I should have done an update last night, but I didn’t really have much to say.  I don’t really have much more to say now, but I wanted to post something before it got too late.

Islands is the theme, and it’s not too bad.  I could have restarted last compo’s game, Exploration, since my idea for that was island based, but I decided to go in a different direction. My entry for Islands is going to be a puzzle game where you walk around different islands in order to get to the goal, avoiding traps and other dangers. Here’s a screenshot.

First screenshot. Simple tiles, simple graphics.

Basically I just used Photoshop to create simple tiles.  I have some art sketched out, but it needs to be scanned and colorized. I’ll do that later, but for now I need to work on the actual gameplay.  So far, the smily can move around and the tiles each have bounds that will stop the player, but that’s it.  I also recorded a little bit of sound effects, but those haven’t been moved over from the Mac yet, and either way, there aren’t many game actions to tie them to yet.

Next up is to work on the movement. Right now, it’s dependant on KeyDown presses, which are limited by keyboard delay. I’m going to implement KeyDown/KeyReleased pairs to change this.

Tags: ld48_17, screenshot

Atollery is playable and public, right around somewhere… Oh. Here.
Have fun. Instructions are in the game. Don’t forget to comment, I’ve hit a design dead end and don’t know what to put in the game now. This is pretty much finished, just needs some polish.

Download the most recent build here

Edit: Note, You need the DirectX Runtime installed and the .Net Framework, (This is Windows only, sorry Mac/Linux users!). /Edit.

it’s an island colonization and expansion game… it has no goal… yet..

I’m thinking population target over all your islands, which will force players to colonize more than 1 island..

I’m not sure, your thoughts on the way it’s heading is most appreciated.

(WASD to move the game camera around, Escape to get out of an island, Left click for everything else!)

click on the empty spaces (where the info boxes pop up) on the islands to build the discribed building..

Housing increases population, stonemasons increases stone, woodcutters increases wood, Farmer increases food.

Dock will (eventually) build ships which will allow you to colonize other islands (Although at the moment you can colonize any island anywhere without penalty or requirement.

Happy developing guys!

All batteries fire at will

Oh yeah, I ate a pizza slice. There won’t be any in the game though. The enemies will be balloons with little turrets underneath.

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

So, I came up with a name for my entry and drew a quick title picture for it. Isn’t it… well, I can’t draw. There is more puzzle design and tedious default stuff waiting for me, so I needed a quick distraction.

Hour 16 and counting! *headbang*

Tags: progress, title art

I liked both of the top two themes (Islands and Escape), so I decided to incorporate both of them. Basically you’re in the Isle of Man when a zombie plague breaks out. You’ve got to run your ass off to get out of there in time, all the while fighting zombies who are getting in your way. Picture a side scroller with a horde of zombies coming at you from the left (so if you hit the left side of the screen you die) and individual straggler zombies on the right. Couple that with occasion humans getting eaten alive in front of you and there’s a game concept! To win, you need to get to a boat and escape the island. You can’t die from individual damage, but the more you get attacked the slower you’ll be getting out, and the closer the horde will get to you.

Screenshots later.

After scrapping my original game idea, I’ve come up with something that’s a lot more feasible. I also think it will be a lot of fun to play, so that’s a plus. Progress has already been made, and here’s what have so far:

There be islands, my man! I have a pretty good idea of how I’m going to progress from here, so progress ought to remain steady for a while, which is a good thing. Now, onto food photos!

As we all know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day…

You know it!

Oops, spilled some juice!

Uh oh...

Tags: foodphoto, journal, LD17

Super duper gameplay footage awaits in the mysterious depths of YouTube! Hurry up and click and save the day forever!

Hello, i have yet a first game screen that do somefing. An army of naughty pirate are looking for the treasure…

Ahem, anyway…

I’ve taken the derelict scroller and rewritten it from the chunky scroll to a smooth scroll.. though, I’ve lost it’s “smartness” where it’d only draw what it could see.. now it draws every sodden tile ( otherwise, it gets lost and starts blanking out tiles before you’ve moved over them, and not drawing quick enough.. hmm.. some investigation later is needed. )
I’ve also added mouse support into my engine and exposed it to Lua. Need to do something with it now!
Finally, engine wise I told it to spit out a delta time properly… may as well stop making everything frame-dependent 😉

Currently have a large (100×100 tile) map loading in and being rendered. Actually, it’s technically two maps that get loaded, one for the background, and it keeps another for collision stuff.. may change this later as it’s taking it’s time per frame ( probably due to the rendering of all those sodding tiles! )

Anyhow, time for dinner.. here’s another screenshot in the meantime:

Greetings ludarriers, I’m about to start making a game, here we go!

I’m getting a pretty late start, I was learning salsa dancing when LD started, and have been walking the clouds ever since, but now it’s time to find an Island to land on.

I started learning flixel/actionscript 3 a few weeks ago for research at school. I’ve made a basic platformer and Pong, and I’m going to use flixel for LD17. My next research project is to make a clone of River Raid (Atari vertical scrolling shooter/shmup) and I’m going to get half my research done for LD17.

My vision for this game, as of now, is to make a scrolling shmup that scrolls in the direction of the player. The player will fly a plane over water and land on islands. Islands will be a source of fuel and ammo for the craft. The player will shoot down enemy craft while traveling between islands. Islands will sometimes be controlled by an enemy, and the player will have to shoot down enemy craft and drop bombs on island fortifications. Stuff I probably won’t get to is commodity trading for profit, purchasable upgrades, craft, and fortifications.

This sounds like a good start. I’m quite tired right now and I’m probably only going to get about 12 hours of work done all weekend, but we’ll see. I’m working in a public library today, chair is pretty comfy.

I’m calling the game Tail Spin, a spin on the 90’s cartoon Tale Spin, which involved flying planes between islands.

Idle on land

Take off! Last frame or so to be repeated

Also, tiles are done!

Swoosh, Swhoosh, swoosh! You can see the waves moving. Can't you? :)

And now it’s time for small break!

I really, really, really wanted a scarf. Oh well, antenna will have to do.

“Premade engines, libraries, basecode, and game makers are allowed. Ludum Dare is about creating games, not about writing A* for the 8th time. If you want to start from scratch, great. Lots of people start from python + pygame, or just with DirectX. But other people prefer to start with a higher grade engine, and that’s OK. What’s not allowed are libraries that other people don’t have a reasonable chance to be able to use. If you had to sign a NDA to get it, it’s probably not allowed. This is to strike a level playing field for everyone.”

I’m guessing that means, if I found a hover engine for MMF2 earlier (an engine for a game maker) then I’m sure that’s allowed. I’ll just have to look at it and then franken-code it to make it unique to fit my needs. Although I wish an admin would make that more clear.

Decent progress since this AM. I’m more certain about how the gameplay will be structured, I have flocking and angular velocity/momentum for the whales (luckily it turns out I don’t really have to do collision for them!) and I’m starting to look at some behaviors for the pod.

You’re going to be a glowing intelligence that is worshipped, leading a pod of whales on some strange planet. You can fly from whale to whale, who’s backs are slightly emerged (think of them as sentient moving islands). You can commune with them, designate as leader, and so forth.

Each whale will have it’s own personality and your goal is to try and get them through five stages.

We’re ludumdaring together here in Cambridge, England!

From left to right, Terry, Dock, Roburky, Titch, Perrin and Nora Shishi!

I’m way behind. I’ve spent all morning grappling with flixel in an attempt to make a map that wraps around. I feel like every time I try to use flixel, my game idea includes something just far enough outside flixel’s boundaries that I spend twice as much time working around it as I would have doing it without flixel.

For future reference: if you want to set a FlxGroup’s x or y coordinate directly, you have to use FlxGroup.reset(x, y) instead. Otherwise, it sits there like a stupid lump and doesn’t update anything.

What I have now (the turtle does move around, at least):

Tags: progress

Awesome?

So I’ve been thinking about removing the double pixels; my game would be bloated up to 800 times 800 pixels with ’em and that sucks. Also I like the look of it with single pixels. Look at the little fella, ain’t he adorable? Input appreciated!

Tags: progress, question

I’ve decided to adjust my idea somewhat.

Instead of floating islands with meat and cheese growing on the trees, I’ve decided on plain islands with fruit growing on the trees.

The fruit will have magical-type properties that affect your characteristics, and possibly some that give you special abilities If I Have Time.

Also, he now has a hammer instead of a sword. Swords are overdone.

I’ve gotten a bunch of sprites of this Guy:

Our Dashing Hero

I also had a some cereal:

Chocolate and Banana Nut Cheerios in one bowl

Now, data loader, then test, then terrain tiles. YOW! 😀

Here is what I ate for dinner:

I also had a salad, I forgot to take a picture of it. I’m just taking pictures of unhealthy food. 😉

As for the game, there is not much code there, but (nearly) all the graphics are done including some animations. Take a look at that wonderful title screen:

(It’s actually pre-rendered and the pixelated texture look is intentional, I didn’t want to invest any more time on the title screen as I’m behind schedule.)

Tags: foodphoto, progress

Tags: motivation

Ooh, Dr. Who was good.  I was worried since the previous episode was terrible, and I really couldn’t see the point in bringing back the angels, but that was up there with the first two episodes of the season.

Anyway, here’s how the pizza turned out:

The dough didn’t turn out as airy as I was hoping, but it was still pretty good.  Another picture and some more details after the cut (I realise no-one’s interested in the intricacies of my pizza recipe but, well, I’m proud of it).

I use the pre-grated kind of mozzarella, because the stuff that comes in a ball is always too watery for my taste, leaving a soggy pizza.  Also, it should be obvious, but you need a hot oven to cook pizza properly, so turn it up as high as it will go.  My own oven’s probably not quite hot enough, but if I pre-heat it and stick the pizza right at the top it does a decent job.  Finally, I usually cook the base on its own for a bit before I add the sauce and cheese.  Here’s a picture after it’s had some time to rise:

Right, I’ll stop talking about pizza now and get back to my game.