Here’s where the level-gen’s at:
there’s a few problems right now, mainly the generation of ores isn’t very pretty 70% of the time, and I also have yet to make clumps of ore be of the same type
Edit: I forgot the “concept” part!
My game’s title is “Probe”. It is about a little robot that is sent to explore a mysterious alien fortress and runs into hostile machines and even finds usable alien technology. (Meaning Metroid-style upgrades)
There will be two characters: Zoe and Frankie. They will have somewhat different attributes, as is the way I do these things. I’m using Zoe for testing, because, well, I just usually make the female lead before the male. It’s a weird tradition that’s embedded itself into my work habits. It’s kind of like having a playable character of each gender, I guess. Just something I like to do.
Yeah… Um… I didn’t think I’d get this much done this fast. I thought this would take me at least another four hours. But I have what I called in my schedule post a “prototype”.
Or at least the beginnings of one.
What I have, specifically, is:
In, what, 4-5 hours? I’m going to take a break, I think, and hang out in IRC.
Oh, here’s a screenie and a link to my demo on Dropbox.
Isn't she cute?
Currently I’m working on the level format, so I’m shoving that in a readme.txt. I should probably rename that file.
There isn’t any code to load the data just yet and I’m trying to work out the structure that entities should use.
Anyways, while you’re waiting, here’s some music I intend to use.
Choose your next discovery!
Yay, I’ve got sort of an idea. Probably one that lots of other people have 😉
Reach out to the stars, discover new planets, new material and new ways to reach the farther out stars. Lots of pseudo random involved.
It’s 6am, it’s freezing cold, it’s pitch dark, England is caked in snow and the theme of Ludum Dare 19 is <strong>Discovery</strong>.
Discovery is what I was hoping for. I think one of the close runners up, Containment, would probably have led to a more interesting selection of games, but I had a clearer idea of what I’d do for Discovery. I knew if this one ended up being picked, I would have to make something involving randomised content. That’s what makes Spelunky so exciting to play, and that’s probably the greatest game about discovery I’ve ever played.
Unfortunately I’m not Derek Yu, and I only have 42 hours, and I’m wasting time writing a blog. So my game will be a little less ambitious.
To fit the theme, I feel like the pleasure of the game has to have something to do with the discovering. And the only thing gamers truly and instinctively care about is stuff that benefits them in the game. So not only does it have to be the content rather than just the scenery that is randomised, the unique elements of that content have to feed back into character progression in some way.
My plan currently is for something top down, where you direct your character – probably a robot – around a large landscape with the mouse, encountering enemies with randomised stats. Destroying them will let you salvage some of their traits, so a very tough enemy would boost your hitpoints when you destroy it.
Someone joked that everyone should not only have to stick to the chosen theme, but also combine it with Christmas. So if I can draw it in any meaningful way, I’ll set my game in the snow.
Uncle Flyboy needs you! To submit names! Together we can beat the reds! Etcetera!
You can watch the war effort here!
You can mourn for your fallen comrades over here!
GET TO IT SOLDIER!
Here is our Airship, cruising out over the ocean, looking for something to discover…
Not real impressed with the theme.
Oh well, a few minutes sketching out an idea before bed, and a first screenshot.
I’m gonna be doing something 3d involving deep sea exploration (or, discovery, that is….). Here’s a shot of the fog effects and such on some crappy brown seafloor (it looks better in motion with the animated caustic-y effect…).
It’s a pretty big step up from solid boxes. Ground texture isn’t final, and will probably be changed. The blue circle thing is a bomb placed by the player.
Gems have a 1/10 chance of appearing when blowing up a block. This will definitely change, since luck is no fun.
End of day 1 I suppose.
Resting already? Yeah. Doesn’t look like much, but here’s what I got:
Starting to tile
What we have here is one isometric tile being, um, tiled in an HTML canvas element. Now I rest and dream of discovery.
Just woke up and it’s time to get working. The first cup of coffee has already been drank and I have an idea on what to do.
I think I’ll flesh the idea out a bit first before talking about it incase I decide its a crap idea and moving on to something else. The concept needs to be simple so I can make it with my limited knowlege.
Okay, lets do this!
LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDDDDDDDDDDDDDDUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE!!
kay, discovery, hmm…
The sun is slowly starting to shine, and I’m here with an updated screenshot.
Still 90% of the time left and feeling confident.
Needing sleep pretty hard over here, but so far things are looking much better than they usually do at 5 hours in.
Doesn't look like much, I know.
The slightly-unusual control scheme is working and (I think) kind of fun, I can now load up levels made in Tiled, Collision handling seems solid (for once), the little guy’s animations change to reflect important state changes… I’m feeling good about this Ludum Dare!
This is my 1st LD, and I’m just so excited about it. I spent about 5 hours to get an good idea for the theme.
The name of the game will be “Land of Discovery”, and the concept is:
I’ll use unity as my game engine, but my 3d modeling skill is almost ZERO… So I think the game world will end up with plenty of primitives.
After enjoying a tasty breakfast outside i got an interesting idea for the game. I’ll have to begin to test out if it’s acually functional and playable.
5 1/2 hours in, I’ve managed to get the game to read this file…
And import it into the game like so:
Still having a bit of trouble rendering the tiles though, but I should have that fixed in the next few hours.
Next up, “chests” 😀
Edit: Who would have thought that changing one letter would fix all of the problems 😀
From:
for (int x = (int)tl.X; x <= tr.Y; x++)
To:
for (int x = (int)tl.X; x <= tr.X; x++)
Can relax now 😛
Here’s a screen shot of me messing around in the engine. The character sprite is done; the blocks will change. A bit later ill describe the game concept 😛
Movement feels quite smooth for how fast I did made this. Doing quite well; hope everyone else is!
Managed to create a random treasure spawner. It has:
– An GameObject array to throw in different types of treasure.
– A public int for changing how many treasures spawn.
– A public float for changing the min allowed distance between treasures (works good enough)
– A Vector 2 for changing the allowable spawning square.
To Create:
Only have one treasure type at the moment, but when I put in more it will randomize how many of each is distributed.
If I decide to make the game point based I’ll tighten the hold on the spawner so there is a set amount of each type, this will prevent someone from getting lucky and only getting high valued treasures.