Increpare recently released Puzzle Script, an HTML5 puzzle game engine which really tickles at my reptilian programmer hind-brain.  In its programming language, the process of building a puzzle game becomes one of recognising and munging patterns.  If you’re even vaguely interested in these sorts of games, you absolutely owe it to yourself to have a play with it!

Of course, the very first thing I did upon starting up Puzzle Script was to try to replicate Robot Finds Ice Cream within it; my ‘Game in a Week’ game from far too many years ago.  I haven’t quite managed it yet, but I think I’ve sorted out most of the really tricky bits (with help from Increpare — thanks, dude!)

After a few hours of playing with that, I felt like compiling up the original game again, and so spent some time modifying its old code-base to build on the computer I’m using now, and then brought it up to date to run with the latest version of the VectorStorm engine.  That updated version of the code is over here.  Note that there are a few render glitches in it;  Robot Finds Ice Cream was written back when VectorStorm used a simplistic front-to-back rendering system, and so it structured its rendering accordingly.  Now that we’re using a render system that’s based on batching materials, there are several bits and pieces which aren’t working correctly — most notably the vending machines are translucent, and some of the wireframe lines are visible through floors that should be obscuring them, because all the wireframe lines are drawing over all the opaque bits, instead of everything being sorted by their fake depth in the scene.

But it all compiles and runs.  And that’s the most important thing, at the moment.

I might try to finish up the Puzzle Script implementation of Robot Finds Ice Cream tomorrow, and then back to MMORPG Tycoon 2.  There’s a fair whack of stuff to talk about, there.  Really need to start actually typing it up!