It’s my first LD and my first real  game.

I  want to make a Tower Defense with continu attack.

I will use the C# language and XNA

Hey Ludum Daredevils (<:D), I’m in for the 7DRTS challenge!

What I’m making?

Two words: BOMBERMAN + RTS

…these are the magic words ruben created himself.

Don’t steal them!

Also, here’s a mockup I made and then threw away. I wanted to make this, but then I realised I was never going to finish it 😉

Anyway, have fun everyone!

The theme for myself when it comes to Ludum Dare has always been to become a better programmer, so here I go to try again. This time around I am armed with a better understanding of the matrix and vectors, and have a little bit more stable library. I am hoping I can step it up this time around.

Lets have fun!

This was my original idea before I decided to spend day 1 trying to come up with more. Each player controls one little guy, and you roam the map gathering resources, building buildings and fighting. It’s like an RTS in that you tech up, expand, scout the enemy, etc. but instead of having a whole army you just have the one unit.

You get one ‘base’ building to start with, and you have to return to your base to make stuff from the minerals you gather. If you die, you respawn at your base. But if your base gets destroyed and you die, you lose.

I think this is a better idea than my other one (a side-scrolling RTS) because just having the one unit removes a surprising amount of complexity. In a normal RTS you need a little bit of AI to help you manage your units since you aren’t controlling them directly. But here, you don’t!

I’ll go with this unless I think up something better this evening.

Also I did some pixel sprites. I don’t normally do pixel art, so this is another fun adventure. Lesson 1: 8×8 pixels is not enough to draw a convincing humanoid.

• C++
• SFML
• Game Base
• Utility Library
• Maybe libnoise?
• Boost Filesystem

Still haven’t decided what I’m making yet. One possible idea:

Basically it’s a traditional RTS but on destructible 2D terrain. Trouble is, a traditional RTS is a lot of work: selecting, orders, menus, auto-attack, resources, notifications, pathfinding…
So, as much as I’d want to play this game, I doubt I could make it in 7 days. Back to brainstorming…

So, here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about two things, an old game and an old computer.

First, the old game. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a designer named Howard Thompson came up with a novel wargame idea – a game set on an alien planet, inhabited by huge, semi-sentient hive-minded insects. He called this game Hymenoptera, and unfortunately a complete version never saw the light of day.

It also had the word “hymen” in its name, which caused everyone who heard it to snicker.

As Hymenoptera languished in development hell, Thompson’s company, Metagaming, decided to focus on small, simpler, easily portable and playable games that they called microgames. This strategy proved successful, and Thompson decided to create a microgame set in the Hymenpotera universe. He called it Chitin: I – The Harvest Wars.

I know that killer bugs have kind of been done to death in the RTS space, what with the Zerg and the Tyranids, but I think I’m going to do it anyway.

Now, on to the old computer. I’ve talked about Daniel Remar rather a lot on my blog, and I’ve mentioned his game Hero Core many times, too. Now, the interesting thing about Hero Core is that its native resolution is 200×180, which means that it could easily be replicated on the ZX Spectrum, which had a native resolution of 256×192. In fact, I always thought that Hero Core felt like a ZX Spectrum game – austere but imminently playable.

And then there was the Easter egg in Startopia that presented the game almost as if it were on a ZX Spectrum – and the game was still playable! The only real problem was that the text became unreadable, but you could still build and manage your aliens due to the use of very clear icons.

So for a while I’ve been wondering what an RTS on the Spectrum might have looked like. And I’ve already mentioned that by limiting himself to a small resolution and monochrome palette, Daniel was able to get effective graphics for Hero Core in a short amount of time.

So I’m following suit. My RTS will use a low native resolution to make it easier to do the graphics (I’ll scale the final graphics so the window will be larger on the screen, I promise) and it will be about bugs fighting over various resources they need.

And I’m going to call it Chitin, after the original microgame.

The  #7DRTS  (Seven Day Real Time Strategy) Game Jam at +Ludum Dare has begun!  (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/07/05/minild-44-announcement/)

I’m taking part and hope to post one screenshot per day for the next seven days – from concept to mockup to beta to release. I hope to make a simple puzzle/boardgame style RTS that features lots of castle and road building.

My initial idea: think reversi (othello, gomoku) plus civ/simcity/carcassionne.

Played on a top-view fantasy overworld map. The strategic focus is on the road network (or train tracks). Any time you capture a city and own both the first and last city in a network, you claim the entire trade route. Just like in reversi, you can suddenly flip the team of a long row or column of cities if you capture the “ends” of the chain.

Wish me luck!

Tags: #7DRTS, McFunkypants, screenshot

Back in December, I made “Cruel Cruel Dastard” for Ludum Dare 25. Folks seemed to respond positively to the mechanic, so I’ve spent the past few months making an updated version. The new game, now called “Ragtime Ruffian” was just released today and is available for iPad/PC/Mac/Linux.

The new version includes completely re-done art, new mechanics, 50 designed levels, and the procedurally generated endless mode I originally wanted to implement during the compo. You can get it here if you’re interested.

Tags: final, iOS, post-mortem, postmortem, SuccessStory, You are the villain

Yes, it is spelled Defence instead of Defense in other variations of English that aren’t American English. :p

Anyway, I am Xeon Gutierrez of Kerinova Game Studios, and I will be participating in #7DRTS, or Mini Ludum Dare 44. There will be one other person working with me: Sebastian Benjamin. He will be doing his day 0 blog later today.

We are making a game called Defence Paradigm. It is intended to be a 2D ARTS/MOBA, but with far more RTS elements than MOBA, and not top down. We are hoping we can get online multiplayer done in time, but it will be difficult. If we do have extra time, I will add leaderboards, and port it to more platforms.

Anyway, enough with the introductions. Without further ado, the nominal amount of work I have achieved on Sunday, the 0th day.

07/21:

• Set up my Twitch account, and got Twitch premium, as to be able to stream as much of the Ludum Dare process as I can. // This proved more problematic than I first expected, as I got an issue when I used my password, and only realized an hour in that I needed to use the stream key. Then I started optimizing the stream for high quality, and little-to-no lag.
• Designed the game using a game design document template. //This, other than naming everything, proved relatively easy.
• Then for most of the work of that day, I set up the engine I would be using for Defence Paradigm. I would use a modified version of the Strider Run engine, which was a custom built engine we were using for our first game. All I did was work on importing the engine, as well as mixing in the GameState engine provided by Microsoft.

Anyway, that is all we have accomplished on Day 0. Now it is time to work, as it is now Day 1. Do tune into my Twitch channel if you want to see the development process. I will be streaming most of the day on Twitch.tv/zxeonz.

If you want to follow this developer blog easier, then go to www.kerinova.blogspot.com I will be posting these blogs there, in addition to here.

Day 1, part 1

The night before was intense. I could not sleep, especially knowing that my first major game – to be made within 5-6 days – would start tomorrow. I set the alarm clock to 5 AM, and started working on it an hour later.
For the most part, the game mechanics are done. Sharks, seagulls, sailors, so on and so forth. Multiplayer is pretty much done, though I still have to test it with a friend.

I guess you guys want specifics, so here they are!

*Started game
*Made the game controls for the seagull
*added mouse-only support
*removed mouse-only support
*added keyboard support
*”hey that’s pretty easy : D”
*Added sharks
*OH NOOOOOOOOO-
*Added ships
*So long, and have some fish!
*Added multiplayer
*Added base credits
*Added endless singleplayer
*Seagull doodoo everywhere

yeah I’d better stop there before I gross myself out

for the first 5 hours, not bad! The graphics leave much to be desired, though, so no info on that quite yet :/

Goals for now: Online Multiplayer, sound design, testing, outsourcing graphics to a talented artist named BeGamer who’s working with me!

Tags: devlog, journal

Hello everyone, Sebastian here.

Day 0 was a day of immense preparation for our debut in #7DRTS, as we had many things to get ready for the challenge that will be not *entirely* failing at this. I think we did well…? At least, we managed to not break anything so far.

To reiterate for the fifty-thousanth time, the game we are making will be called Defence Paradigm. Basically the concept is a MOBA/ARTS- with potential macro elements and controllable units other than the main hero.

What I did on Day 0 [7/21]-

-I tried and managed to actually succeed at making the stream work with semi-decent quality

-We (me and Xeon over at twitch.tv/zxeonz) created the GDD

– I set up all the VSTs that I’ll be using to make the music and sound

– I made my already ghetto setup more ghetto by trying to make the second monitor for streaming not be crunched into the wall

-I designed the HUD concept

Go to my stream at twitch.tv/threadnecromancer for my side of the development

Tags: #7DRTS, art, Day 0, design, editorial, game development, hud, LD44, Ludum Dare, music, programming

This weekend was the NoMoreSweden 2013 game jam.

I was nearby so dropped in on the Sunday lunchtime to watch the teams present their games:

The entries were fantastic!  Lots of really good games got made this weekend.  The mood was fantastic too; lots of coders got really happy this weekend too!

I’ve shared my quick impressions of some of the games on my blog williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com

Quite excited being that this is my first. Was working on registering player movement and pathfinding. Enemy ai isn’t just ready yet. I guess mines is more of a conquer type of thing. Don’t have all the assets right now. Focusing more on the coding part and functionality.

What you see (in a correct aspect ratio if you go fullscreen):
Two agents playing the game:

• Finding a spot for a harvestor building
• Building a harvestor-building
• Producing a harvestor
• harvesting some green stuff
• building more harvestors to harvest more stuff
• until maximum number of harvestors is reached

Done today:

• Basic Server and client code
• A lobby (not shown in the video) with options to create and join games
• A* Pathing (might also try greedy best first search tomorrow, we’ll see)
• A very simple agent system that I should be able to extend into something more fancy
• Some placeholder gfx and lots of sand
• A minimap

The final maps could be much larger and I am looking forward to start building barracks tomorrow. I hope to be able to get some simple card system as in my draft here implemented by late tomorrow. I got a lot of ideas during the day how the card system could actually work. I hope it’s working out as I imagine it.

Happy coding everybody!

I’ve barely started, because I want sure what I was going to do until recently. I’m going to remake Goblin Fortress, which I entered to LD last December. As I left it, it was a very basic city builder, but this time I’m determined to get the ‘map’ section of the game done, letting you send little goblin armies to ransack the human populace.

Slow going so far, as I’m using a half-complete Component system, but I’m enjoying it anyway. No screenshot, as I literally just have a tiny motionless goblin on a black background.

Hi there my names Stewart I’m an artist from the Scottish gamejam team tartan paint.

Our game is a top down hexagonal strategy game with a Greek theme. We spent the past week brainstorming gameplay and design. We have a very unconventional yet accessible play style and we`ll be going into more detail it in the upcoming days courtesy of our team leader

In the meantime, I’m going to show off some of the assets we managed to whip up on the first day of production.

This was one of the initial mockups to show the positioning of the user interface and how the playfield is composed.

The game involves you sending units toward an enemy base, and the health indicator is to be a statue which crumbles the more damage you do.

The typical Zeus pointing lightning worked well for a placeholder, but now we`re thinking about having an hourglass which could shatter and crack. We`ll be focusing more on user interface once the initial terrain is done.

Speaking of which, here are some of my efforts today to try and get tiling paths to be modular and link seamlessly, it was not a fun procedure. The more decorative, straight roads were a real headache and in the end I did a patchy looking cobblestone road to better success. as far as environment art goes, getting the paths working was the biggest hurdle, and mostly from here out it`s just fun draw times. No more modular nightmares.

I got all the necessary tiles done for mountain/lava environments done today, and a start on the water ones as well.

And our resident coder got the terrain generation up and running. every time you load up the .swf file you end up with a new level.

That’s all for now! It’s been a long day for all of us so sorry for the scrambled and hurried post. Hope the gamejam goes well for everyone!

Tags: team tartan paint

Hello folks!

(First of all, sorry for my english! I’m not a native speaker.)

My game idea:

You have to take control of an evil wizard’s tower. For this you have to build your character by training, acquiring items, developing your stats etc.

Not very original, but I’ll try some mechanics to see if they work (or if I can make them work): you can take control of the tower in different ways, like marrying the wizard, killing him, joining him etc.

As you progress, some events can occur (since the mage is trying to destroy everything around him). These events could be, for example: the mage is going to the forest to hunt unicorns (where you’ll have a chance to kill him in the open or the chance to get some equipment, map, or you can talk to him and establish something etc).

I think it will be too much for me to do in a week, but I think it’s a cool idea. Maybe if I trim it down to the essential:

• FF IV like maps
• top down perspective
• no multiplayer (too much to do right now. But multiplayer would be very nice)

Cheers!

In high school they sometimes give us “progress reports”, which is just a mid-semester report card. So far I’ve only been at it for a few hours but I am content with my progress, so I’ll give myself a solid “C” for my progress report. This is my 3rd competition thingyma on the Ludum Dare site and my 2nd time using Javascript for a game (The first time was miserably failed but I learned a lot from it).

My “strategy” game is going to involve moving clouds around to control the weather, and in my current version of the game moving around clouds is all you can really do.

Since my Ludum Dare 26 game had the worst controls out of all the submissions I’m going to make sure the controls actually make sense this time. Which is exactly why I’m using WASD and the Spacebar instead of “>” and “<” with “U” and “P” and other akward keys like LAST TIME.

Looking through the entries you guys are doing amazing!

Here have a splash image!

Day 1, Part 2

After settling into the routine, I managed to get significantly less done than before. Nevertheless, it’s better than nothing.

*Attempted Gamepad support
*Put it on hold because it wasn’t working
*added sound effects
*Made Multiplayer more chaotic
*Added buttons for different controls
*Also put it on hold because of the gamepad issues

At this point, if it weren’t for the bad graphics that people watching my stream could notice I could consider this done, but then I still don’t know if it’s ready for submission – we’ll just have to wait and see.

Tags: journal