I had some business I had to attend to, so I didn’t get very much done this hour, but here is a screen shot of the new tree in game, will be adding vines to it next and continuing with crafting system.

Had a family dinner tonight so I lost about two hours. I decided it might make more sense of the protagonist was a robot since he’s flipping around the level and not moving too much, sometimes quite brutally. It looks a little more natural to have a robot flipping around the level. Here’s my crappy robot art:

I played around with the prototype a bit to get a feel for the game. I also tried messing with gravity and found that it was interesting to have a bit of gravity in the level too. I think I’ll make a few levels without gravity and try a few with gravity as well.

Here are a few sketches of some level ideas I had. The straight lines are climbable walls, the squiggly lines are non-climbable walls. The triangle is the player and the X is the exit. The gravity of the level is listed at the bottom.

And if you’re interested, here is my to-do list:

 * Implement level exit with next level int - & special int for game over
 * Restrict jump aim to 90 degrees from contact normal in either direction
 * Replace jump line with line & cool looking cursor
 * Restrict cursor to set distance from player
 * Implement jump charge by holding mouse
 * Implement some of the levels I designed on paper
 * Story? Should probably tell the player when gravity changes - falling free bodies also helps here
 * Make a little more effort on the level art... static BG image might work
 * See if there's some way to keep the player from phasing through walls (the jump restriction will probably help with this)

I’m working on a hardcore platformer without jumping. How do you make a platformer without jumping, you ask? If only you had some sort of umbrella that let you ride currents of wind…

Most of the coding is done; just lots of level design left.

You’re alone without any allies, enemies, or even moving obstacles. Just you and the environment.

Well, I got my menus in, and now GM is deciding to bug up significantly, creating runtime errors whenever I exit my game… Ah, well… I’m sure I can find someone to compile for me.

Preparing for the competition I thought of most things, but one thing I completely missed was level management.

I didn’t think about how I was going to load the entities in a world, how I would load different levels, none of that. So the last 8 hours of my day were spent trying to figure this out & make it work. I tried loading a PNG file & looping through the colours which would be related to an object. I tried using TilED but didn’t know much about it. I knew how to make a level with it, but nothing about using it in the code. I tried creating an array of integers & each integer matches to an object.

None of it really worked, so I’ve decided to just work on this at my own pace following my own theme. Because that way there is no pressure to get it done. I can just take my time.

Tl;dr, here’s a picture of a banana:

I’m so sad. I have been looking forward to Ludum Dare for so long that it sucks that I have to pull out now. But I am completely burned out from finals week coming into this, and the more I continue, the less I enjoy it. If I kept going, I’d probably hate programming games forever. So I’ll leave now, and hopefully come back to the next one better and brighter.

Here’s what my idea was, if anyone is interested:

You are stranded alone, in the future. You have the ability to go back in time, but only for five seconds, so you can affect future things by modifying the past.

You also have a gun that shoots things into the past/future (wherever you are not). Unfortunately, no one has invented a reflective surface that you know of, but if only you could find one, because then you could shoot yourself into the past… hehe.

I slept quite long and it took my a while to get out of bed.

after getting up I meditated a little and Ideas kept rushing into my head. I don’t think I will finish on time but I feel really good about this game, so I probably will continue to work on it and just submit what I have to the compo aswell as the jam.

It seems there is a bigger story behind this episode…

I added my intro cutscene which really gives the game context and I think it also gives a bit of emotion to the game. Pretty happy with how everything is turning out so far 😀

Finished the intro cinematic! And yes, you DO play a dog.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 18th, 2011 at 5:13 am and is filed under LD #22. 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.

Muzak done. Horrible clipping, but it’ll have to do now.

A bit late on this hourly, but I was finishing up the webpage for the game!

It’s available at : http://games.temperancexiv.com/ld22/ for test.  Play it if you want, submit your hi-scores to the table, and leave comments if you find any bugs.  You can also email me at ajstroud@temperancexiv.com!

I’ll be spending today bug testing and fixing before submitting it.  Feels good to have 17+ hours just for testing and polish.

Finally fixed the collision export bug from the screenies below, got my ODE camera working, next step is baddies & projectiles

New morning == New work

ToDo:

• Implemet Kongregate API
• Adding a level editor
• Maybe adding other types of tools
• Choose A Name For The Game (Help Me Please)

Play The Game Here!

Watch The Live Stream Here!

I may be a little behind where I think I should be, but Tiled and melonJS are REALLY helping me to have a LEAST a start of a prototype!

Here’s my latest progress, may not look like much, but I proud!

After a good night’s sleep, I’m feeling optimistic again. I couldn’t continue with my original idea and didn’t want to scrap it either. I figured out a compromise when lying in bed this morning: a way to alter the game mechanic to make it more interesting from both the developer’s and the player’s point of view.

Large trees now come covered in vines. The vines get removed from the tree if you forage the tree.  I’ve setup the recipe system I will be using for the crafting system… now I need to tie it into a menu that lets you select from available recipes and then craft said items.

Oh. I almost forgot. I added in a main menu (press space to start with a black screen).  But that was just added in because I also made it so you can die from three different deaths now! Hooray!… well technically you can’t die of hunger before dying of thirst right now…. so make that two deaths.

Well, I’m getting tired, going to call it a night. I implemented exits that take you from one level to another. I don’t know how difficult it would be to try to implement a smooth scrolling level in Fisica so I’m just going to keep it simple and use single screen levels.

I have to admit I’m kind of bummed. I had hoped to make more progress today.

The good news is that I think I have a direction. I certainly have my work cut out for me tomorrow. Unfortunately there isn’t much time for playtesting and iteration. I do want to improve the art a bit… but more time spent there means less time I can spend on the gameplay. (And it takes a lot of effort for me to even make mediocre art, I’m not an artist…)

In any case, I’m already pleased with this as a movement prototype. I think there’s interesting gameplay to be had with this design, given enough digging and iteration.

So, yes; my game is ‘serious’. It’s more about different interpretations of alone than it is about any gameplay.

I hope people give it a chance and can relate to one or two of the things they encounter.

Not long left…

It’s 8.30 in the morning, after 4hours of sleep, I think it’s time to continue.

So, here’s what I have so far :

• Movement (control by gesture on the touch screen, or the mouse for the flash version)
• The hero can jump, move, die
• Level selection
• Collisions detection

And what I have to do today:

• NPC + dialogs (and level design)
• Level destruction
• Design (at least try to have better one)
• Sound

To understand what I’me trying to do, you can imagine a solo lemmings (the flash gordon one) trying to get out of this place where he thinks he is alone. He has abilities of course, and can have more if he’s able to save other people …

I think that the game is more fun on a tablet, but i’ve manage to make it easy to play with the mouse … (draw the path of the player).

For the moment, I’m not really happy about what I’ve done, I’ve lost too much time trying to understand some features of NME because of unexpected bugs …

It’s time for breakfast, good luck everyone !!

After about 10 or so hours of work, I’ve completed about half to three-quarters of the concepts I want in my game. Time for sleep, I can’t code at 3AM. So, until tomorrow, Ludum Dare!