{"author_name":"chunkyguy","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346016720,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"52235","p_author":"chunkyguy","p_authorkey":"10887","p_urlkey":"87934","p_title":"Been there done that!","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346016720","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"10887","us_name":"chunkyguy","us_username":"chunkyguy","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"

I haven’t slept properly for last 48 hours, and I’m just realizing that the weekend is over for real \":(\"<\/p>\n

This was my first LudumDare, and I’m quite satisfied with myself that I made the game. YeaH!!<\/p>\n

I started out with a game where there would be millions of species living and fighting for survival, and here is the snapshot of it:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The game that just didn’t work<\/p><\/div>\n

You see each block represents an organism. And then there was this algorithm that each organism was just to reproduce. The chances of reproduction was based on three core factors: The attractiveness, the reachability and the force of nature \":)\"<\/p>\n

You can guess a lot just by looking at the statistics being displayed at bottom.<\/p>\n

But, sooner I realized that this game was a shit, there was nothing for you to play in it. It was more like watching Discovery channel.<\/p>\n

So, I just simply carped it out and went to sleep. I woke at least 3 times at night brainstorming some idea for ‘Evolution’. At one point I even googled the word ‘Evolution’ to get some idea. But everywhere were the parody of that ape-to-man image.<\/p>\n

Then, I finally decided to make this another game, where we play the role of God on some creatures of some world.<\/p>\n

The idea seemed awesome to me. The job of God was decided to be The Natural Selector, to avoid congestion and\/or extinction.<\/p>\n

At the beginning, there were infinite organisms of random species. Each one had its own skin color. Then I thought of doing something more simpler. Why not just create 5 species, with each species having a square shape. I even thought of one species eating other one when they collide, but I was getting too lazy and too late to do any heavy computational work.<\/p>\n

From then on I just did cropping of ideas, making it more and more simpler. Settling with just 5 species having a color code. Each one splitting into 2-3 at the end of its lifetime.<\/p>\n

The I worked on adding a single bullet, when you fired you had to wait for it to cross the screen – the reload time. But while testing, many times I just wish I had more bullets. Bombarding the world seemed quite interesting.<\/p>\n

But, that added one more bug, now a user could just close the eyes nuke the world. So I decided to keep a count of bullets, like if you fire something more than 1000 bullets you loose, and then to like if you fire 10 bullets within a minute you loose. But still nothing could hold me from shooting on the screen.<\/p>\n

So, I added the logic if at any given time you make a species extinct by killing everyone you loose and that made a lot of sense.<\/p>\n

And with that implemented, the game was done. I was about to post it when I realized that I hadn’t added sounds to it. And I wasn’t even sure if SFML supported the sound format sfxr exported to. They had nothing mentioned in the documentation, I went to the header file and\u00a0 there was that awesome comment about all the formats supported and I was quite relived to see the wav format.<\/p>\n

And, while I’m writing about the music and sound I just realize that I forgot to release the Music objects. But, I’m not going to fix it now. I’m too tired, and that wont be a big problem as those objects are always alive, they die and become zombie when the program quits..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And, that’s it I think. First Ludum Dare awesome. I guess from now on I will participate everytime. I learned a hell lot of things. I made a Mac game for the first time. I used so much C++ for the first time, I used so much SFML for the first time, I made a game in few hours for the first time. There are so many first times. Awesome experience, thank you Ludum Dare.<\/p>\n

And, if you’re reading still to this point please go and check out my game, code or snapshots.<\/a> Snapshots were the hardest thing to take, as any key press resulted in going into the game. I had to comment some code and rewrite some just to take screenshots of the launch and the game over screen.<\/p>\n \n

Tags: postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 26th, 2012 4:32 pm","title":"Been there done that!"}