Somehow I’ve gone from feeling like I’d barely started to being ‘finished’ in a couple of hours.
My entry is posted here. I like the core concept so I’m planning on doing more work on it after the competition to polish and add the missing features I’d like to have added.
I have a timelapse recorded but it’s taking a long time to convert and there is work in the morning. Will upload tomorrow. 
I got to Iteration 3 by scrapping some of the art and animations I had planned for Iteration 2. Those story points go back into the backlog.
Iteration 3 was a bear. It was where a lot of the advanced AI had to be implemented. I’ve never done A*. Most of my AI was very simplistic, which went with the simplistic games I’ve done before. This game was going to be different.
Or at least I hoped it would. Entities would bumble about, get stuck, and fly off the world map even though I explicitly told them not to!
I had a quick lunch which was easy to make while I continued to work.
Unfortunately, the deadline for the main Ludum Dare compo passed when I finally figured out the A* algorithm (it turned out that there was a greater-than sign when there should have been a less-than sign, which is why the entities were moving so strangely). After the pathfinding, the entities still had to interact.
I had the Hero moving toward targets it sees nearby, although every so often I see that he gets stuck in a certain tile for some reason. Enemies seem to have trouble moving to the Hero like I expect, but they find him soon enough.
But with Iteration 4, they fight!
Do you see how the Hero’s health is down?
That’s the first time it has been like that outside of arbitrary tests being conducted. One of the dragons did that! Good job, my babies!
Since the main compo is over, the only option I have left is to continue on. I can still try to enter the Ludum Dare Jam, which gives me an extra 24 hours before the submission deadline.
For now, though, I’m going to bed. These last 48 hours have been grueling, frustrating, and exciting.
Tags: foodphoto
Here’s a quick timelapse of my development process during LD18. Timelapse Video, LD18 Recycle Defense
Before you all post your fancy lovely timelapses, please be aware of what music you want to use. Now before you go, I don’t have anything good so I’ll just use ‘Ice Kitty and the Purple Tomatoes volume 3’, keep in mind, that not everyone may appreciate that kind of music. So, without further adu, I’d like to make a small suggestion:
http://8bc.org/
Please consider finding some good chipmusic. There is a lot of it free for any use here so don’t be afraid to grab a couple songs, give credits to the artist somewhere, and add it. Have fun.
Heeeeey yooou guuuuys!
My first ludum dare is now over (for me) and here is my submission:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=2365
Things learnt:
I hope you’ll endure the download size and try my game
Tags: inspiration, motivation
Well well done to everyone who participated this LD, I started, and made some great progress but then a friend turned up and wouldnt leave lol. Oh well theres allways next time I suppose.
And instead of going for the game I decided to use my time to make something that can help someone with their own prejcts,
I made a library for loading files from No-Tile Editor, I was going to use it for my project but in the end I only had a few hours, of devtime.
I have a download link on my website:
http://www.antsportfolio.co.uk/?p=427
feel free to use as you see best, good luck to everyone still working.
Im really looking forward to seeeing what people do with this theme.
thanks -Ant
Well, it didn’t work out for me this time. I put in more time than I think I did for any entry, but just ran into too many problems that slowed me down along the way.
The game is ‘Inception of the Borg’. It is about how the Borg came to be. You play the AI program that eventually becomes the Borg. It is a kind of piracy in space. Your ship is an assembly of modules, CommandModule, ShieldModule, LaserCannonModule, etc. As you defeat other ships, you “assimiliate” their modules, growing and improving your ship. The gameplay was to be similar to Star Control.
I think to get this thing done with my skill level I needed a higher level framework. I should have chosen FlatRedBall over SFML, or at least I should have brought in a physics engine. I might try porting it over to FlatRedBall to see if I can progress further with it.
I leave you exhaused, having suffered 30 hours of futility, with just this intro song and these screenshots. Nooow, muuuust sleeeeep.
Intro Song
http://www.bitjets.com/BorgIntro.mp3
Screenshots
Level design done… it needs tweaks and such, and I’m missing more classes, to be honest, since the game becomes more complex…
Better rules for choosing targets would also help, since the current system doesn’t allow for the player to really be tactical in the game (too many random factors)…
Still, the game is fun, and since it has infinite retries (and one savegame, so even if you quit you can resume where you dropped off), it let’s you try different approaches…
I’ll ask people to stick to it, since the end cutscene has a twist! Yep, I’m a regular Shyamalan… “What a twist!”
Anyway, screenshot of level 6 in full swing:
Time to add sound and music to the game, still have almost 3 hours for that… and try this in Release mode (been playing this in Debug build… hope it doesn’t bug out in Release *cross fingers*)…
Time to fire up Sfxr (DrPetter is a god!)…
After working for a bit longer, I’ve got most of the content covered for my game:
There’s also some music. I’m not really much of a musician, but I think it turned out pretty well. Listen to it here!
If you’ve got time, give the test build a play and let me know what you think.
Well, I’m throwing in the towel for LD. Maybe I’ll wrap some stuff up tomorrow so I can at least get it out for the Jam. My problem is that on Friday, I was forced into mowing the lawn after explaining that any time was fine except for this weekend. Then I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning trying to get even a bit done but ended up doing little but working in circles trying to get an idea and later in the night just struggling to stay awake. So I went to sleep for 3 hours, and made painfully little progress on Saturday. I was so tired I decided to just sleep for as long as I was tired and slept from 11 to almost 9. Productivity today skyrocketed, but 14 hours just wasn’t enough to get it all done. I’m so close to being finished, but there’s simply no way for me to squeeze it into 2 hours, especially considering how tired I’m starting to get and how fed up I am with the bizarre bugs I’m getting after making some minor changes to make the enemy templates get read from a moddable external file rather than the hard code. So this is thanks for the motivation to get back working on a game I started a while back and a cruel insult because you stole my sanity yesterday. Oh, how I wish I had just gone to sleep Friday night ;(
Wenemies is as finished as it will ever be in this compo. Perhaps later, when I have more time and less Carpal Tunnel, I will update it.
View the Entry Page, watch a short gameplay video, visit the project’s spartan Website, or watch the Time-Lapse Video.
Evaluation: The idea for the game shaped up during the course of programming. I had wanted to spend an entire night just thinking about the concept, then come up with a better game; my restlessness however took over, and I began coding almost immediately. I’m certain the simpleness of the concept shows this. I also had a long day of fighting in the mix, so my time was limited, especially as I was out of shape and therefore unable to continue that night. In the future, I must clear my weekend entirely. Pygame was a pleasure to work with, especially for a 2-d game such as this, and I will either expand my skills on this for the next compo, or attempt an understanding of Ruby or Scheme. Learning packaging was non-trivial, but necessary, and I have a Windows version available as a result. All in all, I did okay—I could have done better, but I did complete something.
This is the first ever finished game to be written entirely in HAL, the editor / scripting language I’ve been working on for six years. The project really helped me see what I need to do to improve the language and tool, so for that it’s been invaluable. I’m reasonably happy with how quicky I could get new content in with it.
Here’s a screenie, to whet your appetite – would love to get your feedback over on the submission page!
Two hours to go, and I have added background music and eye candy. Still no scoring or enemy bullets.
I really need to work on setting priorities.
Alright, finished up my shmup. My attempts at making music for it failed miserably, so I’ve left it music-less… but the gameplay seems to work well enough, and while still shots look sorta iffy, it looks nice enough in motion.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=1503
Turns out that using full 3d physics and graphics engines for a game with entirely 2d gameplay isn’t worth the added effort… ah well lesson learned.
Good luck to everyone still scrambling for the deadline!
Yep, I’m finished. True to form, I spent half of Saturday writing a toy, then a day and a half buffing it to a needless shine and building up unnecessary cruft around it. Double Bounce is a simple physics puzzle, a sort of mash-up between air hockey, pool, and putt-putt golf. Give it a play and you’ll know what I mean.
Anyway, it’s got rad particle and blending effects, plus easy-to-use tools to let players create, share, and rate levels.
Whee! It's not a bacterium, I swear.
Now, off for some (much-needed) sleep.
Give Double Bounce a play!
Tags: final, screenshot
*Collapses*
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=150
Please read the “Disclaimer” before eating my face off.
Night”
This game was inspired by the “Land of the Dead” movie, where a zombie starts to get smart and command the others against humans. You turn your ENEMIES (people) into WEAPONS (more zombies to help you killing more people).
It was great to learn the JGame engine for Java. It’s a little buggy right now (and those bugs will reflect in my game), but anyway it is a great engine in terms of development speed and ease of use!
Also, it was my first real LD (I’ve submitted an entry to #16 by I prefer to ignore its existence…) and I can say it was a great experience!
