ChipWits Recruiting and Snowlocked Cabin
We got some great candidates for both producer and programmer so I shut down recruiting. We are going to take our time talking to them and deciding. I look forward to introducing the new ChipWits team.
Having these great candidates takes a huge weight off my shoulders because I know ChipWits is going to be in good hands.
The last few days have been productive for the Hel’s Bet rewrite. I am reading through a paper prinout – 650 pages! – with a red pen scribbling edits. I’m cutting a lot of dross, which feels great.
The Pad is now snowlocked for the winter! I tried to get up the snow-packed hill once too often:
The hill is steep and you have to gun it as you round the corner. Oops.
Brook helped me haul the car out and suggested I might want to give up on the hill for the season.
Good call. Part of the fun of living at The Pad is getting snow-locked and sledging in supplies and sledging out laundry and trash.
I got a great new sledge this year:
My new sledge holding a couple bags of laundry.
It’s deeper and sturdier than my orange sledge from last winter.
I buckled my belly band to my waist and let the dogs out the gate:
Mika pulls me as I pull my laundry.
It’s 200 yards to the car:
The gentle slope down from The Pad to the car.
When I got back from my laundry run I took the dogs for a walk:
Mika on Lake Almira.
Me in the balaclava hat I've worn for decades.
Ogre Island looked grim:
Humans beware! It's Ogre Island.
I love my little slice of Earth.
Tons of ChipWits downloads
Someone listed ChipWits on Versiontracker, and listed us as freeware. We are getting lots of hits. They listed it under Mac software, and the Mac version is less tested that the Windows version. I wish they hadn’t linked us for 2 more weeks.
But the current build is looking pretty good. I quickly edited the ChipWits website to emphasize to visitors that the game is still in BETA! and that it is shareware.
I’ll be interested to see how many register their game.
Got ChipWits working on the Mac
Running under Adobe Apollo. Apollo is slick. It was a cinch to convert my Flex project to an Apollo project.
I gave one last shot at getting ChipWits running under MDM Zinc and it went off into a loop that was impossible for me to debug on the Mac. So I bit the bullet and converted it to an Apollo app.
Apollo isn’t ideal because it’s in alpha right now. The installation will be a hassle because a user will need to install Apollo first and then the ChipWits.air Apollo file. When Adobe rolls out the release of Apollo installation will be a one-step deal, but for now if a player doesn’t already run Apollo they’ll need to install it manually.
I got a Mac Powerbook off eBay a few weeks ago – a 1.5 ghz G4, which will be the low-end Mac we support. I picked this Mac as the target at the suggestion of Jay Bibby of Jayisgames.com . ChipWits runs a tad slower on the Mac than my PC of the same speed, which concerns me. I may hire a Flax/Flex animation guru to review my code to help me pump up the performance of the game. Flash isn’t the speediest game platform, for sure.
It felt good to see ChipWits running stably on a Mac again after 23 years.
Major New Build of ChipWits
The latest build of ChipWits is filled with LOTs o’ new features. I really pumped up the IBOL editor. The most important features are undo/redo and multi-chip drag and drop. Both features were requested in ’84 and are finally ready for your enjoyment. Since a lot of the player’s time is spent in the IBOL editor, making it slicker is a big win for the game.
I also changed the Subpanel system, letting players create as many named Subpanels as they need rather than just A-G.
I added the new Register operators to let ‘Wits do math and have addressable variables. The ChipWit can now drop a Counter object, which has a numeric value. I am going to create Register-based missions with a CounterLock – a door that opens when a Counter with the correct value is dropped onto it.
I also added the ability to add comments to chips. This will help a lot in making IBOL programs understandable.
I am going to wait a week to get some feedback before I hold a contest.
Until then I am going to work on the Mac version and start working on a full suite of tutorial missions.
Feels great!
ChipWits and The Mac
Mike and I wrote ChipWits in 1984 – the year of the Mac. We got our hands on one of the futuristic little beige toaster the first week they were available retail.
Within 6 months we had created one of the best games for the Mac, as certified by numerous year-end magazine Best Educational Game awards
The first time I saw ChipWits in a computer store was a real rush. I stopped in to check out an Apple store and there was my baby running as the demo on their single Mac. Proudly I buttonholed an employee and asked where the boxes were.
The dude got flustered and admitted that it was a pirate copy. He said that a friend who worked at Apple had given him the copy. Hope ChipWits sold a few Macs for you, Mr. Jobs.
Now, being rather poor due to my neural problems, I don’t own a Mac. But it is important to me to release a Mac version of ChipWits on the same day as the Windows (and I hope Linux) versions. So I’m at an old friend’s house in Minneapolis working on his Mac to get an OS X hqx bundle ready.
And I look forward to buying a new Mac with some of the first ChipWit bucks to roll in.
Love the Mac, but Amiga was the most fun computer to program for.
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*Thanks, Senor Wences, for the photo of ChipWits running on an old Mac.
Archeological expedition into the Ancient Maps of ChipWits
Mike and I wrote ChipWits in 1984 in a blaze of inspiration and insanely hard work. After launching the Mac version in Fall 84 we produced the Commodore 64 version and the Apple II version in less than 6 months.
I didn’t keep the best notes. I’ve got a box of disks and printouts and sketches of IBOL ops and even the first drawing of a ChipWit (which I will scan and upload here). Nowhere can I find maps of the original 8 missions.
So I am playing the original game on an online Apple II Emulator (IE only for now, they are working on their Firefox emulator plugin):
The majesty of Apple II Graphics: ChipWit #7, lacking ZAP or PICKUP, is blocked by PIE.
I wrote a keyboard-driven ChipWit so I could explore at will. IFKEY S->SKATE FORWARD, IFKEY X->SKATE RIGHT45, IFKEY Z->SKATE LEFT45.
There are 2 Bugs in this ChipWit! Spot ’em! Answer tomorrow.
The Apple II IBOL editor is pretty amazing. We did the Mac version first and were Mac zealots so not only did we port the game to the C-64 and Apple II but the cursor-driven menu interface. as well. Note that instead of a mouse, players had to use a joystick to control the cursor. Clunky but it works. Running in emulation the interface is even clunkier.
I wound up having to kill 2 editing-induced bugs before it ran.
I decided to spelunk in Octopus Garden first – the most challenging mission. The ChipWit always starts on a random square in a central room. There are 8 corridors running from that room, each terminating in a room containing a high-score DISK to PICKUP.
It feels very strange playing one of my own 22-year old games. I know that I spent endless hours working with Mike on the Apple code and all the sound-FX and silly little animations did a real deja vu number on me. It was fun when an electrocrab sidled up to me because my heart-rate did go up and I SKATED my guy out of the room ASAP.
I ran into 2 pies that blocked my path (fiendishly placed there by some devious game designer (me or Mike)). So now IndieBot (the CW’s new name (after I. Jones)) sports a ZAP chip to clear the PIE.
I’ll have all 8 missions mapped by tomorrow. If I survive the PIE.
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Yesterday’s bug – The arrows from both bottom chips should point right:
Walden 3.0 
Get OFF MY LAWN!