Why has Construct decided to turn its back on me after everything I’ve done for it, supporting it spiritedly in my posts?!
See my thread on Scirra if you want to help me sort out what is probably the equivalent of an amateur programming problem. What I don’t understand is why it did work and now it doesn’t, and that’s why I blame Construct.
I spent a long time experimenting with Physaxe, and now I can set up the bounds of a level from Tile Studio. It’s going very slowly, I might still decide to go without Physaxe and just do it the old fashion way.
Yay, my game has a title screen now (and a name, as it seems). An hour of doodling with a drawing tablet and here you go 
And now I shoulf create more units and tweak the settings a bit.
The first graphics are in and there would be some challenge already if I put player damage in.
Next up: First boss (might be the only one if there is not enough time)
I made myself a mozzarella pizza for dinner. It looks the part, but I think I need to work on my sauce-making skills – there was definitely something missing…
Game-wise, I’ve got the scrolling mostly working except for a weird offset between the player character and the rest of the level that’s suddenly appeared. I’m going to try and fix that now, then hopefully I can get the light beams up and running before bed.
My pony is Master of Jellybeans. What’s yours?
The cover is working, but not tuned, in that video. Black is walls, orange is cover. If a swarm member is within 100 pixels of the point where his beam intersects the cover, then he automatically fires through it. Otherwise his bullet has a 75 percent chance of stopping. Now I need to make A.I. that will actually cause my swarm members to run behind cover.
I’ve decided to (mostly) ignore the theme to work on a game I’ve wanted to work on for a long time.
Basically, it’s Dungeon Keeper. In space. With kittens.
I’m not kidding. Here’s a picture of a security kitten! Considering that I have no artistic talent, doesn’t he look fetching in his lovely red uniform? (The actual icon is 32×32 of course.)
I was hopeless when I posted an entry message yesterday and I had work to do until a few hours ago (mostly work I should have finished Friday). However just now I have the greatest idea (something like graner’s wagon race) ! Also I’m free whole Sunday.
I wanted to learn how collision with world and physics like speed and bouncing worked in platform games. I think I’m about to make it my own way. A late start but I’ll get definitely what I want to do. I hope I can finish and give you people a little something to look at too.
I think the Numerical Analysis lessons I took will be enough for me but I didn’t write anything like this before so I appreciate any resources on f=m*a type of physics or world collision in 2D.
“Life is Guano and Then You Die” is … “playable”
Finally have all of the core features implemented. It is actually fun!
I spent way too much time on guano colour, fruit and rock physics, and pixel art.
Now to take a bit of a break and add all that good stuff like missing art, point system, a HUD, a menu, more sound fx, help, omg so much to do.
I thought it would be interesting to post the progress in individual milestone shots, as I did not record a timelapse.
4 frames of bat animation, flapping about!
Priority #2, bat poop. The bat is emitting Guano!
Priority 3, something to poop on. Miners of course.
Blackness is boring, we need to delineate outside and inside. Added world extents and floor/roof. The Baobab appears!
Miners belong in a cave mining. Now they do. Simple arse AI added (Seek, Mine, Return, Aim, Throw)
Fruits sway in the wind, and you can eat them for more guano. mmm. fruit.
Those are the 6 big milestones so far. I’ll edit this post later to add the rest.
Well, I have an idea. Cave dragons will be shaking at the sight of this knight:
Okay, he’s not too knighty yet… And I don’t have a title. There’s collision detection and lighting though!
Stay tuned for some sweet knight action to come!
Last hours were productive (albeit slow for my usual form, I’m getting old…).
I added the Helper robot, which is the one controled by the player:
and got his controls working (was easier than expected, since it’s controled by the arrow keys, but it is relative to the camera)…
Anyway, added the first real “gameplay” element: the gems… This is what the Driller robot has to get…
On the image, he’s currently picking up one of the crystals… he can only mine what’s right in front of him.
He’ll also be able to destroy stalagmites, which act as obstacles for the Helper robot, so that might add to an interesting gameplay bit…
Now, time for dinner and a movie (so my wife doesn’t feel neglected! :))..: Going to see the new Tarantino one…
Have fun everyone, and good luck!
Yeah! Lighting system done!
I have an overambitious project I want to try… So far it’s taken most of the day to get this:
Difficulty levels. They even have descriptions. The second shot is hard mode. Doesn’t make much of a difference, just you can’t see very far. Of course none of you will play on Easy Mode, right?
You can also see I resized the window. No need for 640×480 if you can barely see anything around you.
So far, I’ve got a little robot that runs around.
She has a gun, but it doesn’t do anything yet.
Here’s a picture:
She can run, but her gun doesn't work :-(
I have decided to go with the idea of using more than one theme.
“Cavern” will be covered by the setting (Once the terrain is in place)
“Guns. Big Guns.” is apparent. Well, the gnomes will have bigger guns because they are bigger. My pigtailed android is actually quite tiny, but it doesn’t show because there’s nothing to compare her to at the moment.
Which seques into “Evil Gnomes”. These are the enemies. They are much bigger than you, and can step on you as well as shoot you. They are rather slow, though, and can’t fit into every space that you can. Their guns also aren’t terribly accurate. Well, that will be true once I actually make them.
“Kittens” is a secondary mechanic I’ll put in if there’s time. The kittens will be somewhat smaller than you, but able to attack the gnomes. Kinda like the security guards in Half Life.
That said, the environment… Might be hard-coded, but if it is I’ll place enemies (And kittens if I put them in) randomly.
If I have time, I want to generate them procedurally, where you have to kill all of the gnomes to move to the next level.
All that being said, it’s rather bare-bones now, but I’m aiming high.
———
One of the core mechanics that I’m using is an unusual relationship between the size of the player and the size of the enemies.
This creates an interesting effect, because the player must use their speed and wits to succeed. (Heck, even to survive!)
The idea of size has always fascinated me, I admit. Very large things have an air of power and… Even authority about them.
By contrast, very small things have a charm that I can’t resist. They have a quality of efficiency and grace.
The next upload will have baddies and working weapons, I promise.
If you want a completely up-to-date version, you can get a subversion snapshot at my GoogleCode site: http://code.google.com/p/pycron-ld48
Note that this will be updated fairly often as the project picks up steam.
So… Not a waste, but certainly not much.
Here’s to challenge, triumph, and learning from hardship.
—PyCron
After being excited about LD48 all week I’ve ended up starting on 8pm on Saturday night with 1day 7hours 25minutes remaining.
I’ve got an idea in my head / sketched on half an A5 page but unsure what tech/language to use yet.
I’ll be calling this a practice if I fail to get anything submittable done
My desk and some sugary foods to keep me going.
I am calling my game “Coffee Caverns”. I am not as far along as I was hoping to be, but I had some other things I had to take care of. I decided that instead of just creating temporary art, that I would take a break from coding and work on a few graphics that may be what I use in the final game. I almost have a working prototype, but I created a quick screen mockup to show off some of my idea.
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
The basic idea is you are in a cavern (maybe more than one time permitting), and you must collect coffee beans. Coffee beans will be falling from the ceiling along with rocks. If you get hit by a rock, game over! The game is really never ending but the longer you play the more coffee beans and rocks will appear and the higher the score you will get.
I haven’t created the player graphic yet, but will have that in within the next thirty minutes or so.
Overall, I think I am making decent progress. I am very confident I will have something for submission at the end of the contest.
