Got all size+speed optimization challenges in Human Resource Machine!
Some of them are HARD.
I have new appreciation for being able to std::swap (in one expression), or use, like, any literals
And the ending. The reward is a creepy cutscene...

A task in Human Resource Machine.

The idea is to write a program that computes Fibbonacci numbers; the program is comprised of simple assembly-like instructions. The game gives you special bonuses for optimizing for speed or size.

This approach uses loop unrolling. The resulting program is really unwieldy and cumbersome to follow, but outperforms the speed goal by a lot.

Although I played this game eons ago, I completed it for the first time today.

Playing this game to the end revealed it glitching out at times (can you spot it?):

After a couple repairs and lots of futzing with cables... life!
This is the SHARP x68000, a vintage computer from Japan.

If the name sounds familiar- it runs on a Motorola 68000 processor. This vintage computer was never sold outside of Japan due to very strict export regulations in the 1980s which included this system. Inside Japan, there were many notable video game franchises that debuted and/or gained prominence on this platform

Finished Braid for the first time.

The levels are really clever. Got all the puzzle pieces, got the ending/epilogue, and was left really confused.

What the heck is going on! I understand 0% of the lore of this game.

That sure escalated quickly.

This game was a team effort with myself and 4 other students, for a contest called Games4Girls. The contest is run by University of Illinois. The objective is to make a 2D game, of any kind, targeted toward a female highschool-age demographic, with the restriction that we use Game Maker. Game Maker is a proprietary program used for scripting 2D games, using a C-like language. The choice of Game Maker had something to do with problems with past entries that depended on a wide assortment of platforms/runtimes. Many games wouldn't run. So, they ruled that all entries had to use Game Maker.

We decided to make a platformer type of game, which is familiar to most people. The player controls a character named Alessa, and uses her various weapons to defeat enemies and move through the levels.

Because there were restrictions on using copyrighted content, we created all the graphics and music ourselves.

My personal role was

• coding object collisions
• coding scene transitions, scoring
• creating sprite and background graphics and getting them into the game

Overall the project was a lot of fun to work on. As it turned out, our entry was very well-recieved and we finished in first place. We won a cash prize for our team and some money donated to our CS faculty at University of Waterloo.

https://info.uwaterloo.ca/www/profiles/research_profiles/profile-archive.php?id=193

The levels contain various enemies and obstacles.

The game includes some dialogue segments, illustrated by our group, with larger character graphics illustrated by my super-artistically-inclined groupmate! The dialogue provides some story background to the game.

Controls:

• Left/right arrows: move Alessa
• Up arrow: Jump
• Any arrow(in water): swim
• A key: Shoot an arrow
• S key: Swing a sword

My team consisted of (big thanks to my teammates!):

Download Win32 binary

The game was originally built and tested on a Windows 7 environment.

Notes for running on Windows 10 and later:

• Windows may mark the game executable as protected by SmartScreen. Although anything downloaded here is at your own risk, I attest that we did not put malware into the game and do not distribute it knowingly with any malware. To proceed past the SmartScreen filter should you choose to do so click "More Info" and "Run".
• The Game Maker environment relies on DirectPlay which, from Windows 7 to 10, was changed from a built-in feature of the OS into an optional component which is downloaded on demand. If Windows prompts you to download it, choose Yes to proceed with downloading it and enable playing the game.