and unlike last year better finish something.

The theme is "death and taxes", so at first I was thinking something about Ron Paul. Imagine how many points you'd get with the judges just by naming your Ron Paul Final Fantasy parody "Fiat Currency". I'm not an RPG fan though, so my next thought was an overhead shooter where you'd have to commit election fraud, possibly in the vein of Charlie's Angels as you and your teammates take missions from the mysterious and reclusive Mr. Galt.

While that sounded like a lot of fun it was more taking a generic game and slapping the theme on it. I wanted to try to come up with something that likely wouldn't happen otherwise, and that's how I came up with Gerrymander.

In Gerrymander you are tasked with ensuring the reelection of some guy (whose name I am threatening to make Gary Anderson) by gerrymandering cities!

Each level will have a certain number of districts to make, which have to be reasonably the same size in order to be accepted. Each tile in the city is a different shade of blue or red to show how favorable the people there are to voting for you or your opponent. More apathetic voters won't actually vote when the election comes, so you'll have to take them into consideration.

In addition to that there will be various things which change voter apathy. Include a police department in a district and watch as crime drops and voters are swayed towards keeping your party in office. Leave a district without a school and observe just the opposite! Voter registration drives may pop up, so be sure that the spurned interest in voting is in a favorable district to seal the deal.

I think it will be fun!

ANYWAYS, today I threw together some quick things for it, getting it to load a level from a file and letting the player mark districts, though nothing can be done gameplay-wise yet.

See if you can solve this first puzzle dubbed "Wikiville". Divide it into 3 districts so that red wins the election. (Click for solution)

I know this is something everybody by now has, but TF2 is free to play for a week and there is a fairly believable rumor that it is going to become free to play and supported by microtransactions via the Mann co. store.

(Personally I think they'll make it a free game included with any Steam purchase)