Northway Games – Page 25 – Makers of Rebuild and I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

Rebuild 3: games you should play while you wait

Rebuild 3 (ahem, I should get used to saying “Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville”)… is going to be awhile. I’ve updated my release date to Spring 2014, which simultaneously feels forever away, and far too close. While you’re waiting, here are some similar games to play that have been a big inspiration for the Rebuild series and the new game.

King of Dragon Pass

I can’t believe I only just played this game from 1999, but I can tell you it still holds up. It’s a wonderfully rich storytelling experience, a strategy game where you manage a clan while being barraged with moral dilemmas. It’s set in a super deep fantasy world based on gods and mythology that goes on forever in such detail, all of it illustrated with these huge hand-drawn pictures. I’ve never played anything like it. It’s inspired me to make the text events in Rebuild 3 even longer with more explorations of the world and events from that terrible “first year” of the zombpocalypse.

They more recently released an updated iOS version and have a great development blog for it. I highly recommend it to fans of strategy and storytelling.

Dwarf Fortress

Now showing in the New York MoMA, this game is without a doubt a work of art. The product of years of obsession; Toady’s unrelenting drive to simulate the running of a dwarven city in raw and ridiculously minute detail. With ascii graphics. You need to squint and use your imagination to see the blonde/brunette/redhead, but part of the appeal is that the game is in your head. But to be honest… I prefer Mayday’s graphical edition, and though I know it’s sacrilege I’d kill for a full-mouse interface.

Despite their lack of visual representation, those little dwarves have so much character that they inspire epic works of fanart/fiction. I come back to them when I’m brainstorming new survivor enhancements like perks, backstories, individual happiness, relationships, kids… it’s hard to know where to draw the line. With Dwarf Fortress there is no line since it’s a perpetual work in progress, which I guess in a way Rebuild has been too.

SimCity

Though not totally accurate, I sometimes describe Rebuild as “SimCity with zombies”, and my earliest prototype used modified building graphics from SimCity 1. Mostly because I needed some quick and recognizable placeholders, but also because the first two SimCities were defining games from my youth. I later played every other simulation game I could get my hands on, but these were my favorite.

So I was heartbroken that the newest SimCity is riddled with always-online DRM which means I can’t reliably play in the remote places I live half the year. No surprise their servers didn’t handle the day 1 load, but it was inexcusable that EA claimed the always-online was to offload processing, which was a bald-faced lie. I’ve also heard the new game itself is a disappointment, but you can always go back and play the earlier games.

Space Rangers

Recently remastered as Space Rangers HD: A war apart, this space trading/piracy game breaks up the strategy with delightful interactive fiction events. Sound familiar? This game was on my mind when I came up with the initial concept for Rebuild: a strategy game broken up with text that tells a much deeper story.

Rebuild 3’s going to have even more, longer events with more complicated decisions to make than just “yes” or “no”. They may not have you performing espionage at alien cocktail parties (a plotline I seem to recall…) but hopefully will be just as compelling.

May 22, 2013
Rebuild 3: Interfaces & common resolutions in 2013

The target aspect ratio for Rebuild 3 is widescreen 16:9. Rebuild 1 and 2 were 4:3 which is pretty normal for Flash games that have to appear on sites like Kongregate with ads and stuff around them. But the PC/Mac and mobile versions of Rebuild 3 will support glorious fullscreen, where 16:9 is the new norm. Check it:

My dubious hobby/addiction to making colorful graphs

So the plan is to design an interface that fits snugly on 16:9 iPhone5s and wide PC screens, but scale and move around to fill more square screens. Here’s a few ways we might do it:

Concept art for Rebuild 3 at 16:9 and 4:3

Alternate concept with broken sliding hud

Concept with menu down the left, taller menus.

I hope my addiction to mockups leads to something useful. Adam’s doing the same thing on his end, finding inventive new ways to convey a ton of information without looking cluttered. I want the game to feel natural at any resolution, so you don’t feel so much like you’re buried in an endless stack of menus. Which… come to think of it, is not a totally inaccurate description of the game.

May 15, 2013
Rebuild 3: First look concept art

After an exhaustive search for a Rebuild 3 artist, sifting through 150 applicants and agonizing over the decision for months, I chose the art and style of Adam Meyer (of Steamroller Studios and Crystal Clear Art). When he’s not working with me on Rebuild 3, Adam’s got a zombie game of his own on the go – the beautiful Deadwood with a super unique art style involving wooden people.

As for the style of Rebuild 3 (tentatively called “Gangs of Deadsville”), we’re going to go for something cleaner and more cartoony than Rebuild 2… but not nearly as cheesy as my stickmen from Rebuild 1. Here’s a rough mockup of what we have in mind:

Adam’s mockup for the new look to Rebuild 3.

The new characters have so much… character! They’ll have mix & match features like earlier games, and a bunch of new clothing options. Hipsters, geeks, cops and cowboys – I can’t wait to make my last stand with these adorable bastards. I’ll leave you with some of Adam’s survivor sketches:

May 9, 2013
Solution to the BirdBrain Puzzle

I posted a very hard puzzle here and challenged the Internet to solve it. It’s quite a hard puzzle and it took about a day from originally posting it for someone to solve it. That someone was Mark Ivey (@zovirl). I asked him to write a quick description of his solution and he did up a very nice little post which I thank him for. Here is Mark Ivey’s solution to my puzzle:

The Solution to the BirdBrain Puzzle by Mark Ivey

Overview: A down-and-left circuit moves the birds to the first & last yellow pellets. A decaying memory circuit bounces the birds up off the red ball. Since this loop decays over time the birds will go down again after clearing wall #2.

Down-and-right circuit

To bounce up, the birds have to hit the ball from the top. If they hit the side, they’ll bounce at the wrong angle.

The right signal is slightly stronger than the down signal to make sure the birds get over the ball before hitting it.

Decaying Memory Circuit

Bouncing up requires reversing the ball signal. Keeping the birds moving up after they hit the ball requires a memory loop. When a bird hits the ball, the ball signal gets injected into the loop. The 2 neurons in the loop keep the signal alive even after the bird leaves the ball. Then the signal is reversed (repel from the ball instead of attract to it) and passed to the wings.

Don’t want the birds to keep going up forever, just want them to go high enough to clear wall #2. This means the memory of hitting the ball has to decay. A sidetrip out through the 1/2 neuron does this. To keep the signal from decaying too quickly, more connections are added between the 2 memory neurons. This dilutes the effect of the 1/2.

If the bounce signal has to fight against the down signal, the birds move too slowly. To prevent the bounce from having to fight the down signal like this, a bunch of parts of the bounce circuit send suppression signals to the down-and-left circuit.

Tuning

Once the birds are moving in a nice down-up-down motion, it took some tuning to get them to just barely clear wall #2 before going back down to the 3rd pill.

Tuning #1: The memory decays slower if there are more connections between the 2 memory neurons (this dilutes the effect of the 1/2 signal). About 5 connections in each direction worked well.

Tuning #2: The suppression lines are doubled in a few places to suppress the down signal even more.

April 26, 2013
BirdBrain Puzzle
Hello Internet. I have a puzzle for you. It’s quite hard.

In this puzzle you have to build the brain of a bird. The brain already has several Neurons, you need to connect them with some Axons.

The puzzle is here: BirdBrain

Don’t run off though! You need some instructions and I happen to have some hastily written instructions right here:

Controls: Click on a Neuron (the grey disks), drag to a different Neuron and let the button go. This will make a wire between the two Neurons.

Click on a wire to delete it.

You want to make the stream of birds pass through each yellow “food”. If you get one dot then you’ve figured out how to play. If you get the second dot then you are clever indeed. The third one is genuinesly hard, I really doubt you’ll make it there so why stress about it?

There are Three broad catagories of Neurons and Nine specific kinds.

The Three catagories are:
1. Input
2. Processing
3. Output
These correspond to the top row, the two middle rows, and the bottom row of the puzzle. The top rows generate directional input, the middle rows can change that input, and the final row takes whatever is being fed into it and steers the bird in that direction.

Here is a run-down of all the neuron types:

This Neuron points towards the red baloon. But, and this is important, only if the bird is touching it. The bird is blind, it can’t see the baloon, it can only feel it.

Up/Down/Left/Right: These Neurons point in one direction at all times no matter what. Try conecting one of these neurons to the final “motor neuron”.

These are your basic normal Neurons. They average whatever input they get. If you pass them a down and a right you will get down-and-right out of it.

This reverses whatever you pass in. If you pass it a down and a right you will get up-and-left out of it.

Will average whatever input it gets and then multiply by two on the way out. If you pass it down and right you will get down-and-right-but-fast out.

Will average whatever input it gets and then divide by two on the way out. If you pass it down and right you will get down-and-right-but-slow out.

This is the birds wings. It will fly in whatever direction you like. If you pass it down and right then the bird will fly down and right.

Wires: are used to connect Neurons. Information flows along the wires in the direction you draw them. If you draw from the Left Neuron to the Motor Neuron your birds will go left. If you drag from the Motor Neuron to the Left Neuron the bird will not move.

Inhibiting Wires: These wires inhibit whatever they are connected to acoriding to the strength of the information passing along them. If you connect the Down Neuron to the Motor Neuron with a normal wire and then the Left Neuron to the Motor Neuron with an Inhibiting wire the bird will not move because the Motor Neuron is being inhibited with the strength of the Left Neuron.

Loops: You can make loops.

Overlapping Wires: You can place a wire between the same two Neurons as many times as you want going in either or both directions. There is no graphical hint to tell you how many wires are there.

Special Case: Neurons average all the information they get except for the special case of zeros. If they get a zero they will simply ignore it. Since the birds can not see the Baloon when they start connecting the Balloon Neuron to anything will have no immediate effect because it is sending no information. Combining anything with no information results in no change, not a halving of the value.

Good luck. You’re going to need it. (and yes, it is possible, here is a picture of my birds getting to the end)

If you’d rather just mess about in a sandbox I have one of those here.
April 25, 2013