i’m working and then…

this happened see left side of picture

Coming along quickly. So far, you can learn a bit of backstory and find a key to a locked room. Oh, and get yelled at by the King, too.

So, after spending a good 4 hours trying to make Game maker work (It has worked before, but all the exe’s it compiles…don’t run on Windows 7), I decided to quit.  But soon, I couldn’t stand doing nothing, so instead of doing a graphical game…mine is all text based.  It was very late by then, so I decided that some sleep would be good for me.  While laying in bed, I decided how the game would work.

First of all, every character (even yours) has a different personality that is randomly decided by the game.  (If I need to, I can manually add a personality), and every character in the game responds differently according to his major personality traits, and how well he knows you.  Yep…giant project right there.

Secondly, you have no control over what your character/party does besides how he levels up/what he does when.  For example, lets say you wake him up at 9, and then you pick one activity.  You could have him eat/get ready.  That takes us to 10.  At 10, you send him off to go exploring.  Now you can watch him explore, see what he finds (everything he finds adds exploration points), watch him fight (you can’t tell him how to fight), and at some point along the way, you can tell him to head back to camp.  Lets say he gets back at 5.   I tried to make the game…as strategical as possible while being minimalistic.  I decided to be minimalistic because: it is easier for me AND you don’t have to type “go east” over and over.

Now about leveling up.  Every character has a list of abilities, and he actually levels up those abilities by using them…not by you pressing the + button.  However, you can take items away (preventing him from using certain abilities), and at every level, teach him a new ability.  That’s it.

Now what I have done:  (I have 9ish more hours to code/debug)

Creation and development of my idea/flowchart

Character personalities/creation.  (A giant project)  I still need to do the NPC text/tests to see if they join/give missions

Coding of the reader (grabs names and stats of areas/locations/items/monsters)

Now what I have to do:

Name every area/location within that area/items within that location/monsters within that location, and each of them stats.  (all will be stored in text files)

Code the general engine for time/telling what the character to do (shouldn’t be too hard)

Code the engine for what the character/party decides to do.

Debug

Release it to the website

…Like I said.  I’m going to die 😛

I was a little let down when unwanted powers didn’t sweep the votes. So I slept on the broad theme of exploration.

Exploration left it pretty wide open for me, concept wise. I’ve been drooling over stuff like Passage, The Marriage, and Braid again after seeing Chris Hecker’s talk at MIGS a couple of months ago. I figure this is as good a forum as any for making a game filled with allegorical subtext. Not that this is exactly the target demographic, but at least some of you will be tossing me feedback.

I’m thinking a more accessible less artsy Passage. The exploration of time, and decisions in life, couched in a gauntlet style game.

I’ll toss a rough concept document once I’ve got a rough proof of concept done.

Pretension a go go!

I wasn’t going to have characters in “Explorers”, but I just couldn’t resist this. Viking helm and monocle? Yus.

More information at Waddlefarm.

Spent a lot of the morning fixing my cobbled together code from last night. Things are looking ok from the tech-side though I’ve spent more time than I wanted.

Build 004 is available here: http://www.refrag.com/gamedev/ld-16/ It includes character movement with the arrow keys and sonar blasting by clicking any of the black area. My game concept will revolve around the player only being able to see through tiny sonar blasts. They need to navigate the terrain with very little visibility.

My goal today is to get the bulk of the game done so I have all of tomorrow for polish.

Time for my shower!!!

Here we are! What I’ve done so far:

– Thought about what I want to do (at hockey game last night)
– Created a design document (after I got home)
– Slept (too long but not long enough)
– Made love to flixel (today)
– Got a Screenshot!

Unlike previous competitions, this time I know exactly what I’m doing from the start; I’ve put together a design document which is something I haven’t done before. I’m excited to see how this turns out.

Yes, I'm making a sailing-ship adventure.

Things are going very slowly but I’m tired. I only got to spend about 6 hours on my game today and most of that time was spent figuring out how Unity works so I haven’t made that much progress. I’ve got some basic gameplay but I’m not so sure that my awesome gameplay idea is that awesome. At least it looks like it would need a lot of experimenting and tweaking to make it right so maybe I’ll switch to plan B tomorrow and make something quick with pygame.

Anyway here’s a little screenshot (everything is placeholder as I haven’t worked on the graphics yet):

first screenshot

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 4:13 pm and is filed under LD #16 - Exploration - 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This game may be text based, but it’s got it where it counts. It has a cool story, and awesomesauce NPCs. Not to mention loads of typos. 😀

I skipped the picture from phase 2 just to let you explore yourself what there will be 😀 Now I have a scout on a map, so I only need a gameplay, only …

Tags: screenshot

Somehow this reminds me of Fallout… Whatever, things are going mighty fine! I’ve got the map going and the engine mostly ready, now just to add rest of the engine. I guess I can spend tomorrow entirely on adding content.

Yarrrr !

no screen to update just code code and code hehehehe, finished the desktop implementation, so now I can move to the game itself

• fix the keyboard input
• fix the mouse input
• make char movement, with animation
• add map and screen scrolling
• define map in a txt file
• draw tiles
• draw trees
• draw rocks
• draw coin
• draw 10 different vegetables
• draw 3 different quest givers
• draw 3 enemies
• add to the quest giver to code to show the quest
• all the char to gather stuff
• add random code to add vegetables to places in the map
• add coin counter
• add bomb key and bomb damage
• make enemies move and attack
• buy bombs
• add life control and die event
• create bomb machine
• create main menu

Although I am a bit late with it, I have a good feeling about this one. Most of my game mechanic is finished. On the picture you can see the graph of paths drawn out, red paths are active, blue are passive, and are activated, when you reach certain action nodes in the graph. You can see an action node, under the mouse, indicated by a spinning red circle. The filled red circle is you player, who travels over active paths. You can send him to an action node, by clicking on it. He will find the shortest way and follow it, until he reaches that node.

Now I need to replace the black background with scenery, red circle with a sprite, create animations for action nodes and some sounds all wrapped up as a neat puzzle. Right now I hope I can get one level together, after that the menu, and then maybe another level (my head is in the clouds).

Tags: black, graph, java, pathfinding, screenshot

For the power of caffeine summoned by Yerba Mate…

I’ve already half of the speeches. The gameplay is simple but solid: You must find a girl and in your quest you end up knowing a little bit of the raw truth about society.

I think I’ll use tonight to add music and better graphics to the game.

Regards!

And what a nice one it was too B(

Anyway…time for a new one!

Progress and stuff. Aliens are all red for some reason.

Tags: alien, screenshot

Well, it’s raining all weekend, so they kinda blew my idea of going outside and taking some pictures for the game.

But instead, I came up with a great idea for this theme, a fun one, that uses all of the christmas stuff my wife collects around the house.

The name of the game is Massacre at Misfit Toy Island. You are Santa and your objective is to explore Misfit Toy Island, finding all the Misfit Toys and exterminating them (don’t worry, misfit toys will be able to defend themselves). I am kinda aiming it sort of after the classic PS2 game, Shadow of the Colossus. You sort of explore around misfit island, until you find a toy and destroy it. You have to destroy all 12 toys (12 is a good biblical number).  You should feel sort of sad after killing a misfit toy.

I have finished taking all the pictures for my graphics. Almost 7 Gigabytes of raw shots on my new Canon 7D (amazing camera btw).

Now I have a TON of processing to do to remove the backgrounds of the objects and to assemble the graphics for the backgrounds.

Let’s see how that goes. Remember, the actual game will be super simple. I’m just focusing on “Eye-Candy” for this game!

I found this article on Roguebasin, that I thought might be of interest to folks creating indoor environments procedurally.

The method described works by dividing the map into grid “cells” containing an area of map tiles, and how to use that to create a procedural world efficiently and simply. Worth a read, I’d say.

Boo yah! I like the look of this.

Just got back from work and scanned in the tea-stained paper.  It’s not as dark as I was hoping for – maybe I didn’t leave it long enough?  Or maybe I should have used coffee?  Anyway, I reckon it still looks pretty good:

If I have time I might try and stain the edges using computery magic.

aligned randomly for your convenience

bonk

bonk bonk

bonk bonk bonk!

2 areas done, 2 work in progress, should have 6 of the 11 planned areas done today

the goal of the game is to collect all the gems, maybe to recharge your spaceship batteries or something

Under “normal” conditions, I was going to use python with pyglet and chipmunk.  However, since I have a large extended family with tons of planned activities this weekend, and at work I’ve got a huge software release coming Monday m0rning, I’ve chosen to attempt something with Unity.

I didn’t download Unity, or even begin to learn it until last night, but already, my confidence is growing that I might actually have *something* fun to play with by tomorrow night.

Sorry, no screenshots or work area photos yet, and I won’t be able to tinker again until this evening.

I’m estimating that I’ll only have about 10 more hours to work on it before the deadline, so wish me luck.

(And please don’t beat up on me too bad for using Unity…)

-vizionary

The boat can now sink…

Created an animation where the boat got filled with water (just painted blue from the lowest to highest parts of the ship, in each frame). Looked bad… Tried not using blue but painting the alpha channel instead… Looked a bit better, but still terrible…

So, I decided to suck it up and I did an animation on 3ds, then extracted some frames… Doesn’t look that bad, tbh… Still needs some “splash” to it, so it looks like the boat is on water, and not floating in some netherworld… But I’ll leave that to polish time, if I have any, still lots to do to actually have a game…

I’m going to do a small break now, catch my breath, been working almost non-stop for 8 hours…

Next on the agenda, whirlpools!

So… my basic idea is that history is full of  “explorers” that were part of destroying native cultures and sites they find. So that sometimes it could perhaps be better to not explore at all in the first place and let these hidden paradises rest at their natural state.

Unfortunately it seems that my gameplay concept and gfx asset list is way too ambitious again so I probably have to cut a lot of corners. I hope even a part of the original idea finds it into the final game… Coding wise the “core” is done, now I just have to figure out how to actually make this fun…

Sneak peak of my main level:

After countless hours fighting with collisions and platformer stuff, I finally have something I am willing to go with. Collisions be damned.

This is probably nothing like the final game will look like, but hey, the little green guy is pretty cute.

Well it looks like asteroids, nothing to explore yet.   The plan is to fly around a random map making money by blowing things up and hunting for a finite amount of fuel.

I hope to have the AI make money and upgrade as well, but we will see how that goes.

So the game I’ve come up with for exploration is something I’m calling AD2030. It’s my way of thinking of an exploration game where a lot of the exploration in this instance is indirect. For better or for worse I haven’t had much visual progress as a lot of the game is done through non-visual communication. Additionally a lesson that worked well in the last Ludum Dare was I used placeholder graphics as long as possible so I could focus on getting gameplay in there.

Meanwhile here’s what I had on my lunch break. It’s like I’m back living in my college dorm again!

Phone cam shot! Om nom nom!

I’m starting to get a better feel for where my game is going. I hope I can finish most of the difficult code today and focus on content tomorrow.

Tags: foodphoto

I have been fruitlessly mucking about with random level generation and bumping into SIGFPEs and infinite loops. It seems to not fail now, however it doesn’t do what I want it to either. Here, have a nice picture!

Ooh, isn't it pretty?

It should be linking all the rooms up, however I have done far too much complication to my code without really thinking and it now scares me. I think I really need to rip it out and rewrite it so I know what it does. *sigh*

I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER

Tags: fail, panic, screenshot

The breakfast of champions, which is mostly leftovers from the supper of champions the night before.

I have big plans for this game, and I think I can accomplish them this time!

By the end of today, I hope to have my random world generator done.

Because I’m using a (Rather large) continuous open world, I’m going to use a spatial hash. The world cell that the player is in will be filled with entities, as will the cells neighboring the player’s.

I’m using a cell-based generator to create (Hopefully) interesting rooms while still having the entire world filled with rooms. Because it’s a man-made structure, big dead spaces aren’t good. My generator will treat every cell as part of a room, and create bigger rooms by linking cells together. Between cells that aren’t linked, there will be hallways with doors placed in such a way that every room is accessible from at least two places. This doesn’t seem like it’d be too hard, but I’ve been wrong before.

Rooms will also have columns and boxes placed randomly when the room is generated. Columns will simply be placed at random coordinates, with the engine insuring that they are not adjacent to any other wall pieces (Columns are treated as wall segments). Boxes will only be present in larger rooms, and will be placed in rectangles bordered by boxes strewn about by a drunken walk routine.

Hot dogs will be placed semi-randomly, scattered around the world. Guards dogs will be similarly handled. The semi-random part is that both will be placed more or less densely based on how far the area is from the objective. (IE: The hot dog mother lode)

Areas that are more than two world cells away from the player will be stored in files that will contain the room cell layout, door positions, box and column locations, and the number of guard dogs and hot dogs. When the area is loaded, one or two guard dogs will be added or removed randomly, and hot dogs will be added according to the density prescribed for that area. If the player has led many guards into a world cell, and this will be saved in the world cell file, but the number will be cut down dramatically when it is reloaded depending how overpopulated the area was when it was saved.

The game will (Hopefully) have short cutscenes for the beginning of the game, finding the hot dog motherlode, and escaping the game after finding it.

If I have time after that, there may be a cutscene for dying, as well. I’m not sure.

The controls are as follows: Movement with WASD or arrows (WASD because my keyboard is wonky and doesn’t like registering arrow keys at the same time as… Just about anything else) and space to run. Doors will open automatically when they are approached, and the player will eat hot dogs when they walk up to them.

Guards will use an A* algorithm to follow the player (As well as to guide their wandering), and a hitscan-like system to tell whether they can see the player. The player won’t have line-of-sight, because that’s very expensive in real-time, even more so in Python. The guards will also be able to hear the player when (s)he is running, if they are within a certain range. They can’t hear the player walk or eat, because (s)he is a fox, and thus sneaky and quiet. When a guard loses sight of the player, and can’t hear them running, they will run to the last placed that they saw them. If they still can’t see or hear the player, they give up and go back to wandering.

Hot Dog Hunter will certainly be a challenge, but that’s my style. Hopefully the difficulty will scale well, though. That’s one of my goals.

Here’s hoping…

— Mr.Dude

http://www.2bam.com/showcase/?game=FindingHer_LD16

The story isn’t complete yet, but you can sort of get the idea. Don’t play it through if you don’t want to spoil the ending with the temporary crappy one.

All feedback is well accepted

I tried to sort them all. It took quite some time. I think I’ll add “bonus” points for a clean sorting of elements.

This will be my first Ludum Dare 48, but I’ve been following them for several years. Totally behind on the schedule due to other commitments, but going to kick off something now. At least I’ve had time to think of an idea or two.

I will be using XNA and may use the following “ball of mud” of an engine.

http://blog.codheadz.com/page/Ludum-Dare-16.aspx

As well as starting late, I have very little time between now and the deadline….. basically doomed

Got basic gameplay working: map loading, collision detection and game ending. The walls are white and the red dots are the trail of the character – all graphics are placeholders and will be removed later.

Now to the hard part:  implementing the echolocator, adding sound and getting rid of all graphics!

Lots of progress so far. Engine is nearly 100% done, and I’m currently painting the cutscenes and working on the story just a tad more.

Gameplay

One of many paintings for the cutscenes. I took a sheet of paper, dunked it in coffee, dried it, crumpled it, scanned it, and painted on it in Corel. I think it looks very nice.

Another painting

So far the plot goes as follows:
There’s an explorer (nameless right now, but I’m thinking Jacques) who goes into a cave trying to find treasure. However he falls down a pit and is knocked unconscious. Later he’s awoken by a mysterious cave spirit who can help him out of the cave. It ties a rope to Jacques(or whatever his name is). You control the spirit (and the rope it’s pulling) with your mouse. By clicking the left mouse button, you can tug on the very stretchy rope to pull Jacques closer if needed. Using gravity and quick wit, you can help Jacques out of the dark caves and back to safety. There will be at least 10 to 15 hand-drawn levels and tons of stuff to see and do. I hope to get it done in time!

If anyone read all of that, may I ask if someone wouldn’t mind coming up with a better title for this? I don’t really like “Gravity Sphere” all too much. Thanks!

Tags: ludum dare gravity sphere

its a start

I declare it shall be an isometric room-based memory game, based on collecting, erm rats. colored rats. I’m currently trying to get a pseudorandom dungeon generator going. It still has some issues, but progress is happening.

Some yummy eye-candy for ya… This is the menu screen.

Pesto Pasta with The Wire

Lunch Progress

I’m not as far along as I liked to be fuctionally, but things are still on track according to the plan.  I’ve yet to come up with a name though.

Tags: foodphoto, screenshot

Brainstormed for a few hours last night, then the idea hit me. Trying to balance my freelance work and LD today, but I think this may be going somewhere…

Since that question fell just now, yes, I indeed stole Notch’s idea of having a livestream. Mine does have sound though! Har har har!

Beginner’s Livestream!

So I designed my rpg, and as I was putting Items in locations, I wanted to make it so that I could put Npc’s in locations..and then areas in locations, then locations in locations.  Soon I realized that my simple method…wasn’t going to work.  Possible, yes.  Possible to do in 4 hours? (All I have left)….maybe.  And debug?  No.  So, I gave up, and hopefully, someday I will be able to finish this.  Anyway, for all of those people that have way too much time, and are interested, I still did a video…. (Includes dancing snowmen and a dancing santa claus!)  Anyway….good luck all.  (I still hate Game Maker 😛 )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgvYVKO-Bfo

Although my game engine is somewhat functional, it is not yet a game.  I don’t have this guy running around yet.  Maybe in a few hours I’ll be in better shape.

We has some stars.

Tags: pygame, screenshot

I have NO idea what I’m doing, but I’m having a blast.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

The art style (8×8 pixel blocks with grayscale and one dynamic color) is REALLY limiting.

I need to get cracking on making a game out of this.

I’m quite sad that I have so little inspiration to design games these days.

I think I should just go back and finish the “Flixel for Game Makers” tutorial I started writing recently. :/

My internet connection was down, so I’m off to a late start. Thanks, everyone, for the encouragement- I’m going to make an entry after all.

Tags: ld16

Doesn’t everyone just love to cut mutants?

Yeah, so I forgot LD16 started, and now my engine doesn’t work…

I really wish I could just copy some code, but oh well.

Heres another screenshot, just for pure self-motivation

Got whirlpools and enemies working… Well, more or less…

Whirlpools work, by dragging the ship in their direction… get too close and there’s no escaping…

The enemies already wander around, but they don’t attack or persuit the player yet… Going to add shooting on the player’s ship first…

Still thinking on exactly the AI of the boats will work… I’m thinking on making them “target” the side of our ship, if possible and try to navigate according to that, shooting whenever they have a good chance of hitting… Got to add some kind of prediction on the shoot dir so it has any chance of hitting…

Anyway, shooting time!

Another low quality shot, this time with random foods I’m eating.

From left to right: Double Sour Skittles, an orange (the same one from yesterday’s desk shot), some Coke, and chicken nuggets.

Tags: foodphoto

After hitting a few snags this morning and patching them up this afternoon, “Snowventure” (working title) Alpha is operational!

“Snowventure” is made is Dev C++, using a console application. so its bound to have a rouglike-y feel. (especially because of the constant screen refresh)

More stuff is on the way! (hopefully the game will be less boring then the screenshots)

Play v0.2 here: http://www.2bam.com/showcase/?game=FindingHer_LD16

I’m going to take a break now.

Basically, a low-res seiklus styled game that takes place on an alien planet. You have to collect colored flames to do … something. Haven’t really thought that part through yet, haha.

Exploration isn’t limited at all, from the beginning you can go pretty much everywhere. Not that innovative, but I’m having a lot of fun making it. Also: You can fly!

Wohoo! It’s a game.

If you like, you can try the attached thing. You explore the fridge in “Where is the Cheese” to find the smelly thing.
You just click on any item, and drag it with held mouse button to another place in the fridge. If you have the cheese, you get bonus points for connected COMBO items in the fridge.

What you say?

I had pizza for dinner, sprinkled with shredded cheddar cheese and habanero hot sauce. To drink, I had Coca Cola in a wine glass.

Pizza - K Rations for Programmers

Coke in a Wine Glass - Classy meets Crass

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is Where the Magic Happens

Some food!

Tags: foodphoto

Holy crap does art make a huge difference. This is the same map and 99% same engine as the image before, just with more sexy.

Now I just need the game to, y’know, do something…

After being late to my first Ludum Dare, having trouble deciding on a design based on the theme, and not even opening Visual Studio until 12 hours into the competition, I have finally made some progress!

Basically you just play as a guy who is in underground caves and is searching for a long lost treasure, and a way out. It will be on one large level (or at least that’s my plan) and you need to explore and collect items to unlock different and hidden areas. (Those yellow rectangles are animated coins that spin, btw)

I’m using C++ and an SDL engine that I have been working on. For my crappy programmer art I’m just using MS Paint. My platform is Windows.

There is now a moving player, a health bar, and winning/loosing conditions. What is missing, is sounds, there are none whatsoever, and a wall of fame would be nice. Of course, polishing is what could be done for ever and ever.

Tags: progress, screenshot

Been at it during the day, on and off. Haven’t really been super-motivated to do stuff but I guess I’ll try to pick up the pace now. What I have now is basically a clear screen with DirectX9 initialization and some base code to actually render something (so it loads and compiles the shaders etc). Oh well :-).

I’m going to start right now with the LD16, 1 day, 3 hours, 29 minutes, 25 seconds left.
That’s a good time to make something playable, and in the last 2 hours i’ve got some time to think about a design.
At the first time i was thinking about a roguelike, bu i see there are some already at a good point.
My entry will be with roguelike graphics as it will be done in bash, but with a different gameplay.

c-ya in a couple of hours!

Boboil’s Adventure is going quite well. So far I’ve added the minerals that you can mine, and you can use them to purchase items at the shop to get more minerals faster! Nothing that exciting yet, but I’m on track to have this finished by the end of the contest. Still no idea on how you will be able to win this game, or if I even will make that you can win, but that will be dealt with later.

Seriously doubt I’ll have anything worth playing by the deadline, but hey… it’s something to shoot for, eh?

Using XNA + flixel.

Now we have a working, functional GUI. Health and hold meters. You can tractor stuff in, which gets added to your inventory.

For absolutely no reason I added lasers too. Maybe I’ll make use of these tomorrow.

Next up is the hub like place where you can sell off your hard earnt booty and get missions.

not only you get to cut mutants, you can also meet the Weird Tusk Monsters!

Progress update!

– ate a sammich
– ate some lovely croissants that wife made (ate 4, plus some jam and margarine)
– lots of game logic in place, whew!

Here’s a screenie showing the crew system.

Hopefully I didn't go too far with this...

Hopefully the crew system I envisioned isn’t too complicated. I’m going to be simplifying things on the “cargo” side, to compensate for the added complexity I’ve got with crew members.

Clarification on the earlier screenshot. The world map was taken from Wikipedia, and won’t be used in-game. Actually, you don’t even HAVE a map; you just set a course. However the game in effort to be slightly realistic will track your course on the map, so if you change course after three days the distances/times will be about right. So the map is actually just for my debugging purposes. La la la!

I’m off to bed now, so here’s where I am at the end of the 1st day:

Players can move to adjacent spaces, and can’t move onto spaces that are already occupied.  The next step is to draw up graphics so you can see how many spaces the player’s already explored.  It’s fairly time-consuming filling in those thin squiggly lines, so I’m only 2/3 of the way through that.

I’ve reached the end of day one and I’m fairly happy with what I’ve got. You can fly around, bounce off the walls, and get defelcted by security gates unless you have the key. Tomorrow, few more things to make it more interesting and some sound. Also making the map bigger!

Good luck everyone, hope to see some cool stuff tomorrow!

Well I’ve certainly started to crap myself. Everyone has gotten so far. I’ve only made the basic engine and there’s still a load more to do!

Over the next 3 hours I will finish the basic physics, gui, map, bg sets for levels and all the enemies in the game (there are a lot but its lucky I was designing an enemy ai engine so I know what to do). At around 2am or 3am (I live in the UK) I’ll go to sleep for about 6 hours and during the last design all the levels for the game.

Coincedently I was thinking about making an exploration game so It was pretty easy to come up with an idea. In the game you are a robot who has been locked in a crate and thrown in to the ocean. A couple of days later you arrive on an island. I won’t tell you guys the rest. Hopefully everyone else isn’t doing as bad as me.

Still working on it, but basically you wander around explore a cave.

LD16, as if you did not know...

I give up. I’ve made far too many mistakes over the course of the last 24 or so hours to continue on with this thing. Too glitchy and unplayable to waste anyone’s time judging it.

Next time will be different. Next time I’ll be prepared. Next time I’ll have something I didn’t have this time: a thirst for vengeance. The Gods themselves will tremble at the codes I will unleash.

Here is my rapid decline documented: http://ld16.neithermachine.com/

Good luck all!

Just to indicate my attempt to develop a game for the compo. I most probably won’t have any time twomorrow, and I had lots of things to do to-day (like packing all my stuff for the travel, back-up a bunch of things on the server, and so on, and on…). But hopefully, I’ll at least make something playable, yay ☆

Things I’m going to use:

Language: Javascript (yep, pure browser javascript)
Libraries: Prototype, Scriptaculous and Lily (my work-in-progress gaming framework that has almost nothing anyways)
Editors: The old’n’good SciTe
Graphics: Fireworks, maybe Inkscape or GIMP.
Sounds: sfxr
Music: Melody-raiser? I guess…
Work recording: ChronoLapse

Well, I think it’s about this. Now to the game I have in mind. While I did the obligatory-stuff-number-1 I thought about several kinds of gameplay (I even did some research at every little break), and came with a turn-based exploration game. It would be a mix of turn-based strategy (divide & conquest), with a sort of dugeon crawling set on a maze. I was going to use a proper dungeon, but it’s a heck more simpler to write a procedural maze generator.

So, the player is a stream of consciousness that’s trying to recover a lost memory, and to do so it can divide itself into little functional parts (namely Destroyers — which will take care of any enemies, — Guardians — which will protect the player, — Collectors — which will collect the fragments of memory, — and Explorators — which will search for the exit). At each turn the player can choose between divide itself, or walk around. The functional parts are indivisible, so they can only be dragged around.

To win, one must collect the fragments of memory (which should unfold some sort of story I haven’t thought of yet) and find the portal that leads out of the current maze. Sorta simplistic (maybe not all that simplistic, but I just have to worry about the core anyways. UI and rendering are already coded for me =D)

Haha, first level done. Well not really. This is just an image. I will draw this on the background, and add some nifty objects over it. But I guess this is it for day 1.

Still have a good felling about this one. I am gonna make it. 😀

Tags: day 1, level 1, number 1

I’m doing something. It has fog of war. It has sparkling vampires to kill. It involves exploring(and not tentatively)

There will be boats for exploring. There’s a Sword and a Lantern. Both are needed for exploring.

It will be awesome.

First some food…

delicious pie

yummy desert

Then some actual development, this is how it currently looks

That is not a horribly drawn santa, he’s a brave explorer with a backpack!

Next up is treasures, better movement and hopefully some computer/human controlled explorers, but now… sleep!

Tags: foodphoto, progress

gotta go zzz

reduced number of areas to 10, six done now

meanwhile have these screens

again with the bonks

bonk on

No new pics since the last update. I’m now rethinking my design.

The original design was very much along the lines of Sins of a Solar Empire mixed with a more traditional RTS and a dash of MOO (special planets). At this point, though, I’m really not confident of pulling off an enemy AI in the time I have left, and it was kind of going off-theme. So here’s the new plan – a dash of SAIS, a pinch of Sins, a smidgen of Star Control, and a liberal sprinkling of MOO2:

– The player is on a mission to this star cluster to find the Relics of the Ancestors. When you bring them together, something is supposed to happen. 😉

– The player can colonize planets with a colony ship. I may remove the idea of building up the planets. Possibly the number of cities on the planet merely increases over time, leading to faster production and more income?

– The relics can be found by exploring the star cluster and conducting archaeological digs on planets with Ancestor ruins. First you must colonize those planets.

– Some planets are defended by hostile giant creatures (Space Crystal, anyone?). Those planets usually have good stuff and/or a relic.

– The player’s steps are dogged by these nasty aliens who drop out of a pocket dimension now and then. They will start arriving when the player reaches a certain level of power. The alien attacks come in waves which get stronger over time.

– Normally, each wave will contain a Virus Bomb – a special alien ship. If allowed to reach a player-owned planet and re-enter the atmosphere unmolested, the bomb will destroy all life on the planet, returning it to an uncolonized state.

– I may raise the stakes by turning the Virus Bomb into a Planet Buster that not only destroys all life but turns the planet into a molten wasteland – it can still be re-colonized but will produce no income.

– The aliens may also have other tricks up their slimy sleeves…

Will be going off to church in about an hour – good to clear my head. When I get back I shall have to go quite frankly nuts.

hahaha I do need to learn how to draw took me hours to do this one on inkscape heheheh

Tags: botanic quest, char, draw, progress

12 hours of straight work, 22 hours of competition so far… Still so much to do, I think that (as usual) I bit more than I could chew…

Anyway, got shooting working, along with sinking of enemy ships, with some GUI elements…

Decided to use a particle system as the shot… Doesn’t look like a cannonball, but to be honest I missed the flair of the particle systems… have to try using one for the trail of the ship, might not look so crummy…

When it hits the enemy ship, you get a nice display of how much damage you dealt:

The yellow number on top of the player’s ship is the ammount of gold he received from the kill… This will (hopefully) serve to buy shovels (to dig) and upgrades for the ship (better cannons, better sails, etc).

Also added a display for the ammount of gold the player has:

Think I’m going to stop for now… Time to get some quality time with the missus, or else she’ll kill me!

Still missing:

• Enemy shooting/AI
• Home port (for buying stuff – repairs, sails, rudders, cannons, shovels, maps)
• Walking around and digging stuff out of the ground
• UI to check maps during navigation
• Load/Save (the game might take a bit to finish, I think)
• Logo/Splash/Menu/Instructions
• Music and SFX

Wish list (stuff I’d like to do if I have the time for it):

• Savages on islands
• Typhoons
• Kraken!
• Game story (slideshow explaining the story)

Ok, i am too tired to continue, but i have made very little piece of game during 10 hours. So i give up – i cant make anything playable to the deadline. Sadly, but things go unexpetedly slow.

What i have done:

-Ship flying in space with real physics. Engines are rotating. Can switch wings angle to use landing mode.

-Can land on planet and dispatch land vehicle. Vehicle have suspension, can drive around on planet.

-Some very basic placeholder graphics and sfx

-Thats all )

What i wanted to make:

– Flying in big generated asteroid field, fighting with space pirates and monsters. Scan the asteroids to find minerals. Land to collect minerals and manufacture new stuff on your ship. Goal is to find relict artifacts buried in asteroids (once they was big planet).

Good luck guys!

(you say baby, have you got enough gas?)

Well, today was a huge bust.  I worked a little in the morning as my previous entry detailed, then it was off to a very distant lunch (about a 1.5 hour drive).  All told that chewed up 6 hours, after which I was home with a big headache and very tired, so another 2 hours spent napping.  Which of course made me feel worse, so popped some tylenol, ate some cake, and gradually recovered not doing much for a couple more hours.

At long last, I did some work for about 2 hours maybe, and now the game is basically what it needs to be, minus most of the content!  You begin with no abilities, and you can pick up the jump ability as advertised and use it.  The screenshot shows the second power, Shoot.  That’s not actually implemented at all.  Also, the enemies are harmless (but the evil OUCH zone is quite lethal!).  There’s no money to collect and spend on these powers like I wanted, but I think I’ll skip that, so I can just spend tomorrow making the actual game content.  Should be fun and easy!

Flixel seems quite limited in what sort of game it will manage, but it makes that particular type of game real easy.  If you wanted to make anything but a side scroller, I think you’d have to fight it so much that you’d be better off just making your own code from scratch.

Tired

Hungry

Not an artist

These are all mine and completely unvalid, i’ve spent since the start time producing my art (all of which is very basic having been done in MS paint XP) thankfully i know what i’m doing and even with the difficulties i expect after the art is done it should get a little easier from there, this makes me happy

Saldo for the first day:

map finished
engine finished
5 out of ~15 areas finished

I’m really happy about this progress. I’m quite sure I’ll be able to finish the rest of the areas tomorrow.

So, I’ve made a python-brute-force logic puzzle generator.

 ('island', 'bonaire', 'port', 'north port', True)
 ('island', 'antigua', 'threat', 'hurricane', True)
 ('port', 'west port', 'threat', 'cannibals', True)
 ('island', 'tobago', 'treasure', 'rubies', True)
 ('treasure', 'pearls', 'threat', 'kraken', True)
 ('treasure', 'saphires', 'marker', 'rock', True)
 ('island', 'jamaica', 'treasure', 'gold', True)
 ('island', 'jamaica', 'port', 'south port', True)
 ('island', 'tobago', 'port', 'west port', True)
 ('island', 'tobago', 'marker', 'skull', True)
 ('treasure', 'pearls', 'marker', 'waterfall', True)
 ('port', 'east port', 'treasure', 'saphires', True)
 

.. Which could be solved using one of these grid things.

The question is, can I turn this into a playable game?
-Phil

Hi, it’s been a while since i sit down and do a game myself. So, I really hope i can finish this one in time;)

yue

Tags: maze, puzzle, RPG, zombie

Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing when it comes to procedural generation. I should have had this done much sooner, but I’ve finally reached the stage where I have something which could be described as procedural dungeon generation.

I don’t actually have any graphics or gameplay, but I can now generate maps from a seed number. Here’s a section of map 0:


# # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # . . . . . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # . . . . . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # . . . . . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # X # # # # # # # # # # # . . . . . . X
# # # . # # # . # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . . . . . # . # # . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # . . . . # # # # # # . . . # # #
# # # . # # # . . . . X . . . . X . . . . . . . . # # #
# # # . # # # . # # # # . . . . # # # # # # . . . # # #
# # # . # # # . # # # # . . . . # # # # # # X # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # # # # . . . . # # # # # # . # # # # #
# # # # # # # . # # # # . . . . . # # # # # . # # # # #
# # # # # # # . # # # # # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # #
. . . . . . X . . . . X # # # # X # # # # # . # # # # #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # . . . . . . . X . . . .
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # #
# . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # #
# . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # #


Once I’ve had some well-needed sleep I’ll get some graphics done, tilemap rendering, get a player walking around and introduce some treasures for him to find. Bah – there’s loads of time left 😉

Tags: dungeon, map, milestone, procedural generation, tilemap

Okay, I think I’ve come up with something interesting and simple enough, but I am not sure it fits the theme quite well.

Don’t want to spoil it now but I’ll write down some keywords.

RPG, screen-by-screen, neon, weird, phobic protagonist, clubbing, city

Now making screenies.

Tags: tigs

You just know it’s going to be awesome.

Just 2 screenshot

main screen

ingame

Yeah, with my current game, it takes 53 lines of code for you to move, and it’s just a maze game. No wonder I’m getting a headache! With the random generation system, it accesses a data structure about a million times, and sometimes it gives me errors because some spots on the data structure don’t exist yet! I’m running out of ideas and I’m panicking quite a bit, with only about another, say, 5 hours left of good development time to get it working. Then, I have to copy the code into the other 4 directions so you can actually move around the maze.

Then, I actually have to make a purpose to the game. <_> If I don’t finish, I might just make a simple preset maze, making the game much easier to make. But hey, what’s the “fun” in that?

Also, since I’m required to release the source code, I’m commenting it to help clear up my head, and that of anybody who wants to take a shot at fixing the darned thing so it works. This is really giving me a hard time.

But hey, no worries! I don’t have to submit anything, now do I? 😛

Hokay, I’m ready to call an end to day 1, since I’m tired and can no longer concentrate on work.

Here’s what I have so far:

1. A generic game agent class with reasonable movement that can move toward a goal heading
2. The beginnings of an object factory that can currently manufacture player characters and wall segments. Wall segments are automatically fitted according to given neighbor pieces.
3. A large part of a world generator, though it is completely untested. This is the part that I am least sure about. The logic is there, but I’m still a little nervous.
4. Most of the sprites for the player character

Here is what I still need:

1. Full set of sprites for wall pieces
2. Last few player sprites
3. Sprites for baddies, items, and props
4. Full world generator (This will be the hardest part, I think)
5. Doors
6. AI with A* pathfinding (Ugh, I think this’ll be a tough one, probably do it once I’ve got worlds being generated)
7. World area serialization/deserealization
8. Full player class with stamina
9. Start screen
10. Cut-scenes

I think, though, that I can pull it off. I think I can…

Here’s hoping…

—Mr.Dude

I’m making some sort of dungeon exploring game. I have a randomly-generating dungeon now and it is explorable. Now I need to populate it with something to make it more interesting to explore.

I JUST got the inventory system to work ok, meaning you can pick up items, drop items, and equip items. They automatically go in a suitable free slot if there is one.

Monsters drop loot when killed, scaled to the difficulty level of the level, and loot can have prefixes that add bonuses, like “Golden”, which adds 100% to the selling price of an item.

Still to do is implement more item types (armor, helmets, pants (PANTS!)), make the powerups from the items work, add shooting  and ammo, make some proper monster types, add level transitions, and think of some kind of ending to the game.

Oh, and I should probably make the different jobs actually behave differently as well, and perhaps make the stats matter in some way.

With 50% of the time remaining, I’d say I’m about 30% finished with this game.

Here’s a screenshot.   Right now there is zero interaction, but the idea is indirect control of your little explorer.   I’m not sure exactly how his is going to work, my original idea was like Magestic (Or whatever that game is) where you attract explorers then send them into the dungeon.  I don’t think I’ll have time to fully implement this, but we’ll see how I do.

Hopefully I can find some gameplay to implement…..

Tags: screenshot

Well, I haven’t implemented any of the core gameplay, actually. Just the most basic of the engine and the procedural level generation. And it works 😀

This is what the first level looks like currently, still need to fill thouse black areas before i can really crack on with the game proper

What this image shows is what I managed to do in 12 hours of work:

Absolutely nothing.
It’s two squares that don’t collide and you can control one of them though all it does is fall too fast for you to do anything.
I need to setup the collision system and I’ll be able to start making the game logic.
For the past 8 hours most of my time programming was absolved by pretentious bugs, which upon fixing revealed even more bugs. But at least I’ve fixed them all!

This has put me behind the time and most probably I won’t finish my game. Still I will submit my source code, because at least the engine part will be finished! And it’s a good one.
Still I hope I can at least make two or three levels for my game just to have something to show when someone asks me “so how did that 2 day game competition went?”.

Being a programmer with the attention span of a cat next to a yarn ball isn’t helping though.

Because I want to be working all day, my food pics will be posted at the end of the day.

Although i’ve been a bit bad and had my lunch and I forgot to take a picture of it.

Although here we go…
For breakfast I had toast. I was barely awake and couldn’t see very well, so no picture.

For Lunch, I had a teapot of Earl Grey and meatballs

For my tea, I’m having my special recipe spicy noodles with added hot sauce 😀 and a nice mug of Earl Grey to go with.

I’ll see you near the end of tomorrow with the last of my food pics

Tags: foodphoto