There be strange red towers on that there island…
I wonder if there is any link to the red lightning that destroyed our ship lad…
It be Dangerous to go Alone! …
What be that thing on the rock…
Hmm could just be just the thing to get our own back me thinks! ;0)
Working on the intro cutscene. The player is the little guy on the left.
So here’s another screen shot to show off…..well….it doesn’t look much different than the last but I have made good progress! So far I have finished:
What’s left is to add more depth to the game and more parts to the boss sequence. I also need to add sound effects and create a UI and score. I hope you guys are doing well!
Cheers!
I was really ill for a while today. I haven’t done even close to enough. Oh well. I added some weapons, here’s one-
I’ll see what I can salvage here tomorrow.
I’m going to go sleep in an hour and a half, and I’m thinking I’ll probably call it quits for development tonight. Starting with not a single clue on what to do and getting to this point gives me hope I’ll actually finish by the end of the competition. Still using the programmer art and all but art is slated for tomorrow anyway.
You can't tell, but the rectangles are meant to be robots.
For now I’ll be hosting the prototype on my site at http://cirr.info/ld20/LD20.swf so you guys can prod it and poke it while I’m asleep. I’m aware there’s a ton of niggling little bugs and not much to do yet, but have faith! Greater things are in store! Oh, such greater things. Probably. Hopefully. I think. Erp.
EDIT: So apparently my site is down. Here’s an alternate link until it comes back up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7124203/LD20.swf
Just finished a custom platform-oriented physics engine for JME after trying to get JBullet to work properly. I’m seeing better framerates too (in the hundreds, versus in the tens with JBullet), at least with a reasonable amount of moving objects. When the movable objects and fixed platforms start reaching into hundreds the framerate drops, as I’m using a brute force search at the moment (O(n^2)). Could be improved with some simple optimizations (don’t check collisions for stationary objects or objects that have fallen out of the map). Probably I could have gotten JBullet to work too, but I’d rather spend the time implementing a simple solution I can understand and tweak, than reading manuals and debugging external frameworks.
Visually the game hasn’t changed much, except I added in lighting. The spheres look positively yummy with a bit of shininess and lights from two directions. 
I’m dedicating tomorrow to content creation and gameplay implementation. The goal of the game will be simple, move from a spawnpoint to a goal-portal on each level, by jumping between floating platforms, and avoiding/fighting some kind of enemies. If I have time I’ll add some companion for the player to protect / escort.
On the tuning side the my scalaprops library is turning out to be very practical, it allows tuning of game parameters interactively which will be a real timesaver when digging into the content creation. It will need a bit of additional work to comfortably display all the settings though.
So after a night of sleep, and some annoying interruptions, I’ve been back to work. I thought I’d update with some screens of the progress I’ve been making. I guess it’s a bit late to turn back now, so the likelihood of me scrapping this and starting over again is very low.
It started with no tiles, then simply creating the same set of tiles over and over, then creating from a set of 2 types, then a few more, then I added in an epilepsy background and alpha to test, and that was all last night. Then this morning I started by updating the graphics, and then by adding in slimes and diamonds.
Making great progress, but there is still so much more to do! Good thing there’s still another 30 hours or so left.
Well I’m calling it a day for day 1. Here’s a screenshot so far:
I’m going for some kind of vertical shooter involving a tank. But there’s not much in the way of gameplay in there yet. My hopes for getting a fully-playable game in place in half a day were maybe unrealistic.
I think if I’m going to fulfil my intention of having lots of tweaking and polishing time, I’m going to have to scale down my idea a bit. I’ll sleep on it and I should have a revised plan in the morning.
Tags: end of day 1, moblin, screenshot, tank
This little bugger is “Sam”. He’ll be the little guy used as the main character for my game.
Hope ya’ll like him!
they won’t stop chasing at me
Things have not being going that well for me. I had to rewrite my engine two times. The first time I tried synchronized grid-based movement for the characters. They would use a global variable to slide from cell to cell… but I couldn’t figure out a way to make queues and priorities work. Who would get first dibs on an empty cell? What if there was a really complex queue? Would they figure out a way to move out of the way? It also looked a bit strange with characters not being able to move into seemingly empty cells because someone had called dibs on them.
So I tried something a bit more analog, but made a mess of the code and there were big problems with getting stuck against tiles and not sliding against them properly. The maze is really tight so you need to be able to easily slip around corners.
Finally, I managed to write a huge chunk of code which slides the player around edges, e.g. if pressing against a wall the game will look for a gap nearby and walk the character towards it. I also added buckets which helps me with depth sorting (overlapping) and it will also make collisions easier to detect later. Some characters will be vulnerable from the back. Slimes are sort of omnidirectional though.
Early array fun. Druaga colors.
Mac screencaps being incredibly slow.
Rewrite. Buckets. Pause function for screencaps.
There’s a lot of work left, but perhaps I shouldn’t underestimate what I have finished so far. Regardless, it will be a busy day tomorrow.
http://www.livestream.com/m2tmgaming
Watch me program/draw/get this done in real time.
last thing ii can remember is that i made a sprite shit bricks. literally. damn, i’m tired, and my body didn’t really like me drinking too much coke. hands are shaking 😀
Sloped terrain technology unleashed
When I laid my head down to rest last night, and shortly after my prayers for others to potentially choke on their baked goods — not die or anything, but maybe just a 48 hour coma with no long lasting debilitating effects — I pondered sloped or a tile based level. I have chosen sloped as I think it’ll be more visually appealing to see these little fleas attacking things trying to climb up a hill. So I spent some dev time creating a way to move along a sloped terrain. Works pretty good and I’m happy with it. I’m going to imagine I might have to do a little more work for a wider object to angle it right on the slope. Like a collapsed corpse for example.
You can check out the demo as it stands here :
flea_bitten_demo
sloped magic, and you are safe from the fleas for now...
You still can click to add fleas, and for the moment you are safe from the fleas as I have not taught them to traverse slopes just yet. So you are safe for now.
I’ve decided to take a slightly different approach in development to ensure i have SOMETHING by the end of the contest. Rather than design out 10 levels, I’m going to develop this as a single screen game for the moment. Focus on all the core gameplay elements/concepts within that range. Then if there is time at the end.. i can churn out more content and scrolling capabilities.
Next up is objects in flight — such as a bird maybe? What might happen if a bird flew low enough that a few fleas could jump on him ? what would happen if he took off and while in flight that bird was bitten and zombified as well ? How quickly could zombification spread under such circumstances? would a helicopter be safe ?
It still looks quite unassuming, but when you go see a magic show — does the magician just show you all the tricks right off the bat ?? hell no, that magic man has some shit up his sleeves. He gets you to look one way and next thing you know he’s sawing you in two and everyone is laughing.
Ok.. back to work. I think i need to go learn some magic tricks too!
Even though the last few hours haven’t been effective, it has been a good day all over. I am quite confident that I will finish in time. I’ve cut out half of the content I wanted in the game but there is still quite an amount of graphics to draw, but I think I can get away with recoloring sprites. No new screen shot as the game looks just like the did in the last shot.
Tomorrow’s check list:
– let heroes buy things at shop
– let salesmen sell raw materials at shop
– let enemy castle generate tougher and tougher enemies
– let castles have energy
– win and lose screens
– balance gameplay
– draw, draw and draw
Cheers for now!
You now have the right to be scared, but don’t wory, there are flashlights to be inserted next 😛
http://www.mediafire.com/?fw5gdla68pv5mf4
PLEEEAAAASEEEEEEEE download, play, and give feedback!
A cute otter to draw attention to the post.
Okay fine. here’s a screenshot:
Now to spend some time playing other people’s games, if there are any available.
At first, I thought that the theme was not good. At all.
Then I got an idea.
Those are trees 😛 it's a pseudo-3D thing
I spent most of the day sleeping and helping at a yard sale. Then on my way home my car’s back right ball bearing started making a racket, and the sound doesn’t go away until the tires stop rolling or I turn really hard.
And I scrapped my ideas from last night and decided to make a game about a photographer that parachutes into unknown territory where there’s a lake with black water and unknown inhabitants. It’s dangerous to go alone, take this backpack! And he loses the backpack immediately; you can regain tools one at a time exploring later. The only thing done now is an aesthetic-gimmick to make things rotate and scale based on perspective.
I’m hoping to have a story and a dirtbike but some things may be cut for time.. Though I did sleep through 25% of the competition already. Maybe cut some sleep?
