download here: Go Left to not die

It should be called “Go Right to not die” , but i was tired when i drew the logo, so thought i’d stick with it :/

Here’s a screenshot of the current status, after 7 hours of work.

Well, for now at least, let’s see how much of the day I’ll have off. My idea for enemies-as-weapons is as follows. You control a wizard who has two spells. A fireball which does some direct damage to a creature. And a zombification spell which resurrects bodies of fallen creatures as zombies loyal to their master. The game now has a few areas with creatures of different strength and you are to build up an army of zombies to face the final boss.

The screenshot below is how far I am right now after about 2 hours and also how the final graphics will look. It shows the wizard and some enemy creatures.

A ready to bake baguette with my own special pizza sauce and some cheddar.  Mmm…

Going on, the next step is to get the background scrolling, then I’ll add the player’s ship and start adding fungi.  Hopefully by the end of the day I’ll have the scanning and spore->weapon mechanics in and can spend tomorrow finessing things.

Tags: foodphoto

In a reverse of my usual process, the game currently looks interesting, but doesn’t do anything.

The plan is for an arena shooter style game, with you trying to influence a large battle between your minions and the enemy. The inclusion of the enemies as weapons theme is going to be fairly predictable. Instead of destroying enemies by shooting them, you enslave them to join your army. Then with alternate fire you can detonate all your current captured slaves, destroying all other nearby enemies. Destroying lots of enemies at once by detonating will give more score, but might leave your army vulnerable.

Notes drawn on bus on the way into Cambridge:

Other indie game devs hard at work at the Cambridge Friendship Club:

After some initial brainstorming in the morning I decided I would like to write something like this – A* search for Mario – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s3d1LfjWCI

The idea for the game is a platformer, where player doesn’t control the jumping character, but rather positions the enemies to slow down/kill the AI player. Basically Platform Keeper. With progressing levels the AI will be smarter.

I did some progress on the AI – currently it’s capable of finding platforms and progress to the right.

i just woke up and im ready to start coading!
i hoping for at LEAST 30th place in the comp 😀

i wish every one good luck on there game!

Tags: v

Well, I have only just come up with an idea and I might try to get it working in time for the deadline.

I was thinking of having some character/ship which moves around shooting controlling blasts at enemies which you can then control for a short time to blast other enemies.

Not very original I know, but hey…whatever works LOL

I am going to use freepascal for the game and a Pascal (Delphi) 2d engine called Hadron Games Engine (HGE)

Good luck all with your entries!

cheers,
Paul

…I have made progress on the graphics side of things! (Also, it took me 3 hours to get sound working, not 5.)

Turns out that I spent a lot of time wrestling with the code where the problems were in the .bmp converter (I was loading the two nybbles in the 16-bit image around the wrong way and then putting the colour information into bitfields around the wrong way, too), although it goes without saying that I also had plenty of mistakes in the VDP code itself.

I’ve yet to get sprites working, and there are still more flags & stuff in the VDP registers which aren’t (but should be) implemented.

So here it is! http://pubacc.wilcox-tech.com/~greaser/stuff/ld18/gm-d002.jar

And now it’s half past Sunday and I have to be up early for church so I really should go to bed. Good night!

So here are the first screenshots off the game, the basic collision, shooting and particles are functional.

Progress screenshot

Ill try to make a puzzle platformer with jello enemies since im not sure if i can manage any advanced Ai in this point. There are these pillars of ooze creatures which hold different weapons. You’ll destroy the enemies in your path trying to find more ammo in the goo monsters. You’ll win the game when you find a good with a nuclear bomb inside which you have to expolde to advance in to new levels.

If im fast enough i migh make some “shooting” mosnters allso but we’ll see.

I just scaled down the graphics and realised how much better it looks. I’ve been drawing some more item graphics (that little golden cup is the treasure you are searching for) and a player graphic (yes it sucks). I need to make the lack of light cause entities (such as the player and the treasure cup) to become darker. Now I need a few more graphics (traps, other treasures, ladders, bandits) and then I can actually get some work done on the real gameplay. My aim is to get most of that done today, so that tomorrow I can focus on polishing it off (menu system, adding some sort of GUI for your inventory/score) and adding some levels to play through.

Yeap that’s how far I got into 2 hours, Doesn’t look all that impressive I know, but thats the only way to avoid over-stress.

I haven’t had the chance to formalize my entry, so here we go!

I’ll probably be using my usual basecode of C++ and SDL with many little libraries.  They can be found at my website:
http://code.bluedinosaurs.com

So…  I don’t have a game design yet.  Heck, it was my theme suggestion!  I should’ve been ready.

Wow, everyone seems to be way ahead of me! Your games are all looking awesome! Here’s a shot of what I’ve got so far, just some art:

Well, thanks to some stormage, I haven’t had an internet connection since yesterday afternoon. I just now saw the theme. Internet is still out, so don’t expect any updates from me during the compo. I may not even be submitting a game if I can’t find a way to upload in time.

The theme is great, and I’m looking forward to playing the games, regardless of whether or not I can submit something.

Have fun!

Update reporting in! Intersect point is working now so forcing the enemys away should be possible now.

A few enemys!

as you can see a healt filled lunch!

Pate, cucumber cheese. what else could a man want?!

Good morning Ludum Dare!

Managed to catch about five hours of sleep–my regular nightly amount for most LDs.

I was thinking–if timelapses are fun after the compo to watch they are certainly fun to watch during a break while the compo is going right? 😀

Before I head over to the Portsmouth NH Ludum Dare meetup I figured I’d render out the timelapse of me creating my first playable prototype (always an important milestone for me) in the first four hours of the competition.

Not sure if you can embed videos here so here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lR4MMAiA9s

Tags: flash, playable, prototype, timelapse, youtube

So I finally cleaned my desk. You might think I didn’t, but I did. Really!

Also got an idea that involves wandering enemies, explosions and chain reactions… I’ll see what I can do with it :).

Tags: deskphoto

That is one ugly asteroid...

My intention is to create a scrolling shooter with very little shooting involved. Instead, you will use a grappling hook (behind the blue ship) to grab enemies and throw them at each other. So far, I have a few graphics, a small physics engine, and no sounds.

It takes some time to get used to the hook’s controls, so I might have to make a way of shooting the enemies instead of throwing them at each other. Or I might not. We’ll see.

Oh, and hopefully there will be some awesome explosions when I’m done.

My game doesn’t suck yet. But don’t worry. It’ll start sucking soon.

Different souls give you different powers. For example, red souls let you explode. Blue souls let you jump higher. Yellow souls don’t do anything yet.

Progressing nicely.. Got my “characters” drawing and basic frame loop somewhat set up. If things keep up, I can keep to my schedule. The name of the game I’m working on is “Psi Keepers”. In the game there will be enemy units that move closely towards the player and shoot rarely. If the player gets hit by a bullet or hits an enemy, it’s game over. The player controls a single character that can move and use psi powers. Moving will be with the keyboard (WASD or arrows) and psi powers will be with the mouse. With the psi powers the player can capture one or more enemy units (a circular are which will be where the posession will happen). The captured units will move towards the mouse cursor and shoot rapidly. These bullets will not harm the player but will harm other non-controlled enemy units. So in essence, you use your awesome psi powers to make the enemies shoot each other. No idea how well this idea holds up, but lets see..