This name generator takes a seed of similar sounding names (or any words), and generates a new set of names based on the likelihood that one letter follows another in the original set. It picks the first and last letter, generates the letters in between, best-matches the second-to-last letter, and runs post-generation triple-letter and Damerau–Levenshtein checks to ensure uniformity with the seed.

Guildmaster has progressed rather nicely in the months since the last update, so it is worth taking some time to collate some screenshots showcasing such progress. Most of these were initially posted on Twitter, currently the best avenue to receive bleeding-edge updates on the project. Let’s dive in:

About two years ago, I was taken by the idea of an adventurer management game in which, rather than participating directly in combat, you’d manage the top-level logistics of party composition, equipment, and the shuttling to-and-from adventuring destinations and rest-providing towns. Such a project began its life with a rather complex world generator, as Adventurers. After quite a bit of back-and-forth in technical foundations and overall development approach, I am happy to announce that the game, now titled Guildmaster is progressing steadily towards its first-playable alpha.

These past couple of months have been turbulent on account of pushing Super Monkey Ball Bounce out the door at Three Rings/SEGA. Motivation and mental resources to work on my own projects have taken a hit, and as I’ve begun to regain momentum I’ve also put quite a bit of thought into shifting priorities:

Hymn, the low-fantasy conflict-management collaboration I’ve been slowly plugging away at for a few months, has enjoyed some progress since the first early prototype/concept screenshots I shared. Although it isn’t quite as far along as I had hoped by now, the following screenshots are a testament to its development:

As I prepare Crossword Dungeon to be released on PC, I will continue to release incremental content updates and bugfixes in the fashion of v1.1.1. This next version, 1.1.2, which has just been submitted to the App Store for review, includes:

The latest Crossword Dungeon version, 1.1.1, is now available on the App Store.

Version 1.1.1 brings a few bug fixes, a major XP tweak, over 100 new words, and, most importantly, the ability to win the game by completing dungeon level 40! Should you have a character deeper than dungeon level 40, the game will be won upon the next level’s descent.

I am happy to announce the latest and greatest update to Crossword Dungeon, version 1.1, is now available for iPhone and iPad on the App Store! A thorough list of changes can be found here. Reviews and ratings, as always, are greatly appreciated!

Crossword Dungeon update 1.1 has just been submitted to the Apple App Store for review. This version was rewritten entirely in an effort to port the code from from Objective-C with Cocos2d to AS3 with Starling, allowing for multiplatform support as well as easier maintenance.

If you, like me, have been using Zwoptex to create your spritesheets for Starling or Sparrow, you might have noticed a distinct lack of trim support. That is, Zwoptex claims to be trimming your files, but the resulting XML does not include any such trim data. Use the following file to fix this pesky problem:

During the past few weeks, I’ve kicked the development efforts of my latest project— sneak peek below— into overdrive, targeting a completion date of end of August/beginning of September. Here are some updates of note having taken place during this period of relative blog and Twitter silence:

Even though reception for The Adventurer’s Guild has been excellent, a few bugs, especially one particularly fatal one, have stopped players from diving as deeply as possible. These bugs are no longer.

I have uploaded an updated version in which I was careful not to fiddle with any game balance issues so as to keep with the spirit of the 7-day roguelike challenge. Here are the details:

I am proud to announce my first entry and success into the 7-day roguelike challenge, The Adventurer’s Guild!

Developed in Flash with ActionScript 3 (and playable in the browser, as usual) starting Saturday, March 10th at around 1:00 PM and finishing today, March 17th, at around 6:30 AM.

Even though I’ve been working on non–roguelikes for the past year, I’ve been itching the entire time to return to my beloved roguelike and eventual tour-de-force Dance of Death; and what better way to springboard into roguelike development than the 8th Annual 7DRL Challenge on March 10th-18th?

It’s finally here! The Color Guessing Game— where you can both test how quickly you can type out color names, and how imaginative you dare to be. Common color names are worth the least points, while rare and unorthodox “colors” will net you the most. Be as creative as you dare; if your guessed color is not found, assign it to a swatch at the end of the game so that it can be added!

Announcing The Color Guessing Game! A Flash and Papervision3D-driven word game where you battle against the clock to name as many colors as you can remember. Rare colors, those which have only been guessed by a handful of other players, net you the most points, and common colors a meager offering. If the color is not in the system, assign it to a swatch at the end of the game so that it can be added to the list!

Is four days enough to develop a roguelike? Yes, there is proof. Is it enough time to test it thoroughly and ensure that it is bug free? Unlikely! In any case, Chronophase was released at the 4-day mark with 3 known bugs, all of which I’ve just now corrected.

Fresh out of the oven, my first entry into an nDRL challenge (a 4DRL, no less), Chronophase!

These last four days have been really intense. Tough choices could not be awarded the luxury of a night’s sleep, as I normally prefer; they had to be resolved within the minute. It really gets down to the core of what game design and development is all about.

I have officially entered into the 4DRL (4-day roguelike) challenge as of yesterday, with a space-based roguelike, Chronophase. I have been kicking around the idea for a space-based roguelike for a while, and what better time to tackle it than a 4-day-cut-the-fat-and-focus-on-what’s-important challenge?

In the past few months, Dance of Death has seen rocky progress. Development momentum came to a crawl while I took a brief break after work got particularly busy with an Oracle/Ironman 2 project that completely tapped my AS3 mana reserves for a few weeks.

Recently, however, I’ve made slow but steady progress, and am down to the last two features for version 0.4!

Normally, in regaining momentum for a project, I’ll pick it back up and work on small-ticket items just to get into the groove again, then work my way into the larger items. Though this time I have done the opposite, I finally have a handle on one of the larger features for version 0.4: custom keymapping.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon the Wikipedia Article on Bézier Curves. As a fan of procedurally generated art, when I saw the fifth-order Bézier curve animation within that article, I was inspired to attempt my own Bézier curve drawing algorithm. This is what happened. In this article, on ANidea, I break down a basic Bézier curve algorithm and show how it can be generalized to create Nth order Bézier curves.

With the relaunch of this site as a blog comes a piece of great news: I am currently working on a Flash ActionScript 3.0-based roguelike game tentatively titled Dance of Death.

This time I am keeping it simple, staying away from the over-ambitious trap that bogs down so many indie games’ development.