http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld26/

I’ve added the actual turn ending code and the squad members can now “explore” an infinite dungeon of nothingness.  Next, finding and attacking enemies.

I’m also starting to think about a name, which has kind of stumped me so far.

1. Get a repo, dev site and fission_engine setup
2. Brainstorm
3. Mock up on paper and excel
4. Draw main interface view
5. Start the game data interface
6. Show the game data on the interface
7. Get a publishable version up
8. Hookup input
9. Add weapons and armor
10. Make weapon and armor selectable
11. Add actions
12. Add turns
13. Add enemies
14. Make winable
15. Polish

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld26/

I’ve now added enemies.  Everyone gets a new enemy for each turn right now. So that means, next up is combat.

1. Get a repo, dev site and fission_engine setup
2. Brainstorm
3. Mock up on paper and excel
4. Draw main interface view
5. Start the game data interface
6. Show the game data on the interface
7. Get a publishable version up
8. Hookup input
9. Add weapons and armor
10. Make weapon and armor selectable
11. Add actions
12. Add turns
13. Add enemies
14. Add combat
15. Add XP gain
16. Add multiple dungeon levels
17. Make winable
18. Polish

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld26/

After a bit of a longer than expected break, I’ve got combat working. You can now attack an enemy that appears (which right now is always when you explore) and your enemies will always attack you. Now I just have to decide on a win condition and make the game winnable.

One of the most interesting aspects of this game is that the screenshot changes very little between each version, even if the usability of it does.

1. Get a repo, dev site and fission_engine setup
2. Brainstorm
3. Mock up on paper and excel
4. Draw main interface view
5. Start the game data interface
6. Show the game data on the interface
7. Get a publishable version up
8. Hookup input
9. Add weapons and armor
10. Make weapon and armor selectable
11. Add actions
12. Add turns
13. Add enemies
14. Add combat
15. Add XP gain
16. Make winnable
17. Add multiple dungeon levels
18. Polish

So the code has settled and the sleep has been regained. I’ve thought a lot about how I did this time, especially compared to last time.  I think compared to last time, I wasn’t able to spend as much time on it.  Back in Dec. I was able to get about 20hrs of work in, but this time I only got around 16.  It was also the 48 competition instead of the jam, but both times I was done on Sunday night.

What went well

• The idea went really well with the theme this year.
• I was able to make the game winnable
• I did a good job prioritizing

What didn’t go well

• I didn’t have as much time as I had hoped over the weekend
• I wasn’t able to add mouse input
• There’s no polish to the game
• I could have spent a little less time on the excel look

All in all, however, I’m pleased with the results.  I think the game is fun and will probably take a couple nights and polish it off.  It’s a good time to add mouse support to fission_engine. It’ll be interesting to see it as a complete product.

Tags: postmortem

So initially, it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to participate at all. Luckily, I decided to just stay up all night and try and crank something out. I’ve been kicking around a game idea all day, so I think I have an idea worked out. It took longer than I wanted, but I have my dev environment setup with fission_engine and I’m ready to start to crank out some code. So let’s plan out what needs to be done for “Ten Second Evasion”:

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Setup action holding area
3. Setup action grid
4. Make actions movable into grid
5. Setup goal view
6. Define a goal
7. Check that goal is met

Then there’s probably more that I’ll figure out as I flesh more of this out.  It should be an interesting night.

Tags: LD #27

The first couple tasks are quick, so I don’t expect them to, relatively speaking, take long.  Colors so far are temporary, the more I look at it, the more I realize I really need to change it.

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Setup action holding area
3. Setup action grid
4. Make actions movable into grid
5. Setup goal view
6. Define a goal
7. Check that goal is met

Another update, making some progress on the visual feedback of the selections and the two modes, holding action and action grid. If it wasn’t such a time sink, I would change the color palette completely. Le sigh.

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Setup action holding area
3. Setup action grid
4. Make the keyboard move the selection
5. Make actions movable into grid
6. Setup goal view
7. Define a goal
8. Check that goal is met
9. …
10. Mouse support

Things are going well.  I’m about 4 hours in and you can now move the actions onto the grid. You can also try it out now at the link below. Next, besides finally changing the color pallet, is going to be actually actual game play.

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld27/

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Setup action holding area
3. Setup action grid
4. Make the keyboard move the selection
5. Make actions movable into grid
6. Change the color palette
7. Setup goal view
8. Define a goal
9. Check that goal is met
10. …
11. Mouse support

It’s a small change, and a little cliche, but it’s a much better palette then before.

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld27/

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Setup action holding area
3. Setup action grid
4. Make the keyboard move the selection
5. Make actions movable into grid
6. Change the color palette
7. Setup goal view
8. Define a goal
9. Check that goal is met
10. …
11. Mouse support

Now I’m feeling pretty good about this. The code now can follow the paths and see if the solution is correct or not. That leaves me mostly with easier problems to solve, like content and changing puzzles. Below is a working solution. If you use it, however, nothing will happen. Solving the puzzle doesn’t result in any feedback that it was successful.

The downside is that the sleep is starting to catch up with me. I’m going to drink another Bawls and hope that keeps me up long enough to make this more usable.

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld27/

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Setup action holding area
3. Setup action grid
4. Make the keyboard move the selection
5. Make actions movable into grid
6. Change the color palette
7. Check that goal is met
8. Change to next puzzle
9. More Puzzles
10. Add visual hints of what’s happening
11. Main Menu?
12. Mouse support?

I’m feeling good about the game at this point. Unfortunately, he all nighter is catching up with me and I’m going to have to go to bed, for some amount of time. In the mean time, the game now switches between puzzles, but I think it’s currently broken, which will get fixed as soon as I get back to it. Other than that, some polish and some more puzzles and I’m doing pretty well I think.

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld27/

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Setup action holding area
3. Setup action grid
4. Make the keyboard move the selection
5. Make actions movable into grid
6. Change the color palette
7. Check that goal is met
8. Change to next puzzle
9. More Puzzles
10. Add visual hints of what’s happening
11. Main Menu?
12. Mouse support?

I was finally able to get back to give a little extra polish to the game, and the final product you can find below, as well as checking it out after I’m done submitting here in a little bit. It now has a 6 puzzle “tutorial” as well as 5 extra puzzles of unknown difficulty, including the last one I didn’t bother trying to make sure it was solvable.  Enjoy, while I go sleep.

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld27/

After the theme announcement, I came downstairs and started to get my environment setup.  It’s been a while since I’ve been able to particpate, but I’ve got this one.  I tried to setup streaming of my development, but couldn’t get it setup well, so I may take 10 minutes later to try and get it going, but it might be a lost effort.

I’m going to be using fission_engine again.  Even though that repo is slightly out of date (I tried to push earlier this week, but had issues with git subtree), I’ll get it pushed out live a little later.

Until then, I’m going to go to bed and think about a theme.  Later

So after a few (well interrupted) hours of sleep, I came down to find my machine had blue screened.  After installing a new video card, blue screens have become more common, so this should be interesting. I think Firefox (my main development browser) aggravates it so I’ve turned off hardware acceleration.  So far no issues, but we’ll see.

At this point I finally have a concept and a name: Karma Cycle.  Have some basic code down and the image above is where I’m at so far.  I am also live streaming my progress so that I can have a time lapse by the end.

So the question becomes, what do I need to do? Excellent question, glad you asked!

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Get a basic UI started
3. Add links between planets
4. Arrange the planets better (?)
5. Add familiars
6. Show where a familiar is
7. Add turns
8. Add actions that a familiar will take
9. Change karma and powers based on actions
10. Add ‘Z’ on the right turn number
11. Add next level condition
12. Add lose condition
13. Add win condition
14. Bug Fix

So I’ve taken a small break, and spend the day with the family. Okay, it was a little more than a small break, it was most of the day. But, the time was not wasted, since more than a few hours were spent in the car. I was able to refine the ideas and mechanics of Karma Cycle, which does change the direction a little bit. But for the better I believe.  Plus I got some Bawls, so I should be good for the night.

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Get a basic UI started
3. Add links between planets
4. Add ‘familiars’ and ‘witches’
5. Show where ‘familiars’ are
6. Add turns
7. Add actions that a ‘familiar’ will take
8. Change karma and powers based on actions
9. Show which planets a ‘witch’ is on
10. Add ‘Z’ on the right turn number
11. Arrange the planets better
12. Add next level condition
13. Add lose condition
14. Add win condition
15. Bug Fixes
16. Planet textures

Got some good progress.  I now have ‘witches’ and ‘familiars’ and they are each on a planet independent of the relationship between the two.  Now for some gameplay.  Hopefully.

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld30/

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Get a basic UI started
3. Add links between planets
4. Add ‘familiars’ and ‘witches’
5. Show where ‘familiars’ are
6. Add turns
7. Add actions that a ‘familiar’ will take
8. Change karma and powers based on actions
9. Show which planets a ‘witch’ is on
10. Add ‘Z’ on the right turn number
11. Arrange the planets better
12. Add next level condition
13. Add lose condition
14. Add win condition
15. Bug Fixes
16. Planet textures

Good morning. After a bit of sleep (and an hour of oversleeping) I’m back at it.  I have finally cracked the case of making the familiar do things.  So that makes me pretty much in figuring out the mechanics stage.  This should be interesting, especially given the strength of sleepiness.  Probably need breakfast, but that will have to wait for the kids to get up.

http://ludum.tarshish.us/ld30/

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Get a basic UI started
3. Add links between planets
4. Add ‘familiars’ and ‘witches’
5. Show where ‘familiars’ are
6. Add turns
7. Add actions that a ‘familiar’ will take
8. Change karma and powers based on actions
9. Show which planets a ‘witch’ is on
10. Add ‘Z’ on the right turn number
11. Arrange the planets better
12. Add next level condition
13. Add lose condition
14. Add win condition
15. Bug Fixes
16. Planet textures

I now have the basics of combat working. You can move to a new planet and attack the familar, which will hurt the witch.  Now I’ve really got to get cracking on AI to implement the rest of the game.  At this point I’m not feeling good about completing this.

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Get a basic UI started
3. Add links between planets
4. Add ‘familiars’ and ‘witches’
5. Show where ‘familiars’ are
6. Add turns
7. Add actions that a ‘familiar’ will take
8. Change karma and powers based on actions
9. Show which planets a ‘witch’ is on
10. Add simple AI
11. Add more planets and arrange the planets better
12. Add Defend and for* commands
13. Add next level condition
14. Add lose condition
15. Add win condition
16. Bug Fixes
17. Planet textures

Okay, now I’m making a little more progress. I’m made the planets all dynamic including the links between planets.  The other familiar only moves randomly right now.  So next up is getting them to attack and level progression.

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Get a basic UI started
3. Add links between planets
4. Add ‘familiars’ and ‘witches’
5. Show where ‘familiars’ are
6. Add turns
7. Add actions that a ‘familiar’ will take
8. Change karma and powers based on actions
9. Show which planets a ‘witch’ is on
10. Add simple AI
11. Add more planets and arrange the planets better
12. Add next level condition
13. Add lose condition
14. Add Defend and for* commands
15. Add win condition
16. Make the lines between planets more obvious
17. Planet textures
18. Make double clicking take you to that planet
19. Bug Fixes

Couple more hours, few more features.  First of all, there are levels now. Every time your witch dies, the board resets, possibly with more witches. The witches can now be on your team, on Z’s team, or on no one’s team.  It was stressful for a while, but this version is getting real close to something that I’m going to be glad about submitting. A lot of features didn’t make it in, but I think it’s come along decently.

1. Setup fission_engine
2. Get a basic UI started
3. Add links between planets
4. Add ‘familiars’ and ‘witches’
5. Show where ‘familiars’ are
6. Add turns
7. Add actions that a ‘familiar’ will take
8. Change karma and powers based on actions
9. Show which planets a ‘witch’ is on
10. Add simple AI
11. Add more planets and arrange the planets better
12. Add next level condition
13. Add Witch spawns
14. Add Defend and for* commands
15. Add win condition
16. Make the lines between planets more obvious
17. Planet textures
18. Make double clicking take you to that planet
19. Bug Fixes
20. Add lose condition