LD14 April 17–20, 2009

#ludumdare is a strange place

Comments

5parrowhawk
17. Apr 2009 · 20:49 UTC
Would make for a freakin’ awesome shmup. Think Warning Forever but with a shitload of small evolving enemies that flood you from the top of the screen.
5parrowhawk
17. Apr 2009 · 20:49 UTC
Those which survive longer pass on their genes to the next generation.
5parrowhawk
17. Apr 2009 · 20:50 UTC
Oh, and it’s Procedural too!

Must stop commenting…
17. Apr 2009 · 20:52 UTC
but how can you work yodawg in?
5parrowhawk
17. Apr 2009 · 21:00 UTC
You have a gun that shoots… guns. That shoot the bad guys.

Priorities

Yeah, spring break happened to fall on this week for me (and it snowed about a foot yesterday), thus I’ve been procrastinating my load of homework which is due Monday and Tuesday.

Oh well, I missed out on LD13 so I’m going to try hard to submit something this time around. I’d like to say I’ve learned Panda3D to try out this time, but… =P I’ll be sticking to PyGame again.

Tags: motivation

yo dawg I herd you like ludum dare

so I put ludum dare in your ludum dare so you can dare while you ludum.

But seriously folks.. I’m glad this theme ending up in the final round is likely a glitch.. but a cruel glitch at that!

Tags: badjoke, badtaste, glitch, latetotheparty, meme, motivation, notfunny, recursion, yodawgyo

Comments

17. Apr 2009 · 20:47 UTC
Yo dawg I herd you leik crappy themes, so I bugged your contest so you can have crappy themes in your final.
Gilvado
17. Apr 2009 · 20:48 UTC
Hahahaha
17. Apr 2009 · 20:51 UTC
thanks.. I’ll be here all night.. try the veal!

What I’ma usin’

After looking everything over, I think I’m gonna use Wiering’s base code that he posted up, built on haXe. So my final list should be:

Wiering’s boilerplate: http://www.wieringsoftware.eu/

haXe + FlashDevelop + SWFMill

Tile Studio (which I have absolutely fallen in love with), Gimp, Wacom Tablet

My Tenori-On, Korg KP3, Audacity, and likely sfxr.

Comments

17. Apr 2009 · 20:47 UTC
yeah– tile studio rocks
5parrowhawk
17. Apr 2009 · 21:26 UTC
Ooh, you have a Tenori-On!

My desk is ready

cleaned off my desk,  got my headphones and converted xbox controller at moments notice, and blew the dust out of my vintage XT/AT mechanical (clicky) keyboard

now I just need to go get some easter jelly beans from the kitchen and I am good to go for a little bit

Comments

sinoth
17. Apr 2009 · 21:56 UTC
I’m envious of your keyboard! CLACK CLACK CLICKETY CLACK
Osgeld
17. Apr 2009 · 22:50 UTC
thanks, its not that much louder than my wifes modern one, but its all about the feel, i just love that positive snap on each key

towlr warm up.. because.. there are still 2 hours left!

just to let anyone who feels like warming up for the main compo with a little towlr action and who wasn’t hanging in IRC.. there is a little towlr precompo going on… you’ve been warned.  :)

and for those of you who have been spared from towlr so far… here is the link: http://www.towlr.com

Tags: compo, irc, towlr, warmup

just had some chinese

Tags: motivation

Comments

17. Apr 2009 · 22:57 UTC
No Rain!!!!

Framework “hello world”

Well, it means that OpenGL is working (2D ortho), along with texturing, mouse interaction, and a bunch of other stuff. Normally I wait until after the theme is announced to get this stuff working, so hopefully it’ll help with my reduced time budget!

But it’s not exactly impressive to look at.

Hopefully this is my Black Triangle, or at least something 80% there. Still need to add rotation support, but that’s not too bad.

Tags: framework, screenshot, sofar

Desk

I’ve participated in a lot of LD48s, but I’ve never posted a workspace photo.

Erik\'s workspace

I really should learn to make music with that keyboard.  It’s probably time to get rid of the g3 imac as well.

Tags: desk

Comments

sinoth
17. Apr 2009 · 22:30 UTC
nice! i like the toy car and blue desk :) do you have kids or just a kid at heart?
erik
17. Apr 2009 · 22:45 UTC
The thing on top of the printer is made of lego as well. Kid at heart I guess.
Osgeld
17. Apr 2009 · 22:47 UTC
hey ill take your imac :)
erik
17. Apr 2009 · 22:52 UTC
Heh. The shipping on a CRT 500mhz g3 imac is probably far more than the machine is worth.

Desk… sort of…

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Heheh… yeah, thats a God awful picture. Sorry. Not much to see anyway.

My Very Own Towlr

Had to be done. (actually it’s just a hack =p)

Tags: picture, towlr

Comments

17. Apr 2009 · 22:57 UTC
Argh!!
17. Apr 2009 · 22:58 UTC
Wow, did you actually recompile it? Either way, I’m impressed.
LunarCrisis
17. Apr 2009 · 23:21 UTC
xxd FTW, I just replaced the string in the binary.

desktop ready

I’m with 50% of the brain working … but the desktop is ready, run desktop run !! lol

Tags: desktop, half-brain, sleepy

Comments

sinoth
17. Apr 2009 · 22:54 UTC
what is that thing above the headphones?

Yet Another Desk Shot (YADS)

Here’s a shot of my desk.  Time to break out the Ruby!

Comments

sinoth
17. Apr 2009 · 22:58 UTC
ICARUS!

My ‘desk’

Not much, but I’m loaded with mountain dew and snacks for a while. :) I migrated to the couch a few months ago after I got sick of sitting on my hard chair at the counter. (See previous deskphotos.)

Hmm, I have a bunch of random junk around.

Tags: deskphoto

Comments

sinoth
17. Apr 2009 · 22:59 UTC
lol @ the peeps. always an excess of those around easter :)

PoV Food – 1 Hour Before Start

Hey there boys and girls.

I’ve been busily finishing up my taxes the past couple hours. I still have a couple more to go, but I’m certainly past the half way mark. So before I get caught up in more taxes and announcing the theme, I thought now would be a good time to take a break.

Snack time!

The last cookie+marshmallow thing, and a bag of chips from my lunch at Quiznos I hadn’t eaten yet. Yum yum!

Tags: foodphoto

in with the desk montage

desk collage

Going to have a go at this finally! Above is my upstairs/downstairs work space, but it’s finally not going to rain this weekend, so maybe I can sit out in the sun. My planned arsenal:

* Python + pyglet or libtcodpy

* GIMP, Alchemy, sfxr, lmms, and Audacity

* a marantz pmd620, yamaha p140, and wacom UD

* Louisiana gumbo and hopefully a garden salad at some point.

Tags: desk

3 hours in..

screen1

Lots to do, better get on with it!

Workspace.

Tags: deskphoto

Desk

  • Pygame
  • WinXP
  • Kids’ bedtime in 43 minutes

Tags: desk

At your service…

Let’s see what happens!!

My camera is in the shop, and the webcam isn’t working right now…  Maybe I’ll get some shots up later.

I am a big fan of polished games, so I’m tossing in my work-in-progress GUI lib:
http://code.bluedinosaurs.com/SDL/GRO_Gui.tar.gz

Other libs:
SDL, SDL_image, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf
Box2d

And these can be found on code.bluedinosaurs.com:
Sprig
NFont
GoodIO
SDL_ColorDef

Of course, sfxr and the GIMP will be my tools.

Good luck, everyone!
(Say no to Rain!)

Jonny D

My Desk

You can’t see it, because I don’t have a camera. Rest assured, it is a wood-colored boring IKEA table with a laptop and an iMac on it, and that’s it. Why? I just moved here last weekend. Not much in the way of furniture…

About to make some yummy risotto for dinner, then I’ll be ready to go. Depending on the theme, I may or may not do this contest, actually. I’m just sort of zonked at the moment and not looking forward to the prospect of being chained to my desk until Sunday night. We’ll see.

Yay ludum dare!

Howdy everyone. First time ludumdarer here.

I’ll be using Flash AS3 in FlashDevelop, GamePoetry‘s Serenity framework, and Tiled for my 2D tile map editor.

I’ll hosting my final game on Carbonmade and i recommend it to anyone else using flash/haXe. Now lets see if I can finish all my university work and make a cool game in 48 hours! 😀

Intro. And code.

Well, this is going to be my third Ludum Dare if you count the mini-LD I did. Previously I used Scheme/SDL/OpenGL, but since Lua’s a language I want to get comfortable with for other reasons, so I’m going to be putting it to use this weekend =).

I’ll be starting simple and working with the LÖVE engine. I have a bit of code already set up for miscellaneous things, which includes a small demo. Good luck everyone!

Tags: compo, intro

My desk

My desk, taken with laptop camSo, this is my desk, laptop webcam took it, I’ll be working on my laptop, because it’s got much more power than the archaic testbox that’s in the image.

Dunno what more to say here, first time participant and all.

First Ludum Dare meal

Here’s my first ludum dare meal ready to devour on my desk.

Desk and first meal

In addition, my wonderful wife made me this plate of cookies for the weekend, they’re fantastic.

Home-made cookies

yotowlr.. ld14 towlr warmup FINAL

play it here…

Since there is some confusion.. this is an actual flash game I coded as a warm up in the 2 hours leading up to LD14 theme announcement.  It isn’t just a screenshot.. :)   When the game loads, click in the screen and use your keyboard to win!

Tags: flash, LD14 - Advancing Wall of Doom, towlr, warmup, yodawg, yotowlr

Comments

Anonymous
17. Apr 2009 · 23:52 UTC
cake in 14, also WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
17. Apr 2009 · 23:52 UTC
You herd rite, dawg.
18. Apr 2009 · 00:10 UTC
Cake in my Cake in 7 tries. 😀
18. Apr 2009 · 00:13 UTC
Nice!
pants12
22. May 2010 · 10:05 UTC
cake in 1 try

The desk photo

Journal:

05:40

Waking up after about 5 hours of sleep. I’m feeling peachy. Can’t wait to go o__O at the theme and lose a few hours wondering why the hell I did even bother going up at such an ungodly hour. LD, you gotta love it. Also, breakfast.

Go go go LDers!

Notice how I skillfully include both a desk photo and a food photo at the same time! And notice the tinyness of my EeePC 901 under Ubuntu. And the mouse. The touch-thingy just drives me mad.

‘nough said.

Tags: deskphoto, foodphoto, journal

First meal & language stuff

My FoodMy first meal this is.

I’ll be using Java; with Slick as my media library, not sure about other stuff yet, depends on theme, and I’ll see that in a bit I suppose.

First meal

Food!

First meal of the compo. I’m saving off eating it until 4am (start time here), so as to actually eat it during the compo. That’s right. While the rest of you are thinking about themes, I’ll be eating goat cheese, drinking Guinness, and thinking about themes.

Though I’ve already demolished the Cadbury’s. Sigh.

Tags: food, LD #14 - Advancing Wall of Doom - 2009

Framework, sort of.

Well, it’s a start. :) Uploaded for reference. Less than 5min to go!

Tags: framework

Shall I?

Well, I just woke up (04:50 am in Norway), found out about the compo from a guy I know on facebook, and I’m discussing with myself if I’m joining or not. We’ll see when the theme is out. Anyways, if I do join, I might go safe with Flash CS3, or I might go wild and try to learn SDL while working :p We’ll see how things turns out. Best of luck to everybody! :-)

Comments

17. Apr 2009 · 23:59 UTC
I’d play it safe… but if you’re adventurous and want some SDL, you really should hang out in the irc room for help.

Aaaand away we go!

Good luck, y’all. :)

No LD for me

I’ve decided I don’t want to be stuck inside all weekend – I want to explore the town I just moved to. So, no LD. I was hoping for Attraction, but that clearly lost a lot. Advancing Wall of Doom is pretty cool but no thanks. Good luck all.

I’m happy

Now it’s time for bed…

YADI

My workspace

Yo dawg, I put some images in my image to you can see what you’re seeing!

Tags: YADI

Gentle wall

Here’s my idea for the game: It’s going to be a roguelike and you are in an evacuated village in the valley. Storms have been on the horizon for some time and you’ve been helping people get out but now it’s time to save yourself. Get to high ground while dealing with generic monsters and obstacles.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Comments

sinoth
18. Apr 2009 · 00:30 UTC
You mention getting to ‘higher ground’, will there be flooding or what? Higher ground seems more unsafe in a storm :)
eugman
18. Apr 2009 · 10:00 UTC
Yeah, the flooding will be the wall. I think the storms will stay off in the distance.

Advancing Wall of Huh?

Ok.. I’m in! I’ve been looking forward to this.

But… I have no ideas. There’s plenty of possibilities with this theme, but none that I’m really excited enough about to work on all weekend. Yet.  I forgot this item was even on the list (though I may have voted for it).  But I’m sure I’ll think of something.

So for now I’m just starting with generic stuff – opening a window etc – and hopefully an idea will come.

advancing wall of…

…sleep. Though before that I felt like doing a little drawing to get the subconscious primed on the theme before sleep.  Here’s a quick 3 minute sketch of a possible doomy world:

Tags: advancing, art, brainstorm, concept, doom, sketch, sleep, wall

Journal entry #2

06:45

Back from a refreshing walk. The morning air and the surrounding environment gave me some ideas. Now back to mind mapping and brainstorming.

Took a few pictures too:

Tags: journal

Aaaaand GO!

OK, I’m started. Advancing Wall of Doom, you say? I think I can work with that. I already have the necessities going (pretty boring so far, so no screenshot yet, sorry) and things are coming along smoothly. I even have a food photo already!

Exciting! Yes, that is rainbow jello, as well as turkey and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes. OK, back to work.

Tags: food, foodphoto, journal

Comments

TenjouUtena
18. Apr 2009 · 01:02 UTC
Easter leftovers?
18. Apr 2009 · 01:04 UTC
Yessireebob.
winferno
18. Apr 2009 · 01:16 UTC
wtf is that on the left?
19. Apr 2009 · 02:50 UTC
rainbow jello, of course.

Playfield Sketch

It’s a start. Those are huts in the center, in case that wasn’t too obvious from my craptastic drawing here.

PoV’s Thoughts

I’m still doing taxes at the moment, but the idea I’m considering involves procedurally generating some architecture. Rooms connected to other rooms.

Right now, the point I can think of for the game is to exit the room you’re in before a/the walls squish cave in on you. The goal of the game being to escape as many rooms as possible before you get crushed.

I may diverge though (it’s happened, I call it PuffBOMB). Will finish taxes and sleep first.

Must resist the urge to start

OK, advancing wall of doom, didn’t expect that but I’ve got an idea on how I can crack this. But I swore that I wouldn’t start tonight, it’s 10:30 PM here. I’m going to go to bed early, wake up, and get cranking. So all I’ve done is set up a github repo. And uploaded a shell class that just displays a blank window. And some basic update/display logic.

Because that’s not really coding, right?

Right?

Going to bed now… maybe I’ll dream about my idea.

just cant sleep =)

Just made the first draft of the game scene, and wrote some rules about the “Diodontidae” lets works on this tomorrow when I awake.

good luck all, c you tomorrow

Tags: Diodontidae, draft, sketch, sleep, zzzz

The Dark at the End of the Tunnel

The theme is not what I was hoping for – I was one of the people pulling for Rain, myself. However, knowing that AWoD had a high probability of being picked, I spent the hour leading up to the announcement brainstorming for an idea. What I ended up coming up with is a sort of tactical maze game with Roguelike-like aspects (yes, it’s like games that are like Rogue… so not really that much like Rogue itself).

The premise is that you, the hero, have arrived too late to stop the evil wizard/demon/whatever from opening a gate to the Plane of Shadows. You’re now trying to escape the dungeon, with a billowing wall of shadows hot on your heels. If you can get out before being caught by it, you can seal the doors of the dungeon behind you, and thereby – one hopes – save the world from being doomed to eternal night.

Unlike most Roguelikes, you don’t have any equipment, except potions, and no hit points, just energy. You can walk around at normal speed without using energy, or you can run at double speed, but using up energy as you go. Moving through water and jumping over pits also uses energy, as does battling monsters. You regenerate energy very slowly as you walk around, or much more quickly by standing still. You can also pick up potions that restore your energy completely.

The dungeon gets harder to navigate as you go along, as there are more and more dead ends, and less paths to lead you closer to the exit. Fortunately, you can also find torches in sconces on the wall. Moving through one will light it, which will delay the wall of shadows a little bit when it reaches the torch.

And that’s all I have planned now. I think that’s enough to keep me busy for 48 hours. If I finish all that with time to spare, I’ll think of some small embellishments, but I think it should be at least a bit of fun just like that.

I

shall advance to the bathroom, avoiding any confrantation with the walls. Swift doom is lurking in the shadows here. I hope my antics will give me enough of a boost, to spawn some ideas.

Tags: good morning, ideas, lack of, wordplay

Off to what I think is a good start

Although it can only get worse from here then.

I’m using scratch as my IDE.  I’ve been learning it so I can teach my son it. I have an advancing wall and most my graphics drawn. Thanks to cgmusic I have a sound track and will give some sound effects though next.

Poster

(inspired by dock)

Tags: motivation

First snack, first idea

Triscuits with salami and American cheese.

This is my first LD so I’m going to keep it very simple. Tetris variant. Portrait orientation, narrow screen. The advancing wall of doom is a grid of blocks moving downward. The blocks compose individual shapes of (probably) four blocks each. Your job is to create interesting combinations of shapes, perhaps just rectangles. Completing a combination removes the lowest corresponding blocks from the advancing wall. When the wall hits bottom, game over. Points for creating shapes.

Design (already kind of figured out)

The funny thing is, the one theme I actually did plan out in my head was “Advancing Wall Of Doom”. So here’s my design (Kabe Shoujo).

It’s a vertical shmup where you’re a magician. You’ve got the usual 3 kinds of shots: red shotgun spread (shot button 1), blue laser (shot button 2) and purple homing bolts (hold both shot buttons down – makes you move slower).

In addition, you can summon a “wall” of 6 or so magic circles (the Advancing Wall Of Doom) which forms a line about 1/3 way up the screen. You start with the wall active.Each circle starts as a random colour – red, blue or purple.

Enemies who touch the wall are destroyed. Every time an enemy touches the wall, it moves back a bit.

Now there are 3 kinds of enemy bullets – you guessed it: red, blue and purple. The wall circles only absorb bullets of the same colour. However, if you fly into the circle and use one of the shots, the circle will change colour after a short duration. The trick is to change the circle colours to best absorb the massive barrage of oncoming fire.

Also, you can dispel the wall by using the Bomb button – doing so makes you briefly invincible and unleashes a super attack. You can re-summon the wall using the same button, but you only get 3 re-summons per life.

I’m planning to have 1 tutorial stage (really a mini-stage) and 1 real stage.

Dude, run!

Tags: motivation

Comments

18. Apr 2009 · 02:50 UTC
aiee! advancin wal uv kitteh iz r dooooom

Dinner? Food? You be the judge

A delicious (?!) meal of pig entrails and seaweed.  This was NOT part of my gameplan but I guess the wife has her own plan to sabatage me with inedible food… !!

Tags: food, foodpic

OK.

Heres the idea:

 

Its kinda an RPG type thing where you have to run away from the advancing wall (which gains speed over time) while fighting enemies to gather money to advance in several things, including health, strength, possibly speed (possibly because it may make the game to easy), and purchasing units to run forward and destroy things. Using Construct to make the game, and I have some decent progress so far. Gonna spend tonight thinking up ways to make the game more challenging.

Tags: LD14 - Advancing Wall of Doom

Game design, brainstorming, and bunnies!

I couldn’t sleep more than ’til 6 am, which is one hour after the theme was announced. I got up, checked the site, saw the theme.. and froze. I got nothing!
After freaking out for a while, I decided it was better to not force it, so I went back to bed. After just a few minutes, I had my game idea!

You play the role of a bunny caretaker. Your job is to make bunnies not die.
The game is a level/screen based puzzle game where you have to save at least a certain number of bunnies on each screen before advancing to the next one. The problem is that there’s a huge spiky wall advancing from the left, crushing everything in it’s way. You can stop it temporarily by putting things in its way, but it IS going to crush everything sooner or later.
There will be blood and heaps of bunnies with fuzzy ears. And probably a few carrots. Perhaps even copulating bunnies.

One hour game

You cannot beat it.

http://jemgine.omnisu.com/2009/04/18/wallr/

Comments

TimS
18. Apr 2009 · 02:37 UTC
I don’t get it… I can roll over either color… but randomly I die? What kindof towlr is that? (the good kind I guess)
Anonymous
18. Apr 2009 · 07:38 UTC
You die if you touch red.

Sammich 1

The first of many. It may look small, but it makes up for it with lots of cheese.

And yes, it is sitting on top of a stack of encyclopedias, it’s just that kind of food.

Tags: compo, food

The idea so far

I’m hoping to make a kind-of board game in which you must eliminate all of the pieces exclusively owned by your opponent.  A few possible twists:

A. After every few moves/captures, one of the sides of the board crushes inward, effectively shrinking the board as you play.  This one is pretty certain to be the case, for compliance with the theme and to make the endgame work.

B. it is likely that any given player will have up to 1 minute to input their play for this turn, after which point the moves take effect.  If you haven’t specified a move this minute, tough cookies for you; the other player will move anyway.  Perhaps both players specify their moves during this minute, and the moves actually take effect simultaneously.

C. Perhaps the board contains some pieces that both you and your opponent control (?).  Mutually exclusive with the simultaneous-action variant of B.

advancing wall of golems

Hi everybody.

I’ve thought about a hour and have no better idea than this:

Evil medieval wizard %evilwizardname% have sent thousands of golems to a good medieval town. Player plays as a good mage killing golems with fireballas and other spells. He can’t kill them all, but he can stop them for a while. This time is needed to evacuate civilians and gain army forces in a rear for battle. Each level is a combination of walls and other town buildings (top-down view, one screen). Straight rows of golems advances from one (or maybe two) screen sides. Golems makes one step per 1-4 seconds, player needs to make a stand against them for a each level defined time. Player can walk around a level using buildings as barricades, he dies when golems hit him at least few times. When level time is over player needs to run to the next level.

I’m going to use HGE 1.81 and Box2D

p.s. sorry for my bad english :)

Progress so far

After awhile shooting blanks, I came up with the idea of defending a wall from an invading horde. As the horde approaches and dies, they build up a wall of corpses. If the wall reaches the top, the invaders pour over and you lose. So you have to reduce the piles of corpses by whatever means necessary… we’ll see what I can do there.

Here’s how far I got in a couple of hours before having to go to bed. Some laughably bad programmer art here, especially since I made a mistake and left a swatch of white in my sky background. Doh!

Tiled wall over a really badly drawn sky background

Now I’m off to bed for a good night’s rest.

Good luck, everyone!

Design

I’ve been working on procedural generation and RPG’s for quite some time; and as such, I believe I will make a procedurally generated “Run Away!” RPG.

The rest is to come.

Dev Tools and Concept Choice

After checking out the other posts it seems like there will be more than a few games turning the wall into a an enemy that chases the player. So at least my concept will be in good company 😛

Gameplay is restricted to one screen three quarter down. The player’s character will be on one side of the screen and a wall slightly bigger than the player will be on the opposing side. When the game starts, the wall will chase the player down. The wall can only move either horizontally or vertically at anytime. Players score one point per second they avoid the wall.

Every few seconds a new object will appear on the screen. These will be broken up into a few classes:

  • Player Interaction: when collided with will force the player to interact with them (arm wrestling guy, kitten that needs petting, soup that needs stirring, etc). 
  • Wall Interaction: This is broken up into two things, some of the player interaction objects will interact with the wall (the wall will need to stop and pet the kitten as well). There are also three Erlenmeyer flasks of coloured fluid, at the start of each level the effects(shrinking and slowing the wall, speeding up and expanding the wall, giving the wall laser death eyes) of the three flasks will be randomized. Once one of these spawns the wall will give up the chase on the player, and go after the flask. If the player can reach the flask before the wall, he can destroy it.
  • Bombs: Once collected the player can place bombs any where on the screen, they have a small blast radius and will have two functions: removing player interaction objects and doing damage to the wall. Once the wall has been hit by three explosions we advance to the next level.

Most of these actions reward the player with points.

As the player progresses through the levels the wall speeds up, and the amount of points they get for each second alive doubles.

 I’ve decided to go with XNA 3.0 and Visual Studio 2008 Express as my IDE. I figure I’ll record a few sounds in Audacity and possibly hum a tune for music (if it doesn’t end up being too grating). Doing up all my artwork in Flash.

My main concern with going the XNA route is that the game will be set up to use the controller as input, making it less accessible for most LDers.  Setting up keyboard input for it is likely not going to happen within the deadline time.

I’m also going to thank my gal pal, as this was supposed to be her final exams celebration/moving weekend. She is probably the most understanding person ever.

I’m off to my first LD meal.

The walls are closing in! D:

Advancing Wall of Doom huh? I don’t have any ideas for this at all, so instead I made a big sandwich for breakfast. I hope I think of something soon!  Good luck everyone!

Tags: food

Comments

18. Apr 2009 · 03:23 UTC
Wow, that thing is epic

I already hate my game

After further whiteboarding, I’ve decided my “Tetris variant” game is in fact identical to Tetris, but (a) upside-down, and (b) not fun. The “interesting shape” game rule that I envisioned is really just creating fully-filled lines of blocks, and that’s Tetris. Splitting the line-creation task out into a separate part of the game field doesn’t improve the play of the game, and re-combining it with the rest of the field is… Tetris.

So back to the drawing board. But at least I’ve written my pygame skeleton, which I had to do sooner or later.

Progress, sweet

So I’ve settled on an idea for my project, and I think it’s going to turn out reasonably well. I’ve made a lot of progress on the actual game code, but there’s still a ways to go. Luckily, I’ve done some artwork too, so there’s actually something to see! Now you’ll all try to figure out what the game is about, and I can go ahead and make it!

My plan is working, isn’t it?

Tags: journal

First screenshot

No level generation yet… just displaying the tiles that will be used.

First screenshot

Calling it a night

Calling it a night

I am calling it a night – I have computer generated music, sound effects, simple graphics and basic gameplay.

My wall moves a little slow have to play with the numbers but I am happy about where I am this early. Can’t let it get to me though – one small mistake and then you are behind the pack

Squeeze Maze

Advancing Wall of Wolfenstein


First snacks. Some kind of savoury pancake thingies and some french fries. The fast food store’s name apparently translates roughly to “The Chicken of Low Morals”.


I have some boxes. Note that their positioning does not correlate in any way to the layout of the minimap. That is because maths is hard.

Tags: food, progress

Good Morning!

Oh crap, I see the theme is Advancing Wall of Doom :(

This is my Wall of Doom

my very personal wall of doom

Wow,…the theme “Advancing Wall of Doom”. During the voting-period I already thought:”That sounds nice! But what kind of game could I develop for that!?” Still, I don’t have a clue. Maybe a cup of coffee will help me to wake up.

Let’s the party started and have a lot of fun….

ahh slumber

First meal of the compo is a simple one :

After the theme was announced I took about an hour long bike ride (really nice since it was midnight here) and mulled over some ideas.  Ironically enough it started RAINING! (RIP rain.  You’ll be chosen next time, I promise!)

Managed to come up with a possibly doable idea involving a huge spinning circular wall of debris that closes in on you.  At worst I hope to have the huge spinny wall thing done so it’ll at least look neat :)  Filled up my whiteboard with a todo and now its time for bed.

Tags: food, whiteboard

Inspiration, go!

Just got up, checked the theme, had some breakfast:

Still no idea for a concept. :(

Tags: breakfast

Evening’s progress

I have a very simple tile system in place.  I thought I would have simple gameplay by this point, but I’ve run into a problem where my recursive flood fill is blowing the as3 stack.  I’m too tired to figure out what I’m doing wrong, so I think I’m going to call it a night and look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow.

Ludum Dare from 10,000 feet

So this Ludum Dare, I happen to be travelling … on a train to Rome today, touristing in the evening, then flying out to Melbourne via Hong Kong. Wifi access will be sporadic. I won’t always have power for my laptop … but I might as well give it a shot. Chances are, all I’ll submit are a few photos of airline food, but I may even make a game if the power on the aircraft works.

Ciao for now !

The idea is set

Idea:

Big flame chases little hero and throws fireballs at him. Fireballs set flames to the level, so the hero must constantly run. Little hero uses supersoaker to put down an fireball, soak it with water and kick back at the big flame to put it out. He can also use it to fire-proof some parts of the level.

Deployment:

C++, STL, OpenGL, OpenAL

This is my 3rd attempt at LudumDare, all previous ones failed because i wanted my code to be too pretty. This time its kludge time, wish me luck :)

Tags: idea

Mockup — BE the advancing wall of doom

Well, I saw that a lot of people wanted to make games where you run from an advancing wall of doom, so I decided to make a game where you are an advancing wall of doom.

My Wall of Doom is busy conquering the planet, and nomming on all the tasty people and cities that he can find along the way. Controllable gameplay will consist solely of using his nose-beam (which shoots lasers, not mucus) to blow up people, tanks, planes, and buildings. He will move forwards inexorably, and the camera will track him. Whenever he comes up to piles of debris or whatnot, he will scoop it up in his giant mouth, and make loud “OM NOM NOM” noises. The more stuff you eat, the more money you get to upgrade his nose laser, and to heal him. If I have time, you might also be able to get a mortar on his head, or smaller automated face-lasers. But likely I won’t have time.

Comments

mklee
18. Apr 2009 · 04:23 UTC
Oh wow, this is sorta similar to my own Ludum Dare idea that I’m working on right now. That’s pretty cool though, it’ll be interesting to see the differences in implementation by the end!
Gilvado
18. Apr 2009 · 04:25 UTC
😀 I was wondering if anyone had played You Have To Burn The Rope — I thought it was a pretty awesome design for a boss.
ido
18. Apr 2009 · 04:50 UTC
Crap, that was my idea :p
5parrowhawk
18. Apr 2009 · 05:01 UTC
Nice. I decided that the advancing wall of doom should be on the player’s side too, but BEING the wall didn’t occur to me.
pekuja
18. Apr 2009 · 07:33 UTC
I like that idea of the wall being on your side. I think I might do something like that too, in my own way.
18. Apr 2009 · 09:32 UTC
“OM NOM NOM!” :)

At least there’s SOME progress.

Here’s the sprite sheet for my main character: (pardon the white padding)

Main character sprite sheet

He can walk around already, and he even blinks at random. It’s not a game yet, though, I’d better get cracking.

Comments

5parrowhawk
18. Apr 2009 · 04:24 UTC
Wow! That’s fast! I only have a two-frame animation…

PShop break

No ... just no

Tags: wrong

Second Hour

Well, the game is, as a skeleton, complete. I think now it’s time to begin reiterating until I get something balanced and fun. But I doubt I will be spending much time on this one. Is it possible to participate with two games? I guess not.

I forgot to take a picture of my breakfast. Whatever.

Comments

18. Apr 2009 · 04:40 UTC
Wow, that looks fantastic! I’ll be interested to see how the wall theme plays into this, but you’re already making amazing progress :)
Comtemno
18. Apr 2009 · 05:02 UTC
Well, I’m not going to use a real “wall”, for I don’t think we are to take it literally. The layer you are on will slowly wither and turn into walls, or something like that.

Progress report: 4.5 hours in

I’ve got the basic thing up and running. There’s an attract mode which pretty much displays nothing (just the scrolling background), and the play mode. Player can move around and is stopped when she hits the edge of the playable area. Animation not in yet.

Advancing Wall of Domo

Tags: motivation

Comments

18. Apr 2009 · 06:07 UTC
BHL doesn’t like direct links.
18. Apr 2009 · 06:33 UTC
I don’t know what you mean. I used the ‘upload picture’ thing.

Breakfast of Champions

So the theme is advancing wall of doom :) Lets get started on ideas :)

Breakfast and Ideas

Desktop computer!

Orange marmalade, yum

So, I wake up, photograph my computer, check the theme (oh f*ck, it’s Advancing Wall of Doom), proceed to have breakfast, and now I’m here, out of ideas. This is bad, Jane. This is very bad.

Good Morning, Ludum Dare…

Got up to find out it was Wall of Doom, tried to think about it but fell asleep again, no inspriration other than tetris dreams!

Up just had my Weetabix breakfast and drinking a cup of tea, I’ve sketched the game design, back of napkin stuff.  Now drink tea and code! ;o)

Advancing wall of ideas

So I ended up staying awake on IRC till 4am to see what the theme was. Advancing wall of doom, eh? Well, I was rooting for Bosses, but at least this beats Rain. Nobody wanted rain.

(and by nobody I mean me)

So, after tossing about some dumb ideas I’m going to go for a platformer. Details are still emerging in my mind, and while they emerge, I draw tank tracks. Hooray!

It’s 9:30 now, I haven’t been to sleep, I’m not tired and I don’t have anything importatnt I gotta do today. These are I think excellent conditions! We’ll see how long I last…

Breakfast soon, once I get these things spinning.

Tags: graphics

Progress and Tuning

I’m about to have some “Thin Mint” ice cream and go to sleep. But I’m pretty happy with my progress.

As you can guess, my game involves a wall of Tetrominoes. But that’s all I will reveal so far. It’s also about mass extinction. 

I’m trying something different this time. I put some of the gameplay tuning numbers into a config file (which is not that new), but I’m also checking the file time every time the game loop updates, and reload if it changes. I might set this to only happen in debug builds, but it doesn’t seem to slow anything down so far. The cool thing is that now I can tune my gameplay values in real-time, just changing the number and saving the file. This was inspired by Ben Garney’s clever google spreadsheet trick over at CoderHump (worst blog name ever). So far I only have one value, how fast the game scrolls, but we’ll see.

Comments

18. Apr 2009 · 17:12 UTC
Pretty cool. Glad my post was useful to you! :)
jovoc
27. Aug 2009 · 19:48 UTC
Wow Ben Garney commented on my post! I think we met at IndyGameCon II — I was the drunk one. (I guess that’s not very specific, the conference was held at a bar after all).

Wow.

I waaaaay overslept. Oh well. I have an Idea and I best get to it.

Get Ready for……

Shroud of Terror: The Journey of Billy Watson!

I will be working on my 2.4 GHZ Black Mac laptop and CS4.

Is that some art or what?

Collisions, pushing, dragging are all working. Time to add some bunnies, methinks.

First screenshot of BunnyWall

Ode To Programmer Art

Whatever. This was what I was thinking of. I just don’t want to see a real wall advancing.

The game is mostly complete too.

OH MY GOD THAT’S MAGMA!

More soon.

Has wokened up.

Does not like theme. (Like I do not like theme every time I wake up on LD.)

But whatever. I think about it.

Tags: ugh

Good morning!

Eating and thinking of walls and dooms.

Breakfast

I will survive.

Comments

omer
14. May 2009 · 05:30 UTC
I missed this kind of breakfast so badly.