Incubattle

For HEJ June (2025) I made a very small puzzle game for the theme of “Retro Future”. I do not remember all the details, but sure I remember, I did not have any time to make a proper game. I was overwhelmed by stuff in general and I do remember on the side I was trying to make a new camera system that is capable of smooth (sub-pixel) movement. In the end I was able to make one and I used that system first here. I never could discern if there was some problem with GameMaker, Windows 11, or my code, as since I use this system there are problems with my games, considering that every 2-4 start will start with loosing focus on the game window, like I was pressing ALT-TAB, and that even can happen during playing – at least when I run it from the editor, but happens with the .exe too. The other thing is that while HEJ organizers playing my games (starting from this one), they are not able to put the game window in full screen, despite I always set my games full screen by default. I even put full screen functionality to a button, that does not work for them either. Now this is a mind twister. I tried some things, like just setting up the camera and view in the editor (no code), some are untested as of yet (we’ll see in January with the Santa game) and just recently the honorable Pixelated Pope started a new tutorial about a new camera system that I want to take a look a good look at.

So, this game is about scientists experimenting on monster eggs, that can hatch monsters on the grid (middle of the screen). There are some equipment that can help them: syringes and pills that can modify the eggs’ and monsters’ number and an autocannon, that is able to defend them, should a monster gets free. As the eggs have numbers on them, representing their power and the hatching monster will have that number. Two monsters with the same number defeat each other, that will decrease the cooldown for the next autocannon ammo. Otherwise, player have to place the eggs, so the hatching monster on top could defeat the already existing monster on the grid. If a monster moves one step down, gets +1 power. If they defeat another monster, their remaining power doubles. Should a monster gets free – it’s on the lower grid and no same or bigger number monster can be placed – and no ammo for the autocannon, the monster will take out one of the labguys, that’s -1 life basically. If all are gone, it’s game over. This is all to know, so with a little luck, players can play for a long time.

Honestly, that’s all about this game, as I had little to no time for something more interesting, or bigger. There are no technically interesting things in it, except that with the new camera system there are subpixel movements with the sprites. That is the other thing, that primitive shapes, like drawing a line, rectangle or circle (polygons too) will draw that in subpixel too, meaning, they are displayed in better resolution than the sprites, ruining the illusion. I noticed before, that draw gui events does that despite their set gui resolution with my older games too, but I just stepped over that, or draw sprite primitives, when I thought that looks better that way (two examples: Firebat – Revolution, in the knowledge menu, the Prismatron is drawn on the GUI, it’s polygons have bigger resolution, or in Search and Destroy, the minimap is drawn on GUI, and there I used a sprite for the circle representing the player, as otherwise it would have been in bigger resolution). I think this is the first time I ever made a drag and drop mechanic and it works just fine. You can do that with the eggs and with the syringes and pills.

I am not really a friend of the generative AI stuff, I would say, for non-commercial stuff or just creating something as a reference of a not really existing thing (when you really cannot find anything on the net), it should be OK. I dabbled with generating some music for lyrics I wrote too. Not much, as it is impacting the environment and nothing commercial as that impacts people’s life (mine too even if not directly). But the title needed something to be shown and I made a simple picture with AI. I had to repurpose it of course and it turned out OK-is, given the short time. I am not planning to use AI on a day to day basis, I do ask chatgpt sometimes, I will probably generate some pictures for reference time to time and make some music if I have some idea, but that too quickly loosing its magic (the thing makes mistakes and I don’t like that).

Share this: