More visuals:

So here’s what I have. It’s written in Flex, uses Box2D for physics, and is REALLY REALLY LAGGY. I have it open in another tab and Firefox 3 is updating the text in this edit field at about 2 fps.

This is Box2DFlash’s debug rendering – I haven’t had time to implement my own – hence lack of graphics and colours and general prettiness. The grey boxes around the edge are enemies; they spawn every 2 seconds from either the left or the right. The slightly larger grey box in the middle is the player. The circles are bullets shot by the player. They don’t do damage (the boxes cannot be killed!) but they do force the enemy boxes back. Each box jumps vaguely in the direction of the player every second or so.

The idea is that the boxes are attacking and you have to push them down to prevent them from touching you. But since you can’t kill them, eventually the whole screen piles up with boxes and you inevitably die.

The boxes were supposed to have smarter AI, and intentionally build towers of themselves rather than just stupidly launching themselves towards you, but that’s obviously not going to happen in time. The other flaw in the plan is that it’s REALLY REALLY LAGGY.

It’s kinda almost fun to play around with, being a physics simulation, but there are too many problems (too laggy, needs proper rendering, too laggy, bullets need to die on impact, need limited ammo and ammo drops, too laggy, need health and dying, needs survival timer, too laggy, needs sound) and too little time to fix them – I have to go to bed now for university tomorrow, and although the deadline is 1pm local time I won’t be able to work on it tomorrow at all. Even if I did fix everything in time, I’m not convinced it’d be a fun game. So I guess I’m calling this one quits.

I’ve failed! Hope you all have better luck!

There’s about 14 hours left in the competition. I’ve got SDL installed, its includes and libraries set in visual c++, and some SDL tuts in a firefox tab.

I think I’ll start working now.

Tags: latestart

I spent most of the past day trying to tweak the “hand” user interface so it feels right… I’m pretty satisfied with that result, but I’ve sorely neglected the final goal of actually making a game out of it. We’ll see what the next 17 hours will bring

Here’s my first tower so far:

As you can see, the nice thing about virtual physics is that you can make them a little bit more relaxed than real life. Now, I just need to stop playing with these blocks and turn this code into something resembling a real game!

The player can now actually get hurt on spikes and acid. I just realised how much like Lemmings Revolution this is starting to look… I’m going to have to think about doing some level building now.

Food earlier was mushroom soup:

I’m feeling pretty tired, so i’m not sure i’ll add much more. I’ll try though.

To be on the safe side here’s a pre final version. The gameplay is there, as are 8 stages of bombing goodnees and a editor.

The link for the pre-final version is http://www.georg-rottensteiner.de/files/Tower%20Collapse.zip. Anything else will be polish from now on.

Edit: Modified the zip file, this is now a newer version. Removed the final tag.

Tags: Endurion, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008

I was sketching out some of the interactions and just trying to make myself aware of what it is I am tackling with only 8 hours left.

Based on these notes, I think my schedule should be as follows:

• Code to draw tower based on height (determined by difficulty, a nice to have later on).
• Draw an enemy sprite.
• Code to move enemies up the tower.
• Code to determine that game is over if they reach top of tower.
• Code to mouse over an archer.
• Draw an arrow.
• Code to move arrow.
• Code to handle collision of arrow and enemy.

And after all of that, I should have a good base to work with. I’ll see how much time is left and make further plans when those are done. The cool thing is that I can start writing unit tests again for the classes I’ll be writing.

In classic autumn colors, it’s a delicious crunchy, nutty, raisiny cereal, with a side of the world’s finest juice (right, PoV?).  My wife was really upset to find I had put the juice in that cup.  She really hates when the food is the same color as the vessel.  But it’s all so lovely and autumnal!

Tags: foodphoto

Can’t show a screenie since I am currently working on the offline computer, the only one with decent art programs on it (stupid Vista won’t run PSP9 or Max5).  Thusly, what I am doing now is art!  I’ve got lots in so far, though endless hours spent doing it.  Six in fact.  Still need some stuff for the buttons you click on and the title screen, and the treasure the owls are stealing, then I guess art is pretty much done.  Then I’ll need to get some challenge/point/structure to the gameplay, and some sounds.  That should pretty much do it.  I’ll need more heroes than I have to reach that point, but I’ll just reuse my existing art for those, because man, I’ve made a lot of little heroes.  I think about 8 unique characters.

I wanted the game to include a skill tree for boosting all your heroes, but I think that’s something for later.  You’ll have to be content with the strategy/luck involved in which heroes you get.  Not much luck needed at this point, since the pool of heroes currently is the same as the number of rooms at the inn, and you’re allowed to have multiples of the same.  I want to change that, but can’t until there are a whole lot more heroes.  Which probably won’t happen by the deadline.

So I’m off to do that.  I’d also like to have more than one kind of monster, but that too will have to go by the wayside.  Hordes of ordinary owls is interesting enough for now!

Tags: tower defense, words

I’m finally ready to start writing. I’ve decided to call my entry Mr Blocker, after the headmaster from classic children’s TV show “Woof”. It will involve blocks and towers.

Added a pre-rendered Game Over image to the game, plus the animation now stops (so dying is now worse than being notified of your death, it actually stops play). Next up: winning!

I woke up a little late, and I have a thing to go to in an hour. When I left my computer last night, I stupidly said “I should see if I can get my resolution higher on my monitor” and went in and mucked things up big time. After 20 minutes, nothing worked and when it rebooted, I was in 640 x 480. I went to bed and tackled it this morning, but nothing was working. Finally, I realized the KVM switch was probably interfering with the autodetect or something, so I routed it all to my linux box and it now works. Unfortunately that means my Windows box is now headless, and that’s where I keep my Civ IV! Maybe I need a better KVM switch… Maybe a need a bigger apartment so I can have two monitors and keyboards.

Hey, kids! Here’s some stuff I’ve eaten lately. Yesterday, I ate this (this was some time before going to sneak about in towers):

This was my breakfast today:

And I just ate this (while watching some Star Trek with a friend):

In other news, the game is very slowly coming along. I somewhat doubt it’ll be done in time, but hey.

Tags: foodphoto

Ok. So I’m done! Thanks to timezone, I’m early too.

This has been my first competition, and it’s been a lot of fun.

Download it: http://www.ingeniumdigital.com/ldimg/TowerOfDoom.zip

Readme it: http://www.ingeniumdigital.com/ldimg/readme.txt

With all hope (due to its lack of being tested) it’ll actually work. It’s written in C++ with SFML. I’ve licensed the source under the MIT license. If this is a problem, yell.

Stay tuned for a postmortem and perhaps a less broken build after I sleep.

Tags: C++, final, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008, opengl, owl, screenshot, sfml, tower

I was up until 3AM trying to get some functionality in my program before heading to bed. I woke up about five and a half hours later, showered, and am waiting for toast for my breakfast. As of this writing, there is a little over 12 hours left in the competition, and I don’t have game play yet.

I’ll be getting this submission in under the wire.

After spending many hours trying to get the player movement done, I eventually finished it and found that there was a serious problem with it. I’d tried to take a shortcut because of the limited time and handle collision detection and response for the X and Y axes separately but that doesn’t work. What tends to happen is that the player hits the ledge and shoots off sideways by a quarter of the tower. It’s not a particularly complex problem but it will take several hours to sort it out and debug it.

Unfortunately, I have a prior engagement for several hours tonight and a minor problem of getting up for work tomorrow so I don’t have enough time to fix it and actually put any game play in so I’m not going to kill myself trying. It was coming along well and actually looked like it would be a fun game so I might have a go at doing it properly (Including descent bounce physics) out of the comp.

Leaving with a final screen shot:

Meh, too tried for details.

Tags: foodphoto, pasta

Gizmo tends to like to hang out with me whenever I’m doing anything related to programming. I nicknamed her Hacker Kitty. She’s helping me eat my vegan pizza and apple juice.

Diego, on the other hand, just wants to know when I’ll be done.

Well, I’m not done yet, but I have a few more unit tests, and quite a few more lines of code without tests. Progress is being made.

Tags: foodphoto

The last day is here. I’ve woken up with just under 12 hours to go. Can I make it? We shall see… Still to do: all the AI, firing cannons, sound, music, and the major panning effect I had planned for the fight phase.

To power up, I made pancakes for breakfast. Breakfast is so much more malleable than the other meals…

Here is the obligatory phallic pancake for the roommate:

And a spiral pancake! Culinary skills++

Finally, here is last night’s more standard fare – burritos with rice, beans, and cranberry juice.

Tags: foodphoto, journal

Let’s get eclectic!  For lunch, it’s pizza, egg rolls, and corn on the cob.  I’m not a giant pig – this is food for two.  Iced tea for the lady, pineapple juice for me.  Speaking of giant pigs…

My cat is so fat, he needs two chairs.

Tags: fat cat, foodphoto

Pipework and plumbing have been added, so I’ve actually got some gameplay now, but no proper levels to play on. I also spent quite a bit of time getting a proper menu flow (main menu -> in game -> game over). It’s amazing what a good font and a few simple gui sprites will do for the visuals.