I read a few posts about people needing a location to upload for submission. I’ve setup a public FTP server, e-mail me at howard@blacktriangles.com and I will send you instructions, if you need it.

And to test that server I shall link a screenshot. It’s not that different from the last one you saw, but it’s progress!

Almost halfway in time.

The initially planned version is nearly finished (a version without proper graphics and sound, I mean), but I noticed some issues with the gameplay that I’ll resolve first:

• To make it easier, I had to allow moving the tile you’re standing on, rather only dragging walls in front of you to the left or right – which was far too limited.
• Now it’s too easy, so you actually don’t need to explore a lot (you can just stay on your tile and navigate it nearly everywhere).
• The solution:
  • Addition of  a health meter. If you move a tile, it costs more health than just moving your body to an other tile. By exploring you can find health packs to restore your health.
  • Addition of treasures. These are used to create a score. Also, the percentage the map was explored is added to the score at the end of each map. If you have explored the map for 100%, you get an extra bonus.

This shouldn’t be too much work to implement. I hope to do this now, before going to bed. Tomorrow I’ll still have at least 16 hours to create a pretty layout and some nice graphics.

No screenshot this time.

And still having just proto-visuals.

You can now collect money from enemies among other small tweaks.

Controls:

Mouse to Move, Click to Fire.

Press P to Pause/Unpause.

Press Space to Enter Hub/Exit Hub.

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

Things are going moderately well, I’ve still not got much art and the engine isn’t totally finished. But I’m optimistic about finishing on time. I was pretty ambitious with this project, switching from AS2 to AS3 which I’ve not used for games before and also trying alot of new things programming wise, so I won’t feel too upset if I can’t finish.

The game I’m trying to make is a cross between Digdug, Worms and  Go To Hell. Basically you’re an archeologist digging for bones, but being too impatient to dig them out the traditional way, you instead opt to blast your way through the ground with explosives. Getting deeper under ground and collecting bones scores points, but if you blast yourself or something falls on you, you lose a life. 3 lives then you’re dead. If I have time I’d like to add living dinosaurs that you can blow up for more bones too.

As you can see from the screenshot there’s not a whole lot going  on artwise, tried to get something going this evening but my brain  was stuck in programming mode, so I’m going to sleep that off. The  basic engine is all there though, the blue square can move around,  mouse click throws a rectangle which explodes in one second,  clearing a hole in the earth that the player can move into, move far enough down the screen and a new block of destructible ground is created, so you never reach the bottom. Distance from the mouse cursor to the player decides the force the explosive is thrown with, should be easy enough to add in an arc so people can see the trajectory of an explosive before it’s thrown.

Next part of programming is adding in natural holes that contain bones and other objects, which need to be affected by gravity and probably the impulse of the explosives exploding.

Now I’ll sleep and hopefully have another productive day tomorrow.

I’m quickly falling into the trap of designing assets and not gameplay, but hey, I’m having fun.

Planet textures drawn in Gimp and displayed in Unity. Here’s a little video with a first shot at some background music (using Ableton Live):

Earth Flyby

It’s 3. Februar 2011 the discovery starts its last mission STS-133 . Commander Steven Lindsey see earth vanishing with discovery heading for its last ride in the universe…..

blablablabla Something happens => Wormhole => Millions of Light Years away, didn’t think too much about that (as I won’T have time for a story). You need to search all planets of the current solar system in order to get enough resources to jump to the next one. You can do following in order to control discovery’s path.

1) Starting direction (with an aiming utility (can’t be seen on the screenshot))

2) Start Speed

(actually that were the basic ones, followed by more advanced techniques in upcoming levels)

3) In(de)crease sphere of influence (the closer you are to the center of the planet the higher is the influence)

4) In(de)crease the size of the planet (a very new technique of relative scaling makes this possible :D)

Now, I make a break with coding and start with some asset-stuff before I go to bed.

Ok here’s a screen shot.

Eureka! Vaults of Knowledge

It may not look like there’s a game here, but it is progressing.

The idea is that in a post apocalyptic world, the player has to unlock forgotten discoveries from the vaults of an ancient race known only as humankind. This can only happen by researching those discoveries whilst holding off strange mutated creatures.

Strangely enough, I think the theme of Discovery is going to work quite well if I have time to do it properly. If not, then we’ll end up with an unholy mashup of “Centipede” and “Typing of the Dead”.

Wow. This is my first LD and I’m finding myself running out of steam already! On the positive side, I’m figuring out some techniques that I haven’t played with before. And I’ll have something finished by hour 48, but now I’m not sure it’s going to be anything fun. Still, it’s cool to see everyone’s progress over time.

EDIT: Whoops, found a typo, it’S ELSE, not EKSE :p

Here’s my progress over the last 24 hours.

Chronolapse is also still chugging along, at 16,000 frames XD

Here is what i have so far:

I still have ALOT of work to do.

(Please ignore the super dodgy resize. Click here for fullsize.)

Can anyone guess the reference to the theme?

Either way I’ve just done my first pass on my first piece of art for the game, and after having most of the game itself finished bar art, I’m now focusing on getting everything looking nice

I wanted to join this compo, but real life got in the way.

Well I think I’m going to make a game anyway and take the time.

See ya guys at LD20 xD

I know have walls, diamonds* and bodies. But only walls shown.

Hopefully if I get time towards the end I can make the walls look a bit more wall-y, but the engine is the important thing for tonight.

*This game contains no mining what-so-ever**

**no crafting either

Fricking walls!

I got about as far as you see below before I got sidetracked trying to fix things about Flash and Actionscript that were driving me crazy. Eventually I had to just give up altogether. I’m trying to start over and rebuild the whole thing using Ruby and Gosu, but it looks like I have a lot to learn.

Not even close to being a game

I’ve got some basic playability in Disco?Very! now.  You’re the guy on the right.  Use left/right arrow keys, combined with shift, to do moves, and follow the other three dudes.

Click the picture to try it out.  It’s Flash, so click inside the window once it loads (or keypresses won’t register).

Still have a lot to do (more music, more moves, levels, scoring, etc.), but the basic gameplay function is there.

Tags: Disco

Going to sleep. I’ll have plenty of work to do tomorrow, but I’m really happy with what I have currently. Next up shall be some proper effects like a better sword-swinging animation and then quite much everything else; dying, item handling, winning and so on. I probably can’t finish a version I’d be happy with in time, but I’m quite sure I’ll release whatever I have in the end anyway.

Time to get some sleep and think about where I’m going to take the game from here.

See you in the morning.

Current version (not much you can do except jump around and admire the awsum lighting effectz and music):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4785344/ludumdare/LD19%20WIP/index.html

Haven’t quite got anything on screen yet… scary thing is, I have been coding all day and have quite a fair bit of code to show for it too!

Turns out taking the engine and stuffing a prototyping layer on top of it ended up being a bit more work than I expected… so while my initial idea was to abstract pretty much everything, the past few hours have had me refocus specifically on what I’ll need to get a game done over the next couple of days. And a few words of wisdom… Lua and heavily templated and inherited code can cause some major headaches! Be careful where you abstract from, or you’ll be going in circles and creating some rather spectacular dependency diamonds 😉

So, with one day down.. I have to re-plan a few things. Originally it was: Day One – core code, Day Two – gameplay code, Day Three – asset fix up and tidying loose ends/porting fun. So it looks like I’ll be cutting into the asset time to get something done.. but once I have the core code done though, it should be fairly plain sailing so I’m still quite confident at this point.

No doubt that’ll change around lunch time tomorrow, should I still not have anything on screen!
But for now, some sleep is in order…

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.

I’ve been wasting much time during the first 24 hours, mostly sleeping… stupid uni project getting out of hand in the last minute…

Nevertheless, I am determined to get something done, so by now I’m just about done with the initial part of my game… I’m getting increasingly concerned about gameplay, as I’m kinda just going on a hunch I got just after the theme was revealed… the idea never really included any real gameplay, so I’m hoping the Muses will grace me with their presence soon! 😛

As you may be able to tell, I’m trying to mainly play with effects since I’m quite a crappy graphician… I’m hoping to be able to create some gameplay based on visual effects!

Tags: screenshot

This is what I managed to do last night. Its amazing what mistakes a sleep deprived brain can make. I had a lot of issues baking AO maps because I had one silly button selected the whole time, which was the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning. Oh well.

But here is Discovery so far:

Far from finished.

-I dont like the ET texture much atm,

-The shuttle doesnt have markings yet, only an AO map

-I dont have much time to work on it anymore

-Need to get into some python to making it fly and get some environments done today! (But I have so many other things to do today as well… Gonna be a late night)

-ADEdge

Tags: 19, ADEdge, blender, ld, progress, Shuttle, space

And yet another post !
There are so many details to complete before releasing… I plan to spent the next few hours between :

– level design,
– add looot’s of other stupid “new concept discoveries” to unlock,
– sound design,
– intro + outro.

The main engine is working and quite stable. Pretty happy with the way it looks now

One day in and no progress on game design. But I did get Rosegarden + Fluidsynth set up and recorded a few little tunes which will probably not have a game to contain them:
Peppy title
Goings On
Theme?
Obligatory Game Over

I slept from about 6amish-10amish, and i’ve had tea and custard tart and meringue (which didn’t work properly — just not dry enough, but sticky and chewy and yum nonetheless), but I’ve just spent about an hour fixing little bugs; 45 minutes of that ended up being because I’d forgotten to return a value from a function.

Yep, runnin on not-enough-sleep.

But my game has music now!

So ‘Discovering Direction’ as it’s currently called is really coming along. A pleasant mixture of puzzle, profundity and punnage. I imagine players will come up with some creative ways of speedrunning the later levels, given the range of keys made available later in the game (teleport through walls!  reverse velocity!) – looking forward to seeing how this is received.

The 'P' box is the player. Arrows push him around. Here, it's obvious which directions are required.

Profound. Or maybe just going too far with a pun.

I’ve been busy painting HIB promo art and Yule shopping, so I missed this LD by a day. But I want to at least throw an idea down. An idea fueled by pepparkaksdeg (it’s a crime to bake it really) and a movie that I just watched: “They Live” by John Carpenter.

So, you play as a person in a city full of other pedestrians. The walls have company logos, ads and other things. In a trashcan you find a pair of goggles which allow you to see (or should I say discover) the evil aliens who have infiltrated mankind. However, wearing the goggles lowers your health. Taking them off replenishes it.

The aliens consider you a threat, so they’re trying to discover you, and then attack you with health draining beams. They can only do this if they get within a certain distance. So the trick is to only use the goggles in crowds, or to read the motions of people and move in the gaps. You might also have to remember who is nasty after you’ve taken the goggles off (like a game of memory) . The goggles might have a warmup/cooldown to prevent the player from flicking the effect on and off. Perhaps aliens spot you at a larger distance with the goggles on, making it more important to remember who’s who and then sneak by whistling with the goggles off.

The goal of the game is to gather up stuff around the city and head for a building where the aliens have hidden the device which is cloaking their appearance to the human population. The ads and stuff would of course substitute for OBEY/CONSUME/WATCH TV while the goggles are used.

I’d like to say that I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, but I’m all out of… well, time.

Tags: concept

Well I sat on the theme for a total of 22 hours, not 18 as I’d originally tweeted (I hope my math improves as I go along), but mostly my problem stemmed from not wanting to do the obvious exploration/dungeon crawling that I typically flock towards. I’ve written random dungeon generators for other projects and love RPG’s to death, but I figured for my first outing I’d have to do something a little more unique.

Well nuts to that. I’m not creative or experienced enough to do something unique and meaningful. I wanted to go the whole self-discovery approach but I have no idea how to stick as complex a concept as that into a video game, let alone something fun. For my first LD I better bite off something I can actually chew, and it took 22 hours of beating myself up to get there. It seems that the theme of “discovery” is having a whole meta-meaning as I come to grips with the fact that I’m an incubator and not an overtly creative “build it out of thin air” type.

I amaze myself sometimes. No I am not cheating.

So I took an hour from my marathon session of “Sunny In Philadelphia” (who knew a recommended show would actually be good?) to take a classic and code it from scratch. And now that I have a base of a working game maybe I can incubate up a storm to make it a bit more challenging/interesting. Because I’m already getting good at it (read: fluking out) and I’m running out of episodes!

Have a play for yourself before I ramp up the difficulty or god help me try adding more graphics: http://bmcgames.com/discovery

So, after hearing about this “Ludum Dare” in the past months through Twitter, I looked it up to find out that it was A) Awesome and B) Already in progress. So I joined in. I quickly prototyped part of an idea, and set to work:

Ping to Reveal your surroundings!

And the (admittedly somewhat lame) Title Screen:

Eww, mouse handwriting.

What are these mysterious red drawings?

What IS that stuff?

So, yeah. I’ve got 3 levels so far, and I’m hoping it’ll turn out well.  It’s being developed in Game Maker 8 (if you couldn’t tell). Lemme know what you think!

A bit over halfway! Here’s the screenshot of the current state: be warned, it’s ugly. But it’s 2/3 of the way to having gameplay ready, then I can spend the waning minutes of the compo working on polish.

Ugly, but a RTS/Puzzle hybrid based upon finding friends and avoiding foes.

The game is based upon the idea of discovering friends, and not being discovered by enemies. There’s a pseudo-plot to add if I have time, but that’s looking like a post-compo thing. The repeating shape is your beacon, cast out into space.

good news, I ported my entry from iPhone to OSX .. which still limits the amount of people who can try the game out .. but by far less

You can download the latest released build here.

After fixing the tile type set issues, it finally looks like it could actually be a game. What needs to be done now (after making graphics, of course) is getting the player, then some other entities working.

Dump here.

Also an earlier, definitely buggy dump behaves quite differently in Kega Fusion compared with Meka, and it’s here. How does this act on a real SMS?

My game in it’s current state. I’m not very good at coding and/or drawing so I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got so far! Still plenty to do!

Controls: Arrow Keys & Spacebar.  Press R to restart the 1 level!

GO PLAY!

In the last hours I have been struggling to implement the map and gameplay system. Turns out it took a lot longer than expected, partly because sprite.js is not as mature/complete as I thought it would be and because of my own lack of practice.

However I think I have done something worth showing/talking. First I did a python script that would parse a txt file and output a PNG containing a wire frame to design the level from. The same text file is used as input by the game to generate the collision platforms. I also needed to implement basic physics, which still have some rough edges but it will have to suffice for now.

The current prototype is accessible through here.

I think I will leave the gameplay engine for now and move on to game rules and visual stuff. What do you think?

Just for the end of day 1 I made some sample assets. So here is my version of Discovery and a planet and first time ever: I made background-music 😀

#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Ok, that’s it for day1. As summary it started as usual! 8h works -> restart -> …and then more concentrated works. Now let’s see how far I come. Mabye takeing the jam-option!? Cu tomorrow

Ludum Dare Official Unofficial Mumble!

Currently having an amazing party over 72.249.10.144:64738 #ludumdare! Come swing by!

You can get Mumble over here.

Shoutout to Furyhunter for hosting the Mumble server.

Over halfway, and I’ll finally take some time to sleep.

I’m finally at a point where I won’t change anything any more in the game play.

I still need to improve the UI and mini-map, and create some graphics and sound.

I think I’ll go for a black-and-white approach, just as in the original Scarab of Ra game, but with more detail (rather like Mad World).

If I find enough time I may make some stencil-graffiti-like images. I’m no artist though, but if I keep it stylized it could work out.

Example of a stencil graffiti:

Stencil Graffiti

[/pun]

So yeah, water works more-or-less the way I envisioned it, it does in fact make lakes instead of rivers, but it just makes it that much more dangerous, which is good. The next thing to do is make ore float and do something about water’s dangerousness.

and after that it’s enemy time, I’m thinking a mole and the ever-mandatory ball of slime.

Should I just call it “Chain of Discoveries”?

http://2bam.com/proto/ACOD

Mechanics are buggy (I’M HATING POLYGONS, DAMMIT)

Has only 2 levels for now. Trying to figure out some core bugs.

😛

Yup, it’s your stereotypical discovering platformer!

What do I have so far?

• A working engine!
• 1 sided dialog!
• A power up!
• Lame pixely graphics!
• A soundtrack!
• You can jump!
• A screenshot!
• 
• Insightful dialogue! (Obviously!)
• Yeah!

What don’t I have so far?

• Hopefully less than 50% of the finished product!
• Levels!
• Sufficient amounts of sleep!

I FINALLY managd to make something!

Still a long way to go, but here is it curently:

http://megaswf.com/simple_serve/87830/

It’s completely ridiculous and I love it.

It’s 4AM here in snowy Albion, so I’m calling it a night on my first Ludum Dare. Implemented a scripted animation controller, mouse-based movement controller, camera zoom and a basic environment. Also bubbles, but they don’t follow the player yet. When I wake up, I’ll try and turn this into something resembling a game. All done in Unity3D and Paint.net

For what it’s worth, the latest build is up at http://www.danstubbs.co.uk/Diver.html

I’m not  expecting to have this finished by the compo deadline, but we’ll see.  Night all!

Lat night at 8, when I saw the theme  I had nothing. Brainstormed until around midnight and still not much. Woke up this morning and it dawned on me so I got going. 10:30pm here right now and this is a screen shot.

The idea is to ‘connect the dots’ as it were, connecting a chain, and playing a sequence of sounds… I’m not entirely sure how the level progression will work, or even how you will win a given level. But, I’m pleased where I’m at.

Yeah, well, that title is as much music or sfx as you’ll see from me. 😉

Possibly not going to have complete gameplay either, but I’ll try, and I think I’ll have some nice exploration of the things I was interested in experimenting with, assuming the sleepies don’t get me.

I’m actually excited, as I’ve gelled some complex/ambitious ideas down to where it’s a Simple Matter Of Coding. Lots of coding, unfortunately.

Oh, also on the cutting board: That dude’s arms. Wiggly leg-circles are enough to tell he’s walking, and that’s already overmuch art/animation work for the likes of me!

updated

• water graphics
• added roots
• added trees

If I can’t find anything else aesthetic to do, I guess that means I have to makes something useful. Blob enemy time!

I know it’s a bit early to build development tools for an engine…that’s ages away from being finished (well…better be done in less than 20 hours…)  but the way I decided to track maps was conflicting with my testing… level design was starting to take inordinate amounts of time, so I slapped together a quick “make.fla” that is just a modified version of the engine that I can force map loads into.

I’m tempted to make this a fundamental part of the game, creating and sharing of maps, if only to point out that most gamers do not a content designer make.  For now it’s just going to let me build demo maps very quickly.

finally,fire elemental summoned and his magical bullets kill some enemies.

Yay, we’ve got a moving guy in a parsed map, running around, zelda style.

It was supposed to have smooth scrolling, but zelda-all-screen-at-once-scrolling solved a lot of issues.

Here’s what it looks like as of now:

Click HERE to play the current build. Just collisions and a big map =)

Tags: anti colonization

I’m practically done. Just need to do a bit more polishing with some really good polish…

I drew a four directional sprite for the player, 1 tile (not a tileset) a title screen, a background… and I finished all my (painful) level design!!!!

I HATE level design. Very boring.

I’m doing a puzzle game where you “discover” the way to the next level. I only have 20 levels. If needs be, I can add some more tommorow.

Ladies and gentlemen, we very nearly have a game here.

Finally made one of the things I thought of  initially, but doubted I would get to.

Check it out here! (You may have to clear the browser cache for the changes to show)

Yes, cloudy! The map generator is now using a procedural cloud generator over the map shape, and I’m using a photo editor to add the black outline

As I said on a previous post I wil now start working on the level design

Populating a scene with NPCs and clues is a very mundane process, so to help keep my mind from falling asleep too quickly I thought I’d post another screenshot.

Okay… I’m back and working on my game, okies?

Ugh, After being away from home a day, I have less time, but that can also be a good thing! It will make me work harder.

Anyway, Heres a couple screenshots of my game so far:

So, until next update, (game release) Good luck all!

So, I slept 10 hours today. I felt super-refreshed afterwards, but that didn’t really help the progress of my game. Today I finished all the assets of my game but didn’t write one line of code, that all is left for day two. If I won’t finish in time for the compo, I will most probably submit the game for the jam.

My game concept: A science team is sent on an expedition to the north pole where they discover mutated polar bear things and have to defend their base against those things while uncovering more secrets. The game is trying to be funny, so if you liked my style of humor from my LD17 game, you’re gonna like this one as well. Also, I kept the graphics style very similar.

This what I had for dinner earlier:

And here is the obligatory screenshot. As I don’t have any gameplay at the moment, I’m gonna show you guys the main menu:

Tags: foodphoto

I’ve made some more progress, but unfortunately I had to battle with a vicious bug that cost me a bit more of my precious time. Bugs aside, though, I have this pretty screenshot to show you:

My awesome game of discovery is coming along nicely, and completely secret per my usual Ludum Dare fashion. I’ll give terribly tantalizing hints soon, honest!

Also, uh oh, Spaghetti (not o’s). But for real, it was delicious.

Delicious and Nutritious!

Tags: foodphoto, journal, LD19

My submission for tomorrow is going to be Doom Cauldron. “Put things in it… and see what comes out!” It is a simple item merging game. My programming skills pale in comparisonto the talented game makers here, so I have spent my time focusing on taking photos and editing the items in photoshop. It has been a lot of fun! I have been streaming my screen and webcam at Http://team.battleon.com/artix so you can watch as take photos (of myself in some cases… I set the camera on timer mode and took the picture of myself in those robes for the Necromancer) Everything in the game was photographed today (sat).

Here are some of the enemies and other things included within the game. I figured I would go for game-play rather than zero in on the art; however, i’m actually liking these regardless of their simplicity.

box2d rules.

Need to replace some assets with more original ones, namely the teleporter BFG 9000 and Super Saiyan-jin Arch-Velocity Cannon :o.

moar better physics integration as well.

As the title eludes to, I changed the movement. Mouse controls were getting bluh.

Also I realized I am not keeping legacy builds on dropbox so all my old links are either going to be broken or lead to the latest build… I don’t know, haven’t checked.

Either way, for anyone who is checking posts, here’s my update: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12926434/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html

Morp, a young apprentice to the aging Lizard Wizard Edrick, was woken in his sleep by his master. MORP: Nnng? Wh? EDRICK: Come, Morp. It is time for your trials. MORP: Trials? What trials? EDRICK: You are nearly ready to becom a Lizard Wizard. Now you must go on the Apprentice’s Surprise Quest. MORP: Why is it a surprise? EDRICK: Because I just love surprises! EDRICK: For other people. EDRICK: You will go into the Perlin Caves in search of enlightenment in three forms: EDRICK: Mastery of the Feet EDRICK: Mastery of the Tail EDRICK: and Mastery of the Tongue. EDRICK: You will find an artifact for each form of enlightenment. Bring them back. EDRICK: Did you get all that? MORP: I think so. To the caves!

And so it begins.

Ive gotten most of the art assets and sounds done.

Now just to work on fleshing out the game play and music.

They aren’t on screen, but there are sharks lurking about =D

Well I unfortunately forgot to post last night! Here’s the basic premise of the game.

You control a Pirate Ship (Top down). There has been a major piece of land discovered in the Atlantic in the late 1700’s. The French, Americans, Spanish, and British all send in fleets to take control of it, hoping to make it there and lay claim first… Unfortunately, they all arrive in the area at the SAME time, and are not sure exactly where the island is at in the area. You as the pirate must navigate through this MASSIVE battle of 4 fleets and find this island, and the supposed treasure buried on it! (This repeats each level!)

I’ve gotten decently far on it, have the water, the player’s ship, all enemy ships, all firing, and collision detection with the cannon-balls implemented. Lots of code, but well worth it! EVERY single ship can destroy every other ship that is not of the same flag. The British ships can destroy the French, Americans, Spanish, and You, etc. Hoping it turns out well! Here’s a screen:

My goal for the rest of the night: Somehow get the creation of random islands made up, and get these placed. If the player crashes into the island to fast,WHAM, (s)he loses health. If (s)he is able to find the X on the coast and slowly bring the ship up to it, (s)he wins the level!

End of day two for me. Got a good chunk of gameplay figured out. Need to finish that up tomorrow and still leave time for replacing all the placeholder art with something that actually looks good (those arent sausages and potatoes in the inventory).

Also still need to do music, geez…

Couldn’t really start yesterday. But i’ve started now

I’m gonna join the new obligatory “Ludum Dare Boobshot”

instant tradition.

oh, heres my game so far:

yay

OK, now there are more people.  Maybe now it is even?

nope

Seriously, this is the most baffling mystery I’ve come across using AWT…

Here’s Editor and here’s LevelCanvas. The problem is that when I click on the LevelCanvas component, it’s supposed to repaint, but it only does the first time – then you have to iconify and bring up the window again to be able to click it again. The paint() and update() methods for the LevelCanvas are, in fact, being called every single time, but nothing is actually updated on the window itself.

Help?

Well, not doing too well, but I finally managed to merge scrolling + Slick + Phys2D at a decent framerate, though Phys2D still suffers from inaccuracy with box on box collision, if you see the grid lines on the floor and various platforms, those are where my collision boxes are, and the “player” gets stuck when trying to move across them, a circle will work, but I am going to continue looking into better generation of the worlds collision bodies from a tile engine before resorting to that(since it uses circles, and not ellipses….)

A game is not what I have right now, not even close, fun…just not a game…

Here’s another build for you!

Level transitions and game-state saving is working.  All of the dialog code is in place, too, and you can now collect memory orbs.

Now that I am done with all the core game play stuff, it’s time to start working on levels and toss in another enemy or two.

29 hours into Space Empires, a game about Discovery, Conquest, and building one big space empire.

I Rewrote the way the Galaxy handles each cluster of planets, leading to a very fast and very efficient search time and generation time.  A major issue was that I was recomputing all the planets on each cluster switch.  I made it so that it only generates new clusters, keeping the ones that exist before.

With that rewrite, Factions suddenly worked, so infinite factions to fight!  They have small sections of planets and will build an empire.

I still spend WAAAAY too much time developing just flying around and clicking on planets and seeing what their name is.

We had a thunderstorm w00000000t!
While it was going: baked potato chips.

Royal blue potatoes being sacrificed for the greater yumminess

This game is finally starting to approach the limits of my aesthetic ability

Ok, I’m starting to think I won’t deliver a full experience, but I kind a like how it is turning out. Let’me know what you think.

Let’s say it has a very very short story.

Check it out here!

Playable here:
http://www.blacktriangles.com/wp/personal/discovery-v3/

Some features:
– persistent data
– shop interface for fixing the mother ship
– you lost your local scanner cause you have to upgrade to get it.
– added a mini-map but i think that might also be a purchase
– main menu, you can see my ugly mothership model.
– you can generate new levels through the in game menu

Screen shots:

As I rev your saves will get lost, sorry =(

So whats next?
– Purchasable upgrades for your scanner.
– Enemies (yay!) and Combat!
– Purchasable upgrades for your weapons! (i REALLY want to get to this but I think the game can live without combat, first the DISCOVERY part of the game.)

2 hours of sleep in 2 days! I’m starting to feel drunk o_O

Wow. 24 hours is more like 10 hours of being at the computer is more like 6 hours of actually working. Tomorrow is going to be interesting. Here’s a screen of today’s work (you can also refuel and recharge at the home planet through a simple shopping screen. Hoping for a minesweeperish exploration of the space. Gather resources, upgrade your ship, fight aliens, don’t get stranded.

Here’s the latest screenshot:

Collisions are working, also lighting – note the cool torch effect!

Had breakfast:

Now on to to some timestep issues, and actual gameplay!

Daniel

I focus on polish this LD, gameplay is second

Tags: 2D, flash, foodphoto

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 19th, 2010 at 5:32 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.