Hum, well, here’s my breakfast. Wasn’t easy to build The Tower, even though I cheated and it’s leaning against the glass. Now about coding a game.. or even finding an idea for one.. that will come next.
Progress is good, so here’s the current progress:
It loads a crude inkscape .svg file via Slick’s svg parser and converts it into some platforms and a player start position. The player can run along a platform but can’t jump yet so that’s next on my list. Small break first because my hands are cramping up and I need caffeine…
I’m so far behind and my code isn’t working like it should!
At least I’ve got some stuff done though, so it isn’t completely hopeless 
Just a quick screenshot before I’m back to work.
I am making a 3D game and I was thinking it might be easiest if I designed it to require an analog control joystick or gamepad. Does anybody here not have a joystick of some kind?
Also, I might as well tell about my current progress. I have a nice start to my 3d engine with loading .OBJ meshes and textures and correctly rendering them. This is going smoother than I thought it would.
got a bunch of stuff done, not too bad for the first quarter.
todo:
– getting the workers(black pixels) to automate building crates(brown boxes) all they’re doing now is hop up and down for no reason randomly
– getting the falling rooms to crush other rooms when they hit, this is the basic gameplay mechanic – falling rooms destroy, worker built crates support, reach the top to win
off to sleep I go
Tags: journal
After performing my obligitory strategic sleep, I feel refreshed and optimisitic. The key is to sleep long enough to forget the long drawn-out pain of setting up my environment last night but little enough to give me enough time to make up for all the time tracking down F#$(*%!#(INg dependency errors.
So now I’m back on the train – or the tower as it were. My work in progress title is “Tower of Abba”. But it shouldnt have anything to do with the rock band with the same name (although they may have a cameo somewhere).
The game is a defense style game where you rotate around a round tower made up of bricks. Little sprites try to climb up the tower while you set traps on bricks to stop them.
Remember my ludum dare friends – do it for the funz!
Tags: journal
So, my idea was to create a game around an air-traffic control tower in a troubled country.
Players have to manage their air space and land all the planes successfully. Planes refuel and stock up on aid supplies to deliver to the people. Take off too early, and you don’t move any supplies. Land too late, and you crash.
Can YOU keep all your birds in the air?
I have spent way too much to create a rather crude world generator. Well, maybe not so bad really, but the output does not always seem to make any sense. Guess I can improve Mr Parameters when I got a game.
I’ve finished with the laundry, and also had a bit of lunch. The famous Salmon and Stuff dish.
Tags: foodphoto, generation, log, screenshot
Progress is going extremely well…
I already have level definitions, rendering code, some game logic, input, etc… Only thing that’s lacking is an actual gameplay idea… or better, a decision on the gameplay decision. My wife’s been helping me with ideas, and I have 3 or 4 possible gameplay paths available, I just don’t know which one is more fun/less work…
Anyway, here’s some photos and such…
At my desk, heavy in thought:
My cat ready to pounce the mouse:
48 hour salad (all done with tomatoes and olives by my wife):
Brain food for lunch: burgers, mediterranean salad, cooked mushrooms, raw carrots… everything the body and mind need:
And the game screeny:
The blocks of any color can be placed in the tower structure, and they’ll fall down until they found another block or get to the ground…
Tags: breakfast, desk, foodphoto, journal, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008, log, screenshot
I should really REALLY have spent some time with Flex before attempting something of this scale with it.
Still, I’ve (only just) got the thing started now, and now I can maybe turn my mock-ups into something resembling a game, although nearing the 25% mark and with nothing to show for it is not encouraging…
I can’t seem to decide between doing “proper” rope physics (with collisions between the rope and platforms etc.) and some kind of hideous cheesy hack and ignoring platform collisions for the sake of getting something done quickly.
I suspect this could make or break the game, so I should probably get it done quickly and see how it goes either way…
Tags: motivation
LDT +1125
Local Time: 16:23
I made a horrible level format decision, collisions are against rectangles that have to be entered by hand. So I made a super level editor. Still tedious, but feasible. I think I’ll have enough time to make a second level tomorrow.
Ugly isn’t it?
Tools used so far:
)Tags: journal
I just spent a day not working on Ludum Dare entries again (aside from the brief foray into löve fiascos)! This time me and a friend had a real life adventure involving tunnels, towers, tall ships, thousands of people, pirates on stilts, some ice cream mocca thing, and music, including caribbean, jazz, music boxes, sea shanties, and musical air strike sirens.
Unfortunately my camera’s battery went out just as I was approaching the tower, so there’s not much to show. My friend’s camera worked fine, but that memory card is apparently incompatible with my card reader. Oh well.
Anyway. Here’s a tunnel!
It had these totally ancient cave paintings in it.
The tunnel eventually led us to the vicinity of the Rosenkrantz Tower!
Its oldest parts are from the 13th century, and it’s completely filled with cramped passages and endless spiral staircases. The roof had a magnificent view of the aforementioned tall ships and masses of people, which you’ll have to imagine since my camera went out. You can see a mast or two in the above picture though.
Now. Should I start coding? Hm.
Explosions are done…
They even look cute… Anyway, now I have to decide on exactly the gameplay is… I can drop blocks from wherever I want and they explode if they come in 8-way contact with blocks of the same color… So now, I just have to decide between the explicit building (where the player has to place blocks so they don’t blow up, according to some pattern and as fast as possible – this option would have me change the 8-way collision to 4-way, I think, or else it’s just alternating stuff. This choice is also more work in the level design thing); or the implicit building, where blocks come out of the sky and the player has to change their color while they drop, so that they don’t explode when they land… This last option is much easier, since it becomes more or less random and I just have to design towers… I’ll do a break now and decide…
Tags: journal, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008, log, screenshot
Well, by “game” I don’t mean something you can play. But it is something you can watch as all the (temp art, in case there was any doubt…) elements function as intended: the owls ascend the stairs and even descend again if they reach the top. The archer as you can see fires arrows at them. He can even kill the first one before they get past him! The excitement is palpitatious!! Things are going well, I think, though I am dreading the actual real implementation.
My game is this: tower defense, inside the tower itself. Eventually, there will be a pile of gold that the owls are stealing at the top. You of course strew archers, chefs, and yetis about the tower to stop them. The twist is that instead of buying generic units, you buy specific heroes as they show up visiting your inn (so a random element to that). So you might dump Archie the archer after a while for Blog the barbarian. The end goal is something with 100+ different guys (some not too different, like an archer who does more damage or fires faster than another), and a lot of wacky variety. Don’t think there will be 100 of them by tomorrow, though.
Tags: tower defense
This was my lunch a couple of hours ago:
An out-of-focus cheese and onion toastie!
There’s nothing to show with the game yet. I’ve been messing about trying to get a damn fullscreen window open. I may actually start making the game soon. I should probably have used a game library to save all this time *eyeroll*
Tags: foodphoto
I have a basic level editor, some tiles and a good idea of the direction my game is gonna go.
In the year something-or-other, a huge tower has been taken over by a hostile alien species. No one has been able to make any contact to anyone inside the building, and everyone sent in… Never comes out.
After 3 days of throwing lambs to the slaughter, the military decides to send you, a yippie-ki-yay-mofo, has been brought out of retirement to erradicate every alien in the tower. Floor one awaits.
The game is going to have a huge horde of aliens running around. Due to the ridiculous weapons I’m planning aliens wont just die – they’ll explode.
Anyone who has played the likes of Alien Breed and similar games will know what to expect.
Here’s my rudamentry editor –
Here’s my first screenshot – a quick mock-up of stackable cats. Notice that if you put two next to each other, you can also stick another cat on top in the middle upside down. This is important!
I’m doing this entry with haxe and physhaxe. It’s my first time using either (or, any flash development for that matter), and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how easy it was to get up and running with these tools. This program will be about 99% physhaxe and 1% game.
It started off as ‘The Amazing Human Tower’ — a bunch of acrobats joining hands and feet together to make a big wobbling structure. I suspected this was going to be too complicated though, so went with rigid cats instead. I’ll throw a few other things in too if I have time.
Tags: cats
Here’s rough and unexciting rundown of the story so far:
Tags: journal
For anyone using flash.. let me direct your attention to a mod player which has been released recently:
http://gimme.badsectoracula.com/flashmodplayer/modplayer.html
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?p=168442
I don’t really now where all the time went, but at least there has been some progress. Added drawing of the tower with variable number of levels. And initial building of it. And getting and assigning workers to resources. And getting resources. And a bit of ending turn. And simple UI. … Well, so I guess I’ve done more than I remembered at first, but it’s still not a game, far from it. Here’s a screenshot.
And I’ve just had supper. What do you think it was?
That’s right. The toast subclass of bread. With a little butter. It’s really supposed to be a lot of butter, but I ran out of it, and wasn’t clever enough to buy more earlier when I was shopping. So now I have something fun to do before breakfast tomorrow! Yay!
Tags: foodphoto, log, screenshot, toast
My wife just cooked a delicious meal for us, “fishballs and chinese cabbage in ma po -sauce”, or something of the sort.
Oh and I have had some progress with the entry as well. Mostly just structure and algorithm design, since I’m still having only a blank screen.
(1 days 11 hours 56 minutes left)
Tags: foodphoto
Perhaps something similar to this is being done by many others, but when I think of ‘tower’, I think of only one thing: building with blocks. My main goal is to make it almost as much fun to play with blocks in a virtual world as it is in real life!
It remains to be seen how well I can transform a 40-year old, pixel-constrained, utterly inhumane piece of computer hardware (i.e. the mouse) into something even as crudely delicate and artistic as a 4-year old’s hand. It’s a formidable UI challenge for sure, so I’m looking forward to giving it my best shot!
That being said, i wouldn’t hold your breath. 😉
Well I’ve created a simple cutscene system to go along with my game. It autoprogresses every 5 seconds. I think it’s good enough for ludum 😉
Tags: journal
So, I made a game in about 3 hours, which is so simple that I could submit the final and call it a day. No matter how hard I try, there’s just no way to expand or polish this idea beyond what it already is.
I think I’ll start from scratch, and keep this as a backup option in case I don’t come up with something better.
Pancakes!
And of course…
I don’t think I’m working fast enough…but here’s something:
Tags: foodphoto, screenshot
Crude, hacky physics that is. I’ve got some pipes which will eventually become drain pipes of some kind but at the moment they just flop around on the map and look limp.
And it still looks very ugly. That’ll have to wait until tomorrow I think.
13 hours in, and I have something! It’s not much, but it can at least conceptually be seen as a building (see the levels?). The brown things are stair cases between the floors, which should probably end at the latitude where the next level up starts. But those aren’t things you think about until you try explaining it to someone.
The little stick figure is the player, and right now it goes back and forth and up and down, with reckless disregard for walls and viewable areas. Next up: collision detection.
Read on, for more trials and tribulations of the first 13 hours…
I wasted about an hour trying to get Java to handle the transparency of a color key, and learned quite a bit about image filtering, but it looks like that wasn’t the way it would work. So I regrouped and figured out that I could say the transparency in the image using a GIF, thus saving myself the hassle. I think it’s fair to say that this is lesson learned #1.
Also, I suffered my first keyboard fatality of the weekend. Well, I guess it’s more like keyboardslaughter, since I willingly popped off the keys to get some gunk out that was sticking the arrow keys. The keys are those fancy scissor keys, so I think I broke a plastic tab or two in the process, and by the time I realized it had happened, I broke another tab on the same side. So the down arrow is about 3 mm higher on the right than on the left. That, and some splotching backlighting (it’s illuminated) after a cider spill a few weeks ago, and I think it’s time that it be retired.
And here’s my pre-grocery snack. I’ve started in on the caffeine already…
Edamame beans, yum! And FreshDirect better get here with my groceries within the hour, or I’m going to be eating raw spaghetti squash for lunch.
Tags: foodphoto, screenshot
Ok, basic gameplay is inplace (no win conditions yet…)…
I’m trying to play it, but the game reveals itself impossible in lot’s of conditions: for instance, in the screenshot below, you can see that there’s no way I can transform that block into something that doesn’t screw everything up…
I wonder why most my games in LD48 end up like this: impossible… I should think things through better before coding…
Anyway, I’m gonna try and find a solution…
Tags: journal, LD42, log, screenshot
Pixels are good for you.
Well. With no idea after 12 hours, I finally decided what to do:
(drumroll)
A platformer.
You play an owl, and start at the bottom of The Tower. Then you have to jump up all the way to the top of The Tower. What I got so far is:
What I need to do next:
Optional, if I have time left:
Well, this is what I’ve got so far. Not too much – though I have been sleeping for roughly 8 of the 13 hours of the competition that has elapsed so far. How do you feel about the mutant kamikaze bat with neon purple eyes and a green mouth? Should that be interchanged? I don’t know. I’ve never had a chance to meet up with one, let alone inspect its cavities.
Well, I’ve something that’s working reasonably… and plays very poorly. It’s just too hard! The idea as it is now is to climb the tower using a limited amount of, uh, jumps? And touching as many walls as possible on the way up.
After a nice night of sleep (8 hours yay), I’ve started actual coding. I’ve got most of my data structs and whatnot done, handling for those etc. I’ve got my general design in my head and my checklist written out in a text file. Milestone 1 will be getting a screen with all basic elements displaying. I’m aiming to have this hopefully no later than 5PM tonight, but we’ll see. Nothing with screenshotting yet, so no screenshots. I may post a pic of my workspace later when I get access to my roommates digicam.
I’m hoping what I’m working on will in fact be interesting enough to play; I have been dubious. It’s a tough theme since there have been SO DAMNED MANY tower-themed games made over the years. I’ve got a backup idea if this one doesn’t pan out, but it may come down to the wire if I have to run with that one.
Some specs of my work environment:
Lenovo Thinkpad T61, 2.4 Core2 Duo, 1GB mem
Slackware 12.1
XFCE4 for my wm, though I am more partial to e16 usually
Straight-up C for language
vim for editing
GIMP for graphics
Probably sfxr for audio, though I may get fancy with my guitar if I have time
I also have a tower with a tri-boot Slackware 12/WindowsXP/Debian64 setup; I’ll be using it for judging games that I can only run on Windows, so I don’t have to screw around with wine.
I’m using the allegro lib for most everything; I don’t need anything special so it works fine.
More later!
So I took a risk in deciding to code some “proper” physics myself insted of just fudging things and having pipes that don’t collide with anything. It seemed to work, but now I’ve let the player grab hold of one end it all goes horribly wrong. The pipes tend to get stuck on the rather angular levels so it stretches and goes wrong in all sorts of horrible ways.
Unless I can figure out a quick way to make this stable, I think I’m screwed. 
Here’s what I have to show so far. It’s supposed to take place on a rooftop where you direct the wind in ways that will make it blow crates over the edge.. and quite possibly end up killing people and the occasional owl at the bottom of the tower.
So the idea is that there’s a guy climbing up a tower, and the Kamikaze Owl Squad is trying to knock him down. Every time an owl hits the guy, he slides down a bit. The guy is climbing up at a fixed speed (slowly).
This is all great, but I haven’t decided on a way for the user to interact and kill the owls. Mouse? Keyboard? We shall see.
Tags: screenshot
LDT + 1400
Local time: 19:00
Here’s a working demo. The collision code is still buggy though, and it’s rather ugly.
It’s written in python + pygame, so just $python run.py to play.
Also it doesn’t catch exceptions yet so if the sound isn’t available it will die.
edit: dead link, get the final version instead
The collision detection has indeed some problems (I ran through walls and doors a couple of times)…Well, I woke up a lot earlier than I thought I would – about 4 1/2 hours sleep. I guess that means I’ll have more time to munch on toast:
… and to read the Bullet physics library docs. I’ve been told that Bullet is allowed, and I’m hoping that it’ll save my bacon. I’ve never used it before though, so I guess we’ll see how this goes.
Seeing other peoples screenshots
My workstation, including my crazy chair, the Swopper.
Champaign grapes from Trader Joe’s.
Couldn’t take the pic quickly enough!
Peanut butter jelly time!
Big, gravity-defying water mug:
I made breakfast (scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese) for my wife and myself:
OK, so here’s the plan:
You need to make it to the top of the tower for some unknown reason, but assume it’s a good reason 😉 There are blocks on the floor, you need to pick up the blocks and move them to make steps able to get up to a door on the wall or something that will take you to the next level
It’s a puzzle game, you have to figure out how to use the blocks available to you to move around, put the blocks together, and move on up.
Also, there will probably be some kind of enemy added that hurts you if you touch it, dropping blocks on it or maybe just blocking it in a corner is your only defense!
As far as the code goes, I have a basic camera system and you can move around on the floor (right now the model for the player is an orange cube :P), but I need a break from coding so I’m going to go get my guitar and see about a sound track xD
First screen of the game (no art, only colored polygons). Let’s see what comes out of it :P.
I’m just back from a barbecue with the neighborhood. Well, now I don’t have to waste any time cooking. Back to work.
Tags: foodphoto
Just thought I’d give some word on my progress before I go and get some sleep.
It’s now possible to expand the tower. It’s also possible to build roads. Those are perhaps the only different game changes. I’m not posting a screenshot because the roads are just lines at the moment.
Night all.
Tags: log
Progress on all fronts simultaneously (except art and sound). This shot depicts the Inn Menu open. As you can see, many of the bunks are occupied with clones of Archie the Archer, since he’s the only hero in the game. The cursor you can’t see is on one of them, eliciting that handy tooltip that describes him. At the top of the tower is a vast collection of invaluable treasure. Hidden behind the row of bunks, you can just barely see that the owls now have life meters for your convenience. Every few seconds new heroes come to the inn, and ones leave, giving you an endless array of heroic selections. Of course, they’re all Archie right now.
I guess the next step is to let the owls steal the treasure. They drop it when they die right now, but I don’t actually know that, since they can’t pick it up in the first place yet.
Tags: Archie, tower defense
I’ve decided to call the game “Demonic Tower”.
A lot of progress has been made since last time, although it is not all evident. Enemies and combat have been added. The game is entirely playable although there is no animation, so it is somewhat boring to play as it is just a sequence of hitting OK and attacking, and you can’t really see the results of combat (other than watching imps dissapear after they’re dead). I’ve got all of the combat animations drawn and my next project is going to be health bars and combat animations.
I also recorded some sound effects and wrote a few little musical loops for the game.
What remains:
Now it’s time to take a break to go cook some. Food pictures later.
First, stir fry:
As far as the game goes, I only have this screenshot to show:
Its a pretty much completely disfunctional tilemap and player sprite. You’ll notice the glaring pink instead of actual transparency, the missing rows of tiles on the right and bottom, and even the fps counter is wrong, seeing as the max should be 60. If this picture was moving you’d also see the player sprite move in the opposite direction to the left and right keys, with the same fixed graphic, while floating slowly down the screen like a feather and completely failing to collide with the floor on the way.
But as we all know, the best code always gets written at 3am, so I’m hoping I can still turn this thing around.
I’m way behind… Decided to scrap both my idea and code and start over.
The idea for the game is to climb a tower of junk without making it fall down, we’ll see how it goes.. I’ll be using Box2D for the physics so it should be pretty easy setting things up, I hope. Using PyOpenGL and Pygame as well.
Sure, it’s almost lunch time, but I thought I’d post what I ate this morning.
Bacon, Eggs, Hashbrowns, Toast and Biscuits and Gravy. My wife had blueberry pancakes and helped me eat the B&G. You can see baby Hunter in the upper corner.
Well, all I wanted was a Nebulous style round-the-tower effect, now I have actual 3d cubes as tiles. I’m way way behind schedule though, so not sure if it still will lead to anything.
Ok, have all my structs and such debugged and compiling, and now displaying. So, here is a first display:
Tags: screenshot
Well, I’m coming along nicely, and I thought I should probably get another blog post done, as I hear that’s what I’m supposed to do… And, here’s a screenshot of how it’s coming along:
Better get back to work if I’m going to make that considerably more interesting.
Tags: journal
Well, been at work all day, so got just over 24hrs to try and throw something together..
So it ain’t original, but should be a bit of fun to make… Yep, a Nebulus-like rotaty towery thingy
I’m working seens 6:00 at the morning… >:}
Im druged by those damn energy drinks and my PixelArt skills are being burned 😀
hahahaha but I still have power and I shall continue at once!!!
here I added you a pic of what I have allready
sprites for the engine are done…well for the simple stuff… I have many surprises to add 😀
units can move/die/attack and my Akin hero (on the tower) is using crossbow to blow up his foes 😀
stay tuned for some more Akin Action!!!
muhahahahha (dont mind me im on energy drinks and hearing a playlist of 1576 of the finest Trance music OMG im energized and have new headphones YAHOO!!! :D)
^_^ keep the good work mates!!!
Solved the stalemate on the game design by adding another color… that breaks the pattern and makes the game more fun…
Now I already have win and lose situations, with all the flow in it…
As usual, took me longer than I wanted, the glue structure of the game (get to the next level and such things…)
Anyway, this part is done… game starts, goes to the first level, if you’re successful (that is, if you can build the tower with bricks to spare), you go to the next level, otherwise, you get to repeat it…
Now to add the lives indicator, and add the game over and well done screens…
I’m a bit worried about sound… I doubt I can make it work today and tomorrow I won’t have the gear for it… K
Ended up on the phone for about an hour, and went to the grocery store for a few small things. Came back and made homemade salsa.
The game is coming along. The lines that make up the tower all behave like walls, and the staircases finally behave like staircases! Meaning that you can use them to get between floors. This is great progress, and I’d be really happy if only I didn’t know all the hacky stuff that’s going on behind the scenes. I’m actually thinking about writing some unit tests for the collision and game logic code, since it was a really touch and go process to get the stairs working correctly.
My dog is dying for some attention, so we’re going for a walk, and I’m going to consider what to do next. The easiest thing would be to add items to pick up (keys for locked doors, I’m thinking). But the most technically difficult would be enemies patrolling the floors, since it’s entirely turn based at this point (I only draw when a key is pressed). So I would have to add an animation thread to get something moving on its own.
Tags: foodphoto
End of day 1 for me.. after a lot of messing around with physics and n00b flash stuff, I have something playable to work with. The cats appear from the top and are controlled tetris-style. The aim is just to stack them as high as possible.
…well, I am not yet sure whether I will really try and compete, or if not. It’s been crazy busy around here for a while, and I dunno if I want to devote the time needed to really make this go…
That being said, I do have some nice prgress for about 3 hours work to show. Basically there are two images, one a black and white only, showing where cities can and cannot exist, the other a color version.
Cities are randomly generated, and you can make more.
Here’s a screenie:
Here’s a bit of what I’ve been eating. The first dish, believe it or not, is Maruchan Ramen Noodles. I prepared them Thai style, stir-fried with chicken, cole-slaw mix, peanut butter and a chili-garlic sauce. It was my first try at this recipe and it was delicious.
The second dish is what I am eating right now: Chicken and Artichoke Casserole. Probably my favorite dinner right now, short of Paella. So delicious; and easy to make.
Both were prepared by me.
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
Tags: foodphoto
I’m changing concepts yet again… my last idea didn’t make any sense.
Now my gameplay can be described as “Moonbase Commander” meets “Tower Defense”. Which should be pretty cool. So it’s yet another tower-defense game but different. If you’ve never played moonbase commander you should look for it.
I’m still learning to use Ogre so im not sure if I can pull it off but we’ll see.
I spent the morning mostly making some gun tower models and getting them into Ogre. Now I’m going to see if I can get something playable.
Tags: journal
The idea in my game is that you don’t control any of the tiny men directly, but rather just build buildings for them use use. It’s working relatively well right now, and the code for adding new buildings is actually not that horrible.
However, the AI sucks. 😉 They frequently pick up rocks only to run away with them and get lost in the woods. I’m trying not to add a too complex AI as I believe much of the fun in games like this comes from figuring out how the AI works and exploiting that.. besides, there’s not much time left.
Looks like i’m not the only one with the problem:
I have a working prototype but the game is not inherently fun. Dang. It does make kinda fun blowing up the building though. So far you can set up the bombs and some protection and need to get a certain percentage of the Tower razed. Right now there’s not too much challenge in there. I’ll have to find something tomorrow (i hope to dream the solution up during the night).
I’m leaving the level design for tomorrow as well. At least i have half the menu system going, so the drag part is mostly done. This leaves lots of time for late bug inducing 😉
I took a little longer than I expected to get back from lunch.
That’s a Turkey Twister sandwich on pretzel bread and fries, and I ordered a basket of tater tots. As you can see, I tried to make a tower. Maybe it is more like a ziggurat?
Tags: foodphoto
Though I’d post before I knock off for tonight. It’s you basic climb the tower knock off (I don’t know what the original is called and I don’t think I ever played it)
So far I have all the media assets (textures and sounds), the tower is drawn with our damsel in distress and the enemies but no ledges yet. You can fly the player about the tower (via invisible owls) but there is no other game play yet. Tomorrow I’m going to start with drawing the ledges from map files then onto player movement physics.
I’m on my way!
hhhh didnt have time to post my pizza muhahhhaha to busy doing a special attack 😛
so here it is Bon Apetit XD
ohh you know you want a piece! >:} well you won’t get any! its all mine!
I’m almost finished with my game engine (rather, I believe I am); I’ve done numerous improvements to the game since my last journal (one would hope so) so right now I’ve just got to finish off the game. I also composed another short song for the game. No real great new screenshots though.
Tags: journal
I’ve gotten as far as having a demo to show. It’s Java webstart this time – will probably create an exe wrapper for the game before submission tomorrow. Try it if you like!
Tags: demo, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008, Towerball
Looks like I got the basics of gameplay right, although it’s not really a game yet. Tomorrow will be mainly about finishing code, add score, better graphics, and above all, level design. Unfortunately I don’t know how to make music nor have the time to add sound effects.
Lunch: LD baked potatoes with sauteed veggies on top. Hard to tell that it says LD, but I swear it does.
Dinner: grilled cheese with tomato soup and horchata. We tried burning LD into the bread by putting butter in the shape of the letters, but it cooked evenly anyway.
More progress shots! Wee!
I spent the past couple of hours trying to get a simple spacial partitioning system working so ray/triangle intersection tests between game objects and the world mesh would be reasonably quick … or so I hoped. On my machine the frame rate drops horribly with even as few as 10 intersection tests per frame! I guess Python’s not a good platform to write a 3D engine in.
A much needed update: There are about 29 hours left in the competition. Already people have posted some very impressive looking screenshots!
I spent the morning losing a fight with pyode and have removed it completely from my program, replacing it with pymunk instead. Hopefully I can get pymunk going on linux — that really hurt us in pyweek, so it’s important that I get it working.
After/during that, I took an hour to help a friend move, but when I got there they didn’t need me anymore. :/ That’s ok – breaks are good, right?
Now I’m finally starting to get into my game – the physics is working and I have most of the infrastructure laid out. I don’t know if I have time to finish (above mentioned friend is coming over later as well), but as of right now I’m still going to try.
Also, I finally got the laptop out so I can get the pictures from the camera online.
Behold, the command center!
Friday’s Food:
Kolaches for Breakfast this morning!
Tags: foodphoto
Having fun with OpenGL here. Added kittens and a ground. Now need maybe some gameplay items, and then create a level.
Hi there. Well my second time trying to participate in this. Considering that results should be open source decided to try out available for Flash physics engines. Started with APE http://www.cove.org/ape/index.htm but didn’t find it to be even close to game development demands…
Well some 4-6 hours ago started to play with http://box2dflash.sourceforge.net/
Well I must say this engine can a lot. But internally some parts of it look and sometimes even work ugly 😀
So here is screen shot of todays progress:
Basically 70% of game mechanics is ready. Trying to keep things simple cuz last time I failed to finish I have few aces left in my sleeve for tomorrow programming 😉
Tags: progress
Click here to test the current version of my game.
You need to have java 1.6 installed, which can be found at http://www.java.com/
That small rock ring will be a full tower, which you can mine for rock, slowly bringing it down to the ground. However, once you start doing this, you unleash the monsters who will start killing your doodz in ur base.
I felt like I picked up some speed, here is something remotely playable: http://enedahl.com/ld12/incomingfodder01.html
Going to bed now. Oh, the music is just a placeholder, a demo .mod file.
Tags: 2D, flash, tower, tower defense
As of this writing there are only 23.5 hours left in the competition.
And my project is in bad shape. I have some decent notes, but the actual implementation is lagging. I have to remember that I still need to create art and sounds, not just code.
Will I make it? I should, even if it means cutting back on the scope of my initial design. I haven’t been writing as much code as I would have liked, but I’m not sure how much of it is due to the fact that I’m still learning TDD and how much of it is due to the fact that I’m practically reimplementing code that I’ve already written. Still, before my last break, I found that my coding time has been very productive, so perhaps I’ll see a working game sooner than I think.
Spent a lot of time reworking the physics, especially the collisions and relaxation code as it was jitterier than an epileptic on crack. Seems to be much more stable now, although it’s a bit slower than I’d like it should hold up ok.
I ordered the vegetable entree from a Thai restaurant, and the person on the phone asked me what kind of meat I would like. That’s why there is chicken. I also asked for vegetable egg rolls, which were smaller than I expected, but they did have only vegetables in them.
Tags: foodphoto
The middle point has passed and I still have nothing playable. Doing 3D from scratch, combined with bad preparation are making my progress really slow. Will I be able to finish a game?
Tomorrow I’ll have to focus on gameplay at all cost.
Tags: log, screenshot
Almost time to turn in…
Most of the game is done, including sound and music… Just composed some stupid tunes on the acoustic guitar, recorded it, cleaned it a bit in Goldwave, and it’s done… Got a game music and a title music… even considered adding some lyrics to the title music, but I don’t have the gear to mix up the voice and the guitar and I can’t do both at the same time, because I suck! J
Going to wrap this up for tonight, get everything ready for my trip tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll be coding again in about 15 hours or so (which leaves me with about 7 to 8 usable hours left)… Thankfully, only things I miss are the Main Menu, the Instructions, some levels (which can be done pretty fast) and some gameplay tests)…
Tags: journal, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008, log
Yes…. you heared it right! Fireballs!!!!!
yes I made it using photoshop!!! muhahahahahahahaha >:} there is no resistents!!! 😀
and its allready working in the game so much fun! 😀
Although my screenshots don’t look like much progress, I have got a lot futher.
My game has been combined with rouge-like sight-stuff. You can’t see anything beyond the current room unless you open doors, at which point the room beyond and all it’s nasties are showed to you. (Including a nifty progressive flood-fill effect).
I’ve managed to get my guy running around, all my level graphics, including decals, loading and displaying. All doors working, level switching working. My guy shoots (and leaves shells lying around too).
I took a small break and one point and managed to do a little industrial loop and some ambience, as well as a couple of sound effects. (I use Propellerhead’s Reason for all sound.)
Tomorrow I’ll start adding enemies – that’s when the fun really begins!
Oh I wonder what is behind this door.
Oh just another corridor.. But stairs too! Onward to the next floor!
I just woke up to find my computer off … there had been a rare power failure in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Then I went to have a shower, and the bathroom clock had stopped. The problem is, the bathroom clock runs on batteries .. it wouldn’t be effected by a mains power failure.
This can mean only one thing. In the early hours of Sunday morning, I was visited by aliens.
Of course, the power failure turned off the web cam with my computer, so if they entered the room to tamper with the code or anal probe me, I have no hard evidence.
I’ve no I idea why these inter-galactic or inter-dimensional visitors want to try and stop me completing LD12, but I’m determined to get this game out to the world in ~24 hours, whatever the cost.
On the positive side, there is no data loss, and since they didn’t touch the code I can safely still enter as a solo developer ….
LDT +2040
Local time: 01:39
Well, I’m off to bed for the night. I got a lot more accomplished today than I’d expected. Level 2 is almost done already. Plan for tomorrow: more sound effects, cutscene, maybe difficulty settings, more chrome, maybe even music. Plus anything I think of at night.
Tags: journal
Over six hours there I struggled with a completely intractable problem. The free Flex SDK, it seems, is about as user friendly as a kick in the nadgers. For over six hours I fought with an invisible error that wasn’t even triggering any events when it was supposed to.
I got a friend to run it through his copy of flex builder, et voila
SecurityError: Error #2148: SWF file file:///C|/www/flash/towerassault/towerassault.swf cannot access local resource file:///C|/www/flash/towerassault/res/assets.xml. Only local-with-filesystem and trusted local SWF files may access local resources.
In other words, because flash is running in the browser it presumed it didnt have access to local files, so refused to open them. The instant I uploaded the xml files to the server in the other room, worked first time.
I am not a happy boy.
Well I’ve managed to get the platform movement working and incorporated a nifty pseudo-3d effect with the tilemap, but I have a lot of work to do tomorrow. I’m going to call it a day and get some rest as I can barely keep my eyes open right now! A people seem to have had the same idea as me – a rotating platform game based around a tower. I guess great minds think alike
I wasted a lot of time rearranging the Ogre tutorial app… but I’ve got towers and enemies.
Too bad they don’t do anything yet.. just sit there.
Tags: journal
Local time: 02:58 AM
We woke up to see the theme voting results, and “The Tower” was not what we had expected. But in a hurry we turned an old idea, to fit the theme. Some kind of a smashup game, a clone of the SNES game “Super Smash TV”. You are in control of a random muscular character, and you’re goal is to kill all the enemies on the current floor of the tower, without dying, and then proceed to the next floor, with more and heavier enemies. We are planning an arcade mode, so you will be alive untill you are extremely outnumbered.
We began making a fast title screen to match the theme of our game, which looks a lot like the old gaming consoles Gameboy and SNES.
To give it some kind of relevance to the theme, The Tower, we made a cut-scene of our character moving on to the next floor in an elevator. This sequence, will be played every time you conquer a floor and move on to the next.
After the cut-scene you arrive to the actual game. A floor, that actual looks more like an arena, where you have to kill all enemies around you. The gates will open randomly, and spawn more zombies. If there’s enough time, we will add other enemies than just those zombies on the screenshot below.
We also managed to create sounds for the title screen, the cut-scene, floor doors open/close, weapon shooting and bullets hitting the wall. Besides that we created the animation of a zombie dying.
There’s still a lot of work to do.
We are now going to bed, and looking forward to continue tomorrow morning. An upcoming journal of day 2, and probably a few comments and pictures of our workspaces and lunches will be posted later. Goodnight!
