I totally forgot about this competition until just now. I’ve still got 20 hours left, this is workable…

Is “The Floor Is Lava” taken as a title yet?

So, I’m about 3 hours into my game (I got a late start, having just discovered that this was going on about 3 hours ago). This community seems to be about blogging progress during the challenge, so I am doing so. I’ve gotten to the point where I have something that is playable (in the technical sense, not the enjoyable sense). Controls, physics, sound, and scoring are all working at this point, so this seemed a good time to show off what I’m up to.
Try it out here.

7-ish hours in, and nearing completion. Just some stylistic and gameplay tweaks to go. The music certainly isn’t my best work, but it sort of works as a minimalist-ish thing, I guess. Waffling over whether the kobold-speak in the text is charming or annoying.

Try it out here.

Got enough polish on it at this point, and I need some sleep and I’m not confident of waking up before the deadline. So it’s done and submitted.

Either Randall Munroe’s a fan of my game, or this is simply a matter of “childish minds think alike”. I’m rather entertained, either way.

I’ll be using this Processing project skeleton – the same one that I use for my weekly games – as a basis for my LD #18 compo entry. Mostly, it’s just so I don’t need to reimplement things like a main loop and particle effects for every game I make.

Other tools that are likely to feature prominently include sfxr, PXTone, Audacity, and possibly The GIMP if I bother making a game with graphics this time.

Sweet. This is one of my favorite themes in games, so I’m pretty excited about what I could do with this. Time for a bit of brainstorming, then some feasibility assessment to narrow down designs.

Inspiration on the topic of Enemies as Weapons: TUMIKI Fighters (adding on), Pokemon (capturing), Kirby (absorbing abilities – or more pertinently, wielding directly in Kirby 64), Rayhound (redirecting attacks), Mischief Makers (enemies as projectiles).

I’ve got some ideas coming together of specific mechanics I want to play with. My inclination is to wrap those in an action/platformer game, but platformer engines with good solid physics are kind of a pain to write. Maybe it’ll turn into more of a beat-em-up.

So I’ve been slacking off brainstorming design ideas for a while now, and have settled on something like a fast-paced arena shooter. And a title. Right now I have tentative player movement implemented, and… that’s about it.

Starting to implement enemy behavior. Not a lot of progress, but it’s something.

This is actually going to be an actual game with actual gameplay, I promise.

Implemented enemy grabbing, flinging, and damaging. Now we’re actually getting somewhere. Still debating how exactly bullets are going to work.

Improved grabbing, added sounds, enemies turn red when they’re damaged. All in all some decent progress.

All right, 7 hours left. Finally, this is the kind of pressure that I can work under. 😀

5 hours remaining. Need to implement scoring, write music, and add more enemy types.

Two hours to go, and I have added background music and eye candy. Still no scoring or enemy bullets.

I really need to work on setting priorities.

Scoring and difficulty progression done. Almost there…

Got the game finished, complete with enemies that actually shoot. Check it out. I didn’t have quite as much time as I would’ve liked to tune the difficulty curve, but it seems to be close enough to what it ought to be.

So, as some of you may know already, I create and post a new game every week on my website, based on titles provided by people who donate to my site. Last Ludum Dare, I suspended my name/donation thing. But this time, my donation queue is currently empty and non-suspended, which means that the top donation before Sunday Dec. 12th, 11:59pm determines the title of my Ludum Dare game. (And anyone who gets outbid still gets their title used for subsequent games!)

This is going to be exciting and/or terrifying.

Hopefully the theme decision will cooperate with me.

Please find enclosed my formal declaration of stuff:

Game Title: “Circus Peanuts”
Language: Processing
Framework: My own, available here
Sound: sfxr and Audacity
Music: Famitracker and/or PXTone
Graphics: GIMP if anything
Food: Whatever I’ve got on hand, supplemented with the local convenience store and Voodoo Doughnut.
Desk: thusly
Morale: Kobolds

As of yet, I have still not discovered what my game is about. If anyone else has any insights, please let me know.

What sort of game is this, anyway?