the light rushes in
I mentioned droqen’s awake last month; this month’s piece is a direct riff on that game. I also drew a wee bit on sylvie’s approach to platformer mechanics.
I mentioned last month that I completely misinterpreted the point of awake: I thought the point was to get to the lightswitch and just experience the cool ambient swell that plays when you turn the lights off. When actually the point is to make your way back up to the start in the dark.
the light rushes in is an attempt to make the game that I thought awake was. There’s no way to get back to the start once the lights are out; in fact, there’s no jump mechanic at all.
I tried to lean on the sound design to convey a sense of release or relief when the lightswitch is triggered. And for the record, all of the sounds except for the lightswitch are procedurally generated; there are some Pd prototypes in the source code folder if anyone’s interested in how I made those sounds.
Anyway, it’s a tiny vignette of a game, but now I really want to see an entire genre of single-screen lightswitch platformers. I feel like there’s a ton of things you could do with this tiny structure.
Download the light rushes in
Controls: escape: quit; cursor keys: move; space: interact
The Rules:
- The file at this link will be deleted 1 month from now (6/5/23).
- All downloads are zipfiles containing a Windows executable.
- All source code and assets are included, licensed under the Anti-Capitalist Software License.
- As long as you abide by the license, you can do whatever you want with the download.
Further Reading
I picked up the TPB of Golden Rage this month. I absolutely love Williams/Knight/Dodgson/Carey’s take on Battle Royale meets the Golden Girls.
JP LeBreton with a wonderful insight on what it means to be both creative and technical.
And speaking of technical, here’s an incredible (v. long!) thread on mastodon documenting the teardown of a modern pinball table and uncovering all manner of horrors and terrible design decisions.
A fascinating, super in-depth discussion of the development of a multi-user text editor designed to solve the actual issues people encounter when editing documents collaboratively.
I also read R.F. Kuang’s Babel this month, which takes a takes a lightly fantastical premise and uses it in service of an uncompromising dissection on the crimes of empire.
Joanne McNeil on the importance of critics and college radio DJs on her connection to the wider world as she was growing up:
“Who were those DJs and where are they now? High school teachers, warehouse workers, veterinarians, office managers, accountants? I don’t know. The people I’ll never know who were spinning Spacemen 3 or Helium on state college radio stations that I heard one night out driving at midnight that was now a long time ago: yes, that’s who I write for…that’s why I’m here, and why when it’s hard, I am stubborn to stick around. I got the signal from them, when I needed it; how do I send a signal back? What makes the cultural spaces I’ve gained access to such closed loops and how does one break out without giving up?”
(part of my interest in continuing this newsletter comes from that same impulse. So much of who I am and my continued curiosity about the world comes from growing up reading music critics etc. People sharing all these amazing things that others are making and doing, acting as gateways to a wider, wilder world)
I’ve only seen a tiny fraction of it so far (hoping to do a playthrough with some Biome Collective folk and puzzle it out together), but this Doom WAD seems like an astonishing piece of work. Careful about spoilers in that doomworld thread though; eevee on cohost has a far more useful list of tips if you get stuck.
A wonderful long read about the inventor of greenwoodworking.
JP LeBreton again, this time with thoughts on what it means to work on creative projects in a team, and how to support and build on other people’s ideas. I’ve been teaching on a team project module this term, and have been thinking a lot about how I give feedback and respond to people’s ideas with kindness. Especially when they have clearly gone way over scope and are likely to collapse if they actually attempt to realise their initial vision.
It is pouring with rain as I write this, so I hope you’re keeping dry wherever you are. I told a friend I’d go to a talk in Dundee this evening, but I’m now kind of wishing I’d decided to watch it online. I’m think I’m going to get very wet. Anyway. Take care, and I will check in again next month.