Hydra Game - Taxi Panic

fkorf

The much awaited third game has finally arrived. TAXI PANIC!

You drive a taxi. Stop on pickup points '?' to get a passenger. Stop on dropoff points 'X' to drop them off and collect the fare. Make sure to make it to the dropoff before the time runs out, or the passenger will leave.

This one features sound, so, you know, get excited about that. Thanks to Nick Sabalausky for the sound driver.

Have fun.

-Fk

Roadster

Looks like fun, Can't wait till you finish it

fkorf wrote: »

The much awaited third game has finally arrived. TAXI PANIC!

You drive a taxi. Stop on pickup points '?' to get a passenger. Stop on dropoff points 'X' to drop them off and collect the fare. Make sure to make it to the dropoff before the time runs out, or the passenger will leave.

This one features sound, so, you know, get excited about that. Thanks to Nick Sabalausky for the sound driver.

Have fun.

-Fk

fkorf

Ah 'finished'. Such an elusive idea. For me, a game is finished when it provides 10 seconds of fun.

Let me explain. I've been building games on various devices for many years. The hobby has proven rewarding and educational, and not really in the ways I expected. The biggest lessons learned related to project management and the art of creation. I spent months developing elaborate collision schemes for engines that never saw the light of day. I wrote elaborate rendering routines for games that were never even close to complete. The fact is, to complete anything, you have to be able to constrain your own imagination. You have to sit down and decide what you are building and why. In the end, I realized that I keep working because I enjoy the work. Any output is almost irrelevant, since so few projects were completed and nobody saw the fruits of my labor. Knowing this about myself made it easy to draw a line in the sand and say that I do not need to create complete 'videogames', as that term has been co-opted by commercialism to mean something much larger and more daunting than the 'videogames' I grew up with. Instead, I am content to create 'experiences' which resemble games, but are considerably smaller and more limited. I try to focus on the 10 seconds of fun, which is a phrase I picked up from the original creators of the Halo franchise. They said that all they did was find that 10 seconds of fun, and repeat it over several hours. Genius. In fact, the desire to minimize the size while maximizing the fun is what drew me to the Hydra in the first place. I find it a lot more interesting to ask "what can I do with extremely limited resources" as opposed to standard videogames which ask "what can I do with nearly limitless resources". I find that it benefits my understanding of the hardware itself, as well as a much tighter and more focused experience.

And now that I've apologized via soliloquy, I'll say that that game is finished. It's little, but it's finished.

Have fun :cool:

-Fk

trodoss

fkorf wrote: »

Ah 'finished'. Such an elusive idea. For me, a game is finished when it provides 10 seconds of fun.

Let me explain. I've been building games on various devices for many years. The hobby has proven rewarding and educational, and not really in the ways I expected. The biggest lessons learned related to project management and the art of creation. I spent months developing elaborate collision schemes for engines that never saw the light of day. I wrote elaborate rendering routines for games that were never even close to complete. The fact is, to complete anything, you have to be able to constrain your own imagination. You have to sit down and decide what you are building and why. In the end, I realized that I keep working because I enjoy the work. Any output is almost irrelevant, since so few projects were completed and nobody saw the fruits of my labor. Knowing this about myself made it easy to draw a line in the sand and say that I do not need to create complete 'videogames', as that term has been co-opted by commercialism to mean something much larger and more daunting than the 'videogames' I grew up with. Instead, I am content to create 'experiences' which resemble games, but are considerably smaller and more limited. I try to focus on the 10 seconds of fun, which is a phrase I picked up from the original creators of the Halo franchise. They said that all they did was find that 10 seconds of fun, and repeat it over several hours. Genius. In fact, the desire to minimize the size while maximizing the fun is what drew me to the Hydra in the first place. I find it a lot more interesting to ask "what can I do with extremely limited resources" as opposed to standard videogames which ask "what can I do with nearly limitless resources". I find that it benefits my understanding of the hardware itself, as well as a much tighter and more focused experience.

Right on, I completely understand! I operate under a similar M.O. in the Propeller environment. 10 seconds of fun and "what can I do with extremely limited resources." Couldn't have said either better.

Keep up the great work!
--trodoss

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

I think the concept of "how much can I accomplish with limited resources" is what drives many of us to playing with this microcontrollers. With the Propeller the limits are still there, but on the other hand, you've got some amazing capability using TV and audio output in the games.

Looks like the next Propller will be more of the same thing, only on the next level. Fun times now and ahead!

OBC

potatohead

Agreed. These little games are fun! Thanks for sharing them. Finished as they need to be, IMHO.

pedward

If you take a bunch of 10 second games and string them together into a collection, you have a bunch of unique experiences.

Think of it this way, if you made 256 unique 10 second games, then every time you ran the program it presented the games in a random order, no two experiences would be the same. You could have countless variations of fun, only limited by your attention span and your allotted time.