Kloonigames

(Update September 13th, 2007: There is now a great tutorial on how to use the level editor writen by logr. You can read it here.)

I really don’t have the time to write this, since I’m trying to crank out my next game (which should be out tomorrow). But here’s a quick update report on matter’s concerning Crayon Physics.

First off all here’s the level editor (I promised that it would be out during this month and here it is, just in the nick of time). You can download it from here: crayon_editor.zip. It’s an ugly editor and there is no documentation (I’ll write one after I get the game out). So here’s a brief description of the shortcut keys: Left shift down will create a static object, Z adds the ball, X adds a star, S saves and L loads.

Second off all, we have a new level by Ichabod. Can be downloaded from here.

Third off all, lately I’ve been peer pressured by Linux users to release the source code of Crayon Physics. As I’ve said before, if I release the source code I want to do it properly. Not just dump it all in sourceforge.net, because that never works. And right now I’m too busy to do it properly. Also there’s the fact that right now I don’t have a proper future plan for Crayon Physics. In case that development of Crayon Physics isn’t continued in any other way, I’ll just dump the source code in sourceforge.net and hope for the best.

Fourth of all (is this even a real expression?), I have a pile of unanswered emails and I’ll reply to them and also to the blog comments after I get the new game out.

I just realized yesterday that there are only 30 days in June, which is the reason why I’m extra busy with the game. So I’m off to coding.

I was supposed to write something not Crayon Physics related, but I think I can’t pass this opportunity. I know there’s a lot of players anxiously waiting for the level editor. But apparently there are also players, who got tired of waiting and decided to crank out their own levels. During the weekend Otávio posted a comment that contained the first ever fan made level to Crayon Physics. There are some details in the comments on how he did it and it’s pretty impressive. And yesterday I received another fan made level, by logr.

So I also decided to crank out one level and zip all the levels in to one file and now we have a semi official “level-pack-mod” to Crayon Physics. It has only three four new levels, but they are all delightfully difficult.

You can download the level pack from here (270 KB).

To install it, just extract the files and folders to the same folder where Crayon Physics is located. The “level_pack_01.bat” should be in same the folder where crayon.exe is located. To play to the new levels just run the “level_pack_01.bat” in the root of the game.

Thanks to Otávio and logr for taking the time to hack together the levels. I know that is wasn’t all that easy of a task.

Edit June 20th, 2007: Just when I got the level pack published logr posted another level 🙂 So there are now four levels in the levels level pack. Check out the screenshot of logr’s new ice level.

Crayon Physics turned out to be much more popular than I had imagined. It was featured on Independent Gaming, GameSetWatch and on the2bears, and about half a dozen French sites (Btw. I have no idea what they’re saying about the game). And apparently everybody wants me to continue the development of the game.

Now I have to point out that Crayon Physics is a prototype. It’s a butt ugly prototype, that was hacked together in five days. And as a prototype it served it’s duty well. It proved that the gameplay mechanic of Crayon Physics works and is fun to play with. As a “proper game” it’s not all that great (there are bugs, there’s only seven levels, etc). And to make into a proper game would mean a lot of more work. Too much for me if I want to continue developing games on monthly basis. But don’t get me wrong, I’d love to continue the development of Crayon Physics, but the big problem is time. Or the lack of it.

But even with the serious lack of time, I’ll try release a level editor for the game during this month. I just don’t know if I have enough time to make it a proper level editor, but I’ll try. During the development of the game I did create an unusable level editor for myself, and if things don’t work out for me, I’ll tweak it a little bit and release it. But that’s my emergency plan.

Also when I release the level editor I’ll probably have to release a new version of the game (to support the user created levels). So if I have enough time I’ll fix some issues with the game.

Edit: The game was also featured on TIGSource, Binary Joy and on Mooktown and mentioned on Game Tycoon.

Here’s my tenth done-in-under-a-week game. I would have liked to spend few more days with the game, but unfortunately I didn’t have the time. As usual the game is open to critique.

Crayon Physics

Download
Crayon.zip (5,6 Mb) (Release 1)

Instructions
You play with crayons and physics. The goal of the game is to move the red ball so that it collects the stars. You can cause the red ball to move by drawing physical objects.

With left mouse button you can draw and with right you can remove objects.

Space – Will reset the level.
Esc – Will open the menu.

Alt + enter – Will toggle fullscreen.
Alt + F4 – Will quit the game.

Credits
Game Design, Code & Gfx: Petri Purho ( petri.purho (at) gmail.com )

Music: _ghost – Lullaby. The song is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 -license.

The game uses Erin Catto’s Box2D physics engine.

The graphics of the game are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 -license.
The background texture is based on Felipe Skroski’s photo One for SXC. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 -license.
Some modified textures from Image After were also used.

Thanks
Inspiration source: Experimental Gameplay Project.

Crayon Physics uses: SDL, SDL_Image, SDL_Mixer and SDL_RotoZoom