Monday, June 18, 2007

CuteGod Prototype Release

The truth is, I'm probably too busy to be working on prototypes of nifty games, but don't worry: I haven't let that stop me!

I've been able to add a number of features to the CuteGod prototype:

  • Recognition of ground patterns
  • Houses (automatically generated when patterns are completed)
  • A nifty "pattern holder sidebar-thing"
  • Sounds, which I think really spiffied the whole thing up
  • Some flashy sparkling stars for effect (and more importantly, a framework for future special effects)
Here's a quick screen shot:

And, happy days for you no doubt, here's a link to download the prototype.

If you want to give it a try you'll need Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0, XNA Framework 1.0, and DirectX 9.0c.

If you do give it a try, I'd appreciate it if you can let me know if it worked or not (if not, please email me a copy of the log.txt file in the directory you installed the prototype in -- in fact, even if it does run it would be great to see the log file, so I can get a sense of what sort of machines it's working on).

Controls are very simple: click to pickup the highlighted block when your "hand" is empty, click to drop a block you're holding on top of the highlighted block, right-click and drag to pan the map around (be careful with this -- it's not my fault if you pan yourself into oblivion!).

The list of things that aren't done in this prototype goes on for about a mile, so don't expect any miracles or anything. That said, I do think it's already pretty fun to play around with.