Update madness 😀

• pathfinding using AStar working
• zombie and hero fight!

Initially I was super excited about the theme selection because it was my favorite in the final round of voting. Then I spent the first 12 hours doodling in my custom sprite editor and sleeping. I woke up today and started fresh. I finished the level editor and most of the main artwork. After lunch, I will be starting on physics and collision. Still hazy about where the theme fits in, but it will get there eventually!

So I’ve decided to change the name of my game from the ‘virusdanger’ to ‘Out of the desert’.

There are three keys, and three sections of the screen to touch.  The characters will all be drawn with lines, and geometry made of lines: beziers, rectangles, triangles as well as circles.

I don’t know javascript all that well, or newer versions of opengl so webgl is tough one to deal with.  I’m making progress.  My game is going to be a first person platformer.  How well it turns out depends on how far I get today.  I just about have the models of the game world objects done.  They aren’t fancy.  I have most of the code for moving around as well.  Once I get all that straight I’ll have to get some simple physics in place.  Then it will be a push to set up some abstraction so that I can script out my levels.  If I get all that done before bed then tomorrow will just be level design and play testing.  I’m hoping I’ll have time to add in niceties like sound and hopefully a tie into the theme.  Anyways, thats where I’m at.

I finally managed to make those bi-arrays work. So, now, corridor generation is working, though I do have to tweak it a bit, I’ve got to reimplement border generation, and then start the core gameplay.

I don’t think I’ll manage to finish but I’ll try, I’m so far behind…

Here’s a screen for you : the green square is the starting point. It’s chosen randomly in one room. The objective square (red) will be in randomly in another room.

Breakthrough

So I missed the first 11hrs while sleeping. I did read the theme before conking out though, and when I woke up, I had my idea ready. Basically, it’s a cave platformer, but you have a ‘device’ that flips your gravity. So you can walk on the ceiling or on the floor. The cave you are in and must exit is full of lava, spiders, slimes, crabs and bottomless and topless chasms.

So after 3 hrs, I have all of my sprites drawn and am working on the code. ONWARDS!

So, we are about 15 hours into the LD now, and I’ve made a little something to demonstrate the concept of my game.

You are a dude, and you’re dropped in a map littered with zombies. But before you go, take this! it’s an <effect> <ammo type> <guntype>.

Yeah, that’ll get you through the night!

'Heavy Bomb Machinegun'.. Nice!

The idea is that you get a weird new weapon every night. A burning fish shotgun or a  piercing zombie pistol for example.

Here’s a .rar with an example:

http://mc.glutt.us/upload/spud.rar

Controls are wasd for moving, Q for the next weapon and Z for zombies, aim with the mouse.

I’m making Oden!

Time to work my ASS off! I need this engine SPARKLING by tonight.

All the base elements are finally in place. The rest, as they say, is polish and  – well – art assets.

The title screen of ZRW

I think I might actually keep the title image…

Safehouse stage

The basic intentions here are in place. Need polish and flash and pazaz.

The game in action

Again, art is not my forte and the only three things I like about this image are the boards on the window (left – look nice an pixelated), the combination with real-life photos and the absolutely ludicrous notion of riding a sheep through a horde of zombies.

I’ll focus on the four item types, make about 12 different items for starters, and then look into the assets. Finally, code polish.

It’s a little lonely down here in the game dev bunker sometimes. But, if you want the fruits that come along with makinge games like it’s the end of the world, you must strictly adhere to the concept of there being no one left but you and lots of radiation.

You have to want brains, if you are ever going to eat them.

So the agenda for today is fleas. I am very tempted to work on blood effects, since I will have tiny zombified fleas in search of brains. If you are gnawing through a human noggin, blood is going to happen.

But, first i think i need to focus on their motivation. If they never have a unquenchable thirst for brains, they will not likely become ravenous enough to make this game worthwhile for the gaming community. So I will first create a victim class, who will be a shape of little definition. I will place a boolean property in the class named “hasBrains”, and I will most assuredly make sure that the flea class is capable of knowing the status of said variable.

I am thinking to start that I will focus on just having them use proximity to a brain carrier to determine their likelyhood of attacking.

Now… fully rested, I am feeling confident that I can train fleas to like brains. There are so many things i thought about while drifting off to sleep last night. One being — should I go with sloped terrain ? or a tile engine ? I’m leaning towards sloped, but… but we shall see.

I’ve scoped out more of the competition today as well. My opinion is they seem far too comfortable to be successful in this environment. I like imagining them OUTSIDE this bunker in the radiation. I see pictures of food that’s nicely prepared and laid out on a table with napkins and silverware. This kind of imagery has no place in game development, you need hunger. You need whats at the end of the journey — that’s what you are fighting for. Beer is only allowed because it can help temper the pain of serious game development.

So keep eating your muffins and other baked goods i say. Keep taking a timeout to stir fry some healthy food. Keep on taking pictures of your spreads of various delectables. Have you ever seen a picture of shigeru miyamoto with a fork and knife in his hands or with crumbs on his shirt ??? cmon people. You guys are making zelda clones with a fork and spoon.. this man paved the way by resisting such things. So while you are churning out another zelda, this man is going delirious from hunger and coming up with another stellar concept for you to copy!!!

Ok, if I don’t stop here, I’ll most likely be blatantly trolling again in no time. — by the way, is it trolling if you post taunts in your own updates… as opposed to as a comment on someone elses post ? I should probably not risk it, but I’m so close to calling out some of these meal driven developers. waka – waka.

no forks.. no crumbs.. very slim. food doesn't drive this man!

Well it’s about 4 hours in and we’ve got an idea, and some basic game stuff.

Goddamn Concept art.

Silly drawing

First printscreen.

the dude lives!

After eating a delicious pizza, of which I sadly don’t have pics, I’m now going to continue with the ‘puzzle’ in this room. Anyway, so far I’ve created the crusher enemy, which will crush you, and am now working on the first item you can carry and ‘use’, which is needed to get the hero out of this room.

All is going well but I think I’m going to have a hard time coming up with levels eventually. But still, so far, so good! Also, I planned on making the hero sort of smart and allowing him to do things, but maybe it’ll be even more fun if the hero is completely stupid and oblivious to what happens, like a true escort quest. But maybe that gets too frustrating, so I probably won’t do that.

Hi all,

This is what I have so far… I’ve been working on an isometric engine

I just read another post and there is another old school isometric game in the contest… good luck!!

After breakfast of course.

I’ve just come back from a walk. Here in Cambridge, a beautiful spring afternoon is coming to a close, and I couldn’t justify staying inside for all of it.

Anyway, my game is sort of coming along. You play an adventurer about to embark on a dangerous quest. A helpful but questionably sane old man of your acquaintance finds himself unable to allow you to proceed without first furnishing you with various enchanted items that may be of assistance. So, he keeps chucking useful items in your direction and you have to try to keep hold of them. If you drop one, the enchantment breaks and the item explodes and kills you horribly.

So far I have some items falling from the sky and some deliberately arcadey physics, but it is neither finished nor playable yet.

“It is dangerous to go alone,” he said.  “Take this.”

The little red heart is pretty, but I don’t remember how it works.

Hey! That guy has a sword.

I’m not sure if I will be able to do what I want… but anyway… that’s what I got so far

I am making progress now. I made the text boxes, a lot of sprites  and came up with a name for the game. Now I am going to do a lot more rooms, obstacles and enemies and after that there is maybe still some time to make a boss fight.

This also explains the story of my game and the use of the theme. 8 ó clock here. Just had some diner, and of course I made a picture. (A)

Got the menu-graphics and story ready. Oh – and animated character sprites 😀 (I never did any animation before so I’m quite happy I finished one which looks good – YAY) All text is hand-written because standard fonts are just too boring. Game Engine is also finished so far – time to create some interesting levels.

It's dangerous indeed

Spent yesterday evening coming up with a concept and knocking out some pixel art.

This morning I’ve been working on platforming. I’ve now got a tile-based map with a little dude running around and pixel-colliding pretty nicely.

Dinner last night was Baja White Sea Bass:

I’ve decided to do proper room transitions like the 2d zeldas. I could just have done a hard cut between rooms but I always think that doesn’t give you a proper sense of space, so it kills a lot of the fun of exploration. That does mean dealing with multiple coordinate spaces though (there’s no such thing as “world” space any more).

Still, I can walk between rooms, which is nice.

To keep things simpler, I’ve limited it to one exit/entrance per side. That slightly restricts the available room designs but not much I think.

Wow, it’s been a hard day. I spent nearly 6 hours non stop shopping with the girlfriend and my feet, legs, arms and back hurt like hell. I’ve been trying to code and do some minor artwork but it’s all gone nowhere really, at least nowhere fast. And it looks like I’ve been going at a dead end now – it’s time for a pretty large rethinking. But it’s gonna be a fairly large project… Damnation to it all.

I feel the pain from being away from C++ and game programming for so long – I need to constantly refresh on functions, classes and whatnot. The venture into Perl, Haskell, Lisp and whatever has sure made me a better coder, but now I just feel like a damn slow one! I got off to such a great start, but now it’s falling apart a bit.

Now I have some positive things too. My girlfriend is ever supporting and I think she understands the hours I want to put into this this and tomorrow night. I think I have a really, really great idea for the game!

You’re gonna play the role of an alien or some sort of divine spirit, I was thinking of the guy from Tron Legacy who was set to create a perfect world, who has been given an imbalazer which will let him to transform plants and animals. Then you should create a system of sorts, something like a digital circuit, which will emit sounds when an animal reaches a goal or a function or similar. This way you can create all sorts of circuits, with the ultimate goal of being able to create binary algebra – so you can make a calculator or whatever. The sound thing is partly from me being lazy (don’t have to spend all day making something that sounds like music) but also so you can create your own song!

Phew.

Now it’s barbecue time and I’m preparing for a long coding night tonight.

My current progress in my attempt to beat grand master loudumb i’ve done the following:

The player can shoot;

The ending song has been made as well as some ambient loops;

Some of the artwork has been done;

I have a plot. :D;

Does anyone know whether making a(n almost exact) Zelda clone would be a copyright infringement? Also how about the rules of LD and using the same graphics as Zelda?

PS despite the fact that I am planning an almost exact copy, the difference should be worth it, so yes, I know that just copying Zelda defeats the purpose, but I do have a reason for wanting to make it as reminiscent of Zelda as possible.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Tags: LD20

16 hours in, 32 to go – I don’t know if I’ve made it to 1/3rd completion yet, but I do have my first test prototype mocked up. No graphics yet, and none of the collecting survivors mechanic, just a test of the swing/release controls. Play it here:

Click the image to play the control test prototype

And here is another page from my notebook expanding on the design I’m going for with the controls.

Controls concept sketch

And now it is time to start working on some graphics.

Still working with XNA: have a basic level editor, steering for three NPC types, three kinds of bait, collision, and some range visualization stuff for testing/debugging purposes.  Still need to add obstacles/walls so I can start working on some level design.  Many b&w graphics, but still need NPC animations, as well as environment art.

sadly, the title has nothing to do with my game.
I’m getting a new computer, no idea what I’m looking for. When I get it I’m going to have to go through a good hour of transferring over important files and hooking it up. This could set my LD back  by a while.

Woke up today a little later then I’d have liked, but with a plan fully in my head.  Super simple RPG system coupled with a pet/minion battle mechanic.  It’s dangerous to go alone.  Here, take this guy!  I also woke up to the lovely, lovely smell of the catbox being well overdue for a cleaning and no litter in the house, and a fridge devoid of food.

Letting my fiancée, who isn’t coding a game in 48 hours, sleep in I went off to the store to repair these things and decided on spoiling us for this stressful weekend.  Recently we discovered our local grocery store has a good stock of quality cheeses, and nothin’ says goodmorning like a good sliver of bree and fresh baked croissants.

So, finally sitting down to code and I’m realizing that me not knowing basically anything about the differences between actionscript 2 and 3 was not the best idea when going into something like this.  Caffeine? Check.

Apart from some strange blue becoming green antics, the base systems and building objects seem to be working, next step. Add the outlet goal blocks and the game play element of getting a particular block and having to figure out how best to use it.

I’m RDP from a macbook at the moment which means i’ve lost print screen button… when I get a break I’ll figure it out.

tic tac, the clock is running.

Unfortunatly for us, Abe’s netbook keep on crashing, his punny laptop couldn’t handle the hight level of awesomeness we trying to make him compil.

The engin still needs many tweaks before beeing able to be concider as prototype.
I guess those hardware issues are part of the challenge.

Anyway Mr Aries have finish the first music layer :
Have a loook !

For my part i m starting animations and content variation in order to generate our levels.

sorry, this lib viewing is a crappy but it stills give you a little update.

Take and keep the good work !

(definitly a great experience sharing this wek end with you mates)

I am trying to do an automatic procedural quest thing – probably foolish, but here’s what I have:

I WANT A KITTEH!

YOU MUST DO SOMETHING FOR ME FIRST

YOU MUST DO SOMETHING FOR ME FIRST

YOU MUST DO SOMETHING FOR ME FIRST

YOU ALREADY HAVE IT!

OK, ALRIGHT, I’ll GIVE IT TO YOU.

OK, ALRIGHT, I’ll GIVE IT TO YOU.

OK, ALRIGHT, I’ll GIVE IT TO YOU.

KITTEH!

That is, the player was assigned a subquest to get something else, and from that subquest, another subquest, nesting (in this case) three deep.

I woke up 16 hours ago and now is a good time to afford some diner. I feel bad for last few hours because I was looking for simple yet efficient way to implement lighting in my game but no success except one tutorial which will help but not today. I’ll make that tomorrow for today, I have next plans:

– Make nice torch particle system
– Pickups
– Some cheap monsters
– Maybe some additional mechanics

After that, I’ll find suitable place in my bed

classic pizza with very spicy peppers + beer

What’s there not to love?

Anyway just wanted to share an early screen of my game with you guys.

Have physics up and running, now to figure out what to do with it 😛

Nyan out!

Hooray, I kind-of have some playabilitinessification.

So far, you can move around, and trhow an anchor at the little red dudes that come out of the huts,to knock them over. Then you have to pick-up your achor before you can throw it again, which at the moment is a huge drag, and it’s hard to hit things with the anchor… Hmmm.

The idea is that after throwing, you’ll have a chain to the anchor, and you’ll run round knocking dudes over with it. I may well get nothing else done, which is a bit rubbish! Too much time spent fiddling with the (veeery basic) animations.

Screenshot!

It’s sort-of, kind-of, playable here.

Tags: progress, screenshot

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

I have Flixel up and running, and now have a framework I can start building a game on top of.  I’m still a bit uncertain about the theme.  So I’m going to continue to work on my engine.  Next steps are:

• Improve player movement
• Mouse aim and shooting
• Proper level loading
• Enemies
• Enemy path finding

I didn’t get a chance to buy groceries last night, so I’ve ordered pizza.  I tend to eat pretty poorly during LD48s.

Okay, porting a boids-style steering system to Monocle was probably not a good use of competition time.  And in the end the movement didn’t really look good and I threw it away and replaced it with something simple.  Oh, it would be nice to learn the lesson to do it the simple way the first time…

Graphics are placeholders, of course.

It’s coming along great so far.

I couldn’t Imagine how fuzzy the jar-thingie with java is, or maybe it’s just me, but it took me hours to put it together in a working state, but finaly, here is my first draft. It’s incomplete, buggy and ugly, but it haz multiple characters at once and Buttons (you can even play it together with a friend, if you share a keyboard or so)

wanna try out? click here

and animating.. except upside down and huge :S

and fixed

I tried to do a video capture of the game in its current state, but the upload to youtube failed… I put it on Dropbox though, so you can admire the laggy capture and the ugly placeholder obstacles over wich you must try to avoid tripping

BUT I have all the basic elements for my game now, including interactivity. I need to implement proper win/lose conditions, add some menus and context, and maybe record some music/sfx/whatever…

At least this time around things seem to be going my way. Let’s hope nothing bad happens tonight nor tomorrow !

So here’s the video for those who are curious : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17113774/video-day1-20h21.ogg

Stayed up all night putting the platform engine together and now I’m so tired, but I’ve just been writing non-stop about the plot for my game and I don’t know where all of this inspiration is coming from. Now I’m just going to hammer together the levels, work furiously on the graphics, and then sleep straight through my classes on Monday and Tuesday!

After getting back from shopping, I did a little brainstorming about the game. One thing led to another and i eventually settled on this idea.

In short it’s “Exploration vs Minesweeper”

The basic idea is this. You play as a little character who has been sent into a mysterious cave with the aim of reaching the other side and all the glory that holds. Its dark, cramped and scary in the cave, and the place is sure to be filled with monsters at every turn but you don’t know where!

Upon reaching the cave (totally unprepared for venturing in) you are given a magic hammer by a passing stranger (how mysterious). He explains to you that by tapping on a wall with the hammer it will reveal what lies beyond the wall for a very brief time.

Using this knowledge you must decide whether to knock the wall down, and move further into the cave, or try another wall.

If you stumble across an enemy it will kill you, not even the mighty hammer will be able to avert your fate.

Right now all I have is the tile reveal part working, and a rough echo reveal effect (the numbers)

Next i’m going to work on putting the character in which moves around the cave and the basic game logic. (i.e hammering, moving)

Graphics will be up-rezed at the end time permitting, as right now i’m more focused on the gameplay side.

Starting to look rather zeldish…

My rendering strategy is “punish the gfx card” as you can see by the wireframe.

Hopefull it will be playable soon

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 30th, 2011 at 4:55 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.

Cave Jimmy II: Physics Breaker is now running as smoothly and with far better graphics than the original Cave Jimmy, and I’ve even got the original classic umbrella for him in.

But I have no idea where to go from here.

Well, anyways, here’s lunch:

Progress so far.

My game needs a name.

Brainless dude stuck in a magma place

17 hours down, 31 to go!  How have things gone since my last update?  Well… it’s really hard to say.  I took about a 4 hour nap/sleep in the middle of the night, which was probably a good idea.  I’ve written about an additional 300-400 lines of code.  So far, though, I still have nothing to actually show beyond a (new, slightly improved) title screen.

I’ve set up the bulk of my procedural map generation system, which is probably the single largest piece of code for the game… so I’m probably actually quite far along… but so far I still have no art and have ability to actually put a dude on the screen and move him around.  That’s what I’m working on now; a little bit of artwork, and then I’ll be trying to move around a simple test screen before jumping him into the game-proper.

Energy wise I’m doing okay… very drowsy, but a steady stream of caffeine, sugar, and music are keeping me focused and on task.  I’ll probably end up having to take another nap this evening, though, especially if I plan on being up most/all the night.

Hopefully I’ll report back in another few hours with some screen shots, or possibly even gameplay video!

Tags: LD #20 - It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!, pygame, python

+  = BADGER CANNON!

Since I had some work to take care of this compo’s time has been basically cut in half. It’s a simple enough mechanic that is should be done hopefully by tomorrow morningish. Another point whore game here I come! I was going to bike down to the studio and camp out there till it was done, but it has been raining all day and I don’t want to bring the wacom out in the rain to play.  So I might do my art work at home before I hop down there to code.

great progress recorded the zombie sounds, the kids had som fun on that lol, selected soundtrack from http://www.freesound.org/index.php, and found a model to use as city for the game

now its time to rest for some minutes then start to put everything together in Unity.

Tags: city, mailman, progress, sounds

Here you go:

Screenshot features:

• World map

• Small bitmap in a separate window, from which map is loaded. Yes, I’m using bitmap for world map, too.

• Some poor fellows that are later to become prey of evil monsters. They currently just walk around randomly, but don’t walk through walls. They spawn at the magenta zone on the world map.

• Complete absence of animation whatsoever. Also, mobs don’t walk but instantly teleport to the adjacent tile. Smooth movement will be added soon.

• Shoddy programmer art

• Complete absence of gameplay 😀

Tags: screenshot

A 48 hour compo is not the best time to learn all the vagaries of an expansive language.  Maybe I’ll be up for C# next LD.  Let’s give javascript a try instead!

This last hours don’t show much improvement visually:

But below the hood, I’ve done tons of stuff, mainly a Lua-based scripting system capable of driving cutscenes and other game events! Really proud of it, since it can really makes the code cleaner and handling of the lifespan of objects easier…

The old man in the screenshot appears in a cloud of smoke and will give the object needed for the current level… Just need to add the talking component, which shouldn’t be too hard…

Problem is that I’m running short on time (30 hours to go, but I won’t work that whole time, since I have to rest a bit for work next week… )…

Task list:

• Framework working
• Loading a level data (from a DDS image)
• Rendering the level (3d generated from the level data)
• Drawing the character
• Rendering character
• Design levels/items so I know what to implement
• Spawn points
• Bind spawn points to scripting events
• Draw “old man” and do speech system (seems like a polish thing, but it’s kind of important…)
• Give and take objects to the player (through scripting)
• Spawn creatures and give them rudimentary AI (also through scripts)
• ….

That I’m not finishing again. I’ll see how far I get with this platformer tonight. But otherwise, not finishing. Not even Jamming. Again.

Finished working on the main character and did a blender rendering of what it should like

Well… except for the shadows which are kind of expensive for mobile devices.. and also the cellshading… and probably the diffuse shading will be a little bit different… and probably everything else as well… :p

Yes, these are the final graphics for the game. Deal with it.

All 5 levels are now playable, we have HUD showing magic item cooldown and cloning limit, CLICK TO PLAY:

My TODO list keeps on shrinking:

Things going pretty smoothly, I’m gonna grab some dinner and then on to title screen and cutscenes, then some sounds and music

Tags: flash, progress, screenshot

The engine is entirely done (I hope), with support for scripted cutscenes and automatic level loading.

Now it’s just time to pump out a bunch of levels, tie it together and hope it’s fun.

I’m worried about how long it’ll take for me to upload the final product on my extremely slow bandwidth. Might have to plan for a couple hours of upload time…

Well I’m into it pretty good now. I have to stop doing the frilly stuff before I have an actual game though. As you can see below I took the time to paint both of my robot models – hopefully that won’t come back and bite me.  I’ll be offline for a bit as I am hosting a dinner party – I’ll be back around 8:30 EST for more fun.

I’ve created a victim class that has brains, and zombified the brains of my flea class. The result is fleas that seek out victims.

flea_bitten

yes, they are indeed in search of brains

You can use your left/right arrow keys to try and escape – but even though you might go off the screen — rest assured that even if you are off the visible screen, they are still chasing you through memory. You CANNOT escape. I made sure that you were only fast enough to “think” you could actually escape. There is no happy ending in this demo.

(disclaimer, if you end up using precious hours from your project time trying to prove me wrong by escaping these fleas and therefore become unable to finish your project — i am in no way responsible. But I am not saying that I am NOT putting forth that challenge to prove me wrong. )

I am not entirely happy with the flea movement in terms of jump velocity, and have added that as a TODO for once I have more of the gameplay logic done. This will have to do for now.

I believe my next goal will be to create some type of level. I am kind of thinking that slopes would be nice. I see alot of block stuff going on in these posts. I’m kind of thinking I don’t want these fleas to drown in the sea of platformer clones.

The more I think about this concept, the more I love it. Killing a single flea, is quite a trivial process. But infestation is not at all trivial to survive.

Part of the concept here is that you are playing the role of a zombie. You see, mankind is very well versed on surviving a zombie apocalypse given all the training they’ve gotten via zombie movies. So in this one, merely 4 days after 28 days, you are the only zombie left. I shall not reveal all the twists.. but I shall tell you that your “this”, is a single flea egg. How could such a microscopic little egg bring down the entire world as we know it ? That is a great question, and it truly deserves an answer.

Zombies tend to have a single-mindedness when it comes to their search for brains. In the animal kingdom it is much the same, as it’s often instinctual for them to attack in packs. What if… a telepathic zombie was able to communicate his wants/needs to his offspring ? What if a zombie took the time to hatch a tiny flea egg ? What if that baby flea thought the zombie was his “momma” ? what if they were family ? What if they wanted to join the Mafia ??? errr. ok, that last one is not a part of the story, but if i’ve been trying to work the mafia into this story somehow and sometimes i forget i axed that part.

Anyways. Enjoy this little flea zombified flea simulator with no blood. run you pansy.. run i say. cause there is no hope for you.

Zombified Flea AI development a success

Hangedman: Well, no, no, don’t take that wrong. I’m not done. Not giving up. Maybe giving out.

<Laughter offscreen>

Hangedman: I built the main game structure in an hour and a half last night, but then sleep all night and work all day has cost me a remarkable amount of time. But the game is practically playable. A few graphics here, a few arrays there, a bit of panicked music <Chuckles offscreen> and we’ll give it a go.

Hangedman: But I will persevere, even if I have to sacrifice my personal life to do it. What little there is.

<Laughter offscreen>

Hangedman: Keep on truckin’, all you great people being greatly sleep-deprived in your great time zones. I’ll give you a bit more music to carry on. It’s the incomparable Parov Stelar, with the kickin’ Libella Swing. Hope you like it.

<Applause, fade to music>

I spent about 2 hours working on some movement code for my game. It’s totally wrong. I blame math again. I guess I better fix it. At least I have some code to save.

Working on cleaning up the visuals and getting something presentable. The mechanics are turning out quite nicely so far and I’ve integrated Ogmo into the mix.

So after hitting a few dumb coding blocks here and there due to forgetting my originally far more scaled down plans, I found that I had actually done some doodles for planning. And as a master of planning, the majority of my plan for the actual level of the game is “fill in later”. This bodes well. In fact this entire plan just smells like a recipe for success. Oh well.

So much for "take this".

This is going to come back to haunt me tomorrow.

Still, getting there. Should have most of the code done by the end of tonight.

I’ve got a few ideas about what comes next, but I’m not sure if there’s time.

Note to my future self: Next Ludum Dare, code first, do graphics second. I’ve got several images done that I haven’t used (yet)

Man…

I’ve currently got a basic scene node, basic entities including a moving entity, a collision box class, and an empty display window.

Geez, this is really unlike me. I usually have something by now.

That being said, I’m going to try working through tonight. I hope that I can have a demo working by tomorrow.

I’m kind of sad because I see a lot of games really taking shape right now, and mine’s just a pile of boilerplate right now.

Oh well, tonight and tomorrow will (hopefully) bring some success.

At least, Prof. Feynman seems to think it’ll turn out okay. Still, he and I are pretty sure that we’re only going to have a demo for the jam. A full game may be post-compo, but there will be a demo for the jam.

Peace, love, and bright tomorrows,

— Mr. Dude

Finally got the player to move on the maps, will redraw the sprite at some point. I had to remove the physics from my engine so I broke a few things doing so.

Next things to add are a battle scene (pokemon style), enemies and the special items you will be given to fight the enemies since you’re on your own!

More updates soon

Screenshot:

Gateway DX4850-43CU with Nvidia something

gateway 24” LED screen

cost about 900 dollars CA. I am happy with it, downside is that I’ll spend all day screwing around now and not doing my game making.
I’ll do it tonight.

So, one of the game development lessons I’ve learned over the years is that if you want to have a satisfying game, every little interaction the player has with the game should also be satisfying. With that in mind, I’ve spent the last few hours tuning my movement controls, with a black dot jumping around on a black line:

If you want, you can try it out yourself. Enter to start, Left/right arrows to move, Z to jump, Z in the air to airdash.

“It is dangerous to go alone,” he said.  “Take this.”

Now, do I use this magic to destroy my enemy, or to punish my minions for not destroying him for me?

World domination, or sexual gratification?

Today it is Queens Day (Koninginnedag) in Holland, which is traditionally celebrated by everyone selling their old stuff in huge flea markets. I spent most of the morning walking around in this huge park, where it seemed like half of the city’s population was present.

Then I went to Amsterdam, where my cousins had their birthday party.

Now I’m back home and I’ve had dinner, it’s time to start working for LD!

Okay, so I started making progress on my Flash LD48 game.

So far I’ve accomplished this not so impressive screen:

I’m using a font by Zaratustra that I found on Fontstruct, and is CC licensed: http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/zaratustra_bigital

Anyway, stay tuned for more later.

Buzzing around with collisions continue as I once again fail to present a screenshot that does not contain a person sodomizing a sheep.

I’m adding the protagonists (zombies – who’d have thunk) and smoothing out item code right now. Trying to decide whether to mess around with audio or improve the art. While it may score me a triple smiley in Mrs. Hodgesons’ third graders’ drawing room I can’t see how these drawings are anything but doodles of a seven-year-old.

Tags: sheep

I don’t have very much to show yet, most of the work so far has been about tweaking animation/gameplay movement feel. I drew this little critter to go around with in the game. Movement feels somewhat ok now, except I’m still missing a jump action which I think would probably be nice to have. I also composed a few notes to test a soundtrack related idea.

Implemented the player, extending a “monster” class so implementing monsters should be quite quick. When the player reaches a red target spot, the game generates a new world but the player keeps his status (not that there is much yet to see).

So, to come up, line of sight (not like rogue, no memory system, and quite limited) and a hud. Then monsters, I guess and basic interactions with them.

Here’s a screenie :

The player in the world

Finished narrations. Now going into recording. Ugh, so much work! Why do I put myself through these things?

Hi all,

I’m waiting for my partner’s sprites. So far I have implemented jump and a 4-colors style using blocky-graphics.

This is the same room in 2D 😉

Goal for today. Simple filmation engine:

Movable blocks
Mortal blocks
Enemies
Goal
“Weapon”
B&W TV look

Goal for tomorrow: music, better sprites, original and theme-related gameplay 😉

Good luck!!

Hi all, we started about 9 hours ago ( counting about 2 hours to set the game direction and final setting).
Here is our progress so far

The working environment:

Picture -‘nough said.

The setting :
The game throws you in the role of the item shop keeper in a not so fantasy/medieval world.
You role is to gear up the local peasants for them they become warriors (provided a little money), and die happily for the sake of the kingdom (and your shop of course) facing hordes of organised monsters.

The game :
The game principle is a mix of puzzle reflex and survival/tower defense, with some inspiration from (little) CannonFodder.
On one hand, you have wannabe-hero peasants, waiting in a long line in front of the shop. On the other hand you have waves of monsters (each with one particularity).
The game core mechanic is rather simple, drop equipement (moving fast on a cloth rail) onto the wannabe-hero as precisely as possible, and send him to the battle field.
Make sure the gear matches the monster he will be facing. Better not give’em the wrong stuff, or they’ll die quicker and without hurting the baddies at all !
exempel : Sword for basic monsters, mace for monsters with shields,etc.

Also, the more precise the gear drop, the more efficient the fighter!

The screen layout :
on the left half, the shop, on the right side, a camera view of the battlefield.
on the top border, the wave sequence of monsters !
On the bottom border, the long line of wanabe-heroes…

What we have so far :
– Title screen (sketch and code)and intro music
– Gaming screen layout (temporary artwork)
– Basic gameplay mechanic working – hero entering shop, clothes moving on rail, drop precision detection
– Quick placeholder heroes and items

lots of nice games so far, huge motivation !

thanks everyone ! Keep it up !

This game is coming along…still no title yet but I have a few in mind. I’m working on what I believe will be the final level, for now anyways. Then I’m going to do Sound effects using Sfxr and music. Next will be the intro screens, then the ending screens.

Depending on how much time is left on the clock I would like to go back and revise a few gameplay functions, while creating the levels I though it’d be really cool if you could teleport the colored devices to each other to make it through a colored gate or any other puzzles.But puzzles like this would depend heavily on the Minimap, that in its current state is only slightly better than guessing. After spending a few hour messing around with trying to get the minimap working correctly I have now given up. If I have time I’ll recreate it using the Construct event sheets.

the char is in the city and the camera is in the correct position … lets make this guy move !!!

Tags: char, city, mailman, unity

Look at that, just look at it. You’ll never see a more beautiful reproduction of the Link vs. Old Man screen in your entire life.

Tags: in my entiah rife, screenshot

As is traditional now, I’ve spent a couple of hours having things not work for no explicable reason. It doesn’t help that Flashpunk’s documentation isn’t very good, but all I’m trying to do is draw a line, for which there is a function, which does nothing.

Maybe it’s a simple thing (the equivalent to forgetting to add a tween to the world) but whatever it is, it’s burned me out a bit. If anyone could tell me how to draw a line and make it work (preferably onto a Canvas, as I’ll be doing collisions from it too) then I’d be very, very grateful! And you’ll get a warm, fuzzy feeling, along with a game that has lines in! Everyone’s a winner!

Tags: help

Spent the past few hours writing a bunch of base code to help out with the additional mechanics that I want to put in. I also did some more graphics work (A HILL.). Best excuse to show off another screenshot ever. So you are seeing countdown bars for the upcoming bricks that you can drop on your tower. I was thinking it might be nice to put in a pax briticannica style “hold down to get more power” thing to this. Don’t know if I will need it though.

I got a call from the friends that went to the movie, so I am going to meet up with them instead of running myself into the ground. My eye is starting to twitch and I have been at my desk for 11 hours straight, so that seems like a good idea. We will see if that means better work tomorrow. Also I have a tagline for the game: a 3 button realtime strategy tower defense brick game. No title yet though.

Tags: progress, screenshot

And the speech system is in-place… Was a bitch getting right: getting the projected position of the 3d position of the speaker so I could write the text there, center the text, script binds, etc…

Was hard making it visible in all circumstances aswell… Finished writing the text twice, one in black and offset and then in the normal color… Worked quite well…

This is finally shaping up, although it’s not even close to being a game… Next step is probably to draw and animate the imps, making them spawn in their proper positions and giving them AI… Probably will call it then…

Task list:

Task list:

• Framework working
• Loading a level data (from a DDS image)
• Rendering the level (3d generated from the level data)
• Drawing the character
• Rendering character
• Design levels/items so I know what to implement
• Spawn points
• Bind spawn points to scripting events
• Draw “old man” and do speech system (seems like a polish thing, but it’s kind of important…)
• Give and take objects to the player (through scripting)
• Spawn creatures and give them rudimentary AI (also through scripts)
• Draw and animate imps
• ….

I’m a long time veteran on the Ludum Dare IRC channel, but haven’t had the chance to take part until now – so LD20 is my first LD. Since it’s dangerous to go alone, I took two old buddies, FlashDevelop and FlashPunk along with me. Besides that, I’m working with PhotoShop CS5 and Audacity, and progress is looking okay so far. The basic gameplay mechanics are starting to take shape, so tomorrow I’ll have plenty of time to add more variation and work on levels – perhaps even incorporate the theme, since I sort of got sidetracked a bit. 😛

A gfx teaser:

So my game will be a platformer in which the character keeps getting new items. One of these items is a spiked helmet which you can use to climb walls, stick to ceilings and kill enemies.

Got a lot done this day but there is also a lot of things left to do for tomorrow, at least I won’t be hungover tomorrow

Here is a screenie with some placeholder art (if I have enough time left to make some new )!

And yes, he is upside down

I’ve done simple particle system for the torch which looks a bit weird in game but since I have everything implemented it won’t be hard to make small changes to the system (just in case of spare time). HUD – Torch bar has been updated with the bar and now I only have to make that bar become smaller while torch is burning. Another thing I’ve decided to add is “Sprint” which will make the torch glow with even stronger flame but torch bar will lower faster because of that.

Finally got the hang of Allegro.

So far I’ve got the basic game play in place, now just to debug my particle engine….

I’m a little worried about how long it take me to get to this point, but I’m hoping that now I have most of the engine framework up it won’t take me as long to do the actual gameplay bits.

Here’s the title screen:

Here it is so far.  There’s been a lot of distractions today which I’d rather not talk about.  Suffice to say there are bad bugs outside!

In my game, four players can throw each other around.  I’m not sure yet how it will turn out for voting if I require four players.  I can’t even test it well!

Pfiouu….after 19hours working and some troubles with the items generator, i finally have something good

Time to sleep some hours…

Next step: Including mobs, heroes and weapons !

Got the tile engine and character/enemy up and running!

You can now “attack” enemies, but it still doesn’t do anything interesting, it looks like this:

Tomorrow I will add real interactions + levels, monsters and winning losing conditions.

Plenty of work, not much time – let’s see how it goes!!

Daniel

I may try to make some interactive story thing.

But, in hindsight, I have considered the following:

-Will not use mappy for tilemaps

-If I do a tile map game again, I will not make the levels.

-Not design such a large map.

-Even with a smallish map, not allow feature creep to get in the thought process.

And that is all.

Wouldn’t you like to know what the Space bar does? Mwahaha!

That hat really doesn’t work as well as I thought. Oh well. Bed time now.

So here’s what the game looks like so far.

Not much, but I can start worrying about guns and enemies now.

LD20 mailman first movement in the city from Hamilton Lima on Vimeo.

now I can control the char and the camera follow it !!!
used the default character controller and a camera following script

there so many streets here to name … I think I will change plans !! the mailman now need to deliver letters from a cat to the other cats !! lol just need to find the cats in the city, and fight the zombies !!!

Tags: cats, changing plans, mailman, progress, unity3d

Rooms now properly transition from one to another now. This has taken far too long, but the results are pretty nice at least – time will tell whether I’ve wasted too much time on it or not.

Swoosh!

Next up I’m going to draw and add in the npcs.

I’ve now created a dialog system for me to easily get animated messages outputted, and I also diverged a bit and made a spotlight system instead of just using a lighting sprite.