Almost at the half-way point. I’m fairly pleased with where I’ve gotten.

The core gameplay tech is implemented and I’ve been able to iterate on it as I go.

I’ve rewritten my tile engine to use a .csv file instead of XML which has allowed me to use Excel as a level editor. While this took a good hour to do, it’s proving invaluable as I iterate on my level designs.

In Build 007 Levels 1 & 2 are playable at a prototype completeness level.

Playable version here: http://www.refrag.com/gamedev/ld-16/

I’m on-schedule. My plan was (and is):

• Friday: Prove Out core gameplay tech (done)
• Saturday: Build the game. Make it playable start to finish. Get to functional Alpha.
• Sunday: Polish, Polish, Polish. Add gfx and audio as time permits.

Looks a lot like the first screenshot. =/

gasp! orange enemies!

well it’s safe to say i’m almost done, and with most of tomorrow ahead of me, it’s also pretty safe to say i will finish my game!

Progress:

since my first post, i have:

• finished all 15 levels
• added money/points (your points turn into money when you beat the last floor)
• added 5 types of enemies
• added FoW-ish stuff
• added a shop, with three (almost) purchasable items with descriptions and prices
• added saving and loading
• made it so you have to press space to go up a level when you’re at the staircase
• set up some variables for eventual game-modifiers
• added a treasure at the end of the last floor, each treasure will eventually allow you to unlock one of many game modifiers.
• Made the character move, instead of “teleport”, around the grid/rooms
• added lives/dying
• added menu+fancy cursor 😀

there’s probably more but that’s what comes to mind right now.

tomorrow i hope to finish up a few things and if i have time, maybe make some more detailed graphics

So, I’ve been working on that game, and I’ve definitely made headway on it. However, GameMaker must think that “1” = “0”. I’m using string_char_at(“0101”,4), and it returns 0! What on earth?

Here is a boss.

The text beside the health bar is the name and health of the boss.
Yes, I died after I took this shot.

Pixel Stars

Explore the endless supply of pixelated stars at Clicky Clicky
*currently there is a bug where if you go to negative coordinates, your endless supply of stars ends*

Spent pretty much all day working on what comes down to a fairly simple server app. Planets and solar bodies are persistent and tracked on the server in a database. Flash periodically requests a map refresh from the server and creates the necessary sprites. If you go in a positive direction it works fairly well. When you go to a coordinate where the server does not have any stars, it generates somes, saves them and returns them, thus endless until either the client or server crashes.

I wanted to be working on the planetary exploration by this point,grr. Wasted 3 hours fighting with Python/AppEngine before just making a Perl script. Haven’t slept, so 24 hours at my desk trying to code.

Well, it’s coming along.  I have treasure and some other small things working.  Now all I need to do is make a few other kinds of treasure, put them in the game, finish the ship, and hopefully add some more sounds.  A current screenshot, and playable after more.

W/S – Forward/Backward

A/D – spin couter-clockwise/ clockwise

directional keys – Look and turn

Go forward to find the start of the ship.  A box that can be nocked around and a tophat that can be collected are on the top of the ship.

[WP_UnityObject src=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3472941/ocean_02.unity3d” width=”560″ height=”420″/]

With hearing the theme “exploration” my first thought was cave exploration… As I always wanted to create a platformer it decided to do something that should be a bit like pitfall in caves, or so…. Still my biggest problem is that I get stuck in too much details and it was quite exhausting to create some kind of engine that let me create the in blender.

I think I have now a more or less good base to start with gameplay tomorrow. Here a first screenshot:

Usually I planned to publish the game (if it will be one) as java webstart. But actually it does only work for me from the commando-line at the moment. It would be nice if someone could try to start this from the browser (I didn’t succeed).Nevertheless I think I will have to provide it as downloadable archive….

Browser: http://thomas.trocha.com/games/exploration/exploration.jnlp

left/right :  a/d-key

jump : right shit

Command-Line:  javaws http://thomas.trocha.com/games/exploration/exploration.jnlp

But now I need some sleep. Adios and cu tomorrow,

ToM

Well I’m getting there.. slowly but surely.

I waited up for the theme last night, then went to sleep to think on the theme, so I didn’t start till about 9am GMT this morning.
Most of the day has been design, and getting some base assets down.
Code-wise, I’ve implemented a camera system, and a slightly insane map loading system again – something which wasted a huge amount of time as I stupidly based it on the Moons of Subterrane loader. which was designed specifically for it, and not for scrolling at all. This got rewritten twice, because of my stupidity.
More importantly, you can move your marines about ( though can’t choose the starting classes yet,  the menu systems are in there ready for it though ) and it recognizes doors and entities separately from the rest of the map on load.

Now, a screen shot.. then bed for a few hours sleep; tomorrows plan is finish most of the code by lunchtime, then work on assets and tidying till Midnight, which gives me two hours to port and package the final submit ( no bugger ups this time! )

Excuse the nasty hashing, I may fix this tomorrow with better art… if I have time!

Well finally got the basic rendering up & working. This screenshot contains all debug colors and normals/shading is not working and so on. I think this game will be very simple, gameplay wise. The plan is to populate the tunnel with different sized blobs and what the player does, is turn the automatically moving camera with the mouse. Game ends when you hit something and your score is the distance traveled.

…But then I shoved a really rubbish dialogue system it. It’ll do. It took 3 hours of frustration though! Argh!

I think I’m going to design the rest of the levels (level design is a bit shonky) and then… to bed! One level is completely finished though, so it’s not so bad.

I hope I get time to do music. :/ It’s looking unlikely at this stage, unfortunately. (Again, argh!)

Anyhow, I got my maze generator working. I still have to make a possible path to the end possible at all times, as evident by this picture…

Finally finished my town *has a party*

Left to do:

Character

Music

Second Room

Objective

Reason to explore

I’ve finished the game mechanics/score and pretty much everything besides the procedurally generated sound of the echolocator and a decent map. I’ll have to keep it *very* simple to finish on schedule since I will have very little time to work on this tomorrow, if any time at all.

If I don’t finish it was fun anyways, I went from zero experience with Flash to making an incomplete game in a day.

Time to go to sleep.

I have most of the foundations of a game (probably more than I really needed), but nothing playable yet.  Actually, I don’t even have any player controls.  However, with what I do have I’m sure I can get a game together pretty quickly tomorrow.  I’m going to have to simplify a lot of my ideas, but it might still be fun.  I hope I can pull it off — it’s going to be challenging.

There above screen shot doesn’t well represent the work I’ve done.

So, game’s concept revolves around an idea I had for drawing first-person hallways. It’s a cool idea, it fakes everything, and is super CPU intensive. Here’s what it looks like now, with my placeholder graphics:

So, I complain about Gameplay… and what do I do instead?

PER PIXEL DIFFUSE POINT LIGHTING….

Yeah

So… This will be fun to watch, probably!

Tags: screenshot

When you’re balls deep in Trogdors, you know you’re pretty much f****d.

Another couple of screenshot!

INVENTORY! and …

You can equip item!

Now i’ve only to add some gameplay 8_(

I lOvE bAsH ! 8ppp

I’ve finished up pretty much all the programming, apart from the enemies and the ending. I’ve just got a little more to go, and then I can call this finished. I didn’t sleep much last night (although I didn’t work on this during that time)…