{"author_name":"Dan C","cat":"LD #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010","comments":[{"author_name":"","time":"August 21, 2010 6:37 pm","epoch":1282433820,"text":"Loved what I saw at the jam, guys. Looking forward to seeing how it develops! I’m really surprised at how fast people have got going in this competition, it’s very impressive \":)\"","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"","time":"August 21, 2010 6:49 pm","epoch":1282434540,"text":"Thanks!","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1282432560,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"69672","p_author":"Dan C","p_authorkey":"2445","p_urlkey":"105477","p_title":"Progress","p_cat":"LD #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010","p_event":"LD18","p_time":"1282432560","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"2","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"2445","us_name":"Dan C","us_username":"djcsdy","event_start":"1282262400","event_key":"4","event_name":"LD18"},"text":"

Hi all!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s gone 2am, which is not ideal considering that I intend to join the other Cambridge guys<\/a> in CB2<\/a> again in 8 hours. I shall be off to bed soon, but here\u2019s a quick progress report.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m collaborating with my buddy George<\/a>, so we\u2019ll be entering the Jam, not the compo. Here\u2019s a screenshot of our progress so far:<\/p>\n

\"ld18\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bit like\u00a0Asteroids<\/a>, except enclosed within a circular play area, and you can\u2019t destroy the \u2018asteroids\u2019 directly. Instead, you can push them around by firing lasers at them. To destroy the \u2018asteroids\u2019 and score, you must collide them with each other.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty pleased with our progress. The game is basically playable, there are sound effects in most places where you\u2019d expect sound effects, there\u2019s a\u00a0scoring system that even I\u2019m happy with<\/a>, and I even wrote a little bit of \u2018music\u2019, but I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll put it in since it\u2019s painfully\u00a0repetitive (like all my music).\u00a0The only major remaining gameplay issue is that sometimes an \u2018asteroid\u2019 will spawn on top of your ship and destroy it without warning, but that\u2019s easy to fix. Once we\u2019ve fixed that, we intend to introduce some new mechanics to make the game more interesting \u2013 and more challenging as it progresses.<\/p>\n

Frustratingly I spent about three hours today trying to make the ship and \u2018asteroids\u2019 bounce off the arena wall in a convincingly elastic fashion. The eventual code to implement that was about four lines long. One and a bit lines of code per hour is not particularly good going when you\u2019re working to a deadline. I owe a debt of\u00a0gratitude to\u00a0Alan<\/a> who gave me a hand with my dodgy vector math code, which got the bouncing working as expected. (I think I\u2019ve got the right Alan there, but hopefully someone can correct me otherwise.) Other than that, everything has gone surprisingly swimmingly.<\/p>\n

You can\u00a0follow our progress on GitHub<\/a>. If you want to build the code, you need Flex and a little bit of nous. There\u2019re no build instructions because, until the contest finishes, we have better things to do!<\/p>\n

I have to say that a lot of the other entries are looking absolutely amazing, given that they\u2019ve only seen a day\u2019s work. I\u2019m eagerly anticipating the finished products!<\/p>\n

(Semi-crossposted to my personal blog<\/a>).<\/p>","time":"August 21st, 2010 6:16 pm","title":"Progress"}