Games you have programmed

[InsanePyros]

I'm interested in what games XKCD readers have made. I'll start with my own, its sort of a geometry wars clone, but I'm not close to done yet so it might veer off from a direct clone.

beta V 0.1
http://www.mediafire.com/?bn0z4lj3ju3

beta V 0.2
http://www.mediafire.com/?umzjp2pmjms

It allows you to change the script of how the enemies are spawned so post any good scripts you make.

[Berengal]

I made pong in python and pygame once...

[Kerberos]

It's... maybe not a game, but I did make a pretty good Life program (as in Conway) in Pygame. The line numbers in the introduction are goofed up, and maybe I'll write a program to fix that sometime, but it's operational otherwise.

I'm in the process of planning to make a game in C that will be totally awesome that I will post here when I make it.

[qbg]

I once was working on a falling sand game in C++; I could just never get the code clean enough, and it wasn't as fast I wanted it to be (it was fast enough I suppose...)

[r1chard]

There's some I've programmed for the Python game challenge and then there's some others on my random projects page.

[johnie104]

I made a tower defense game. It was created in Game Maker, so does it count? I'm still working on it (next update will be somewhat of a rewrite).
link

[Larry]

Minesweeper and noughts & crosses (tic-tac-toe to you yankeefolk, I believe) on my calculator in year 12. Still got em. Also found a way to make an unquittable program that caused the calculator to hang.

[Amnesiasoft]

I have no links, but I once programmed a Tron-like game for the TI-83+, and later rewrote it for the TI-82 for a friend of mine...

That's about it as far as finished games go.

[CVSoul]

I made a frighteningly complex Battleship game in Java for AP CompSci class in 10th grade.... good lord, I scared myself with that one. I spent hours learning how to recognize pointer location to make crosshairs n such.... joy for that
/nostalgia

[Notch]

I developed the client for Wurm Online. A friend wrote the server.
I won a competition with Miners4k, and receive a fair bit of email about Infinite Mario Bros.
Also, at my day job, I've programmed some 20 games or so, including Carnival Shootout, Duck Pond Dash, Graceful Jewels, Pinball King, Backgammon, and the ports of Zuma and Luxor.

Currently, in my free time, I'm working on a Dungeon Master/Eye of the Beholder/Ultima Underworld type rpg called Legend of the Chambered. An early tech demo is available here.

[Babam]

http://www.experimentalgameplay.com/game.php?g=599

A small game I made in MMF2, god I need to learn a real programing language that isn't basic...

[JCM]

Sorry for reviving the thread, but I'm currently designing (or creating all the graphics and music for) a game, though someone else is actually programming it in FreeBASIC, so I'm not sure if it counts.

[headprogrammingczar]

I am not the only one to have worked on this game, and the game itself is almost as old as my brother, but I am currently helping code for Eternal Silence.

[MoghLiechty2]

Let's see... I made this for a competition, which I technically won, but that's a long story. I did get an internship out of it at a certain Rare Studios in the UK, where I got to do a tiny bit of performance optimization on Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts (hooray, right?).

Any other games I have, are, or know I will work on I am unable to mention.

[NathanielJ]

I made some text-based online games about 3 or 4 years ago that I still admin. Been working on making an updated Facebook version of one of them for a while now.

[Gravitas Shortfall]

I have two that I've worked on:

For some turn-based strategy set in space:
AstroWar

or alternatively, rocket-jumping alien kitty:
Shine

[Ixtellor]

Since he didn't respond yet:

One of our posters: Zileas

Shadowstrife
Warcraft 3
World of Warcraft
League of Legends.

I think he also did some Defense of the Ancients stuff, but not sure.

[Toeofdoom]

Well, I'm personally starting to program another game, which you could follow on my blog (not long to wait, it's a 7 day experimental prototype, so expect it at about midnight Melbourne time January 24-25...)

Or you can play a couple of other games I've programmed at the downloads page.
EDIT: CSS3 warning, may look completely terrible on IE.

[Roonda]

Square Off. I was the only programmer so I think that counts. I also worked on a (sadly) unreleased PS2 futuristic surfing tony hawk like game from Bungarra Studios.

[Klapaucius]

Does monkeying around with BASIC count? In tenth grade, I made a couple of surrealistic text-based adventures on the TI, as well as this customizable Rock-Paper-Scissors simulator (using a random number generator as an opponent), and a thrilling sequel entitles Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard Spock.

[Toeofdoom]

Well I finished that game I started, if you're impatient you can grab it straight away HERE but if it doesn't work you should probably read THIS.

[Josephine]

2 of the weapons are kind of annoying. The no-fuel one takes forever, and the large weapon which draws asteroids to it always kills me.

[Toeofdoom]

Yeah, I put the weapons in the order I thought of them, so the difficulty curve is pretty bad. If it makes you feel better, the one that attracts everything to you usually kills me too, it helps to fire it into a rock point blank or be in an area where it can't attract things. The slow one is okay if you speed up and launch it with your momentum at an easy target.

I made it in 7 days and some of the weapon ideas are ones I'll probably reuse at some point, but I am sorry for the difficulty. Seriously, I haven't survived to the end yet.

[Josephine]

ah, gotcha.

By the way, the 3d just overcomplicates things. Are there weapons later on which require 3d?

[Toeofdoom]

Nope, the main reason for it is that I've been using ogre3d for other projects recently. More worthwhile to learn in a way, because you can put a 2D game into a 3D engine, but not the other way around.

Plus "2.5D" (2d gameplay, 3d graphics) can be seen in a fair few recent games, simply because 3D graphics tend to look cool. Not exactly the case here, obviously, but maybe I'll get better at it

Oh, and I have survived to the end now, only killed 18% of the worlds population. \o/

[Josephine]

Ah, Ogre. The only place I've done any actual writing of games is in the Blender Game Engine. Where did you get your game props? (oh, and by the way: you need to change the background. At least the mapping on the walls from the game environment up)

[Toeofdoom]

I haven't heard of the blender game engine, although it could be related to blender the 3D modelling program. Which is incidentally where I made all the 3D models that appear in the game. I didn't make the textures, though. With the texture stretching on the "walls", that was on my list of things to fix, but I didn't have time in the end (strict 7 day limit makes it difficult).

[Josephine]

ah, you don't know about the BGE? I presume you've seen the logic tab in Blender, go look it up. It's great for newtonian physics simulation (it uses the Bullet engine). It can use GLSL graphics, and is integrated into Blender, so you can, for instance, have animation loops for a character for walking, running, etc. and have those triggered by user input. It even has a nice GUI frontend for the code, you can do almost anything in it. But you do get more functionality (and it can be faster to make) out of Python code.

[Toeofdoom]

Sounds interesting, especially testing out glsl effects. Still, I think I'll probably end up using ogre and such a fair bit more just because I can. I expect C++ would get much better performance which is useful in some physics based games. However, at the moment I'm planning an attempt to create a slightly wrecked crate that is neither grey nor brown... hmmm.

Also I reposted this in my thread in art and links, to avoid derailing this topic further

[Toeofdoom]

Well, I programmed another game for the experimental gameplay project, this time an RTS where you get 10 seconds to order stuff around with the game paused and then 10 seconds to watch it all play out. You might have figured out the theme was "10 seconds". As with all EGP games, it was made in ~7 days. Also, this one has music!

Anyway, with this one I will be releasing a second build - one bug to fix is properly resetting the timer if you start a second match without quitting the game and there are a couple more usability features to work on.

Download instructions
Screenshots:

Spoiler:

[JayAr]

Alright, I don't have much to say but that I have a small list

1.) Spike the dodge (xbox 360) currently waiting to sell it over Indie Games (a basic obstacle avoidance)

2.) I Can't Believe it's not war! (zune hd) Just for me and my friends, a card-based 2d RTS

and 3.) Project 3 I won't talk about this one, UNDER development

[bakadeshi]

An abbreviated list...
High school "games:"
The obligatory single player tic tac toe (with C and not java, so I ended up taking a 15% deduction for not following directions ) that everyone seems to have programmed in their intro to programming class; Go Fish! card game for the IBO that used C++

College:
Single player chess game that was the final project for an AI class I took in college using java (not by choice!), a two player Go! game I made for my game theory professor because he was always complaining about us students losing his black and white game pieces whenever we played in class

Work related:
Simple pac man clone I made while learning pygame libraries and reviewing python, and various games with pygame incorporating hacked wiimote controllers targetted at children with physical and mental disabilities (which was challenging and fun to do, but the games themselves aren't much fun to play for most people. The kids loved them though), tended to be one or two player racing games or silly "fill up this meter faster than your opponent so your avatar can do something funny like throw a pie/dump a bucket of water on your opponent's avatar." Hard part was in programming the movements and getting things to register correctly, not so much the actual "game."
Currently working on a typing game using pygame (or should I use something else?) aimed at secondary school kids that also deals with HIV/AIDs (two birds with one stone--computer literacy and HIV education, both big problems in Tanzania) with some of my students so they can learn how to program.

[Amnesiasoft]

simply because 3D graphics tend to look cool

I'd guess it's probably more because 3D animation tends to be a lot more efficient to do than 2D.

[Toeofdoom]

That would have something to do with it, yes. Also 2D lighting requires per pixel calculations whereas 3D can be per poly, things like that. The thing about 3D looking cool is still relevant though.

Plus it's organic animation that tends to be efficient in 3D, strictly mechanical stuff isn't very hard in 2D at all.

[Amnesiasoft]

strictly mechanical stuff isn't very hard in 2D at all.

I'd say that's debatable. Say I have a machine with something pumping up and down in an isometric game, and this object has no symmetry. Which is easier, animating it once, then letting the computer handle the 3D rotation, or drawing each frame in 2D? Though I suppose you could animate it in 3D then pre-render it... but that's not the point.

[Toeofdoom]

Isometric a 3D world rendered with 2D sprites. I am talking about the opposite, a 2D world rendered with 3D models. Yes, drawing multiple views of a 3D world in 2D is extremely intensive in terms of work. Really not the point at all and even then, mechanical animation isn't always that bad in isometric if you don't have to rotate it, but I'd prefer not to get bogged down in this point (or argument).

To restate my view, it is easier to draw almost anything other than characters and potentially plants in 2D (side/top view) than in 3D. A large part of the reason for using 3D models for those games is because it looks cool.

Plus you should play my games already.

[Caesar]

I just finished my first game, which I worked on in my first semester at the Games Academy, together with some friends.
Affenitaet is a hardcore 2D platformer as well as a so-so german pun. Additionally to running and jumping, you can use your special ability, which allows you to attract purple cristals and repell yellow cristals. This mechanic is used in a wide range of ways, sometimes testing your timing skills, sometimes challenging your puzzle-solving skills.
Why don't you check it out?
http://affenitaet.wordpress.com/download/

[Token]

I stopped playing on the second level, when it became apparent that dying meant that I lost all coins I'd collected. Solving a mini-puzzle for the first time feels like an achievement. Having to solve it repeatedly because I've fucked up elsewhere on the same level is just tedious.

Also, for anyone else following the link: the game is in German (though basic instructions are presented in English).

[Caesar]

Sorry you didn't like it.
Also, you can set the game to english in the menu.

[Token]

Ah, right you are about the language setting - I missed the option. I guess it's interesting that I won't spot a flag that isn't one I'm familiar with.

And I didn't say I didn't like it - it just has (in my opinion) a fatal flaw that means I don't particularly want to find out whether I do or not. I just tried giving it another chance, and the same thing happened: I died on level 3 after having collected all 20 coins, and didn't care to go through it again. This time, another thing that struck me was the level design - I'd got to the point where the only coins left were the ones you get to by riding the two purple blocks, but I fell through the gap to the right of that, and had to go all the way around the left side of the map. Not so fun.