2:34am – I’m awake again and back at the McDonalds. It’s a bit noisy here tonight and pretty busy for two and a half in the morning, but whatever. It took a long time to get my food too. I’m chomping at the bit to get started!

3:28am – Okay so I tried to make the caterpillar segments move the same way as the head does but that results in janky movement because the segments don’t neccesarily finish their coroutine at the same time as the head. So, I’m going to try to move all the movement into the head’s coroutine instead.

3:55am – Well the caterpillar is sort of moving properly, except the segments after the first gradually ‘turn’ where they should be moving straight into the next square.

If I wasn’t on a Ludum Dare deadline I’d go back and redo the whole head/segment construction, having them both inherit from a common class with a static variable list that contains each segment so I can make sure they move properly. But hind-sight is always sharper.

3:59am – On further thought, and testing, this isn’t going to work as is. I’m going to have to do like I said and redo the class structure of these objects.

4:06am – I just went to the bathroom and while I was there the fastener on my pants broke off. It’ll be difficult keeping my fly closed until I get home, and I guess it’s time to switch to my new pants…

4:09am – I was starting to think about what my generic caterpillar part would need when it hit me, I don’t need to make a generic caterpillar part, I can put a list of the caterpillar parts on the head!

4:49am – I’ve got a problem that my Caterpillar segments are scrunching together and I can’t seem to figure out why. :/

4:55am – Hmm… The segments, once they get scrunched up, stay at a constant distance of 0.5. They should be staying at a constant distance of 1.0, and they DO until the first time the caterpillar turns.

4:59am – I fixed it! There was a point where I was halving the distances… I’m not entirely sure how it’s connected but it fixed it!

Now I have three things left to do to get the basic game mechanics working. I have to do the Apples, Add More Segments to the Caterpillar, and add the random Trees to the map at the start.

5:54am – Hokay I’ve got my trees and apples spawning, and the trees block correctly. Now I just need to make it so that when the head collides with an apple, it returns the position the apple was at to the pool of random positions, destroys the apple, and adds a new segment to the caterpillar.

6:28am – I have the apples colliding, returning their posions, and being destroyed. Now I just need to figure out how to make my Caterpillar grow…

6:43am – Oh, I didn’t think that would work but it did! Now my caterpillar grows. <3

Next I need to gradually add new apples to the map over time.

I’m not sure what rate to do. Should I add one every so many seconds? Should I add one whenever one is eaten? That might be easier.

6:50am – And it works! I have the gameplay fully coded. Now to add a UI to the game to track score and handle gameover and restart.

6:56am – Before I go any further, it’s been about four hours since I ate last. It’s brunch time. <3

7:23am – I’m feeling kind of burned out now that I’ve surpassed such a big milestone. I’d like to take a break, but I just spent almost a half hour eating and watching a YouTube show.

8:44am – Well I officially have a game. It now has a titlecard show for four seconds before dropping you into the game. It displays your Score at the bottom of the screen while you play, and when you get a GameOver everything pauses and it shows you “Game Over” and your final score.

There’s a lot I could do to polish this game, but I’ve done it. I’ve created a game in less than 48 hours from scratch. I still have around 12 hours to go.

9:26am – I had a bit of a problem when I built my game for windows but I fixed it. Then I checked out the submission page and it doesn’t seem to be up yet so I guess I’ll have to wait to submit my game. ^.^;;

I’m not sure I want to bother polishing the game. It was enough just to make one. I’d like to go home and rest and maybe play some video games instead of making them for a while.<br />

Tags: compo, LD37, Ludum Dare