Interplanetary Conquest (in Tetris Worlds)

Picture, if you will, a proud race of Minos. Living out there lives, oblivious to their surroundings. Until, one day, they realize there sun is about to explode and everything becomes a mad dash to leave there solar system and find respite on other planets.

Six Tetrinauts are sent to six different planets deemed terraform-able and to "ready" the planet for the impending mass exodus of Minos.

When the Tetrinauts arrive on the lush, fertile planet of Deneb, they are greeted with this...

The kingdom of the apparently equally as proud Denebians. Of course, this doesn't phase the Tetriminos. The conquest must continue. Poor Denebians.

I think they plan on them being a food source.

Color Theory Part II: The Theory (or Color Design)

A while back, I was going to talk about the design aspect of color a little more. Knowing how to get different colors is important, but knowing what colors your working towards is more important.

I'm going to relate everything in terms of my own game Cygnus, because I put a lot of effort into the color design. Well, the first level at least, which dictated the colors I would use in subsequent levels. The player ship for example...

...when it came time to decide the color for the player ship, I could have chosen any color in the world, obviously, but I knew I wanted the color to represent something; stand out and be unique. There have been a lot of games where the player's ship is of a boring color and I definitely didn't want that for Cygnus. Also, I wanted the player to be able to know where there ship was among all the other lines.

One day, Nick was playing Super Metroid for the first time and I noticed that the over all color of Samus's suit (bright yellow) was an 'almost' exact compliment of the color of the very first level, which was a cold blue.

(Check this out, there's an image of samus at the top left)

These two colors came together to really visually give the impression that this area was cold, old and Samus didn't belong and was trudging through, really upsetting the place. Also it was very visually stunning.

I knew from that, that the player's color in Cygnus should be a compliment to whatever the first level was. Since I knew the first level was going to be some sort of dirt-ish planet. I chose a light brown that I liked. Which actually ended up affecting the choice for every other color in the game; because I got the player compliment color from this, and each world had to be visually different. Since everything in the game is drawn with just lines, being different meant having a unique color. (And animation, but that's a differant post.)

So the "compliment" for the brown that I chose was a mute blue.

Also, since Gravitar was a big influence on the look and play of the game, I wanted to have the spawner be the same colors and animation as the spawner on Gravitar. So that blew the nice color compliment but it's okay cause it gives the first level a cohesive prop, which maybe the second screen doesn't have.

Since walls kill you, I really didn't feel the need for enemies, but, for things that move and animate around a lot, I colored red to let the player know that they are more dangerous than a wall.

- Tony

Top-Secret P.S. - I forgot to comment out a piece of code in Cygnus that let's you hit the 'F' key for brakes. It was a line I wrote very early on when I was testing the movement code. It also sets your fuel to exactly 10. So if your going for a high fuel score don't press it, cause' it will cause your fuel to reset.

color theory Part I : The tech

The first time you look at something like this

255, 94, 0

your like whaa?? But once you figure out what it is and you use it a while you start seeing it more like this

Or at least hopefully you do. Those three numbers separated by comas, is the RGB that describes a color to the computer. The first one is red, followed by green then blue. You combine those three colors and you will get the color your looking for.

Natively.

Theres another way for the computer to use those numbers. instead of "RGB" the alternative way is "HSL". (well to be honest the computer can do ANYTHING it wants with those numbers. But I really want to talk about HSL cause its fun.)

-The 'H' stands for "hue", which basically defines the color.

-The 'S' stands for "saturation", which basically means all white or all hue. or anywhere in between.

-The 'L' stands for "lightness", which also basically means all black or all hue. or (again) anywhere in between.

This is cool because using RGB can be very difficult if you, say, want to take a color and just make it darker. or would like to cycle through colors to create one of those psychedelic Jeff Minter style things. if you had the color defined as HSL you could just change the H "hue", and you got a different color with the same brightness and saturation. This is how i did the rainbow level in Cygnus.

Now, I know what your saying, Tony!, this sounds AWESOME but how do I convert to and from RGB and HSL? Well I found this c# code online a while ago,

http://www.geekymonkey.com/Programming/CSharp/RGB2HSL_HSL2RGB.htm

And I converted it to c++ and using openFrameworks(OF is awesome!). This bit will take an RGB color and convert it to HSL...

// Given a Color (RGB Struct) in range of 0-255

// Return H,S,L in range of 0-1

static ofColor twRGB2HSL (ofColor rgb)

{

float r = rgb.r / 255.0f;

float g = rgb.g / 255.0f;

float b = rgb.b / 255.0f;

float v;

float m;

float vm;

float r2, g2, b2;

float h = 0; // default to black

float s = 0;

float l = 0;

v = max(r,g);

v = max(v,b);

m = min(r,g);

m = min(m,b);

l = (m + v) / 2.0;

if (l <= 0.0)

{

ofColor hsl;

hsl.r = h;

hsl.g = s;

hsl.b = l;

return hsl;

}

vm = v - m;

s = vm;

if (s > 0.0)

{

s /= (l <= 0.5) ? (v + m ) : (2.0 - v - m) ;

}

else

{

ofColor hsl;

hsl.r = h;

hsl.g = s;

hsl.b = l;

return hsl;

}

r2 = (v - r) / vm;

g2 = (v - g) / vm;

b2 = (v - b) / vm;

if (r == v)

{

h = (g == m ? 5.0 + b2 : 1.0 - g2);

}

else if (g == v)

{

h = (b == m ? 1.0 + r2 : 3.0 - b2);

}

else

{

h = (r == m ? 3.0 + g2 : 5.0 - r2);

}

h /= 6.0;

ofColor hsl;

hsl.r = h;

hsl.g = s;

hsl.b = l;

return hsl;

}

And this next bit will convert from HSL back to RGB...

// Given H,S,L in range of 0-1

// Returns a Color (RGB struct) in range of 0-255

static ofColor twHSL2RGB(float h, float sl, float l)

{

float v;

float r,g,b;

r = l; // default to gray

g = l;

b = l;

v = (l <= 0.5) ? (l * (1.0 + sl)) : (l + sl - l * sl);

if (v > 0)

{

float m;

float sv;

int sextant;

float fract, vsf, mid1, mid2;

m = l + l - v;

sv = (v - m ) / v;

h *= 6.0;

sextant = (int)h;

fract = h - sextant;

vsf = v * sv * fract;

mid1 = m + vsf;

mid2 = v - vsf;

switch (sextant)

{

case 0:

r = v;

g = mid1;

b = m;

break;

case 1:

r = mid2;

g = v;

b = m;

break;

case 2:

r = m;

g = v;

b = mid1;

break;

case 3:

r = m;

g = mid2;

b = v;

break;

case 4:

r = mid1;

g = m;

b = v;

break;

case 5:

r = v;

g = m;

b = mid2;

break;

}

}

ofColor rgb;

rgb.r = r * 255.0f;

rgb.g = g * 255.0f;

rgb.b = b * 255.0f;

return rgb;

}

The code isn't formatted very well here, but i'm lazy so I don't care.

Coming...(maybe)... color theory part II : The theory

Battle Stations

"There comes a time in every man's life when he must kiss his wife and tell his family that he is leaving home and he will not be returning for he is going to war. "With what?", they may ask. And you'll tell them it is with one of the worst kinds of enemies, one that walks in the shadows, one that goes by no rules, one that preys on the innocent and weak. Your family may try to stop you. Mine did. That is why I killed them."

That was an excerpt from my recent novel "Stations Over Moonbase 94" for our new game 'Station'. What's that? Oh, right, I forgot, we have a new game!

Download: Station

Station can be summed up in six words: Space fights. Oh yeah. Space fights.

Some other descriptory words: It's a turn-based Strategy game on a 8x8 grid. If that sentence gets any kind of hot and/or bothered, please do download at GameJolt by means of the link above the paragraph above this paragraph.

Cygnus

It's an adventure game with Gravitar or Asteroid type controls. I've wanted to do a game like this for a while.

And I just uploaded it...ok ok I uploaded it like an hour ago, I went to go eat a sandwhich before I wrote this post.

You can download it here.

Pie in space

Intergalactic confections!

screenshot?

from what? A new game?

maybe : ) Click on it to make it BIG!