Cryptozookeeper in the Introcomp

by **Flack** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 8:40 pm

ICJ wrote:The craziest way I heard that a guy makes IF is this:

- He writes his entire game / codes it up.
- When he is all finished, he tries to compile it. Gets errors.
- When he fixes all the compiler errors, he's done, and releases it.

That's certifiably insane and may be apocryphal at this point.

I don't use the same process on every game. I can tell you about the process I used / am using for Cryptozookeeper:

- I did a lot of plotting and scene development before I wrote much code. Stuff I knew would be in the game, like the characters of Vest and Cytserz I coded, but not much more than that.

- I tried to write the game in the same order a player would experience it. I went for a "happy" path thing first. Tried to get all the jokes in there for the first go-around. Got some testing at this stage.

- After getting the happy path set, I started from the beginning and added all the stuff that should be there in the game. Scenery which should be around but wasn't. Puzzle solutions that seemed obvious. Got more testing at this stage and responded to it.

- After basically writing a game for the second time, above, I went over a third time with the idea that this is how I am going to send the thing off. I realized I fucked up big time by now.

-After THAT, I am where I am now, which is "ensure I can complete the game from start to finish."

Gotta get to work, more on this later.

I should try your method with my next game. Here's how coding on Hangar 22 went:

- Sat down to code.
- Got depressed at how sucky my game was. Starting drinking.
- Got depressed that nothing works. Drank more.
- Passed out from drinking too much.
- Woke up and found more new crappy code had been added.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:55 pm

Tdarcos wrote:
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I had been keeping track of how many lines of code the game has since September 12th, 2009. By that point, it had been in development for over three years and five months.

20090912: 45,319 lines
20091020: 47,580 lines
...
20110116: 65,223
Let's hope your editor isn't 16-bit or you can only write another 312 lines!

Visit My Site; now with more than 1,903,716% more content than Pinback's!

Didja want to play the game before it gets released to the public at large, Tdarcos? I would be very interested in your take on it, and whatever you might find in terms of glitches!

by **Tdarcos** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 11:08 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I had been keeping track of how many lines of code the game has since September 12th, 2009. By that point, it had been in development for over three years and five months.

20090912: 45,319 lines
20091020: 47,580 lines
...
20110116: 65,223

Let's hope your editor isn't 16-bit or you can only write another 312 lines!

Visit My Site; now with more than 1,903,716% more content than Pinback's!

by **ICJ** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:36 am

Some fun stats:

Source code size is 1.62 MB.
Game story file is now 1,005KB.

"Tell me when you get to 1024KB" -- Alex Gray

by **ICJ** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:35 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I will be posting daily updates as to my progress in ending new development of the game on SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27th.

Oh. Huh, I guess I made this after all.

I sent a copy of the full build of the game last night to a guy. I guess I am going to try to go from here like this:

- Give the game to one person at a time
- Get a transcript from them
- Incorporate fixes, run through my scripts to ensure the game didn't break
- Give it to another person who'd like to play it, more or less, for pleasure

I don't want to release CZK during the Spring Thing. Mostly because that would be a thumb in the eye toward a competition I am fond of, and because Bruce is releasing Stiffy Makane for the Spring Thing, and his game is fun and worth playing. Game of the fackin' Year for 2011, in my opinion.

But this is cool, gives me the rest of March and all of April for people to test, and for me to fix things.

by **Roody_Yogurt** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:42 pm

Huh, ok, I am not entirely understanding how you could have handled it better (what with larger games just being a pain in general), but I look forward to the updates on this.

by **ICJ** » Mon Feb 14, 2011 8:35 am

The craziest way I heard that a guy makes IF is this:

- He writes his entire game / codes it up.
- When he is all finished, he tries to compile it. Gets errors.
- When he fixes all the compiler errors, he's done, and releases it.

That's certifiably insane and may be apocryphal at this point.

I don't use the same process on every game. I can tell you about the process I used / am using for Cryptozookeeper:

- I did a lot of plotting and scene development before I wrote much code. Stuff I knew would be in the game, like the characters of Vest and Cytserz I coded, but not much more than that.

- I tried to write the game in the same order a player would experience it. I went for a "happy" path thing first. Tried to get all the jokes in there for the first go-around. Got some testing at this stage.

- After getting the happy path set, I started from the beginning and added all the stuff that should be there in the game. Scenery which should be around but wasn't. Puzzle solutions that seemed obvious. Got more testing at this stage and responded to it.

- After basically writing a game for the second time, above, I went over a third time with the idea that this is how I am going to send the thing off. I realized I fucked up big time by now.

-After THAT, I am where I am now, which is "ensure I can complete the game from start to finish."

Gotta get to work, more on this later.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 10:34 am

I will be posting daily updates as to my progress in ending new development of the game on SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27th.

That is the day all new development ought to cease, this includes bugs that I find as I run through the game myself.

This includes the graphics for the game. There are over 510 pictures in there (I am on my third graphics resource file, and you can have 255 pictures per resource file) and I have 35 photos left to do for various animals I never got round to.

This includes taking all the test scripts I have been given over the years and re-running them.

This includes building a demo for PAX Boston of a particular part of the game.

What it does NOT include:

- I reserve the right to add more music. There's three hours of Creative Commons songs in there right now. Ideally I would like six hours.

- On the last day of February, I will be sending the game off to any interested testers for the last sections of the game, which really haven't been looked at by other people.

Current status for February 27th: **Extremely Likely.**
Emoticon: =)

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 2:31 am

Also, I have several days worth of e-mail to read and get to. I just had to distance myself today to get some work done. I will catch up before I go to bed tomorrow.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 2:30 am

And I would like to say that I coded all night (I have tomorrow off due to MLK Jr. Day) to this song:

All night. I listened to it starting at 8:00 PM and didn't go to anything else till right now.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 2:17 am

I had been keeping track of how many lines of code the game has since September 12th, 2009. By that point, it had been in development for over three years and five months.

20090912: 45,319 lines
20091020: 47,580 lines
20091214: 47,767 lines
20091228: 48,497 lines
20100201: 49,586
20100203: 50,345
20100304: 52,840
20100329: 53,674
20100411 54,394
20100503 54,934
20100518 55,734
20100529 56,276
20100814: 60,308
20101006: 61,295
20101101: 61,999
20101206: 62,888
20110116: 65,223

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 10:12 am

Cryptozookeeper got a review in the latest issue of SPAG.

http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissue ... 9.html#zoo

I'm obviously very happy that someone took the time to write a review, but I'd like to note that it's impossible to lock yourself out of the first scene. There are two solutions.

There's a couple of solutions to a lot of puzzles in the game. I'm almost positive that the easier way will be found by the great majority of people... and I don't know what to do about it. If I ever do another text game, I've got to think long and hard about puzzles. It's singularly frustrating.

Valentine (from the review) makes very helpful points about the conversation system requiring two steps. I tried to look into modifying it to take one line, if you know what you want to say, but couldn't get it to work. :(

A little note on where I am with the full game - I have just over 30 pictures I need to complete in photoshop for the last few cryptids. I'm also finishing up bug reports for the last scenes in the game. I wish I could give an estimate when it would be finished, but I can't. I hate this process more than anything on earth, trust me there.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 10:07 am

Flack wrote:Congratulations!

What other major IF contests are there? Maybe that would be a good goal for me to shoot for.

There is the "Spring Thing" contest. Here's more info:

http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Spring_Thing_2010

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 10:06 am

RetroRomper wrote:Out of curiosity, has ICJ tried submitting Necrotic Drift to steam?

I tried to get in the Steamworks project when it was first announced. The whole thing is actually one of the lowest points in video game journalism.

When Steamworks was announced, the various gaming blogs did their thing - they passed on the press release. At no point did any of them do anything like see what is involved in signing up.

I tried to get a hold of someone at Steam. Nobody would give me the time of day. And this isn't because I gave them information about my games - it really was a "who should I talk to?" sort of deal.

As far as I can tell, Steam comes to you. I'd love for that to one day be different. But it's incredibly frustrating. I'd like to have the first text game on Steam.

by **RetroRomper** » Sat Aug 14, 2010 10:30 pm

Out of curiosity, has ICJ tried submitting Necrotic Drift to steam?

by **Flack** » Sat Aug 14, 2010 8:24 pm

Congratulations!

What other major IF contests are there? Maybe that would be a good goal for me to shoot for.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sat Aug 14, 2010 6:29 pm

The awards were this weekend, and Cryptozookeeper took second place. Congrats to everyone who entered, especially Iain Merrick, who took first place with Tourist Trap!

http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp.html

IntroComp
Last updated: August 14, 2010

***** IntroComp 2010 is History *****

Results of the 2010 IntroComp are as follows:
1st: Tourist Trap, by Iain Merrick
2nd: Cryptozookeeper, by Robb Sherwin
3rd: A Fleeting Case of Self-Possession, or, Memento Moratori, by Lea Albaugh

Honorable entries:
Closed Circles, by M. M. Kathrel
Fang vs Claw, by Oliver Ullmann
For the Love Of Ornery Blue Yaks, by Doug Jones
Peanut Orchestra, by Fiadotau and Bychkov
Plan 6 from Inner Earth, by Adrien Saurat
Waker, by Kevin Jackson-Mead

(So, for winning 2nd place, if I finish Cryptozookeeper before August 14th, 2011, I shall be awarded $60. I am going to go into "Crazy Mode" and try to finish it before the end of the year. A reasonable goal!)

by **AArdvark** » Fri Jul 09, 2010 5:14 pm

Unix beard! HAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

THE
NICK FRANCESCO
AARDVARK

by **ICJ** » Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:56 am

The first board of Cryptozookeeper has been entered in the 2010 IntroComp, a comp of the introductions of longer text games.

For info, go here: http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/

And to grab the intro of Cryptozookeeper itself, go here: http://www.allthingsjacq.com/IntroComp1 ... keeper.ZIP

More on this when I get back!

Cryptozookeeper in the Introcomp

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