When I was near the end of high school, my family visited London, and I was thinking about being a game dev. So I sent Terry Cavanagh an email, and to my surprise he completely agreed to get lunch.
He was extremely kind, gave me a lot of interesting life advice. I remember him saying that he got most of his ideas just from playing around with mechanics and experimenting a lot, he was never really one to get grand visions.
Anyways, great fellow, glad he opened source V (as he called it).
unwind · 49m ago
Wow, that is cool! Did it help/affect your later choices with your career, did you end up a game developer, or at least try it or so? Always fun with closure! :)
peterldowns · 5h ago
Incredibly fun game, I'm not a huge gamer but I remember buying the Humble Bundle just to get this. One of the few games that I've spent the time to finish. Awesome work, Terry, and thank you for the great times!
btw also fuck you for veni vidi vici, jeez that took me a while!
I’ll take the chance to reference Super Hexagon by the same author. Incredibly fun and addictive game as well while being super simple. I recall reading somewhere that the author spent only a day or so writing it.
And PPPPPP, the soundtrack for VVVVVV, is neat too!
Centigonal · 3h ago
I remember when a certain someone on an irc channel shared the vvvvvv flash demo with me and some others. That game, that period of time, the early Humble Bundles -- all of that was pretty formative for me. Crazy to think that was almost 15 years ago.
Ros2 · 1h ago
I think it was a beta and not a demo but either way, it contained 95% of the game not obfuscated in any way. So I saw the ActionScript code quite a while ago!
rafram · 5h ago
Awesome game. Good to see the code is authentically bad for an indie game of that era.
oofabz · 5h ago
Authentically bad is a good way to put it. My favorite part is the 3300 line Game::updatestate() function and its gigantic switch statement.
valtism · 3h ago
It was originally written in flash, then ported to C++ which would explain some (not all) of the badness.
grep_it · 2h ago
There was a period of time in my life where I had recently moved to California from Canada and I was desperate for a job. I got a job doing door-to-door sales for Comcast. I hated it. I often sat in my car playing VVVVVV on my phone while shirking my responsibilities. Thank you Terry, for the reprieve.
cess11 · 6m ago
At first I thought it would be some kind of successor to https://vvvv.org/, which I hadn't looked at in years.
No way, this is very cool! I loved playing through VVVVVV. The first level music still lives and plays in my head from time to time.
neonsunset · 6h ago
Was very confusing to see C++ and ActionScript until I realized this is VVVVVV and clearly not VVVV!
zahlman · 5h ago
I was confused trying to figure out how they would interoperate, or be useful in the same project. Turns out the desktop version is in C++ and the mobile version is in ActionScript. I assume there were good reasons for this.
phire · 5h ago
The names are kind of misleading, as there appear to be both iOS and android ports of the "desktop version". I'm not sure which version you actually get if you buy the game on iOS/Android.
The original desktop release in 2010 was based on flash (presumably using Adobe Air for desktop? There was also a flash web demo), but there were issues, and flash was really hard to port to linux. So they rewrote the entire game in c++ in 2011, for easier porting. It's that rewrite that is what's labeled as "desktop version". It's the most up-to-date and polished version.
The "mobile version" is a fork of the original 1.0 flash code base, and IMO it's only really interesting because it's much closer to what Terry originally wrote.
Wow, this is great, I really enjoyed this game when it came out, what a pleasant surprise to see it was open sourced, truly a work of art.
TZubiri · 5h ago
Loved the game, sweet and short.
It's one of those twists that reward programmers that can think outside of the box and execute instead of downloading some generic libraries and making yet another platformer.
He was extremely kind, gave me a lot of interesting life advice. I remember him saying that he got most of his ideas just from playing around with mechanics and experimenting a lot, he was never really one to get grand visions.
Anyways, great fellow, glad he opened source V (as he called it).
btw also fuck you for veni vidi vici, jeez that took me a while!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CtiY5D6HCs
Is opening up your source code worth it? Terry Cavanagh thinks it was for VVVVVV - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25727963 - Jan 2021 (16 comments)
Many games are held together by duct tape - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22043156 - Jan 2020 (154 comments)
VVVVVV Source Code Released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22011465 - Jan 2020 (1 comment)
VVVVVV’s source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam happening now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22011358 - Jan 2020 (223 comments)
VVVVVV 60% Off On The Mac App Store This Weekend - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2347676 - March 2011 (1 comment)
And PPPPPP, the soundtrack for VVVVVV, is neat too!
The game looks fun, might give it a spin.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/269270/LOVE/
The original desktop release in 2010 was based on flash (presumably using Adobe Air for desktop? There was also a flash web demo), but there were issues, and flash was really hard to port to linux. So they rewrote the entire game in c++ in 2011, for easier porting. It's that rewrite that is what's labeled as "desktop version". It's the most up-to-date and polished version.
The "mobile version" is a fork of the original 1.0 flash code base, and IMO it's only really interesting because it's much closer to what Terry originally wrote.
It's one of those twists that reward programmers that can think outside of the box and execute instead of downloading some generic libraries and making yet another platformer.