Mending the Flag

Problem: LED USA flag sign looks like this.

LED USA Sign Before

Let’s open it up and look inside.

LED Circuits

Beautiful.

Okay. Let’s test along all circuits for continuity by poking with our Hi-tech LED Testing Tool.

Hi-Tech LED Testing Tool

Sorry. This post was not intended as any sort of buzz marketing. Any brand of battery will work, I promise.

The tool can test 3 or 4 LEDs at a time. Some of the bad LEDs break the circuit, and others just don’t light up. For now, mark all the bad LEDs.

Mark the bad LEDs

Permanent markers are a great repair tool.

Okay, now snip out all the bad LEDs and solder in new ones.

Good LED. Bad LED.

There were a lot of bad LEDs. I saw some dents on a few of them. I think what happened was the sign took a hard fall at some point.

Dead LEDs.

Apparently, this type of short stubby LED is sometimes called a ‘straw hat’.

The new LEDs are a little brighter than the old ones, but from a distance it should be fine.

USA flag LED sign after.

Looks good!

Chitinous Crooks: Success

Chitinous Crooks Gamplay Screenshot

Play in a browser now.

Well, this was my first time doing the 7DRL Challenge. In fact, it was my first time making a game. I didn’t plan anything for this in advance, and was actually caught by surprise when I realized it was 7DRL Challenge week, but I decided to go for it. And it seems like it turned out okay.

Chitinous Crooks is a very traditional roguelike in both gameplay and aesthetics. But you have no experience levels or items to help you, just a random set of god-granted abilities. Each dungeon level, you can use up to three of these, and every time you pass a level your health is restored and you gain additional abilities to choose from.

Special thanks goes to rot.js and the tutorial at the Coding Cookies blog.

Good Points

  • Fight lobsterfolk and crabfolk in an underwater fortress.
  • You can win or lose.
  • A variety of special abilities.
  • In game help screens.
  • I added touchscreen support on the last day. It’s not perfect but it even works on some tablets.

Room for Improvement and Things I Had to Cut for Time

  • I wanted some dungeon decorations. Lobsterfolk statues, moulted exoskeletons and other things to give the Sunken Citadel more atmosphere and less boxy-roomness.
  • Some nice lofi tile graphics would also have been nice.
  • Tweaking difficulty. Sometimes it feels pretty hard but other times it feels too easy. I wonder if I could even that out.
  • I’m sure there are bugs I missed. There are always bugs.

(Originally posted here)