This is my first Ludum Dare and I only decided to participate a few hours ago, so this is a 24 hour challenge for me. I am working in Game Maker 8 and am making a submarine exploration game. So far I have got my submarine moving around in an empty ocean. Let’s see what I can do with this over the next 16 hours.

Finally settled on a name for the game, Discoverer. Has a nice ring to it 😀

Progressing along nicely, finally fixed the problem where projectiles were missing the players bounding box. Have decided that the player must fight a boss in order to get the key that allows them to “finish the game, and find out the secret” 😀

Back to coding!

I am currently polishing my game – Deep Space). Game is inspired by asteroid shooters and is about searching for ancient alien parts. Of course, there are alien bots left on the field!

I’m live again!

I just implemented pickups and messages, which should allow me to get some sort of story progression into the game. Next big goal: enemies.

Tags: foodphoto

Here’s a preview version, I’d be glad for some feedback. It’s quite playable, there is no win condition for now though. Download from here.

After 24hours of been working in the LD I got something I don’t mind calling the final version.

Although being a small story, I proud of the end result. Much more than I expected 24 hours ago. 😛

I could do a lot of improvements in the remaining time, but I’m already too tired, and I’m needing some rest.

Loved the experience. Hope to be able to participate in the next LDs.

You can find the latest version in here!

It’s taking more time than I had imagined, but I seem to be approaching the end.
Still no title for the game, but the gameplay is 95% done. Then it’s time for art and detail!

I’ve worked in a bit of xenoarchaeology and have some interesting subplots near the end of the game… now I just have to make sure everything leading up to it is engaging enough to keep people playing.

Good morning Ludum Dare!

I slept for 5+ hours, and I feel better than at the beginning, when I woke up at 3 AM :). It’s 11 AM here now, what I would call a decent time to wake up!

I just noticed I forgot to make some bread yesterday evening, so I quickly put all the ingredients in the machine (to be continued):

So, to still have a quick breakfast, I baked two eggs. I hope it will be sufficient while waiting for the bread.

And… I think I have some more nice ideas for the art style. Sleeping isn’t to bad after all during a Ludum Dare…

Zoomed out! Click for more detail

Can now actually win and lose levels!  Added a cheap-ass main menu with level select.

I’ll have a few hours tomorrow morning to somehow magically tweak gameplay to be more fun, do music, add more baddies.  (Design calls for three, only  have one, and I’m just using a tinted hero sprite at that!)

Want went right today:

• Whipped out really cool random level generation algo, it guarantees that each part of the building is accessible.  Really, I guess I made sort of a side-view maze generator.
• Added zoom settings per level – The screenshot above is zoomed way out.. I might leave a level like that just for fun, even though it’s hard to play that way.  An unexpected consequence of zooming out is it sort of minimizes the bad artwork.
• Main menu works, took a detour to make it all keyboard controllable so you don’t have to keep switching back to the mouse.  It’s the little things. Plus, this is going to be a Proton SDK sample eventually so I want its code to be usefully copyable

What went wrong:

• Bad art is bad
• Original design wasn’t much fun, dumped half of it.. better, but it still not there
• Behind schedule..  feeling bad that I skipped weekend ultimate frisbee with Cosmo (my kid) for like the first time in a year.. you’re a cruel master, LD.
• Still have no real cosmetic theme or name to tie everything together.  it’s just so generic and I HATE generic.  Dream self, please figure this out during tonight’s repose
• Connection to the “Discovery” theme feels weak

Elements of action games are added.

A in-dev flash in it’s natural environment of code windows

Also, a suggestion for everyone having a bit of spare money: Listening to the awesome chiptune of the BIT.TRIP SOUNDTRACKS Hint: this is 5 seperate links makes motivation skyorcket. But you can also use Reach for the Stars as shown above though Crush40 is still better or any music you like. Music is awesome when coding.

So I’m now deep in art land as well as front end flow county, as I just realised how many screens I’m going to need, hopefully it’ll all be in there in the end, maybe these mousse’s will help me keep going

I also woke up a bit late today which I’m not happy about but then I did go to bed late.

Only another 15 hours to go!

Tags: food

~Code monkey get up get coffee, code monkey go to job~

I woke up at around 7AM, grabbed a cup of coffee and immediately got to work on adding the limited sight.
Even though its quite ugly it only took around 10 mins to think up and implement, it also worked first try too which saved me some time.

Since then I’ve had breakfast, squashed some bugs and added a limited number of lives. Now it’s time to start the GUI and menu screens. Once I have that sorted it will be time to add more gameplay to my game.

Everyones games are looking really good! I can’t wait to try them out.

Really, Who does?  I guess that could be the LD20 theme, but it’s not.

2AM and I have other ships in space with me!  and I can shoot them!

The plan for LD19 submission is to get Empires working, have them spawn Ships, then troll around and try to conquer planets.  You will be doing the same.  I was going to have resources and such, but right now, you will discover empires…AND CRUSH THEM

Also, I realized there are like 10 other games named Space Empires, so imma need a new name for this game.

Now, I go to bed and get some real sleep.  I’ll be pushing the time limit to get Empires working and AI, but I think I can do it.

For a game not called probe…

Showing off some gear…

Crappy lowbie probe.

Beefy manly probe with fancy UI widgets!

Play it here

Each planet will now randomly spawn money, enemies or allow you to mine it.

There is a mining bar at the bottom. The amount you can mine depends on how big the planet is.

There are random spawn points throughout the world. Planets and generic spawn points will no longer appear right next to the hub.

Planet and spawn points will be randomly reset when you visit the hub. Your health will be recharged at the hub when you enter it. You can choose to sell your mined Carbon for money at the hub.

…Still can’t die yet though… I should put that in at some point.

Controls:

Mouse to Move, Click to Fire.

Press P to Pause/Unpause.

Press Space to Enter Hub/Exit Hub/Mine Planets

Click “Sell Carbon” to Sell Mined Resources (On Hub Menu)

http://sarah.draknek.org/Games/CompactDiscovery/

Well, this is a good foundation, at least. I’ll still need to change a lot of things, and add millions of stuff.

I’ve managed to be busy then uninspired, and spent most of yesterday discovering that FlashDevelop wasn’t working, and reinstalling that and Flex. So, I have very little of what could be considered a game:

The latest version looks like this, except the #s are replaced by text loaded from a file.

My eventual idea,thought of in the shower, is something a bit like a cross between a roguelike and Infinite Blank. So, a potentially infinite set of roguelike rooms, created and edited by players. This is quite blatantly well beyond what I can achieve before the end of his compo, but oh well!

Tags: screenshot