Question: when does this mini-LD end?
Question2: Where do you post the game when it is ‘done’.
Thanks.

First, I have a few things to say:
Today I realized in a very painful way that I’ve been very  disorganized in the past.
I recently worked on a flash game for a teaching project I participate where University students teach programming in High School.
One of the AS3 classes I wrote for that project was what I call ‘art code’ that means code that can’t be replicated.. because the goal is artistic.
That specific code was used to generate random brick tiles for 2d games..
It seems that I have deleted it completely somehow.. is there no use crying oer spilled milk? Why do I unknowingly delete code I love?

I hope to learn from this mistake and that I’ll be truly organized from now on.
(I have made this mistake many times before)

Themes I chose:

• Descend
• Demolish(?)
• Destroy
• Dirt

A: Name: Smashy smash!

B: Description:
You are an unseen force around a giant demolition (wrecking) ball  that is constantly chasing the ‘hero’ of the game.
Use the pointer to place dirt and alter the direction of the ball. (click on the platform to erect a ramp, in the air to create a floating block)

C: One mockup image:
One mockup image coming right up:

smashy smash

D: Definition of Done:
A player can:

1. Move the ball around, bouncing it from platforms to platform and switch directions.
2. Lose if the timing of the jump is ‘lousy’ or if she did not switch direction in time.
3. Win the game and get the hero. And smashy smash.

Features:

1. It takes over a minute to win the game.
2. The hero keeps running away and jumping around.
3. It gets more challenging over time.
4. There is a game over screen.

MiniLD #26 – Entry

Name of Game: Magix Elementus

Description: You are a Warrior Mage who must journey to the Elemtus Realm and battle other mages to gain power and prestige and grow your domain.

Mockup

Definition of Done

[] Random Floating Landscape of elements
[] Elements have magic / colour
[] Wizard
[] Move Wizard
[] Move element blocks
[] Turn elements into magic
[] Cast Spells
[] Create Golems from Elements
[] Golems move
[] Golems battle
[] Golems collect elements
[] Enemy Wizard
[] Battle Enemy Wizard
[] Win / Lose State

The Fall

Misfortune throws you deep into the wild caverns below. Forging past the danger, you will return to the surface, no matter what.

This game is intended to be a Metroidvania sort of game involving collecting upgrades, all based on each of the themes given, to be able to progress further up the level. In a way, the primary theme is an inversion of Descent – the descent has already happened, and now the protagonist wants to return from it.

Disclaimer: Final graphics practically guaranteed not to resemble this whatsoever.

Checklist:

• Core mechanics
• All eight ability upgrades
• Sub-upgrades for some of the upgrades
• Five enemy types
• A boss fight
• In-game scripted sequences
• The main level completed
• Graphics for player character, NPC and enemies
• Sounds
• Ambient background sound
• Incidental music
• Title screen
• Ending/credits/shout-outs screen

Pitdive is looking really good… for an ascii game.  you can climb, dig out walls, falling scrolls from middle, even without any other features it is pretty compelling to mess around with at this point.

A: Name of the game

The Unglamorious Halfdozen
B: Description (140 chars)

A group ragged fighters from the Frenglerican nation are sent behind enemy lines with an ample supply of ammunition and dynamite to demolish Germaneese installations during Vanilla Wars 2.0

C: One mockup image

D: Definition of Done:

1 working level with plenty of explosions. I am very uncertain of my chances of succeeding at finishing anything playable this time due to other commitments so i’ll be more than happy to get anything running!

Yeah, maybe I overslept. Again. Its 10 am here and I’m still having breakfast. Last night, I got some pretty interesting stuff: fixed all bugs that prevented me to get-things-done ™ and finished the basical mechanics of the game. The knights and the monsters now can attack, die, kill. The knights can also finish a level and a new level now loads in case all the alive knights exit it. Today I want to do some very un-get-things-done thing, rewrite a lot of code. But that will be needed to get rid of more bugs.

In a few words: Yesterday, I went from a tiny scrolling overview of small characters in a big map to the real game.

What’s next: Add some better speciallization to the characters (stats like defense, visibility, etc), more inteligence to the monsters. A Boss would be a good idea. Also game over and a title screen would help.

Oblig. screenshots:

The Knights at their starting position for the first level. We actually see all regular enemy varieties.

Not the game, really 😉 Just my desk, like someone else posted.

Fuel ( black tea ).

“brainstorming”.

Themes: Destroy, Detonate, Descend (,Dirt, Dig, Demolish are there too, to a degree!)

Dundradoid heard there are tons of gold under the earth! Let’s make explosive excavation! A platformer where the objective is to proceed down a procedurally generated, never ending level by detonating little Dundradoid to remove obstacles. Collect gold and destroy enemies for score!

Definition of Done: At least 3 enemies, randomly generated terrain using tiles, 4 different tiles, highscore and some sounds…

The destroyable world now works, kinda buggy, but I think that its enough for tomorrow’s build.

The next step will be to add the characters. I’ll begin working on it after lunch.

Screenshot:

A: the dearth of dynamite device debuggers

B: diagnose a defective dynamite-based digging / drilling device

C: 

D:

1. more than one sound
2. some kinematics animation (moving along a conveyor, falling)
3. some sprite-sheet animation
4. more than one level
5. an in-game tutorial
6. a win screen
7. a splash screen

Note: fun is not on the list

A screenshot.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 28th, 2011 at 2:12 pm and is filed under MiniLD #26. 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.

So far today I’ve managed to get some base code done that I should have done a long time ago (hooray!) and basic player movement.

The level generation is still just a test thing to see how the tiles look… not great, but they’ll do for now.

I’m currently metaphorically bashing my head against a wall, trying to do collision checking. I’d forgotten how horrible it is. I think jumping in using hitboxes isn’t a good idea. I’ll have to simplify it, get it working, and then make it horribly complicated. 😛

Not visible is the scrolling view as you move around. (Yay!)

Anyway, not spending enough time on this today, and hitting a block have injured my plans in getting Done. Oh, well.

So my original goals were far too ambitious. With the six hours I have left in this day, here’s the updated checklist:

• Core mechanics
• All eight ability upgrades
• Three enemy types
• The main level
• Graphics for player character and enemies
• Sounds
• Title screen
• Ending/credits/shout-outs screen

If I can get all this done before the deadline maybe I’ll add music. Maybe.

Hello everyone ! It’s saturday evening here (almost 20pm) and I’m starting the MiniLD, I’ve got 1 day and some hours left to finish my game, that’s why it’s called “mini” right ? #ohwait …

Ok, so Dirty Things Tracy, that’s how I call my game, and there’s no -that- kind of dirty things in it. It’s a 2D platform game where you’ve got to destroy dirty things  (like the evil dirty t-shirts mawning at you) by using two weapons : the compactor and the water spray. The compactor can reuse compacted dirty stuff to help you cross a trap or a gap. I’ll try to make my design with a Rick Dangerous inspiration.

Here are some drawings I made before going home to start the MiniLD (should I call it tinyLD for me ?) :

ideas coming in...

It will be Done if there’s at least a Tracy character able to cross a level with a 3 screens size, Dirty T-shirts monster, a weapon to destroy them, with sound FX and a background music.

It would be a Well Done if I’ve got graphisms that make the game look like a real game, with two weapons and traps on the way.

It would be Awesomely Done… in another situation/life/dimension (strike whichever does not apply) ?

I’m making my entry in Java (as I stated in a previous post), but I don’t know how to deploy my game so that you guys can download it.

I’m using Eclipse as my IDE and pure Java only, no external frameworks.

Any ideas on the best way to deploy my game?

Thanks for any help

Yeah!  Late start!  Themes: dirt, drill, demolish.

You’re in a rocketship trying to drill its way out from the planet’s core.  Because your species crash-landed so hard 15,000 years ago that they ended up at the middle of their planet instead of on its surface, and only now have developed the crucial rocketship-drilling technology required.

Here’s a rough sketch, probably completely unlike how it will actually turn out:

To be done:  nice vertical scrolling in HTML5, hex tile randomly-generated world, a rocketship that crashes through the ground, and a surface to get to.  The art will be weak.

Red Wizard v Blue Wizard, basic two player movement in place…

Try it here Magix Elementus

Keys

Red: w, a, s, d and z (levitate)
Blue: up, down, left, right and m (levitate)

Does it work for you can keyboards handle it?

Hint: If you fall off the end of the world try levitation.

Finally got the concept/mockup/etc for my MiniLD #26 together here. Interesting requirements; they have really delayed me (planned to start early this morning) but I think it makes a pretty good point. Hammering out a game in a weekend is cool, but having a plan and an idea of what it should look like makes me feel a lot more directed now that I’m getting ready to begin.

Title: Detritus

Description: At an unspecified location in an unspecified time period, you live as a scavenger amidst the wreckage of a destroyed civilization. One day, while digging in the debris, you make an incredible discovery…

Detritus is a text-driven adventure game about exploration, mystery, and lost technology.

Mockup:

The mockup shows two related game screens. The center of the screen is dominated by a static illustration of the current location or situation. When the player has finished observing the illustration, it fades out and is overlaid by a text description and a number of options. The player selects one of the options to progress the game and the text will change to reflect that progress. New illustrations will be presented as warranted by the player’s progress. Note that the vaguely medieval theme of the mockup has nothing to do with the actual game.

Definition of Done:

• Playable from start to finish.
• At least one “win” and one “lose”; as an adventure game, these will probably be “good” and “bad” endings.
• At least ten illustrations of reasonable quality.
• Some sort of inventory system.
• MMO-style quest tracker keeps current goal and progress visible at all times.
• Accessible and understandable instructions.

Bonus Features If I Have Time:

• Some type of character customization/progression.
• Useful mapping system.
• Specialized mechanics beyond the multiple-choice adventure paradigm; puzzle mini-games, for example.
• Player journal for tracking previous events and quests.
• More/better artwork (Art could be an enormous time investment, so it is a low priority beyond the minimum.)

Themes in Use:

Mainly “Dig” and “Descend”, I think. To be honest, I’m not sure how much influence the themes will have, but I’ll do my best to work them in where I can.

Well, after inadvertently sleeping in until noon (Alarm went off but it failed to wake me up…) I had an extremely unproductive day.

I’m really pissed at myself. I promised myself that I’d succeed this time. I really wanted this to amount to something. I don’t know if I can do that now.

Maybe I’m just pissy right now because I’m disappointed in myself, but I can’t picture getting any of this done by the end.

I’m really sorry, folks. I did this myself. I did this to myself. I can’t believe it. I’ve likely failed yet again. Can I ever succeed at this?

This is really sad for me. I’m wondering whether I can actually succeed at making games. Again, I’m probably just pessimistic because of how today went. I can’t shake that feeling, though.

I’m not sure what will become of my Mini-LD entry. I’m really depressed right now, and finishing it at all, even after the Mini-LD looks hopeless. I’m not sure what I want to do, or whether I want to keep going.

This is pretty much how it’s gone for the past year or so. Loads of projects that don’t even make it to being prototypes. Abandoned within days. I’m doubting whether I can actually do game dev at all.

I’m really sorry about this, folks. I just… can’t seem to get anything done. I don’t know why I’m sharing this here. I probably shouldn’t be, but I need to vent. I’m really not sure what I should do.

Still, good luck to everyone. I wish I could find hope for myself…

— Mr. Dude

Pit dive is done in demo web mode:

http://www.devinmoore.com/pitdive/appletholder.html

It doesn’t have all the elements I initially wanted, but that’s mostly because the game took a turn in a more interesting direction once i started adding in stats.  I just thought it would be interesting to show the number of moves, digs, etc. and then I got inspired to make a score based on the total level of descent minus the amount of moves it took to get there.   This causes the game to move into way more strategy vs. just button mashing, which makes the game way more compelling.  If you blast to the end, you will have a crap score, probably a negative score.  I got as high as 150 or so trying pretty hard.  Bugs: don’t dig past the edges of the level… I didn’t finish handling this for the demo but I will fix it soon, as usual I am running low on time and I wanted to stop someplace sensible vs. having a bunch of buggy, half-implemented features.

Long version: I actually don’t have much to report. I had to go out with my girlfriend and what I expected to last just a few hours, lasted the double ( hope you guys know how persuasive women can be ;-] ).

But don’t blame her (or me), since she wants me to finish this game and wants to see it ( she’s into gamedev too ).

What did I do earlier today?

– Game now is true turn-based.

– Spawn bug fixed (people were spawning inside walls, etc).

– Finished characterization (defense, attack, life, etc ) for both the Knights and the boss.

– Got a pretty cool idea for the title screen, game over screen and fininshed screen. And its going to be real easy to do.

– Also got a general idea on the final boss.

– Got some very funny ideas for a backstory.

In the end, its only missing the final boss and those screens. Oh, and there is also a bug on the “seeking” algorithm for the monsters. Gonna finish it before anything else.

Now, on the not so cool ideas: I did some math and its better for me to go to sleep now and wake up early tomorrow, refreshed and full of ideas than go to work now, tired, and wake up late tomorrow, almost on the deadline.

Short version: In my local time, the deadline is 11 AM. If I work now, I would go to bed some 2 AM and wake up at 10 AM. If I go to sleep now, I wake up 8 AM. Pretty obvious, isn’t it?