Caverns!

I like it. My head is currently buzzing with ideas, but I have one particular idea in mind which I think I’m going to go with.

So – here are my weapons of choice for this mission:

• Python 2.6 – Great language
• PyGame – Brilliant python library for 2D games
• Eclipse IDE – I’ve been using it for Java for a long time and more recently for PHP and Python
• Graphics Gale – Fantastic for animated pixel graphics. It’s shareware but well worth registering, imo
• The GIMP – Open Source Photoshop! I use this for other CG artwork
• GoldWave – For editing sounds (if I get that far)
• PyGame-Fenix – a wrapper library for pygame which introduces features and syntax familiar to users of the Fenix language
• PythonUtils – a library of miscellaneous util classes written by yours truely

Right I’m going to start hammering out some horrendous code now, so stay tuned for my next thrilling post later!

Good luck everybody 😀

The best thing about this theme is that it gives me an excuse to use grid paper (and to spill coffee onto said paper, whoops!).  I’m planning out some caves and hopefully I can get something up and running by the end of today.

Here is my working setup. Same as last time pretty much!  Note the cafetiere which was previously full of coffee! :3

And here is my game thus far! It’s all looking a bit too ‘fecal’ for my tastes so I need to consider a different palette soon. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get all the pieces in so I can start building my game.

Got a first screenshot of my game for you. Please excuse the programmer arts. 😛

It's not much, but it's something.

It’s not much — not hardly a dock-quality screenshot — but it’s a start. If nothing else I’m super-pleased with my framework — managed to get the code (for generating the sky, which fades to grey over time, and the bumpy ground) running in about half an hour. Plus some photoshop time, of course, to mock it all up. Good times.

Tags: screenshot

Off to a productive start – there is some basic gameplay already – I have to leave now for a few houres but work will continue later this day.

Just woke up a while ago to think about the theme.

Below you can see some real rye bread from Finland, not the fluffy kind which is sold in many countries as “rye” bread (but have actually just enough rye to change the color a bit or something).

Tags: foodphoto

So I’ve spent the last 3 hrs or so finding out that Windows 7 + Multi-monitor + Fullscreen D3D = problems…

And that you can’t use debug-mode D3D with Win7 and recent NVidia drivers…

So nothing game-like yet… but here’s a pic of my workspace

And first random scribblings of a game idea

This is what I got so far… Iam quite happy with it, so I better start coding up some stuff!

(Click for bigger version)

(Yeah, not really “caverns”, but.. err.. well.. Look, a three-headed monkey!)

So I’m making a cave flyer.  It’s pretty ordinary so far.

Above is my code running for the first time. Flash makes this kind of thing very easy, and there are plenty of tutorials online.

Experimenting with projectiles. Haven’t drawn a projectile image, so using the ship for everything…

Hi guys, this is my first Ludum Dare compo

When I woke up this morning I went to the LD site to know the theme for this compo: caverns. Kind of turn off, because I had a nice idea for a zombies game. I had a shower and thought about what kind of game I’d do: a running game. Not very original (I found out that other people are making this kind of game, too!), but I just want to have some fun this weekend, so no added pressure for winning.

This was my breakfast (was super-hungry this morning): three mini-sandwiches of ham and cheese, with olive oil. Plus some coke. I needed caffeine and I’m not very fond of coffee, so…

I downloaded an IRC client and joined #ludumdare for first time. There were 105 people in there O_o I didn’t know LD was so popular. I asked if I could borrow a public-domain or free picture, and I was told that yes, as long as I alter the picture somehow. I went to Wikipedia and found a nice CC-By photo of a cave. I spent almost an hour working on it, and got this (click to view full picture):

But when I finished, I took a closer look to the compo rules and… it turns out that I can’t borrow any pictures! I was quite disappointed because I threw away precious time, but hey, better to find this kind of stuff sooner than later! I drop the picture and drew some kind of floor to use with the game.

Now I’m downloading some Machinae Supremacy songs and start to code the framework (game states, sprites, and so on) of the game. I’ll be using Ruby and Gosu, so I’m expecting to have lots of fun See you!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

once again, view this whole post to play.

[WP_UnityObject src="http://www.sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/ludum/LD15_web03.unity3d" width="560" height="420"/]

left and right to steer, space to jump.

I know its not perfect but I’m on the way

The background’s a placeholder, but other than that everything’s ready (well, the quit button anyway, the other two don’t do anything just yet).

Well, my research has found me lots of interesting tidbits of information about caves, and some nice terms I can use in the game story (like troglobites and trogolophiles!).

I feel kind of torn between a tactical, turn-based squad based game deep in a series of caverns, or go for from more action-oriented concept.

For now, I’m going to code a random cave generator, so I can get that out of the way, since I’m 90% likely of be using something like that for the game…

*coding*taptaptapclicktapclicktapclick*

40 minutes later, and baseing my generation code on http://benhem.com/dev/dunjons/ , I’m happy with the results:

Now to get some 3d rendering of this going… and yes, 3d because it will look cooler! I’m that sort of guy!

Brunch

But a good brunch should sort me out!

Note all the amazing concepts I've got 7 hours in!

What a difference a 30mins brainstorming can make!

Title of Game: Assault on Zeonia! TM

So it is caverns huh… Before the compo started I was thinking that this theme is not so bad, but it is kind of hard to think of something original where caverns is main point of the game… All originality will probably come aether form game mechanics or from wondering beyond cavern theme but staying in caverns

Well anyways. Have 3-4 ideas and will probably be testing them together today. Then will decide which to finish/polish tomorrow.

So far here:

Small experiment on on creating caverns randomly using PerlinNoise  and some bitmap filtering effects. Click image to see Flash file itself. Use sliders and other controls to change how it looks and hit save to save it as image. Looks not bad so far

Player movement is still a bit dodgy – ill work on that in the morning – before adding in the NPCs. YaML is the way to go for that methinks – easy tweaking.

Tags: screenshot

So, got lots of scribbles out, and lots of ideas on how to first progress – the only problem being, actually progressing!  I’ve not used XNA properly before, so this is a bit of an interesting learning experience.  Thankfully there’s shed-loads of documentation, and if I get really really stuck I know a couple of people I can ask for advice.  Heck, the last time I did any kind of serious programming, it was in DarkBASIC!

Anyway – I’ve got a project up, got a font in, and making a ‘punters’ class for all those Cavern Club patrons to be.

Tags: caverns, concepts, desk, journal, LD #15 - Caverns - 2009, xna

Ok, so its not exactly looking like a “cavern” as such yet. But it will once I get the main part modelled.

Essentially, its going to be a real-time level thingy. Created using 3DS Max and GLB plugin. This is a mental ray ambient occlusion bake. I guess I’m actually going to end up doing more of a content-based LD than a game based one. I’ll try and get some simple gameplay in there too (robots to kill or some such).