So, this is what i have got:

There are also trees. My idea is that you are a wee kiddo lost in the streets tryin to find your way home. So you go aroud asking people what to do. Yeah… Bed-time now.

I only woke up a couple of hours ago, so here’s a post just outlining my tools and initial thoughts.

I’ll be using Flash for the game, AS3 this time rather than AS2 which I usually use. I’ve started using AS3 alot at work and I feel fairly confident I can make a game using it, either way, this will be a good experience.

Photoshop for the graphics, I imagine, I’ll probably stick to my standard simple pixel art style. SFXR for sounds and I might even try playing with a music tracker to make some music, who knows.

The theme is interesting, initially I groaned when I read it, but now I’ve got a fairly good idea and I’m pretty excited to see how it works.

Good luck all!

Scrambled eggs for breakfast, but still no good ideas. Had one idea about a kid sent to bed by its mother, but after the lights go out, the kid discovers the house at night. Platformer. Silhouettes only, one-color background, only eyes of protagonist and enemies visible. End boss: silhouette of mother, looking more like a tyranno, but if the boss has been beaten, the light turn on again the kid is sent to bed again.

It’s too much work and I don’t think I’d be able to code a working final boss from scratch with the framework I wanna work with. For the next LD I guess I’m gonna re-learn using flash 😛

Hi there!

My name is Christiaan Janssen, you might remember me from GunFu Deadlands, a game I did one year ago in Löve2D.

I’ve decided to give it a try and enter Ludum Dare 19, in the “Jam” category. I am right now at Cafe Osswald in Berlin, in the context of the Berlin Game Developers Meet-Up.

For the LD game, I plan to use HTML5/Canvas. Probably GIMP for the graphics, and the audio… not yet decided. I’d like to just use SXFR if I find a port of it to Linux.

…and  I have basic functionality with a couple of the core features. It took me longer than I expected to come up with the initial idea, but once it came to me I started steam rolling though it. You control the little ship and currently your main goal is to uncover the whole map (which is procedurally generated) which is represent by the yellow bar/percentage. I’m think of changing this though, because this could become very tedious; theres 30000 tiles in a world to uncover. You can also colonize big islands which I was planning on having generate more supply for you, which is what keeps you floatings. No supplies=game over. Still working in other features as i go along. But now, I must get a few hours of sleep!

Tags: colony, discovery, island, ocean, pgc, sailing, ship

more than 13 hours has passed and all I had done are some sprites and the level generation.

If 5 hours before the deadline I had nothing submitable, I’m making myself a joke entry

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 18th, 2010 at 8:11 am and is filed under LD #19 - Discovery - 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Already got a good idea for the theme, going to start after breakfast.

Heres the tools im going to be using:

• Programming/Code: Javascript – gVim
• Graphics: Paint Shop Pro 8 & Paint
• Sound/Music: sfxr & ACID Xpress 7

So I am thinking of calling this game Fog of War.  Basically, it’s supposed to be a turned based puzzle/strategy game.  The objective is to collect all the gold in the level while protecting your castle, but revealing a cave also reveals a monster.  Clicking on a faded tile reveals that tile and the surrounding tiles are revealed (but faded).  Clicking a tree gives you the trees, clicking on grass uses a tree to make a fortto block against the monsters.  Going pretty well.  It’s mostly functional, except the monsters don’t walk smartly yet.

Oh, it turns out there is.  I’ve just found these instructions via google, in case anyone is interested.  It worked just fine for me:

DrPetter’s SFXR with Ubuntu

I woke up three hours ago. First thing I did: start the computer and wait for the LD page to reload. Then I saw: DISCOVERY !  I decided to make the title screen and kind of a soundtrack (but really short) because I was a inspired, but I had no idea what for a game I could make. So here’s the title screen:

I’m gonna start coding now. I just compiled the latest wxWidgets library.

Got my gameplay concept for my game worked out.  The game is called Disco?Very!

Got the first still frame sprite done.  I’ll need to make several animation frames for the different dance moves.

I also have part of the music track done.  I have it looping correctly in FlashPunk, and confirmed with some tests that I can sync movement to the music.  That was something I was concerned about.

4:30 a.m. here, so I should probably think about sleeping.

Tags: Disco

No screenshot, just telling the void that I’ve got a moving player character now. Still can’t make them not spawn into solid rock right now however. Will need to dig out a little room for them and then give the player the ability to mine.

Thought I had a good idea but after taking a nap in the chair it has evolved into something else.  Still based around the same idea of using board game style play but instead of being story based it will now be more of a continuous puzzle game with a scoring system rather than collecting stuff

Yeah, it is a little late looking at the contest start but it is morning here. So it’s a damn good time! Ideas are starting to appear, I’ll post once I have decided the path to follow.

Here is a photo of my base of operations:

The guy there is bmfs. We gathered to participate in LD#19

Good luck to everyone!

Well, after a good night of sleep I’m ready to start. The first 9 hours where used to search in my dreamland for ideas to bring to life in this LD.

Me and my buddy jrrt, joined in Coimbra, Portugal to (try to ) develop some mad awesome games in this, which is our first, LD #19.

He should have posted by now  a photo of our workspace.

Let’s get started! Go! Go!

Well, I’ve got elevators up the yang.  I did some character “art” for walking and climbing ladders.  Yeah, that’s a walk frame above, what the heck ??

Maybe I can somehow explain the weird visuals by adding a story element about the main character having to deal with a deformity and back problems.  See, that’s how real gamedev works, kids.

The apartment building is randomly generated and I’m looking forward to trying some big ones with dead ends, enemies, and treasures.

Still have too much to do at this point to feel anything but iffy, but after adding some sfx it at least “feels” pretty good to run around the level.  When the character walks there is this donkey-kong like sound effect.

Thanks, sfxr!

Quitting for the night, will be back in irc bright and early to try to turn this into something.  (I’m SethR in #ludumdare)

Slow progress here. Strange men showed up two hours ago to start drilling holes in my house. Cavity wall insulation apparently. It is currently VERY noisy. Making progress toward something playable though. Just not as fast as I’d like.

Steve out.

I missed the first 7 hours simply because I didn’t remember that Ludum Dare was happening this weekend. No worries, though. A couple of hours later I finally have an idea that has a small chance of actually being fun to play. I guess I ought to sleep now, it being well past 4 am and all.

Nothing like sandwich to fuel the brain. MMMMMMMMMM

…and I’ve been struck by a tremendous idea for a Discovery game. Its name shall be “Profit!”

No time to write — more to come after I attempt to create some kind of framework for this thing… ->

Wel I just woke up and had breakfast. I catched the flu the last days, so I wasnt at all sure if i would enter.

but at breakfast I had an idea which feels good. you’re playing some kind of drone which has to find its destination  with something like a sonar. I’m not hundred percent sure if it will be just audible ping or some graphical clue as well. It just has to be tricky enough to find the target, which could be moving aswell, ideas pop in by the minute i will note them and see what i can implement in time and considering my health.

Anyways I wish everyone a nice compo, feels good to be back again.

For now I will start coding, to get my drone up and flying hope to be back with some screens soon.

And for the tools I didnt take time to do a proper announcement:

code: javascript+canvas

gfx: gimp, inkscape, pixie?

sfx:  sfxr, flstudio

While i was getting some more food to ease my hunger it struck me, now i know what i’ll be doing for the compo. If i manage to get everything inside the game it will have 3 different types of discovery! (omgnoway!) Discovering the environment, discovering new abilities and a big plot discovery in the end. I really hope i can build in everything haha.

mm noodles.

Ok, this was my breakfast

Here are my notes so far:

and here is a screenshot:

The player, tiles placement and gameplay code is from my basecode, that I will throw out soon. The only thing that I’ve made so far is a tilemap, but I figured that it’s more fun to show a screen

The tech so far is flex, flashdevelop, flixel & paint.net. I expect to be expanding it with hg, sfxr and audacity before the end of the day.

Tags: foodphoyo, notes, screenshot

Poorly hacked player mining into something that vaugly works. Time for cake. Also, I should be twittering as I go but I forgot. Sorry.

it’s like 5am so i’m going to sleep  here’s the livestream i took from day1 (Friday) it look to a little to get it all setup.. I’ll probably adjust it a tad for tomorrow so it’s a bit slower

it’s like 5am so i’m going to sleep  here’s the livestream i took from day1 (Friday) it look to a little to get it all setup.. I’ll probably adjust it a tad for tomorrow so it’s a bit slower

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nOOhfVjYY0

Just got back from a driving theory test (failed, messed up on hazard perception) and am ready to start the competition. My idea at the moment is that you are an android scientist working for a space colonization company, and have a limited amount of time to explore each planet your company wishes to colonise and discover resources, lifeforms, archaeological finds etc. What you find will have a bearing on what type of colony the planet is changed into. There might be some kind of meta game a bit like sim city where you have to keep your populace happy based on the types of planets you create but that will be made depending on the time I have left.

…and get rich!

Brainstorming notes:

And some mockups:

Tags: brainstorm, mockup

Just yesterday I’ve been told about all this Ludum Dare thing, and today while drinking my morning coffee, my friend reminded me about. And I thought I’ll give it a try – although I have completely no idea what game to make or how to write games at all, for that matter. It will be fun. For me, at least. Probably.

Hey all, this is my first Ludum Dare so forgive me if I am doing something dumb or incorrect.

I started late but I got the fundamental idea for my project, which is tentatively called “Probe”.  It’s an idea I had months ago, and so it’ll be nice to try and get it done.

I have randomly generated dungeons working, you can walk through it here:
http://www.blacktriangles.com/wp/personal/discovery-v0/

It’s very rough, without textures or lighting. (Well it has ONE light but that’s just for dev purposes). It may not actually remain first person (time permitting).

Description is on my personal blog, but here’s the skinny:
The basic idea is a deep space exploration vessel malfunctions and crash lands on a planet. Using it’s extensive on board fabrication systems it builds a small robot to collect resources on the alien planet in order to repair itself. The robot quickly learns that there are hostile environments and life on the planet, and so must choose whether to spend resources on repairing the mother ship ( to complete the game ) or upgrade the probe to make it faster, stronger, and more capable to collect resources.

In my wild dreams half the fun is exploring beautiful randomly generated planets, ice and forersts and deserts – for ludum dare we will be lucky if i get textures X-D

Next up: movement and collection.

Using:
Unity
Sketchup
Paint.NET
Grooveshark

Made in under 3 hours, with a break of 1 hour total, I have came that far.
Yep the art here looks cartoony, and do not attend to go realistic graphics here.

Update… The camera should now be more or less final.

I’m a bit behind on schedule, as I had to make the walls flat (they’re double-sided planes now). This simplified a few things, and made better vertex lighting possible (the default plane in Unity has 100 vertices, while the default box only has 4 vertices).

I’ll still have to change the lighting, but not before I’ve done something with the materials of the walls and floors.

Next I’ll implement the sliding of the maze.

But first… pizza!

Dunno how many posts I should spam during this thing, but I’ll start with this one.

Stayed up just long enough last night to see the theme, slept for 8 hours, and now I’m back with my (alleged) plan.I looked over a couple posts to see if anybody was doing the exact same game and I don’t see it yet.

blah blah gotta remember I’m on a 48 hour limit (much less, now) so just gonna blaze down the description if I can here.

Thinking it will involve the adventures of the starship “Discoverer Five” and its single crewman, a professional space prospector. The game begins by exploring various exotic space rocks and looking for valuable minerals. Everything changes when the player discovers… something?

That’s all I got so far. Gotta do a little bit of last-second waffling on the details of visual style and which libraries to use. Gonna give myself maybe 30 minutes of “design time” before the first code hits the editor.

So this is my first ever Ludum Dare, I’m excited and nervous and looking forward to getting my code on. I already have a pretty firm idea on what I want to do, it’s pretty damn simple but that suits me because I don’t have huge amounts of time to be doing anything really complex. So the theme is discovery, a pretty cool theme so I think I am going to go with a down right simple exploration game, where all you do is walk around. It’s going to be set in a space station, but not something like the ISS, it will be a great big sprawling space station with lots of places to explore. I’m going to be using a crazy masking pixel type thing I just thought of and the player will be a pixel moving around the map, the idea just came to me. I’ll get coding and then I’ll have more to show, I just woke up!

I’ve gone straight through the “prototype” phase I talked about in my schedule post, and am now implementing a baddie. Holy frak this is going quickly. I’m sorry to emphasize it so much, but I’ve not gotten this much done this quickly in a very long time.

The only baddie I have sprites for right now is a big tank-robot that ended up looking kind of like an octorok from Legend of Zelda but as an alien robot. I’ve not added it to the game, but that’ll be in there.

I’ll post another demo when there are things to kill!

Peace

— Mr. Dude

After being VERY ill when I woke, I’ve taken some painkillers and drunk some tea, and I’m just about able to compete! Few!

Took a while to find some ideas, but I’m going for a game about lots of buttons and a complete nutter. Do you think that could be fun? 😀

Why has everyone gone for RPG/dungeon crawler type stuff, come on, be original!

I have a timelapse underway, just hope it won’t crash! :/

While waiting for the Tesco man to deliver this week’s food (was at the cinema watching Tron last night so couldn’t do the shopping) and hoping he doesn’t get stuck in the snow I thought I’d have the only breakfast type thing I could find. Especially as I was starving hungry, which Nigella on the TV isn’t helping with while she’s making a yummy cake.

Game is coming along ok, I’m worried maybe it’s a little too simple, but I’ll keep on with it

Can’t wait for dinner of some take-away variety, although worried nowhere will be delivering

Tags: food

So I spent most of the morning thinking up a name. I think it was worth it though: Explosive Transcendental Circulatory System.

Here’s a screenshot to go with it:

It’ll get slightly more interesting later.

And I believe I have a design!

Ok, I havent fully decided on the exact objectives, but I settled on a main character. A cuddly alien that lands on an unsuspecting planet…and more I cannot tell yet!

Here is a picture of our lovely friend:

I still haven’t decided if the it will fit with the rest of the game’s look, so it will probably suffer some alterations. What do you think?

Well … yeah…

Since starting at 2am this morning I’ve managed to get a few things done. The overworld is coming together – planets are spinning and being put in various places. Spawn points are… spawning…

Enemies don’t do anything yet because I need to finish the terrible movement in the player first. The movement works at least though.

Not bad for 7 hours I think…

I’m started working on a game were you walk in a mine and try to “discover” gold. Its going to be randomly generated. I’ve drawn most of the art’ll need. I need to get the generating thingy working.

So, I kind of have all my underlying code done, now I shall spend most of the rest of today planning my content (the story, things to do, places to see, people to harass), and here is a screenshot of the menu:

Also, there is a new YouTube video of the game in action, please ignore the music, it happened to be playing while I recorded. 😛

Some extra cheese for anyone that wants extra cheese:

• I may not be able to completely decorate my world in the 48 hours
• I hope that I can make dialogue that keeps players interested and guessing
• So far I think Im doig pretty decently

And so, what I should have within the next 24 hours is content!

Something is moving: in three hours I have an idea, some visual stuff moving on screen and some random audio 😀

Gameplay?? Not too fast!

Keep cooding!

LD19 has been running for 10 hours now, so 38 hours time left and I am just beginning. Last night after the theme was announced I stayed up for few hours thinking about the game idea. The first thing that came to mind from “Discovery” was explorers sailing the seas to find new lands.. So I am thinking a sailing game…

But first things first, I need to set up a LWJGL applet so people can more easily play the game. Better get crackin’

OMG A FISHING GAME, BY ME? SUPER SURPISING HUH?

here’s the link to play what I have right now in the browser. the Katamariness is about to be pulled, but it was fun whilst it lasted.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 18th, 2010 at 10:15 am and is filed under LD #19 - Discovery - 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Finally i got an idea and now I’m gonna start working on it.
It’s gonna be a puzzle game where your mission is to discover all the map(unseen at the beginning) and there are some rules and item…

Tags: deskphoto

Quick Coding ahoy! You are the little red dot, everything else is the map. You can walk about and do stuff like walk into walls and all this. I only have scrolling left on my list and then the game is actually programmed. The work will be when I have to sit down and draw out the space station to explore, which from my notes scribbled beside me it looks like the place might be quite massive.

Here is a current screenshot of my game. It’s a shmup with some quirks I did not see yet in another game. At least not in this outcome.

We’ll see if it get’s any more beautiful or fun. Right now it’s at least funny.

Shmup'em'up

Whoa, it took a little while to get things running.  I had some bizarre problem with my public SSH keys on GitHub.

Anyway, I have a barebones html5 application.  This screenshot (pink rectangle on black canvas) means that the mainloop is running at 60fps.

The code can be found at https://github.com/ChrisJan00/ld19platformer

My Workspace

So, yes, just awake, wholly unprepared (don’t even know what to use as platform yet) and suffering with a nasty headache. Not the best start to my 1st Ludum* Dare. But Let’s get ‘discovering’ what I can do. (see what I did there?)

*) Until literally 1 hour ago, I still thought it was ‘Ludlum’ Dare… Too much Bourne I guess.

Ok this is a theme i had voted for, but I actually dont have any ideas for a game now 😛

Going to make a 2D platformer, maybe in some ancient ruin or something??

I don’t have all the time available, so probably i still don’t have a working game before the deadline.

But f*ck it! If I don’t make it in time, I’m just going to set my own deadline, and finish it later. 😛

Anyways, have fun coding everybody 😀

Idea done, Got a clean screenshot of progress on game itself. Have timelapse as well for the final, its sweet.

After about 4 hours of work and 3 hours of sleep I’ve about finished the introductory scene.

Ludum Dare?

– Sounds like a great idea! Pity I only knew of its existence since last night. At T-14 hours until the theme announcement –  I walked into the Ludum Dare world, and was instantly impressed/excited/interested. I came across this whole thing from Notch’s twitter feed, and remembered seeing his amazing entry into Ludum Dare 18 earlier in the year (except at that time I had no idea what it was, and was too busy to really look into it)

The community vibe is great, I spent last night looking around the site, getting more and more pumped about the contest about to unfold and made certain I would keep tabs on its progress to see how it all worked, in preparation of Ludum dare 20 next April (which I planned to be my first attempt) But here I am now, about to get into this current contest. Pretty exciting to be able to go up against some major game designers.

Why?

– As soon as the theme went up and as soon as I got some time off work to check it, I was hooked. It took me a matter of minutes to work out the game I wanted to make, and once you get that little spark going theres nothing you can do to stop it. I mean its hour 38, Ive just had a super busy day, tomorrow will possibly be busier, but I really want to get something done for this, even with terrible time constraints. Im sure Im not the only one only just getting started.

Who am I?

-My internet name is AD-Edge, my real name is Alex Delderfield. Im from Australia, Im 21, Im studying Computer Graphics and Programming at University. (That covers just about everything)

Ive been writing/drawing stories since before I can remember, making 2D/3D animations in the past few years, and in particular focusing a lot on games. My tools of choice so far have been opensource and Im strongly a part of the Blender community as Blender is my primary tool.

My game!?

-Well the first thing I thought of when the theme was announced was the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Thats what the game will be based apon and I saw someone post saying that they hoped someone would do a game like this (I havent seen anyone else with this idea yet, lots of space stuff, but not space shuttles exactly)

In the game you are in control of Discovery, from T-2:00 mins on the launchpad, it will be your mission to get Discovery into the air and in particular, if your lucky and somewhat skilled with a tendency not to explode – space. There will be a mission to do once you get into space, one which involves a discovery of some sort (double discovery!!). I would like to do a landing part to the game as well when you return to earth, but Im trying to keep this thing short (I dont even know if Ill get up to getting this thing off the ground – haha D:)

If I have time I might attempt a landing part (but I really dont think Ill get that far). But theres always time after the contest to add these things.

What will I use for my game?

-Firstly (and obviously) – Blender.

For my first Ludum Dare I had a gut feeling to do something purely from code, some oldschool retro 2D platformer. But jumping into this one headlong I feel like I should stick to something Im fast with and have had plenty of experience with. So the Blender game engine (BGE) will be my engine of choice, a very much under-appreciated game engine in my opinion. Its not exactly UDK, not at all, but in the right hands some pretty cool stuff can be created. And lets face it, making games in BGE can be extremely fast (perfect!)

-I will also use Python for the scripting (thats what BGE uses)

-Gimp for all 2D texture needs.

-Audacity and maybe pysound for sfx control.

Anyway, next post Ill have a space shuttle to show, maybe more (lets hope)

Id love to hear comments, or other questions etc! Looking forward to getting to know this community better, and of course seeing some awesome games!

-ADEdge

*Edit* Wow, post turned out longer than I thought, hope this isnt too long… :/

j)lDolBPZ^0)

Tags: ADEdge, blender, discovery, first, game, Post, space

A little behind schedule, and I’m not liking some stuff, but it’s coming along…

Yay! Fixed the movement on my player somewhat and added particles.

I declare my game to be the prettiest ever! <3

10 hours, 45 minutes later…

I wonders what we shall discover here :D

It’s slowly taking shape, and I’m kinda starting to like the way it’s going. Next up on my list of things to add would be enemies, the most important part 😀

After that, I’ll work on adding the backstory to the whole thing, and tidying up some other things (Art, Sound).

I’m looking to be on track (For a change) 😛

Only been going for about an hour here in London (very late start), got all my timelapse nonsense set up. Here’s the healthy start to the day for me:

Thankfully there’s no chance of me leaving the flat today due to some unusually seasonal weather here in London:

So, my Space Empire game is progressing.  I have Infinite Planets working perfectly.  I also spent some time writing a Planet Name Generator, and alot more time just flying around clicking on my planets and seeing what they are named.

I generated 100 sample names, and posted them Patebin: http://pastebin.com/LNqQwhqu

From there, I decided what I’m going to do with the game.  You will be conquering Planets, and taking them over.  Your faction will autoproduce new ships (Procedurally generated), and defend your space from Procedurally generated factions.  If a friendly ship sees you, it will follow.  If an AI ship sees an Enemy, it will attack it.  If a Ship is under attack, it will call for backup from it’s friends.  There is enough random in this space to start a big fleet fight from that.

Factions will be procedurally generated, and they will all be hostile (for now).

It’s hard to find good ideas with this theme =)

Basically it’s a action game that takes place in a cave.It’s a action game that takes place in a cave and the player’s goal is to find a magic crystal hidden in the cave.

And (thanks to qubodup for the help!) the app can be tested at http://chrisjan00.github.com/ld19platformer/

In theory this should be updated live as I push code to github, if I didn’t mess up too much with the configuration.

First playable prototype ready, most of the assets nailed now.

I will still need to create the mechanics for enemies and some other minor things.

Progress is going rather well! Also, since I have the habit to check personal stuff while I’m working on the game I’m not going to release a time-lapse. Sorry.

I’ll join, probably using LOVE2D and it will probably be a button press-reaction time game. My inspiration is the shuttle:

I implemented the movement. Now you can click somewhere and the Espial will quickly follow. I’ve decided to upgrade the plot of the game.

Going over land will make it turn into grayscale, and will make your character become tinted by its colour. Scientists in a lab are trying to track you down, and will all of the scientific tools in their inventory to track you down. To dodge satellite photos, you will have to camouflage yourself to the colour their satellite is calibrated to. You will be able to find powerups that will let you restore the colour of a block by right-clicking it, or create zones of static that will save you but draw attention.

Maybe I’ll also throw in guards to evade and other ways to hide. I also want to add an active chat bar to see how the enemy is reacting to your movements and at the right a bar that shows your powerups and stuff.

I like this idea 😀

(pseudo?) A-Star algorithm finally implemented.yes, I’m creating tower defence.I don’t know this is “the true” A-Star,but it seems almost same.

Alright, after a 2 hour powernap I’m rolling again!

Starting to syphon resources from nearby stuff, within a randomly colored universe!

Also, Lunch!

I have made space!

Not even a day in and i know it’s going nowhere. Stress and IRL problems have caused me to have a complete brain fart. I have a great idea but no idea where i can take it so i’m out.

Have fun everyone else.

Happy that the Tesco shop just arrived and I just got my new Spanish hot chocolate, it’s just as nice as the Italian stuff I’d gotten a while back. So now I can warm up with some gorgeous hot chocolate with some marshmallows while I do some enemy paths

Tags: food

Two surprising things have happened: firstly, I’ve made a game that works already. There’s no point in playing it yet, since it does nothing interesting, but that was all I hoped to achieve today. This’ll give me time to make it interesting today, and make it good tomorrow.

Secondly, now that I’ve made enough of it to see what it’s going to be like, I realise it has almost nothing to do with the theme. The angry deathbots you meet aren’t randomised yet, but even once they are I think running into them is just going to feel like encountering enemies in an arena. It technically is discovery, but because they’re simply off-screen rather than visibly obfuscated, it’s not going to feel like it.

I’m not going to worry about that too much yet – my priority order is to make it interesting, then make it good, then make it fit the theme. Here’s what it looks like now:

The blue circles are shields: I didn’t fancy putting a bunch of work in just to recreate the conventional hitpoint bar or health meter on your interface, so I went for something more visual and in-fiction. Right now each shield takes one hit, but as you can see that makes you impractically large for not much health, so I’ll probably tighten their size and thickness before I’m done, and perhaps make them come back online a while after they’re taken out.

The enemy will have these as well, and they’re one of the things that’ll be randomised, so it’ll be very obvious when you’re facing something tough. Not sure if I’ll also have big hulls – that’d mean introducing an armour system as well, which may defeat the point of the shields.

I do plan to have large engines/tracks for fast bots, and a large turret or power core of some kind for things with a lot of firepower. Basically, if I can have at least three functionally important metrics that enemies can vary in, and make each one visually readable at a glance without any interface, I’ll be close to what I want.

Challenges right now:

• You’re in a fairly large open field of snow, and I’m not sure where to take the environments from there. I’d love it to be infinite but that’s technically tricky. I’d also love some randomly placed obstacles, but I’m wary of creating much art work for myself – I want time to redo the actual robots.
• My control method didn’t work: holding the mouse button to make your bot chase it was fun, but it meant you’d never be able to fire in one direction while moving in another. I’ve changed it to Cannon Fodder controls – click to move, right click to shoot somewhere else while you’re on your way. It doesn’t feel quite right with current movement speed and screen size – you’re at your destination before you’ve got more than a couple of shots off. May rethink.
• Random enemy movement was trickier than I thought. I’ve done it, but they’re rather geriatric: quivering with indecision when deciding where to move. I’ve realised the way to make it look better is have them pick an arbitrary direction, turn, then move. But that’s also the way every other game does it, so I’m still wondering if there’s a more interesting way.

Title ideas: Sighs of the Snowbots? Snowbot Snores?

Currently on a lunch break after a busy morning. Well, things got busy after I finally got an idea I liked about 4 hours ago. Got a basic screen and menu system going as well as showing the first sprites on the screen.

First Visuals

Not much to look at yet, but it’s a small spaceship on there that can emit pings in the form of a growing circle that changes color as i grows. The idea is that enemies are invisible unless they are inside a ping. Maybe I’ll add a shorter ranged passive scanner so you at least won’t bump into things when not using the ping. Enemies will probably use pings as well and you’ll get some sort of visual cue when they do, and they’ll get your position when you use yours. Still working out the combat part but things are going along nicely at the moment.

I have a screen capture thingie I threw together that I’m running while actually working. Will post a timelapse if/when I’m done unless it gets messed up somehow.

I’m now making an arcade shoot ’em up, the only type of game I can make…

You play a ship an shoot big monsters. 😀 Anyway its called “PAINLESS”, its all black and white, I’m using the apple ][ font for text.

So far you can shoot and move around. The plot makes it fit the theme….

Oh also live stream http://www.ustream.tv/channel/attempting-to-make-a-indie-games

-bear

Seeing progress is always good. Cave generation, player movement, digging and lighting done so far:

You can “play” it at http://darkhogg.es/ld19, then tell me how you see it :3

Happy Ludum Dare everyone!

I’ve been at it for like 7 hours now. Taking a short break to write up the progress blargs.

Here’s my initial brainstorming thoughts at 6am:

Initial Thoughts: mgs/stealth, space/underwater, discovery of interactions with world, lost, treasure/gold, science/knowledge, archaeology

Top down zone exploration. Collect PSIENC to discover fantastical new world changing technologies. Beware the PSUITS though; they will cut your budget! With lazers.

and here’s my expanded notes list for anyone who wants a peek:

Gameplay idea
– Fly around space collecting PSIENC.
– Avoid or attack enemies.
– Enemies gather around PSIENC hotspots.
– New technologies are discovered as you collect more PSIENC.
– Enemies become more aware of you as you discover more technologies. More aggressive.

Possible Intro Speech/Text
– Welcome UNIT 19. Our PSIENC defence budget has been cut again, so we can’t afford video coms. We still have the intergalactic SPACEMAFONE though!

– Right, let’s get cracking UNIT 19. You are currently piloting a remote drone in some random region of space-hammer-time.

– It appears you have a hole in you UNIT 19, you will leak PSIENC if you don’t get that patched up soon.

– Our long range scans have just picked up a strong PSUIT presence in your area. They must be after the PSIENC!

– If your are spotted they will sap your PSIENC reserves. If you are empty, it’s GAME OVER pilot!

– We can’t let them get their hands on it UNIT 19… FOR THE GOOD!

PSIENC Techs
Starting tech: SPACE VACUUM – Suck up nearby PSIENC.
Asset Description: Inward Particles!

Tech idea: SPACE PING – Help locate the nearest PSIENC deposit.
Asset Description: When activated, a short radar wave will appear from center of ship, then fade out. Arrow will appear to show direction of nearest deposits.

Tech idea: CORPORAL LAZER – Fight back!
Asset Description: Todo.

Tech idea: TIN FOIL HAT – Temporary resistance to PSUIT EMPEENE damage.
Asset Description: An actual hat.

Tech idea: SHINY SUIT – Go off the radar. You Sneaky pony you.
Asset Description: Cloaking/distortion effect over ship.

Tech idea: FFFUSICS BOMB – trap your target in a ball of musics.
Asset Description: H-bomb style. Harmony that is!

Tech idea: HARDON POUNDER – a beam of accelerated awesomesauce.
Asset Description: Suck up some stuff then PEEWWWWYAAAAWOW.

Basic Gameplay Controls
Left Mouse – Activate selected PSIENC discovery.
Right Mouse – Short speed burst – removes attached drones.

WASD/Arrows – Thrusters

Art Assets
– UNIT 19 Ship Model.
– PSIENC pickup.
– Asteroid props.
– Planet props.
– PSUIT Drone. – Attaches to player, sapping PSIENC reserves.
– EMPEENE PSUIT Drone. – If close lets off an emp pulse, that stuns player.
– PSUIT Fighter. – Fires a PSIENC sapping laser at the player.
– PSUIT Mother Ship. – Launches a stream of fighters, fighters will return here if they are damaged.
– Tech Effect Assets.
– Visual Sound Effects.

Still just getting the basic gameplay systems operational. My screencap software is not working so am just going to do playable build snapshots every x amount of hours. The first one: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7899005/LD19/HR12/WebPlayer.html

Benefits of being with your parents for Christmas:

Easy access to food.

Disadvantages to being at your parents’ for Christmas:

Not like I can go for food anywhere else….

Game is coming along nicely btw.

Not having the best start to my first ludum dare, the snow seems to be affecting the power in my flat. And when the power came back on, I had to do the thing I’m terrible at….using 2D graphics software.

But I’ve done that now, well I drew a stick man and some boxes. But all is okay as my stick man has a cowboy hat.

Anyways I better open my C# IDE and see if I can make a playable game in the little time I have left 😀

Happy coding people!

I’ve now added giant sproingy pixels. You probably need to see it moving to get the full effect.

Progress report:

1) I have build the assets for 2 items: the tank, and the laser turret.
2) I can now load a tilemap from file, and build the map in the editor Tiled
3) Code for drawing vehicles is finished – along with a “team colours” shader which does a pallette replacement.
4) I have set up the state machines for the behaviour of objects
5) I have build my vehicles – which consist of a vehicle body and a turret. You put one on the map using the vehicle factory.

Here is an awesome screen shot:

Note how I can colour each tank in its team colours, Its pretty 😀

Untitled Discovery WIP #1

Hey Guys, So i posted earlier and i have actually gotten far with what needs to be in place for my game so far. I was going to upload a playable but thats pretty boring until the first level is done.

So, instead you can look at this picture and watch this video :

LD48 Untitled Discovery from FuzzYspo0N on Vimeo.

Tags: video

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So hmm yeah, now I generate temperature maps (with altitude, distance from equator and noise), and precipitation map (just noise), and from those I deduce the type of vegetation in each cell. This is extremely non scientific and not accurate, but the result is ok-ish and I lost far too much time on these damn rivers that still don’t work properly. Damn, when will I have any kind of gameplay anyway?

I’m very nearly done with the behind-the-scenes codestuff and have begun working on the actual game.

Through this I’ve decided how the game will be played. Instead of actually working to solve the crime like I was originally thinking, you’re finding the clues in hopes of discovering who killed the old woman and why, and why you end up in prison when the whole thing is over. Essentially, I’m shifting the focus from investigation of the crime to pure discovery of the plot.

In the meantime, another screenshot.

A short update this time. It’s becoming more and more interesting, so I won’t spend a lot of time writing this post.

And… I may have too many ideas on how to improve the game. I hope I can implement them all!

Change list:

• Can’t walk trough walls any more
• Added walk buttons
• Added minimap
• Added discovery percentage
• Detection if standing in front of a wall that can be moved

As stated in title. Flex, FlashDevelop, Flixel, and whatever flippin’ thing I can substitute for design talent will be used. About 36 hours left, yes? Yes. And let’s call it… ‘Finding Directions’. Guess the gameplay from the title; that’s what I’m doing. Good luck everyone else, see you on the other side hopefully.

Discovery. Come ON. Name me a game where you DON’T discover anything.

But…

“Discovery” suggests a Metroidvania to me. Those games are all about discovering new powers and discovering new areas of the map you couldn’t get to before.

I’ve been thinking about writing a Metroidvania. I actually already have a main character and a storyline. It’s called Zeta.

So…really simple version of Zeta?

Yes. Yes, I think so.

I don’t seem to be advancing too fast, I have a hexagonal tile system working, though;

Slept a loooong night and now I’m just starting to work on something. Let’s see how this goes on…

https://github.com/qubodup/discoverylaunch

Starting to think this game might be halfway decent.

I woke up 2 hours ago, and here is what I have done so far :

• Each planet can be bound to a Sun
• Each planet can be bound to an other planet
• Gradiant color around planet
• scaling, but it’s not working perfectly :/
• “camera” deplacement

Also, I need to find a name… And I’m not good at it.

Tags: pygame, python, screenshot, SDL, space

Prototype is making progress. Went out to walk in the snow

This will eventually be used as the map ingame.

You can see the keys, maps, and door you will need to find to get out. I’m still trying to decide whether you will need all of the keys or only one.

Also, here’s my companion for today:

Okay so it doesn’t look like much but I want to prove I’m doing something, so there!

The game after about 3 hours of setup and coding.

So you have FOV and exploration types of stuff going on. The map generator seems to be working although I am completely sure there are bugs somewhere in there. Player gets placed in an open area at spawn, which is nice.

Next step: Add some things for the player to discover. That’s the theme after all. Once the player can discover things on a single map I’ll work on trying to apply some sort of larger narrative/flow to the gameplay.

Got a basic white box of my game environment working, and running in engine with some temporary textures. Also spent some time making a bunch of music and sound effects. Still no closer to putting any game in there but progress is progress.

Room exploration with interactive illumination (you can’t see behind walls!)

Also, HUD was a nightmare to get done. The 3x zoom i’m using messed with HUD positioning…

Tags: 7Soul

For now seems to be a mix betwen a tower defense and a shump, but the way you discover gameplay is core element 😀

(with audio :P)

Heres is a screen shot of “PAINLESS”:

And my lunch,

We’re now more than twelve hours in by my count. I have only the most rudimentary gameplay features in. This is going to get interesting.

Edit: – On the upside I think I’m accidentally half way to having a decent 2d game making framework. Which is entirely not the point but hey! Whatever!

How the system works, which is so simple and is now finished is it takes two images, one which is the level and one that provides a collision mask. I’ve been drawing using simple colours and drawing out the space shuttle. I have a big list of things to get drawn, and I want the place to look like it could support 100+ astronauts.

Here is the collision mask. Below is the level file. I’ve got the living quarter started with communal bedding, I just need to add things like showers and stuff to that. Then there is the dining complex, with seating and a walk through canteen. Behind and to the left is a kitchen which connects to a freezer room. That black looking tunnel is one of the many access tunnels, only open to certain crew and maintenance.

MULTI COLOURED BEDS!!!!!1111!!11111ONEone111eleven