Everything I have done has failed now for no reason I can understand

I hate making things

I’m pretty happy with my progress though

Got all the basic elements working, just a few little things still to do, then I can concentrate on art, level design, and stuff ^^

Just a quick progress report before I go grab some sleep (no screenshot because it’s just boxes and lines at the moment):

• I have a tank that moves realistically enough.
• The tank has a turret that can be controlled by AI or can follow the mouse for the player.

I still need:

1. Guns – lots of guns! (I lie, just 2 actually)
2. Enemies – lots of enemies! (Same lie)
3. Terrain
4. Intro, menus, etc…
5. Graphics
6. Sound

So as of now I’m very far behind, but I think I’ll be able to accomplish a lot more tomorrow – in theory there should be fewer distractions from working on the game… if not then I’ll switch to jam to polish it a bit more on Monday (a holiday here in ZA fortunately).

Good night all!

So, my concept has been to have the item you’re given be an acid spewing thing! It’d be a puzzle-ish game where you try to kill some evil thing that is quite dangerous by using your acid to melt enemies and walls!

While developing this game, I’ve just been constantly running in to problems with movement; I didn’t think ahead far enough, and decided to use lines, which, considering that I neither had any base code for that, and have never written code to move stuff along lines affected by gravity, has proven to be a huge pain. Of course, being a person who really loves continuous systems, it’s not surprising that I missed the discrete alternative. I don’t think I’ll be able to write the code for enemies that move in the time, and I’ll definitely have to keep the bugs of the system I implemented in mind while I’m designing levels so that players won’t think to do something that will cause weird movement (hehe… good practice there. Of course, as previously mentioned, I have no idea what I’m doing, so those bugs aren’t gonna get fixed in 48 hours, so it’s better than nothing). These technical limitations are certainly gonna show in the final product, because it really limits the amount of stuff I can do with my concept.

Other than that, it’s going better than I expected for my first time, considering I’ve never really finished an original game before due to my ambitious goals (See: Above). I’ll probably get something out, if not for the compo, I’ll probably be able to get it ready for the Jam. Also, I screwed up my timelapse, somehow. I am the image of competence, aren’t I?

Difficult to gather my thoughts and list everything I’ve done since this morning so here’s a screenshot.  It’s all playable and I’ll post up a preview version soon BUT BACK TO WORK .

After a trip to a V2 test site from WW2, I am now officially 12.5hours behind schedule with only 4hours of work in… So far the kernel is done, engine is done, threads are mostly done and particle effects are done along with menu launcher… And to top it off, a nice screeny of the main menu with particle background:

Yo, I’m EmptyFlash, working on the jam with Nineball. I didn’t check in, but I’m writing my game with Java, using only standard libraries, and he’s using Paint.NET for graphics. I was pretty upset about the theme, but what ever, we’re making it work. Here’s a screenshot of our progress:

Most of the graphics aren’t done yet, and there are a few things not implemented yet, but coming together quite nicely.

Still did not find the problem with Opera and IE. Added a tweet function.

http://keksdev.de/kitten.html?w=108,117,100,117,109,32,100,97,114,101

I read a study somewhere, sometime, that claimed really productive people slept more than others. Well I think I’m gonna give that a try here, I’ll need all the help I can get. I’ve got a lot left. Ugh.

At least I’ve got something that looks like… Something.

Me and my friend this

There is no way you could escape.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 30th, 2011 at 8:38 pm and is filed under LD #20 - It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!. 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.

Stupid helicopters chasing my little birdy. Well… I don’t have a helicopter sprite yet, so there are these nice humans instead. Oh – and I named the little bird Ludum (for no obvious reasons 8) ). So it’s now “Ludum – the magic bird of AWESOME” 😀 Next is: helicopter sprites XD, keys to unlock doors and triggers to do events (like spawn even more bullets)

I decided to work on the art aspect of my LD20 entry instead of coding for a bit. But it’s going slow as hell, because I haven’t pixeled “seriously” in a few months. I wasted a bunch of time drawing brick tiles, before realizing it was ugly. So I backstepped that, and tried to make something a little simpler.

Needs more work, but here we go!

Alright, well, I better take a supper break soon, and then I’ll resume work.

Made some graphics, I think I’ll work on some levels now.

Playable! Click here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4785344/ludumdare/LD20WIP/index.html

Update time! I have made some progress! Buttons for selections are in and the item panel is done (aside from how to actually deal with the items being “used”). In any case, here is how it looks after you select ITEMS:

Game idea is based around this old man in a cave (yet to be drawn, wizard placeholder visible) who all adventurers go to for things, namely items and advice (much like Zelda geeet iiiit?). Anyway, people come in, ask for something and you are free to give them something suitable or something completely random and zany dialogue occurs. You are scored based on how well  you do, but going for a high score would be just as much “fun” as going for a low score so the player is free to do whatever. The title of the store changes depending on score.  Tomorrow the plan is to implement a bunch of worlds/levels that are simple 10-15 second minigames that show the adventurer using the item/advice the player gives them. Example: Trying to do a shmup with a banana is not going to go well, or trying to host a dinner party with a robot is… actually that sounds awesome. You get the idea.

Sleeping takes way too much time. I think I lost like 6 hours there!

My idea for this LD was pretty simple: Since it’s dangerous to go alone, bring weapons! Absurd weapons! LOTS of absurd weapons!

Basically, the concept is that you have a friend (call him Q, Lucius Fox, Isaak, whatever) who likes making weapons. Every time you go on a mission, he gives you something new, shiny, and destructive. And you always come back thanking him.

So… now that I have a full parallax-based sprite engine (hooray for PyGame!) I’m starting on actual game mechanics. I’ve had 3 slightly different concepts for how to execute this concept:

• side-scrolling space shooter (similar to Raptor)
• vertically-scrolling space shooter (similar to Tyrian, Galaxians, etc.)
• top-down, free movement hover shooter (similar to Zone 66)

I’m still not entirely sure which to choose, though I’m leaning toward the Zone 66 style, only with better controls.

Here’s a screenshot of what I’ve got so far. Its an adventure game that I’m calling Robot Village.