The basic mechanics of my game engine are done! Built from the ground up 24 hours is about as fast as I’ve ever managed to do something like that.

There’s been some things pulling my attention off working, proving that no weekend is ever perfect and distraction free.  However, the latest demo is starting to show signs that the game is actually turning into a game!

Play the latest Demo

If things go well, it looks like I’m in for an over-night shift if at all possilbe (if I don’t get too tired) and maybe catching a nap early afternoon tomorrow before finishing up.  I have a couple of features left to add and a LOT of content to make before I’m happy, but the game feels playable.

Quick reminder that I’m livestreaming my whole thing Here

Mechanics Functional

Not much new stuff to show. Made some mode graphics and more level design

Enemies are now ready for battle (although there’s no real battle yet). They get stronger as you venture to the depths of the map

FPS is a little low, but it doesn’t seem to affect the game so far

Tags: 7Soul

Well, today certainly hasn’t been plain sailing. I struggled with the theme, I struggled with the phyics, and I’ve struggled all sorts of other miscellany too. I’d planned to be sunk deep into level design by now, but instead I’m only just about ready to begin that step. Today has been a looong day, and tommorow kind of looks set to feel even longer.

Not sure how/if this is all going to come together, I’ve bitten off a lot, tomorrow will tell if I can chew it. Ah well, hanging around with the Cambridge crowd is making it sociable and fun, so never mind

A great deal of the stuff I’ve been doing has been under the hood, rather than over, so I don’t have as much to show as I’d like yet. This should be a *small* taste of what I’ve been up to though:

Well, we are now halfway through the competition, and…. it seems that I still have a great deal of the engine left to build, as well as tile sets, but oh well…

Aaaaanyway, I’m going to take a break for a bit, and run with it….

I decided on a mix between Dig-Dug and Zelda… which means that I might want some decent puzzles…

I got the basics of ship behavior working. The friendly ships now travel along specified routes, and pick their destinations based on the availability of supplies. (Another new addition, the bar along the bottom of the screen, indicates the supplies remaining in the player ship.)

All sailors navigating the ocean without a barrel full of apples are in grave danger of developing scurvy

As an aside, there are now visible blocks on ships which are carrying cargo.

The next thing to do is set up some UI for building and creating routes. I’m going to try setting up all the build commands without complicating the controls. I’m currently leaning toward doing it all using only picking up and placing items. For instance, a new route can be created by going to a hub island, picking up a flag, and dropping it off on the destination island.

So wow, that was close.

My game relies on audio quite deeply, and I am using openframeworks, an engine that I have used before a few times. I have only used it on iPhone though, where I always do my own synthesis. It turns out that part of openframeworks might have a memory leak in it on osx though. yurgh!

I was only using the leaky part for timing though, so I just switched over to getting the synth timing from the display refresh. Not too terrible, I just wish I hadn’t wasted a few hour trying to track down my crashing issues.

So close to having the level loop in place, then 12 hours tomorrow to build content. Yip Yip!

Game design: OK

Map generation: OK

Allies moving Engine: OK

It’s time to sleep some hours before beginning Enemies IA   !!!!

Good night 😀

Trying to make water work. it’s not doing so great. Here’s how it’s going to work:

• If there is an empty space below water it will fill up that space
• if there is a block below the water and space available on the sides, it fill flood up those sides
• Only downwards and vertical movement, in a way that makes underground rivers, not lakes.
• Water will probably instantly kill you, as a result you’ll have to make sure ore doesn’t fall in.
• Ores float in water; temptation

oh, and I also made the darkstone more beveled.

Once Water’s working I need to make it be dangerous, I’m still not sure whether to do insta-death or oxygen bar.

I’m also changing the game, whereas before it was going to be some sandbox thing; I don’t have enough time to do that. So your goal will be to collect a certain % of ore before time runs out (getting the same ore in a row gets you more points), and return to the surface with them. After water I’ll add enemies or something. maybe some details like trees and tree roots.

Well, day 1 didn’t go so well. I got frustrated pretty quickly with using Java/Slick and libGDX together, so I pretty much moved right on to something I’ve been wanting to play with forever… Flixel and/or FlashPunk. After spending most of yesterday learning all of what it is capable of and doing some tests, I finally got a great idea today for what I wanted to do, and so I’m just starting… officially. Here’s my tileset that I’m currently playing with… makes me feel like I’m actually moving forward finally.

Worked out most of the basic tiles needed for the outside area. Wanted to make sure I didn’t limit myself on the road/sidewalk/building sizes, shapes, and directions, and I feel that I’ve covered all the possibilities that I need at the moment. Now to get it loading in the engine.

Just a screenshot from my tile mapping program.

What sort of game is this, anyway?

No not my thirst…

Here’s some screenshots of my game for this LD : Thirst.

Basically, you’re a pilot whose plane just crashed in a desert. So you have to explore it to discover some water and survive a little bit longer, and who knows, maybe you’ll find an oasis or a village that will save you ?

Ok, now I’ll have to draw (or at least try)  a real character to replace that ugly face, and add an end to the game. But first things first, let’s eat !

I wasn’t really intending to enter this weekend, but since getting snowed in it seemed a better idea. So this is both my declaration of intent and half-time update.

I really didn’t want to do something obvious with the theme, so have settled on something… a bit odd. In theory it’s some sort of RPG training school sim. You must DISCOVER the potential among fifty eager youngsters to finally settle on a team of five to take on the Demon Lord and save the land (naturally). If I get around to coding that bit. Needs a lot of work to actually be a game of some form.

Here’s the latest build of Introspect.

No time for talk!  On to phase 2!

I won’t be to bed for another many hours (it’s 8pm-ish here) but since this is the official 24hr mark, I’ll put up a screenie:

So far I have a halfway-decent tile engine and an in-engine map editor for it.  No Animation, Music, Sounds, or Scripting yet.  Hoo-boy.  Tile art is not final.

I’ve added sound, added a new enemy (a floating eye that can travel through walls and fires webs at you to slow you down and block your path. In other words, the total opposite of the ghost which chases you down and tears apart any walls in it’s way) It might make more sense as a spider, I’ll redo the graphics if I have time) and a general polish.

It’s currently 2 in the morning and I’m not sure if I should crack open another Relentless and crack on or get some sleep.

This is totally going to happen.

The theme is quite a challenge for me. Too open ended. Also I have a problem with spending too much energy on building worlds and not enough on gameplay, so this really reinforces that.

So I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to do gameplay-wise. But I’ve got the start of a landscape making thing going. We’ll see what happens, there’s still half the contest left..

I wanted to make a knight model, but the result is a spaceman…

This is my first time attending LD and it is going surprisingly well. I’m writing my game using FlashPunk. I uploaded a time lapse video to YouTube but since processing it is slow I can’t show it yet.

Test here.

There’s still a lot to do, but now I have to get some sleep.

I’ve just replaced the green square player character with an animated green guy. It’s a terrible sprite but I can do a better one tomorrow after a good nights sleep.