07 August 2020 >> Screeps

This game has become a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine throughout 2018. In it, you program a RTS AI which persists in an MMO world and interacts with the AIs of other players, either through trade or through warfare. While I logged over 700 hours on it on steam, that’s only a fraction of the time I really spent with the game as most of the active “gameplay” actually happens when you write code inside the IDE of choice – watching it run with all those little creeps following their orders can be quite mesmerizing as well tho!

It served me as an introduction into JavaScript and forced me to actually profile my code, as compute time as well as memory on the MMO Server is obviously limited. The source code for my AI can be found on my github.

At its peak performance my AI reached global expansion rank 63. Since I was kinda lucky to be living in a rather peaceful corner of the map, I was able to turn most of my resources into in-game credits which could then be used to purchase subscription tokens – which could then be sold on the Steam Community market for good ol’ cash… fully automated, mind you, even after I stopped actively playing it. It was a fun while it lasted, but sadly I kinda lost interest over time, and in early 2020 Updates to the game caused my code to stop working, which in turn spelled the death for my AI as I checked back into it only half a year later.

Here are some Videos / Gifs I found resting in some chat histories from back then:

Here’s a small squad of mine hammering away at enemy walls. Two healers and one dismantler, enough to infinitely sustain the firepower of the hostile turrets (the blue beams) whilst dealing heavy damage to construction sites. Luckily that opponent didn’t have any proper defense creeps coded, or this would have failed gloriously.

Here my little scout found a hostile construction site of a new spawn (a very expensive building and basically the heart of the whole ant colony) which was almost finished – walking over hostile construction sites immediately destroys them, so this was very satisfying to watch, especially since this was during a ScreepsPlus tournament.

And yeah, my creeps had different (partially even animated) speech bubbles appearing on top of them depending upon their actions, because obviously that was important, even with CPU limitations.

Here my creeps where evacuating one of my old rooms, moving resources from the storage (left) into the terminal (right), from where they would be sent to other terminals throughout my creep empire.

I’ve tried getting back into it once or twice so far, but I kinda feel an urge to rewrite most of my codebase at this point, sooo… this might just never happen, sadly.

20 May 2017 >> BugBloxx

BugBloxx is a game I’ve been working on during my time as a working student at TheraBytes. It’s a Block Puzzle game where you’ll have to use all available Bugs in order to fill every field in the level. What makes it special, is that every Bug has a unique Ability, depending on its surroundings. As an example, Grasshoppers will jump over Grass and Ants will call in more Ants when you place them close to an Anthill.

Watch the Trailer:

and get it here for Android, iOS or even for your AppleTV.
Sad 2021 Edit: Apparently the game was pulled from the stores. Dunno why, but at least the trailer remains!

I’ve mainly been working on the Mobile Port and general polishing until March, and then focused on creating new Levels and content for the first Update in May. I’ve also showcased the game at the Games Bavaria Vernissage 2017, which was lots of fun!

20 December 2016 >> Hookshot

Hookshot is a 2D Platformer where your can only move around by shooting Zelda-Like Hookshots. If that already hooked you, you can go and play the current prototype over here: https://jacudibu.itch.io/hookshot

I’ve also pitched it on the Games Bavaria X-MAS-Pitching event, and even won the audium’s award. Still can’t really believe that - it was pretty awesome! Sadly, I wasn’t able to make any updates afterwards, as exams where approaching. Maybe I’ll continue (or restart) working on it once I finished my Bachelor, as it was also pretty fun to mess around with Unity’s 2D Physics system.

11 December 2016 >> Tech Nick meets Technic

Normally I don’t like posting about work related Stuff, but this is something I’ve wanted to talk about as its both funny and dangerous Topic. A few Weeks ago, the new “Saturn Connect” in Cologne opened. It’s called Connect because it focuses on newer Media and also contains some Demos of them. One of them was a VR-Soccer Experience I’ve created whilst working at Innoactive, combining a GearVR with a Kinect2.

As part of the opening ceremony, Saturn’s Advertisement Celebrity Antoine Monot Jr., also known as Tech Nick, put on the VR Goggles, kicked, wanted to run after the ball - but instead collided head-first with the TV. You can see a Video of it over here on YouTube:

This was definiately no marketing gag, as the TV broke and he got hurt a little.

First of all, it’s a sign that VR seems to work - espeacially with untethered VR Goggles, such as Samsung’s Gear VR, people quickly get immersed and forget their surroundings. But what’s more important than that is a specific learning I’ve made: as VR developers, we should always keep safety in mind. Espeacially when we expect our users to walk around with a Headset on top of their head. For example, in our App we now display a HUGE Stop sign in front of the user when he moves forward too much. Gladly as far as I know there where no more accidents ever since. The HTC Vive handles that kind of good with those transparent Walls it shows you once you get close to the borders of the tracking space.

But still - what happens, when the game supposes you to walk backwards? How can we make sure, that there’s nothing (even if it’s just a wall) the user can bump into? That’s something even the Vive does currently not tell its users. If you don’t want to break the immersion, maybe vibration or something on the back of the headstrap may be a way. Every other solution that comes to my mind right now would kind of disrupt gameplay, which also isn’t that great.

27 November 2016 >> Pushover

Pushover is a 2d action local multiplayer game. You can play with up to three friends via keyboard or xBox360 Controllers. Your aim is to throw your opponents off the platform by either shooting or bumping into them. The more often someone gets hit, the further away he will fly - it is somewhat inspired by how Super Smash Bros works.

Try it, it’s actually a lot of fun!

The game was created during the Weekend Jam at Werk1 and is also my first game made with Haxe, a very interesting Framework / Language.

03 October 2016 >> Hunt the Light

You wake up in the middle of the night. It’s storming outside. Suddenly you hear a noise - something must be in your room! You have to follow the light so the Monsters won’t eat you.

Hunt the Light was created within 8 Hours during the Grill & Games Jam 2016 at Werk1. You can play it over on itch.io.

08 July 2016 >> Project Hexagon

So this is supposed to be a bigger Post about “Project Hexagon”, which started out as “just something using hexagons”. The whole project started out as a random world generator featuring Diamond-Square, Cell-Noise and Hydraulic Erosion Algorithms and other fancy things. Back then it looked like this:

16 June 2016 >> Snake on the Nintendo 3DS

Snake is still a great game nowadays and my recent snake clone on the Roccat Keyboard just wasn’t enough of a tribute to my favourity Mobile Game of all time. So as a next step, let’s make one for the Nintendo 3DS. Yay!

(Yup, that's my first Homebrew ever)

If you want to give it a try, you can actually download it here (there’s both a 3ds Build and a Windows Executable). I’ve also made a post over at GBATemp about it. Have fun! :)

10 November 2015 >> Rubic's Nerf

You are trapped inside a Rubics Cube. In order to escape, you have to shoot with different NerfGuns and solve one side of the cube.

Rubic’s Nerf was created during one Weekend at the Microsoft Uni(versi)ty Tour WS2015 where I’ve teamed up with some of my friends from Innoactive. There was no real theme given, so we’ve decided to try out that little idea we had some days ago.
My job during the jam was to implement the solving and rotation logic of the Cube, which worked out pretty fine after an all-nighter. :)

10 August 2015 >> Snake on a Roccat Ryos MK Pro

So.. Uh. Yeah. Instead of writing lots of stuff, here’s a video on YouTube that shows what I’ve done here:

In theory it should be possible to let the game be played by an AI in the background whilst the user is doing other stuff, which would be a cool background lighting mode.
I’ve created the Game during my Free Time in University, where we have an awesome Games Lab with all sorts of funny Hardware to fool around with. It was the first time I’ve created a game using my own Awkward Engine with C++ and SDL.

07 February 2015 >> Shiny Hotel

In Shiny Hotel, you take control over an elevator and have to transport your hotel guests to the right floor - thats not as simple as it may sound, since most visitors won’t like each other and prefer to start fighting if you leave them alone! (Guess you won’t enjoy being alone with two zombies and a werewolf in an elevator too… ;) )

04 February 2015 >> Embrace the Awkward Engine!

So i had this kinda random Idea to create my own Game Engine…

And here it is. Still in development, some sort of awkwardness included. It is powered by C++ and SDL2, currently supports sprites and some sort of image manipulation, User Input with Controller Support, Sound and some other strange stuff.