October 22nd 2014

Codename: ZXZXZX

Cliché indie puzzle-platformer influenced by Jet Set Willy, Dizzy, Wizball - basically, games in the ZX Spectrum era. (You might know this already!)

ZXZXZX was my project for the Christmas holidays, alas my last update was in January. My day job* came along and said “hey, you should probably be working on those other things”. February, Toast Time was released on iOS. March, I went to GDC in San Francisco. April, Force Of Habit moved into a new office as well as started full production on Friendship Club (a jam game from last November). July, we had two school kids in for work experience. August, we released Neon Caves on Ouya and Toast Time onto Steam (a complete surprise!), and went to Seattle to showcase at PAX Prime. Friendship Club was greenlit too. September was jetlag and the end of the tax year and just that was enough to handle. October, that’s where we are now… I’m still working on Friendship Club full-time, and so these updates will be far and few between (probably until Christmas again).

Last weekend I was at a demoscene party down in Exeter. I was going to work on the Launchpad Minigames project, but the laptop I took with me wasn’t set up properly. So yes, that means what you think it does, I worked on ZXZXZX again!

I’d left the codebase in a state of complete inoperability. Typically. I’d begun to implement level editing tools because the level data / XML file was huge. It was ~2500 lines long, so yeah, a little unworkable. I fixed a lot of that up over the weekend, and now I have a shorter immediate work list.

New Vines:

• Fixed up some of the simple editing tools.

World/room/script/level editor in it’s current state. Pretty basic!

TODO List (in order):

• Ability to change the name in the room editor.

• Ability to resize the world.

• Ability to place rooms in the world.

• Ability to write BASIC script in the script editor.

• Ability to paint different objects in the room editor.

• …actually there’s quite a lot!

Share, comment, let me know what you think, etc. :)

@ashleygwinnell | @forcehabit

*My day job is still full-time indie, and it’s awesome.