Making steady progress. It’s now possible to type words to get rid of the creatures on the screen.

The good news is that my wife likes the game. That _never_ happens, so I’m taking it as a good omen that I’m doing something right.

But here’s a working part …

play it here: http://www.seenfoony.com/LD19/

So, I’ve finally nailed the way the game handles the storing of “keys”.

Hurrah! A UI!

The game is 95% playable. You should be able to complete the first arm (The north facing one). I’m going to improve upon the map generator (It really sucks at the moment), fix up some tiles, and complete the remaining arms. And then do the “final battle” stuff.

Also, I’ll stick in a backstory so there is a motive to actually play the game too 😀

If you want’s to give it a try, you can download it from here.

Keys:

WASD – Move

E – Action Key

R – Reload

LMB – Shoot

Right, I now what I’m doing now instead of making random changes to the code. I just dare not look at the code I have produced in my sleep deprived state!

I’m going to change the way player digging works so that you can dig by bumping into the terrain and I will also improve the way the ghost stunner handles. Then I’ll add random items to the shop. I think I might also change the player characteer back into a green square. My attempt at spriting was terrible. :/

Here’s a nice early version for you to test out.

http://www.jonathanedgecombe.com/LD19/

I sized down the level as it went slooooooow… and took ages to load.

Time to get some sleep. It is hard to believe I started this roughly 12 hours ago, slowww progress.  I have most of the hard stuff working, stupid quaternions, now all I need to do is get the overall gameLoop running and then it will be on to polishing sounds and graphics if time permits.  I was going to do level design by hand but have decided the rooms can be generated based on a template with different solutions per room, the gameLoop will have a rank that gradually escalates difficulty as the player successfully travels outward.  There will be enemies.

Preparing the game to insert textures (my photo camera is charging, so I can’t take pictures for textures at the moment).

So day two is firmly underway, and, whilst I wouldn’t say I was doing badly as such I still have one hell of a lot to do. Panic is starting to set in, but that’s fine, panic keeps you sharp, right?

14 hrs to go, and I still need to do most of the level design, add instructions, tweak and fix loads of stuff, add sound, add music, add a goal and y’know, actually finish the damn thing.

Better get back to it I guess, I’ll leave you with a (probably rather confusing) preview build, controls are directions and space (to pick things up).

I have added even more stuff and friendly interface but the game it still pointless, the level generator is on the way. I better hurry up.
Here’s a screenshot:

Try it Here.

Time for a small (gameplay-less) demo before bed:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1911947/hakken0.1.zip

Make sure to read the README!  Enjoy!

(P.S. Windows only for now, sorry.)

Discover19

Let’s see how many platforms you can dodge until you are bored enough

W/Up: Jump
S/Down: Slide
A/Left: Play random beeps

Am I the only one who’s having audio lag? Try hitting A and tell me if it plays at the same time.

To Do:
– fix glitch: run off a platform and jump again in midair
– fix platform generation
– Score
– Discoveries (new abilities – in the final version you won’t be able to slide from the start)
– an ending
– if enough time is left, boss

13 Hours left, will I be unlucky? Who knows. What I do know is that I have been working for 2 hours since I woke up and I just took a break to watch Heston’s Perfect Christmas. Now I’m back to mapping out the space station for my entry, I’ve drawn out a bunch of stuff and I’m currently masking the tourist complex. I have maybe 4 or 5 item’s left on my list. It doesn’t look like my space station is going to be as huge as I would like, but it will take a good few minutes to explore and look around which is all I could hope for anyway (I don’t expect to win, I just wanted to make something).

For now, good luck!

i was actually kinda discouraged yesterday evening, having only less than 20 % of the planned code and hardly anything else. so i decided to stay awake and started doodling…and here’s the ingame result! (without bgr of course). having this even made me continue coding, and that’s a nice feeling you get when you see stuff work

I overslept, thats 3 hours less than i would have had. I need to summon some speed!
LETS DO THIS.

Game will no longer use a sprite to represent the player, it takes too long to implement.

Expect a puzzle game about finding patterns. It won’t be glorious, but it’s not bad for a first game programmed in old fashioned C using SDL.

Despite not being where I wanted to be at this point in time, I have some code down which is in some desperate need of some polish. Hopefully I’ll be able to add some proper gameplay before the deadline.

Ever so slightly dated screenshot

If anyone would like to play a little they can do so here:

Arrow Keys to move;

Hold keys 1 + 2 and tap enter to crumble weak walls nearby.

http://owl.im/ld19/

I finished off all the tweaking, fixed the bug with Safari and submitted my entry.

http://ur.ly/A3AY

Due to work getting in the way I’ve had to finish and submit my entry early; read more on the submission page!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=1886

Which is to say: not graphics or content complete. So brace yourself for a painfully similar screenshot:

But the two tiny changes you do see represent pretty much everything else I needed to get done for the game to make sense: you can now scan enemies when they’re not looking to steal the details of their weapons, then use that info to rebuild their guns, shields and engines when they’re dead.

I’m happy I’ve got to this point, but there’s a lot more to do. I have a choice of a few fairly major areas to work on, and I’ll list them in my current priority order:

• Player guidance: Even in an ultra quick experimental game I don’t think this step is remotely skippable. If I don’t get a few basic tutorial messages in to explain how to play the game, no amount of readmes will ever make up for it.
• Balance: Bots of random strength spawn in random positions. So that kinda sucks. I just need a few lines of code to make weaker ones spawn near the player, tougher ones further away, and to make certain configurations excitingly rare. This’ll have a big effect on how much fun it is to play.
• Environment: I’d like to add water around the edges to make this an island, and possibly a fortress wall at the top.
• Objective: Right now there’s no long term objective. Ideally I’d like to have you scanning and stealing parts until you’re strong enough to assualt a fortified wall to the north and escape.
• Graphics: I must at least make some proper plasma blasts, and ideally add explosion effects and a better player bot. I also need to take one more go at making snow look less awful – I’d like to make it grainy and randomise the ‘dunes’ a bit.
• Extra feature: scale. I’d really like to have double- and half-size bots roaming around, with accordingly different toughness and speed.

The reason graphics is so low is that the time it takes is such a wildcard – sometimes I get something bad right away, other times it takes me hours to make something bad.

Let me know if you think my priority order is nuts.

Current title idea: Scanno Domini. Other scan puns welcome.

I’ve changed the level flow a bit. Before you could keep getting gems after you unlocked the stairs, allowing a decent player to keep farming the same level for ages, which isn’t what I want to encourage because it’s dull. So now I’ve changes things up a bit. When you get enough gems to clear the level, all the remaining gems are turned into gold, which gives the player an instant cash boost when collected! However, unlike gems you cannot take them back to the portal to exocise the ghosts, so you have to balance the extra income with the need to flee before you are killed by the ghosts.

I’ve also updated the shop.