So i probably shouldn’t be writing this while drunk but i have other things to do and if i was any more sober this probably wouldn’t be happening.

OK!

First Day

following tutorials

I followed a tutorial about how to make a maze game(lets face it resources are resources. ) I had no idea how to make a maze game but i’ve wanted to make one for quite awhile now. So this was the perfect opportunity, of course i had to keep my goals very small, since i’d be learning to make a game i’ve never made before. I also… Have no idea what i was going to say there. MOVING ON.

Second Day

Now i couldn’t clear my weekend for the LD so following the tutorial and getting a working prototype carried over to the second day, INEVITABLE. Shit happens. Here is where i tried to figure out how to export a jar that people would actually be able to play, by this point i had a working prototype slightly lamer then where i wanted it to be, but the basic building blocks of what i would need. Problem, last time i played with java i couldn’t get it to work on anyone else’s computer, so this became an all day afair.. basically ate up all the time i had to work on the ld. But i did manage to start some basic AI for our “predator”

I also made sounds! but implementing them required slick which would have made it harder to export and not worth the time. So the sounds never made it :/

Predator – (and molding the game)

So it occured to me that i could use the 10 second time in two ways for my purposes, that was the either make a time limit to complete the maze(it works but it’s kind of boring and probably frustrating) This was my plan B, my plan A consisted of creating a predator to chase after the character after 10 seconds, the only real issue was creating an ai that would work for our predator. This is around when it occured to me to use a mouse as our main character and cheese as a finish line(all art assets were made on the fly) But going back to the AI, it was actually a bit of a pain even though it’s not really AI. I decided to make the cat run in a random direction depending on it’s options, i also wanted to make sure it never ran in the direction it came from whenever possible.

So i had to keep track of which direction the cat was heading from and heading to, Then i used a random function seeded by time to decide which direction the cat would run in. Realistically it shouldn’t be much of a challenge but given the limited possibilities for directions, the cat is capable of becoming a nuisance. I gave every direction a value and used a random number based on a range determined by open directions minus the direction the cat came from,  each open direction(represented by a number) was saved in an array and the direction was decided by the random number. This is complicated to type out, so it was really a pain to implement. That took roughly the rest of my ld time to get implemented and working right. This occurred between day 2 and 3 of the jam. Besides a little nightmare scenario of forgetting to add the assets with the submission, this was the last thing i did for the jam.

What i did right

• I made a game i’ve wanted to make for a long time, it really helped motivate me to finish
• I used Java(a familiar programming language) my past experience helped some things become much easier then it could have been.
• I sacrificed a virgin to the Northern Gods
• I had realistic goals(i did want multiple levels though)
• I finished the core game mechanics first
• I wasn’t fussy about my art, could have wasted a lot of time on them.
• I got out of the house and did stuff, probably kept me from getting drained

What i did wrong

• There was a lot i didn’t know how to do which i lost time for that could have been useful for making the game better, so some prep before the comp might have helped me there.
• Life gets in the way of my game making. (Damn you life!)
• I haven’t accomplished much since the compo(i’d love to improve it but refer to previous item)

What i would like to do to improve the game

• The art pretty obviously could use some improvements, i’d like to create some animation for the game.
• Sound would be nice
• a better movement scheme, one tile at a time just isn’t going to work especially with the animation i’d like to add. Although i guess i could have them move one tile at a time and just run tile to tile. That’d be kinda cool.
• I would like to create a random level generator, it’d add a LOT of re-playability to the game, but even a few more levels would be a big improvement. One level just isn’t enough.
• And it would be REALLY cool to have an android version of the game but that could be a pain to do.
• I think at this point i’d consider the game “complete” any other improvements could be left for some kind of sequel.

10 second lead