LD14 April 17–20, 2009

First Alpha

http://willhostforfood.com/access.php?fileid=63191

Download there. Arrow keys to move, Z for sword, and X for magic.

When an up arrow appears over your head next to a castle, it means you can buy an upgrade. The big cross ups your HP, the sword raises your strength, the other cross thing raises max magic points and the square summons a guy to run into the wall in an attempt to slow it down. Magic uses your strength at long range, but has limmited ammo. Still work to do, but its playable as it is.

 

EDIT: Also, hot dogs for lunch after two hours of shoveling mulch.

Playable Alpha

Right, all the gameplay’s basically there – now it’s just a matter of filling things out with sounds and traps.  So, here’s an alpha version (Windows only, I’m afraid): http://www.niallmoody.com/downloads/ld14/DieYouStupidHurdlers-alpha1.zip I’m really surprised by how well this thing’s gone so far.  Any comments would be most welcome :)

Also, what I had for dinner:

Saturday's Dinner

(cheese and tomato rice, plus Irn Bru)

Comments

Craig
19. Apr 2009 · 14:43 UTC
Looking good Mr M!

An Unexpected Snowstorm

So the design of the game is fairly established now. It looks like the core mechanic is a food chain. There are different varieties of little creatures which occupy various niches. All would be well in the world, were it not for the sudden arrival of DOOM in the form of an explosively reproducing foreign species…

I was trying to get the first projectiles into the game, and ended up with a rather unexpected snowstorm instead:

http://i39.tinypic.com/1628ohy.png

Currently there are invaders (red-green) and one form of sessile predator (orangey) in the game. All life forms heal over time, and the invaders use this to their advantage by withdrawing outside their target’s firing range briefly if their health dips too low. There’s no player character yet.

http://i44.tinypic.com/2elfh52.png

The next thing to do is get some sort of plankton- or barnacle-esque life form into the system- something low level that doesn’t eat anything, and simply provides food for other organisms.

Tags: tigs

1st Screenshot, Still a Way to Go

I’ve been having some wierd performance related problems, but nothing too bad.

Here’s the 1st (early) screenshot:

Lunch, food.

Well, I have my idea, just gotta do it! Yummy lunch:

Well, it wasn’t awesome, but it was okay. More later!

Tags: compo, food

Don’t forget to eat,. . mind needs nurishment.

noodles,. and cows

Spinich Rice Noodles, and last nights grilled cow leftovers,. poured the soup over the top,. pho mooooo!

My cube is now a toothy pacman-esque ‘character’  but he still has some funky awkward movements and no objects to interact with, except the blocks he hops around on,. .  thinking of forcing him to stay grid alighned so a total rewrite of the current conroles,. . perhaps I take a brake first and go outside!

in the ZGE editor

GUI work…

GUI work done…

screen09.jpg

First alpha version (only one level, no restart, etc) can be downloaded here.

Just get to the exit, fetching the keys to open the doors. Exit doesn’t work yet, though… 😀

Anyway, comments are appreciated…

Still to do:

– Functional exits

– Game story

– Gameflow code (menus, title, instructions, game over, end of game, etc)

– Enemies (most code is already present, so this is easy)

– Lava, water and spike tiles

– Level design

– Music and sound

For now, I have some friends over, gonna party a bit, but if I muster the courage, I’ll probably still return to coding today, hopefully I can finish a lot more of the gameplay code. Want to devote the maximum ammount of time for the level design (which was always lacking on my previous entries).

And the award for least inspiring screenshot goes to…

It may not look like much but It’s been a good day and it’s pretty much playable.   Lots of things to do tomorrow though, not least improve the graphics as it does look about as exciting as a crossword at the moment. Time for some rest now though.  Happy coding. See you all tomorrow.

An idea, and the end of an unproductive day

Well, I have my idea. Advancing wall of doom? How about advancing brick 3d cube wall maze of doom! The wall would crush you, except there’s a hole in it. This hole leads into an intricate 3d maze. This maze is in sections, the exit of one leading to the entrance of another, and the maze gets tougher and tougher every time.

But keeping with the theme, it is an ever-advancing wall that you are navigating through. Instead of crushing you, this long rectangular maze is passing through an energy field that will vaporize you if you take too long.

That’s right. It’s an advancing 3d maze of doom that will vaporize you if you don’t move on to the next section in time.

So after deciding I could use blender, I set about learning what I needed to know. I figured I could make its game engine do most of the work for me, with python to generate the mazes. Not an easy feat for someone who’s never even completed a tutorial in the thing or completed anything in python to date.

First thing’s first, I set up wink and tested it out. Might as well have an easy way to screenshot.

Trying out Wink

Then I began looking up the rules.

Then I began my research…



Then, five hours later, frustrated and no closer to even starting the game than I was before, I began to think that maybe I should try PyOpenGL instead…

PyOpenGL might be easier...

Hungry with no sleep, I go now to shower and head to work at wal-mart.

An Empty Project

automotivator picture

I woke up, decided to start coding, and saw this. It was slightly disheartening, but I’m trying to look at it as a good thing. Somehow.

Tags: motivation

Doom Runner

There might actually be a game in there somewhere. There are walls running up to you and you need to jump about and collect prizes. There’s probably a wall of doom (with spikes and innards and blood and maybe zombie pirate spiders), but it’ll never be visible i fear.

Anyhow, looks like gameplay is once more up to level design mostly. Urgh.

Tags: Endurion

Comments

Cosine
18. Apr 2009 · 17:11 UTC
Looks pretty good. My only recomendation would be to make the camera follow the player, not be in front, unless that’s how it is already. Can’t really tell, that’s what they did in “CRASH: The HUGE Adventure!” for the GBA, and it was nigh-impossible to play.
18. Apr 2009 · 17:20 UTC
zombie pirate spiders..so you’re saying you have spiders who took up piracy with the eye patches and the swashbuckles and all that, who were then bitten by zombie spiders thus becoming zombie pirate spiders?
Endurion
18. Apr 2009 · 17:24 UTC
I of course forgot the robot ninjas in the formula, but I’m sure they’re behind the evil scheme and somebody has to move the advancing wall somehow 😉

TrigoNOOOO!metry

Who knew drawing circles of circles in a circle could be so difficult?

I’m working on a puzzle game. In bold defiance of the “of Doom” fiat, I’m using the cheeriest colors I can think of. ^_^ Got a little behind because I had to take advantage of the amazing weather here and ride my bike, but now I think I’m on track.

Comments

18. Apr 2009 · 18:18 UTC
Add brown and you have the album cover of Hot Chip – Made in th Dark :)

Fleedom – Progress Continues..

So, I have another playable build of my work in progress available.

Play it here in your favorite browser

It now has an enemy ship wave manager so I can build out the Wall of Doom(tm) that you must escape through to rescue the last of your race.

I also took a suggestion to map the fleet pattern echeleons to the Z/X/C/V keys.. four patterns in all.

Give it a whirl if you’d like as I’d love to hear any feedback.  I’m trying to get absolutely as much of the gameplay done before screwing around with any graphics this time.  I think it is actually progressing really well for once!

The game just ends right now when all the enemy ships go by.  Also.. if you lose all your ships you have to refresh your browser to continue!

Tags: armada, as3, browser, demo, doom, flash, fleedom, fleets, progress, space, wall

Comments

Fiona
18. Apr 2009 · 17:18 UTC
Can I suggest you mapping the layouts to 1-4 keys too because it’s currently nigh on impossible to play on non-QWERTY layouts. (I use Dvorak.)
18. Apr 2009 · 17:21 UTC
Of course, you need to not let the ships out of the screen and skip everything!

Well done.
18. Apr 2009 · 17:23 UTC
@redbone.. hah.. yeah– umm.. right now the version is ‘play honest’ style.. :)
Shabloosh
18. Apr 2009 · 17:26 UTC
I think wasd to move and hjkl to switch would be nice 😛
18. Apr 2009 · 17:27 UTC
@Shabloosh: if you’re being serious.. (i think you are) I can do that too
georgek
18. Apr 2009 · 17:27 UTC
wow, I really like this! Are you going to add any kind of power-up for shields or something like that? Or an energy reserve to blast holes in ships?
18. Apr 2009 · 17:29 UTC
@georgek: a lot will all depend on time… I will definitely be releasing a post-compo version.. but I’m aiming for a compo version that is at least a fun game.. we’ll see what can make the deadline cut!
Shabloosh
18. Apr 2009 · 17:45 UTC
I was being half serious. It would be a cool set up… but it is after all a 48 hour compo.
18. Apr 2009 · 19:30 UTC
Heya hamburger! No, I haven’t played Xoldiers.. sounds like something I’ll have to check out!
18. Apr 2009 · 19:31 UTC
@Shabloosh: It is trivial to add.. if it makes at least one player happy.. i’ll do it.. 😉

Fancying Footwork

Photobucket

I’m currently working on the levels, and trying to make the game harder as you progress up the building. I find making Fancy Footwork be even fancier is hard.

This is also the first screenshot to have cracks in the ledges. They of course, break on touch.

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

A Snack and a Cat

One of my favorite things to eat is a crispy, crunchy Granny Smith apple.

A delicious apple

Look how delectable!

Ok, so if you saw my previous post, you know that I have absolutely no code, and the first 24 hours are almost up! So as soon as I decided to start filling my project directory with brilliance, I’m attacked for my ambition:

Time to code...oof! Hi, Gizmo.

She always does this. I could be idling away online for hours, but as soon as I want to do something productive, guess who is crawling on my lap and over my shoulder, preventing me from computering? Gizmo, you’re lucky that you’re cute.

Tags: foodphoto

one

here I go, breakfast and the title screen of my first game ever! As I was doing that I remembered reading that it’s best to start a game in the middle, with the gameplay, then do the end and the beginning afterward…it’s funny how intentions don’t always translate into actions. Anyway, I have a pretty solid idea of what I want to do, the only thing now is to do it.

Tags: food

Comments

18. Apr 2009 · 19:46 UTC
A legend once told me to ‘make the toy first.’ Of course, I never do it, but hey, isn’t that what design philosophies are for?

Food, it’s good for you.

Breakfast, hurrah, including all the essential nutrients that every Ludum Dare participant needs. Orange juice, pancakes with berries, and of course, an ample supply of syrup on those bad boys.

And of course, we can’t forget this masterpiece:

Back to work, I suppose. LET’S GO LUDUM DARE!

Tags: food, foodphoto, journal

Blocks

Not a ton of progress, but more than it appears:

I’ve got a scrolling map, and the red block is the mouse cursor that allows you to place down new tetrominos. Well, just a block for now. But it’s a start.

More hints about the gameplay: You are building the doom-wall out of tetris bricks. It’s kind of an anti-tetris, you want to fill up as much of the board (and there’s no disappearing lines or anything)

This is what a deathbed looks like.

Well, I sort of have a design planned out for my game, so I decided to take out a pen and start drawing. Here’s what I sketched up in the past 5 minutes.

Notice the beautiful asset list: brainwave, eyes, hand, mouth, and nose. A more delightful art asset list I have not seen!

Tags: art, closing my eyes, deathbed, LD #14 - Advancing Wall of Doom - 2009

Comments

18. Apr 2009 · 19:27 UTC
hehe.. I like the face