Okay, 9 hours in, gonna sleep now…

I’m making a shmup, it’s 3d (though until I get some nice textures and particle effects going, it doesn’t really look interesting…), and the premise is that you control a cargo ship of some sort with powerful magnet/tractor beam-ish tech, so you can “force push” enemies into each other (I’m using bullet for some fancy physics), or pull an enemy in to use them as a shield and use their weapon to destroy other enemies.

Here’s an early shot:

I’ve decided upon my genre/game/application/whatsit. It’s going to be a fairly gruesome platformer done in a film-noir style. Assuming I get time for art, that is.

As it stands, I spent four hours implementing a verlet physics engine, two hours implementing collision detection, and finally started on gameplay during the last hour. I can create levels with arbritrary collision geometry, put ragdolls into the level, throw them around, and most importantly, dismember them!

This all fits into my grand game plan where you are required to dismember enemies and use their heads, legs, arms, or tentacles (aliens, maybe?) as weapons.

The artwork is currently all stick-figure, but the code is already written allowing me to replace the sticks with graphics. All I need to do is draw something.

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In lieu of awesome graphics, here are some awesome ragdolls. Naturally they look better in action.

The ragdoll being punched or kicked or shot in the chest:

Ragdoll being dragged around a level:

Dismemberment!

So I’ve decided on a name, and I’ve got my background rocks into the game (though they don’t scroll yet). I give you  The Lair of Fungal Wonder:

I think the lower foreground is a bit too similar to the background, but that’ll probably be less of a problem once I add the fungi and the background rocks start moving parallax-ly.

After spending the morning working on all the ‘back end’ boring stuff, I’ve got the map rendering with some items on the floor (torches). The lighting system is also working.

Now I’ve got all this basic stuff done, I’m starting to get really excited about my game although I haven’t thought completely about the design yet.

So far it’s like this: you’ll be exploring some ancient tomb hunting for treasure but there are also bandits who want to steal it. I want to be able to add some puzzles and traps and more of an element of stealth than fighting (hence the darkness and torch stuff). To fit in with the theme “enemies as weapons”, you’ll be able to”read their minds” and see what they can see every now and again (probably in random flashes when something significant happens on their end e.g. falling into a trap). So it’s kind of like your secret weapon against them (and it also is them). Hopefully that is enough to qualify it :p.

Anyway, enough talking. Back to the programming and graphics design (it’s all typical programmer art sadly!)…

Ok, here’s a screenshot of the single graphic I have drawn and the window I have got it appearing in:

I tried to get Felix to design me a game, but she hates the theme.

Tags: cat, first screenshot

I’m gonna try and participate again for a change.

And my latest experiment shall be developing the game in pure OpenGL. Also, structuring it in such a way it is easily portable to an iPhone. I just got an iPhone you see, and I am somewhat smitten with it. So in celebration of me having a new gadget, I shall make a game that is hopefully easily ported! 😀

Here is a random screenshot. It shows some red lines which I think will be the world boundary, a green rectangle which is probably going to become a circle eventually and indicates the player character, and a blue line, which is the path the green circle is following.

First screenshot!

Actual gameplay? None yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something as I go along.

A fairly slow start, game ideas slowly coming together, an I decided to make something isometric this time. Which unfortunately means that I need to do more art usual… Very placeholdery iso tiles for now, until I get some gameplay together, then I’ll have a go at redrawing (or maybe rendering) something a bit nicer…

Next comes the ‘fun’ bit… proper sorting of the tiles with moving objects like the player and enemies…

I am giving LD a go, to take a break from some work code. I plan to but might not finish, either way works for me.

SO! First, i came up with a concept : Angry sentient code. Their enemies are the programmers (for making the code primitive).
, They attack in an army formation, converting programmers to their langauge, converting teams to their cause. Subtle domination – they will take over the world!

Then, a mechanic : Eufloria/Bladestorm/Top down unit control.

Im avoiding mockups until i have gameplay as i have a tendency to get distracted in the art.

For now, here is where i drew the logic out (it explains a lot more of how the game works).

The image is quite big, and i would type it but im in a hurry so Read this instead

Draknek gave me a makefile that takes a screenshot every minute. Why it was a makefile I have no idea.
I wrote a proper shell script to do this (fully configurable) which does stuff better.

Download it here if anyone is interested.

Finally we’ve got a title for our game!

Helgas World Domination

Hi Everyone,

After a late start, this is the first screenshot of my upcoming game “HOME”:

The story is about a sole survivor in a spaceship floating in space, and he wants to go home. Weapons and shields are down after a hard battle, so all he has to defend himself with is a tractor-beam – which will allow the player to drag enemy ships/asteroids and throw them onto other enemies.

(Very) Basic physics are already there, as long with basic sprite drawing and handling – hope to get it all up and running in this retro, vectorized style.

Girlfriend has made Lasagne, so soon, eating!

Thanks! I’ll be happy to hear comments!

Daniel

After a few hours of brainstorming, I’ve got an idea that is simple enough. So…

• There are three trenches – two are occupied by enemies, one by lone soldier, who’s out of ammo (that’ll be player)
• When player is hidden in a trench, enemies don’t shoot. Player can move in the trench and stick his head out of it (enemies shoot then)
• Goal: to survive and make the enemies kill each other

I have to go now, so after 9,5 hours of challenge, I’ve done:

• 2 hours of brainstorming
• 0 hours of asset creation
• 0 hours of coding.

Oh yeah!  Smells like innovation.  Innovation and placeholder graphics.

Desk

Food

Yesterdays birthday party only cost me onle nine hours! Could’ve been worse. 😉

I really like the theme although I only have one real idea as of now: I’m thinking of a “Mega Man”-esque platformer but — wait for it — with a TWIST! Stages would be controlled by two bosses with somewhat opposing “themes”. You would then get to control the enemies by shooting at them with a special weapon, for example. By using the powers of the enemies against each other would then allow you to solve puzzles.

The problem is that this is a very content heavy idea. The fun here would arise from good level design and I don’t know whether I could make enough levels to make it into a good game.

I’m gonna take another few minutes to maybe come up with a “simpler” idea, but then I better get cracking to at least have something playable in the end. 😉

In part thanks to Hamumu, who’s list helped me put a collection of mechanics into game form, I now have a decent idea I want to run with.  (not like last time where my idea changed like 12 times)

Here’s some basic (and crappy) graphics I’ve made up for it.

As for no-game related things, I had small snack in the form of Red Leicester sandwiches and a can or Red Bull.

ONWARD!

There’s an idea in here somewhere, but as usual I’m geting bogged down trying to the language I’m using (this time Javascript and the HTML5 canvas) to do what I want it to.  I need to stop messing around and just get something controlable moving around on screen.  But first to grab some festival food.

Tags: hungry, idea, ideas, LD18

Really tight on time as got guests visiting us this weekend and so. So I’ll probably try to make a “few hour” entry. Will mean I’ll probably go for C# and .NET 3.5 or something like that. I do like the theme at least a bit. Got some idea I’m comfortable I’d be able to whip up fairly fast.. Good luck everyone!

Mmm sugary goodness!

Doughnuts and milk

Hey, some of you might remember me from the last mini LD. This is my first proper Ludum Dare and I’m having loads of fun so far.

Like the last LD, I’m going to be using Photoshop and Flash with AS2 (don’t feel confident enough with AS3 just yet).

I’ve been going for about 4 hours now, and I’ve got the basic collisions and sprites sorted. Here’s a screenshot:

My idea is this: the rabbit has a big cannon and he needs to kill the enemies on screen (of which there are currently none drawn) but he has no ammo. So he has to load the enemies into his cannon and fire them at other enemies to kill them. At first this will be pretty easy but the plan is in later levels you’ll have to make some much more difficult shots to hit them. I’m hoping to make those tiles destructible too.

I’ve got the cannon rotating and firing at the moment (but nothing fires out) and the collision with the tiles and everything works.

Hurrah for placeholder graphics, no?

Anyway, I’ve got basic enemy AI all tidy and everything so that’ll be very easy to both create and adjust. Now I need to make weapon AI, and then make the player thing move.