What's happening on Spelchan.com

January 2022

Plans for 2022

With my thesis defence passed (but with major revisions required), I am now close to having free time again. Not entirely sure what to do but here is what I am thinking. Feel free to comment.

December 2021 - part 2

Santa Tac Toe

Santa Tac Toe originally began as a Java demo for demonstrating building a simple recursive AI but I decided to turn it into a new Christmas game. Here Santa’s friend Krampus has challenged him to a game of Tic Tac Toe. You get to play against either Santa or Krampus, with how good you have been determining how well your opponent plays. Enjoy the holidays and see you next year

December 2021 - part 1

Pony Race and other electronics projects

Christmas is coming and it has been a while since I have released a new Christmas game so on the 15 of this month I will be releasing a new Christmas game. In the meantime, I have finally got around to putting together a page for my electronic projects. Here you will find three electronic projects that I have developed, including a pony racing game. Circuit diagrams and source code are provided, the Arduino and components are up to you to get.

November 2021

LiteTux Editor (Open Source)

As stated last month, I created a mixed-initiative editor as part of my thesis work and am releasing it as open source. The editor is available on the LiteTux.ca site with the source code on GitHub ( https://github.com/BillySpelchan/LiteTux ). The editor lets you create new levels and the share option lets you create a link to a playable version of that level that you can send to friends. No signup required.

October 2021

LiteTux (Open Source)

For my Masters thesis I am working on mixed initiative editing which is using Artificial Intelligence to aid in the creation of game levels. To avoid IP/Copyright issues I created a simplified version of the Open Source game LiteTux and an intelligent editor for creating levels. I have now released the game, including the levels that were created as part of the user study, on LiteTux.ca and the source code for the game on https://github.com/BillySpelchan/LiteTux. The editor will be released hopefully next month.

September 2021

Knight's Tour

For September, we are doing another chess puzzle (solvers will be explained in blog over next few months). The goal is to move a knight from it's starting position through every position on the board.

August 2021

Lucky Scratch

As August has Friday the 13th this year, I thought it would only be fitting to bring a bit of luck to the month by porting my Lucky Scratch game, a scratch ticket that always wins!

July 2021

A Study of Artificial Intelligence Assisted Game Editing Using LiteTux (Study Concluded)

For my Masters thesis I am working on a study with Dr. Yong Gao at UBC Okanagan on using Artificial Intelligence to aid in the creation of game levels. This will have you playing a simple platforming game and creating levels for that game using our editor. If you think this sounds interesting you can find more information on LiteTux.ca between July 11th and July 31st. If you are interested in my current research, this moth's blog post at https://homebrewgamejam.blogspot.com/2021/07/ai-and-game-editors.html covers what I am trying to accomplish.

June 2021

Queen's Challenge with Solvers

An enhanced version of my Queen's Challenge game that now supports solvers so you can watch the computer attempt to solve the game. The four different methods demonstrate how search techniques have evolved, something that will be covered a bit more in next month's game.

May 2021

Color Collapse part 3

My Mother's favorite game was Color Collapse so the last few years for May (Mother's Day) have been porting the game to HTML 5 with a part per year. This is the final part, so suggestions for future years will be welcome.

April 2021

April Fool

April Fool was the first game I created for Blazing Games a long time ago so it is only appropriate that I finally get around to creating a new version of this game.

March 2021

Evil Eggs

As Easter is at the beginning of April, I am releasing my Easter game this month. This is a JavaScript/HTML5 re-write of my Flash game Evil Eggs where you need to help the Easter Bunny detect evil eggs..

February 2021

Lite Tux beta 1

As a tiny part of my Thesis research I created a platformer game which is a simplified version of SuperTux (a clone of another game). I am relasing a beta this month and hope to have a better version in a few months.

January 2021

(click links for games containing hints to plans)
2020 was a disaster for me so lets hope 2021 improves. Besides covid, my Thesis just is not coming together and my Dad has medical issues. My lack of spare time is even worse as I suffer through some type of malaise resulting in me being even less productive than normal so the choices of games to port may be low hanging fruit. I am enjoying my Teaching Assistant work, so want to focus my blog more on teaching so plan on a series adding different types of solvers to Queen’s Challenge. If this is successful, another chess puzzle might be worth exploring. Another thought I had would be video ports where I show a port being developed as I do it explaining all the lines of code and concepts used . And of course, you know I am going to have my Mother’s Day game and want to work on a certain RPG. Lets hope 2021 turns out to be a better year.

For older releases please check out the archives