The source code that I wrote for a little game I made with Derek Yu back in 2005-2007 has been released!
Releasing code is hard for me. It’s always imperfect (or in my case, mostly a mess) and it feels extremely personal. Especially with Aquaria – a game that involved a lot of stress and heartbreak over the course of its development. (a significant portion of the code was written while under the influence of Canadian Club Whisky)
Although programming is foremost a technical pursuit, it feels organic to me. Maybe switching between code, music and design frequently enough makes you appreciate how similar these areas of game design are – rather than thinking about how different they could be. That might be why my code is more like a weird tangled evolution of the game, rather than a clean, factory-built design. (there’s even stuff in there from back when the game was an RPG, for example)
In any case, hopefully some people will find the code useful, and hopefully some will manage to improve it.
You can find the details of the code over at Wolfire.com. And much thanks to the amazing Ryan C. Gordon for porting the game to Linux (and Mac again) and organizing the open source release. What a guy.
Also, see this talk for more on the Humble Indie Bundle:
Yes ladies and gentlemen, its time for Pajama Jam #1! What is a “Pajama Jam” you ask? No – its not that – get your mind out of the gutter. Its actually when you wake up in the morning, you’re still in your pajamas, and you sit down at the piano (or whatever your musical instrument is) and you just start playing and making it up as you go. There are no mistakes, you just play what’s in your heart at the moment. I decided to start recording some of my Pajama Jams for kicks. This first one features themes from Aquaria.
[vimeo 2583321]
I’m looking forward to seeing your Pajama Jams as well as seeing what the rest of the IA team can come up with. Its not just limited to music… I bet Katie could jam out some pretty amazing art in her PJs, for example!
P.S. Aquaria was released on Steam recently, and its on sale for $16 until the end of the year. So if you haven’t picked it up yet, now is the time!
I’m Alec Holowka… You may have heard about my last project, Aquaria. If you haven’t played it yet, you really should! It took me and my friend Derek Yu about two years to finish, and I’m really proud of what we managed to accomplish. Both Derek and I feel that video games are the next great art form, and we put that theory to the test through our efforts on Aquaria. Being able to successfully design, develop and release my own game was a dream come true – with the added bonus of being honored by the IGF, getting insanely positive press and meeting some really cool fans.
But right now I’m fulfilling _another_ lifelong dream – starting up a new game development team in my hometown of Winnipeg, Canada. Yeah, THAT Winnipeg! Fortunately, I managed to find three other people who are extremely gifted and who also understand the potential of video games. Katie, Chris and Ian are not only multi-talented, funny and sexy as hell – they’re also really great friends. You can find out more about all of us on the About Page.
We’ve been working on a new game for about two months now. Everyone’s pumped, and we’ve all been working our butts off to launch our website and get a leg up on development. Big ups to both Katie and Chris for putting this slick website together – especially Chris, who is probably now dead of the fever he was valiantly fighting for the last week! We’re not going to tell you what the new game is about yet, but rest assured – its going to be awesome.
This website is the home base for our journey into the crazy world of game development. Over the next year, we’ll be keeping you all up to date as best we can with behind the scenes info – in the form of blog posts, podcasts, video… Let’s just say we’ve got some big plans.
So on behalf of the four of us at Infinite Ammo, we hope you stick around. I have a feeling that its going to be a great time!
