Blog for William Lee Sims at GarageGames.com

Heroes Of 2073 Prototype

William Lee Sims — 2008-09-27T06:39:21+00:00

I love board games. I own several hundred and hold weekly (or more often) game nights and game days.

I've always dreamed of making a board game that can only be played on the computer. The general idea was to create a game that has a board-like feel, but has mechanics that are more easily played out on a computer. I'm looking for a game with rigid rules that are easy to understand, but better handled by a computer.

I've started by making a game called "Heroes of 2073". It combines various aspects of the games Return of the Heroes, Shadowrun, and Arkham Horror.

This is mostly a test of my craptacular (craptastic?) art skills, as the coding is fairly easy for me.

My recent success in the prototype was creating tiles (like in Return of the Heroes) that can be rotated in any multiple of 90 degrees and placed anywhere on the terrain.

First, I create a 200 meter by 200 meter area which has rolling terrain, water, objects, buildings, splined paths, etc. The border of this area must all be at exactly 200 meters high. I then modified TGE to save off the terrain and the objects. I can then load them back in anywhere on the terrain with any multiple of 90 degrees of rotation. (The water took some work, but the rest was fairly easy.) I then link up the adjacent tiles. After the server does this work, the clients can connect and get the new, random game world.

The general game is as follows:
1) Create a character.
2) All character move simultaneously to Get Missions, Kill Monsters, Rescue Fair Maidens, Blackmail, Plant Evidence, Steal, or whatever.
3) Upgrade your character with better stats and equipment into the Uber-One.
4) Be the first (of 4 players) to kill the Unnamed.
5) Have this all done within 30 minutes to 90 minutes.

The experience cost to create and upgrade your character will be controlled by an economic system that I developed years ago. The stats and missions that were taken by the Winner of the Game will be recorded to an internet database. Over a period of time, the cost of the stats taken by the Winner will slowly go up in cost and the others will go down in cost. The missions that were taken will slowly give less money and experience points. This has the effect of balancing the costs over time without having to patch as an exploit is found.

First is a GUI prototype I created. The dice at the bottom have one example of a cursed and blessed die.

Here is my actual progress in the game. Click for a larger image.

Toy Factory!

William Lee Sims — 2008-07-21T23:24:17+00:00

Hi, All!

I finished a game about a year ago called Sparks! 5: Toy Factory. (Actually, it went through many names including Origami Garden, but that's wishy-washiness for you.) It's a network-connecting logic game. I couldn't find a graphic artist, then the holidays came up, then I took over a month of vacation, then my sister (with 5 kids) had surgery. Well... you get the idea.

During this time I worked on Fast Arcade and made about 35 games. This was a lot of fun. I'll be adding games to it until the day I die. Recently, I created a game on it called "Pet Store Detective". I'd been wanting to test out RentACoder, so I tried hiring an artist through it. It worked like a charm. I got a lot of offers at a lot of different prices, each with it's own advantages.

But now I'm back and converting Toy Factory to the latest TGB version. I found Richard (a British ex-patriot living in Spain) to do my art.

I've had 2 experiences hiring artists here at GarageGames and now 2 at RentACoder. My success rate here is 0% and at RentACoder is 100%. I'm not bashing the artists here. My experience is probably not standard. In one case, the guy had no experience; in the other, the guy had to stop due to personal issues.

Below are two images. The first is a programmer-art version of the game in one of its 50 levels. (Each level is replayable, due to the random building of the puzzle.) The second is a close-up image that Richard created.

Later!

Fast Arcade Complete (Warning: Large Image)

William Lee Sims — 2007-02-02T03:59:22+00:00

I have long wanted one of those touchscreen gaming systems, but have found them to be quite expensive (300,000 shiny pennies). Besides, I didn't care for a third of the games.

Then I found that 15" touchscreens cost around $300. Since all of my spare time is spent writing games, it costs me nothing to write my own games. By connecting the monitor to my laptop, I would have a semi-portable touchscreen gaming system.

I developed a meta-system where I put games into categories. The main program scans the categories and creates buttons. If you click on a category, it scans the subdirectories to make buttons for the games. You click on the game button, see the high score table, and then can play the game. Each games takes between 2 and 5 minutes to play. All can be played with both mouse and on a touchscreen.

I've tested the system with my family and friends and found that it is very popular with them. I've got about 20 mini-games created with plans to create another 15 (or so) more. I have a button within the meta-system which downloads any updates and new games that I will create. This will allow my family to get updates without re-installing the program.

If you are interested in taking a look at it, you can get it at wsims.com/FastArcade.

Here is a snapshot of the games:

Sid Sackson, Prototyping, and Mexico

William Lee Sims — 2006-08-23T01:36:55+00:00

Sid Sackson (1920 - 2002) was a great American game inventor. "Acquire" is probably his most famous game. In my opinion, even his worst game ideas are inspiring. Several years ago I was lucky enough to get a copy of "A Gamut of Games" (1969) fairly cheap.

I've probably read the book a dozen times already. A while back, I even implemented a couple of games from his book: Bowling Solitaire and Solitaire Dice. They were done during the early stages of Torque Game Builder (an early Beta if I remember correctly). They are getting played on a fairly regular basis by strangers (which I consider a success in my book).

I'm now heading back to San Carlos, Mexico to finish the last of the paperwork for my new house down there (which once again, I blame Joshua Dallman for making me look down there). While there, I'm going to be prototyping another Sid Sackson game called "Last Word". One problem I have with word games (like Scrabble) is that a computer (or human) player will put out "cacoepistic" and you will have no freakin' clue as to what that word means (it means "of or related to mispronounced words"). I will fix this with "Last Word". I downloaded Wiktionary and am in the process of writing a program which parses the list into reasonable words (2 characters or more, no capital letters, no punctuation, no slang) and puts each word with a few of its definitions into an SQLite database. (This will be available on my web site when it is done.) I will then use it in my game so that you can look up the definition to a word you don't know. (Of course, I will only be allowing you to look up words that are already completed so that you cannot test random words.)

Sparks! 4 Complete

William Lee Sims — 2006-07-07T03:50:19+00:00

I love TGB. I've finished my 5th game with it today. (Okay, one was a quick derivation of another, and two of them I packaged into one executable.) I'll be the first to admit that they are, for the most part, crappy. But I write these for my friends and family. Since they don't get played much, the quick development time in TGB makes me feel less guilty about writing them.

Here is a picture of the games:

If you are interested in playing, you can go to www.wsims.com to download it. It features art and music by me and stars Adam from the AdamPack! There is an easy "training" level and all of the help is in-game.

Sparks! 3 was my breakout game, getting played over 3600 times. Sparks! 4 is nothing like Sparks! 3, but I hope people enjoy it. It's a combination of games I wrote/prototyped at work (I won't say where I worked, but suffice it to say that the United States taxpayer helped pay for these).

If you play and find any errors, please let me know. I've tested this quite a bit, as has my partner, but that means little when we already knew how to play the games.

Ed: Larger Picture

Land Bridges Complete (Enough For Now)!

William Lee Sims — 2006-06-04T21:57:09+00:00

A long time ago, my partner and I decided to whip out a board game conversion as fast as we could. In a weekend, we had a multi-player game with artificial intelligence. It was exciting!

Now, some 6 months later, we decided to clean it up a bit by making the artificial intelligence smarter using a genetic algorithm, and adding some special effects and some sounds. All said and done, it turned out pretty good. I even have a Hall of Fame table on my web site for completed games.

Normally this is a type of game I make and then only send it to my friends. But based upon the millions of web sites that do not seem care about board game publisher rights, I decided to put this here for a short time. If you like to play board games and have ever played Bridges of Shangri La, or would like to learn, this is the game for you.

If you do play and have any suggestions, just let me know. I am sure to get to Version 1.6, as is frequent in my board game conversions. Also, if anybody wants some tips on making a board game in TGE, I can help. (Although it is mostly just a good state engine.)

I've included a really poor jpeg image of a game in progress. It looks much better in-game.

As a side note, I would like to thank (blame) Joshua Dallman for suggesting San Carlos, Mexico, as a wonderful and cheap place to live. I visited, fell in love, and bought a house. I am heading back Monday to get the keys to the house and get it stocked up. I plan to rent it out for a couple of years. Me and my partner will stay there for a few months each year to see if we like living there. We will then decide whether or not to stay in Denver or move to San Carlos. Owning two houses has put me in a financial pinch, but this will be quite the adventure.

While I was there, I got prices for water, electricity, new home building, water filtering, insurances, trusts, food, etc. If anybody is interested, I would gladly be willing to provide it.

Tuesday Feb 1 1:32

William Lee Sims — 2005-02-01T01:32:32+00:00

I've finished working on my Hide and Go Seek game with power-ups and six different worlds... a brick maze, a mazed interior, inside a computer case, a bizarre funhouse, a village, and a graveyard.

This is my first project with the TGE. I was a bit ambitious in making it, but I finally got it to a point where I'm happy with it.

The game plays with 3 to 16 people (although I've only ever tested it with 10). There is a lot of programmer art in this, too. Learning the art tools (Quark, gameSpace, MilkShape, Ultimate Unwrap, CharacterFX, etc.) at the same time shows. But since this is just a hobby, my friends are my only players, and I don't make money, nobody can really complain.

I made a few changes to the engine. I created a tractor beam (which is really an impulse beam). I created a C++ object that mostly encapsulates the source and target names. The clients then draw the tractor beam using those names. I then have a separate function which applies the proper impulse. The tractor beam looks kind of Star Trek-ish... kinda.

Second, I had the server determine the footprints. I then replicate these footprints exactly on each client. This is because each character has a stealth ability. The more stealthy you are, the less footprints you leave. It was vital that you knew where your footprints were. Especially when you are invisible.

Finally, I made a slew of minor changes to support each character having different speeds, different powerup effects, different stealths, and for tagging. (Nothing major... just a lot of state variables and modifications to virtual functions within my own PlayerHnGS class.)

If anybody is interested in these changes I would be willing to share the code and/or concepts.

Here are the powerups. You can visit my web site or view the Hide and Go Seek Instructions to learn more.

Here are a few shots of the levels (from the documentation):

Sunday Jul 11 3:02

William Lee Sims — 2004-07-11T03:02:44+00:00