Almost Done just got to try and add sound not enough time for graphics *Woops*

Really all I will do is make a sprite for them that looks like they are flying but meh, close enough. Please don’t judge on graphics which I am sure you won’t. Key’s from 1-9 are assigned to certain spells and you have to select the enemy first. I may add a boss fight if there is enough time.

Flying enemys.

So today’s my last day of coding and I have lots to do. I have currently got my basic game working, I can load maps, print messages, move and collide with the world. Today is story day I think. I need to actually make it an escape game. Why does this scare me? I should probly be coding not blabbering here so I’ll just post a quick preview screenshot.

(You can see my dev log from the start at http://tenpn.tumblr.com/)

This is my first Ludum Dare, and I didn’t want to stretch myself, so I have gone with a roguelike genre. This means I don’t have to worry about framerate, or even graphics. I used libtcod, which bar the lack of documentation so far seems like a good middleware.

In my game you are escaping from a blazing office building. Each floor is procedurally generated, and the objective is to get to the exit before you’re overwhelmed by the flames. You have various tools to help you, including water bombs and the ability to shut fire doors. In the screenshot you can see I have just manually activated the sprinkler system.

It’s really difficult to extinguish the flames completely, so your best choice is control. Can you stand the heat?

Tags: LD #21

Hello, this is the progress report on Astral Artifice, my ludum dare entry.
Yesterday I worked (and spent a lot of time) on creating a procedural space station map generator I call SpaceShift.
Here is an example.

When I started this ludum dare, I choose to do the opposite my last entry, rather than a compo all from scratch pure gameplay entry. To do a entry with fairly high production values but a more known story driven gameplay for the Jam.

Warning contains a picture of a naked woman!! *Correction its a naked man, don’t you hate when you make that mistake :O*

Originally I planned to have my good friend Debs helping with the design and doing the art as that felt like too much of single person job, but unfortunatly she could join me this weekend and so I had to go it alone!

The hardest path was always going to be me, as a crap artist producing anything remotely pretty, the only hope was that the Jam allows you to use outside resources and Daz3D came to the research. From some nice art there, I’ve wrangled them into a isometric sprite based engine, via Lightwave and a lot of fiddling and finally I have an animated character, playing an idle in the spawn point of my map.

Been more work that I thought it would, I got the base level tiles in quite quickly, so doing the character which are just a series of the same things felt easy but the actual process of getting the artwork through, the anim lined, the place on teh screen, the Tmx file objects working, all proved harder than I expect.

Buts its here, our hero for Escape from Purgatory is floating where she is meant to ready to venture forth.

Warned you she was nakid! 😛 And she is actually a he, I used the male model not the female. TBH at this many pixels and just the skeleton, you’d be pretty good to tell teh difference!

So it’s been 17 hours since my last post, but the site being down and a little something called sleep made that necessary. Anyways, I’m completely done the gameplay now. I’ve got 12 levels, 4 types of special tiles and 12 more hours to make sound, music, story and art. I’m going to finish this baby.

No screenshot, nothing new to see 😉

See you on the other side.

Tags: journal

So I haven’t posted an update in a while. Basically Around mid-day yesterday I ran into a bunch of problems. The idea which I originally had didn’t work out. In that it relied on me come up with just too many good ideas. I wanted the player to move through a world that is about to collapse. So you are inside a little cell or something. And it collapses, so you try to escape from it. And as you move out of it you begin to realize that this small cell reacted to the world around it. the world is composes of all of these smaller cells that feed into a bigger picture. And some kind of virus is destroying the stable state it was in. And that would destroy you too. So your goal becomes to escape this whole system or track down whatever is destroying it. As you can probably see this whole idea is way to abstract. And despite me being pretty sure that this idea would be cool and maybe even possible to make within the timeframe of 48h if I base the system on some simple rules, I wasn’t able to get any concrete ideas that seemed to work out.

So I backed off that original concept. What I’m currently working on a a game where the player is tied to something by an elastic band. Which means the player is trapped, because the band is pulling him back at all times. But of course there is a way to escape all this. You are surrounded by hooks that allow you to move further, and maybe at some point reach something that frees you from that rubber band.

Basic functionality is implement. I have to make some levels now and different kinds of hooks(moving, smaller, etc) and maybe some enemies that can weaken your grip by shooting you. And of course nicer artwork and music. That’s a ton of stuff.

I would show you a screenshot but this site is too slow atm. But I have an executable for you to test: PLAY

I’m into the home stretch here anyway, another hour or two and hopefully I should have Harvest finished. Here’s a screenshot that includes all elements of the game.

The general gist of the game is as follows:

The Humans have escaped. You were just transferring them across the galaxy for their annual probe and they blew a hole in the side of the ship and escaped. How inconsiderate of them. You were going so fast that the humans are spread over half the galaxy!

You have to visit all the solar systems and collect the humans.

That’s it basically. You pilot your spaceship around by clicking behind it and firing your thrusters. Keep away from the planets that try to suck you in.

The game is basically a high score game, you have 5 lives which you can lose by crashing into planets. The more humans you collect and the more solar systems you visit, the higher your score.

The game was built with Python, Pyglet, Pixelmater, Py2App, Py2Exe. I’ll have some recent builds up shortly.

Yesterday I didn’t have any time to work on LD, I had an orchestra rehearsal day and a concert in the evening, we played Dvorak 8.

This morning I was too tired to get up really early. So I’m going to start now.

To much concert yesterday and to much sleep today. But I’ve managed to totally revamp the graphics now. Feel much more confident in the new look. And I added signs so that you guys know what to do 😉

I’ve had to finish up some work – and in fact, still have some – but I really want to compete! I’ve started over 24 hrs late, not sure if I’ll be submitting for ld or just going for the jam.

I tried my hand at the last mini; I went down in flames. Mostly because of real life bs but I realize even if I had the whole weekend, my plans just weren’t simple enough.

This time around, it’s gonna be simple, simple, simple!  I’m using SDL and Visual Studio 2005.

My game is called Escape Velocity. And yes, I thought of the name before anything else ;).

You play the role of an interstellar delivery boy. However, the company you work for is so freaking cheap that you’re not even given enough fuel for a round trip! You’ll have to use the gravity of Stars and planets to slingshot your way through space – without crashing or flying off into the void. The faster you make your delivery and the less fuel you use, the better your score.

Escape Velocity WIP

I had a complete failure of confidence yesterday evening, so I’ve decided to change my idea completely, as I really don’t have the motivation to keep working on this one. I’ve decided to make a simpler game instead, as I’m now short on time. I’ll adapt my current engine to run a maze escape game instead of a platformer.

To avoid making an unoriginal, boring “Escape this Maze” game, I’ll add some extra features, like buttons, doors, TNT, destructible levels, and so on.

I’ve updated my live build, which is here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16895250/ld21/build.swf

Did some new graphics for the game and added some basic features like enemies and walls including collision.

I’m In!

Wait … what?

Due to an overwhelming dose of real life, my LD entry became a little delayed. However, I’m escaping real life for the next 13 hours to write one quarter of an LD game. (in one quarter of the usual time). I’m hoping I can write the correct quarter – so that I come out with a playable game at the end.

I’ll be using my own framework on top of SDL, which – if you’d like to join me in this quarter-LD madness – can be downloaded here. As usual, it’s buggy and incomplete, but hopefully will save me time in the end. Despite being based on SDL I use a bunch of windows stuff, so it’s Windows Only.

I’m also recording my adventure using my screenshot capture program from LD18. You can download it from here (Windows only). It’ll ask for a path (which needs to end in a slash – ie: C:\Screenshots\”); a count (files are saved as 0001, 0002 etc, so this is the first number); and the time between screenshots in seconds. Due to the wonderful hack I used to write it, it wipes the clipboard every time it takes an image. Beware!

Onto the game …

With time racing past, I need to write something very (very) simple. So I’m aiming for a physics-based puzzle adventure platform game with RPG elements.  Without the RPG stuff, or the adventure stuff, or the puzzle stuff.

Onwards and upwards! (Or sideways to the next platform).

Had a great sleep and relaxing morning but now, “Back to Ludum Dare with you!!!”

Screenshot time.

Still using Cubes for graphics, will get onto that soon and make a main character (the blue rectangle 😀 ). Then to the levels, if i can get some good puzzles done this could end up playable, wow that would be awesome. 14 Hours to do that then. Lots of other bits planned but wont spoil that surprise (aka, not saying in case i cant do it intime 😛 )

Almost won this level after quite a journey. I was running low on food and hope for some time and couldn’t find a way out. Finally I came to a cage which could lead me to my escape. Then I dug into cacti just before the exit right from the green arrow in the screenshot. With hope and food almost at zero there was no chance to get out via another path.

Tags: pygame, python, screenshot

Will they all survive?

So excited to be taking part in Ludum Dare again! I got really demotivated when my laptop started glitching out and giving me issues, but I eventually got my energy back and decided to try for it anyways.

What you see there is coming along very well, and is already quite fun. Got all the gameplay mechanics finished, intro, title menu, game over, and the gameplay sequences chaining together. I plan on spending most of tomorrow designing the levels and adding in sound effects, polishing more here and there. Any free time I get will be used to spice up the menus more, but if I run low on time they’ll get left as is (functional, but not pretty).

Onward!

http://www.ludamix.com/games/heartbreaker

It’s multiplayer After a few rounds of playtesting I got it to “still very glitchy but playable,” which is the most I’m going to aim for in the compo timelimit.

I’m going to bed now, when I wake up I’ll try to get some sounds in.

And a screenshot:

Twenty-one and a half hours into development and this is where the game is at. I’m very pleased with the way it’s turning out. It has RTS controls for your rovers, dragNdrop inventory slots, doors, some basic graphical effects, and a maturing item system.