I hope to participate in this upcoming LD, never have before!

I’m BlueShaman, I will enter a project made with Processing. I like procedural stuff so I think that’ll feature in it if I can manage it in 48 hours. 😀

Wish me luck. Or not, I doubt anyone is reading this. Good luck to everyone else entering!

‘wonder what the them will be?

Escaping? Escapees… Hmm….

I’m just staring at #182A63, trying to come up with some sort of idea….

Escaping a Prison or some dragon beast thing is the only thing that’s come to me… Neither of them are good enough…

Stuck….. Hmmmmmmmm…. Let’s go see what other people are saying?

I’ve decided to shape what the character will be like.

In doing so, I’ve also picked the palette and mood for the game….

Almost macabre, but I feel like I’m only picking it to make Hope very obvious…. I guess that’s the point of “Escape” anyways.

That’s not going to be my full rationalization, by the way.

It all just hit me. Complex game design… I’ll figure out platforming mechanics later.

I know how it ends and it begins, so that’s good enough for me. 😀

Hm. Took an hour and eight minutes to get this far. Not good news. D:.

Oh well, I’m tired, and I’m off to bed.

Just updating my progress:

Generally I fear inconsistencies with color… So far it’s all checking out fine though!

That’s Processing, at the left, and Paint.Net in the background.

Simple, premade map editing software turns out to be a photoshop tool! I highly suggest using stuff like this to make content go faster for non visual design IDEs.

Storing EVERYTHING in there? I don’t think so… Like player starting position… Luckily the math isn’t so hard, just pick a point on the image and multiply by 16….

I’ll make sure not to spoil much for the game so that anyone looking through when rating for “community” won’t have the game itself ruined for them.

Good luck everyone, and good night.

Servers must be super taxed… Oh well, it’ll be better by tomorrow!

Back to coding! Making platformer engine thing. Done it several times before so there won’t be many problems. Adding a debugging helping box thing to tell me which blocks you’re standing on / could hit your head when you jump:

I like that blue color… Hm. Well! Off to go finish the platforming engine!

YAAAAAYYY.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLbpx-kJkTc

I have little people walking around who mimic the player’s graphics in every way…

Now to make you be able to talk to them! Hm. Probably just have text overlay at the top, and vanish when you walk away.

I think I’ve also settled on “Mirror’s Secret” as the name as it alludes to the two most poignant things in my plans for it.

Went from an exploratory type trading sequence game to now a fighting game…. Fights will probably be generated, less work for me. :3.
I’ll post a screenshot once I get enough done on basic combat and AI.

Well! Sort of panicing since I only have 9 hours left to do this, but….

I have basic sword fighting in. The player has a slight edge because their weapon reaches out a little farther than the enemy’s.

The problem is that it’s too easy if you just engage one, and ridiculously difficult when you engage several.

(By the way I’m so glad I’ve implemented velocity for all movement; it makes fighting physics a lot easier)

So, my solution, is going to be to vary enemies, somewhat, but the larger part of the solution is Arrows.

You’ll pick up different kinds, and then they have different abilities (normal, explosion, freeze, slow, fear, etc).

Boom!

Particles have also been added.

Now I just have to make quivers and some levels and enemy variance… Actually enemy variance could be fully procedural… hm…..

Now to tie in the theme with the beginning and the end….

Also need to tie in the game title, and then make many more levels (which involves scribbling in Paint.net).

6 hours to go! 😀

3.5 hours left… Then I have to go set up hosting for it.

Whee!

Added death, and multiple stages, corrected loading problems associated with both of those…

Two stages drawn. A little overly difficult… I’ll tweak damage and healing a bit.

Only thing left to do.

Great. 😀 😀 😀 😀

Well, obviously, there’s the fear in the beginning. Your entire journey is based on that escape.

Then, you must escape that entire journey, as you are trying by moving through [and then the end happens].

So, yeah. I consider this theme RATIONALIZED.

Last compo I wrote a platformer.

This took an unusually long amount of time.

This worries me for the next one coming up, so I’ve decided I might commit myself to simply using old code (as allowed by ‘base code’, although I’m going to try to confirm this specifically with as many LD’ers as I can before the compo).

Code:

player_x and player_y are float values, of the center of the player (which is a 16×16 box).

player_vspeed and player_hspeed correspond to the vertical and horizontal speed of the player (in pixels/frame).

current_map is a two dimensional boolean array, where true corresponds to a block and false not.

(Written with Processing.org in mind; any math functions such as min / max can be referenced through the Math java library, or really any programming language’s math library).

Up/down/left/right are booleans corresponding to the pressed-state of the cardinal keys, used for movement.

 int LX = int((player_x-5)/16);
 int LY = int((player_y+12)/16);
 int RX = int((player_x+5)/16);
 int RY = int((player_y+12)/16);
 int MY = int((player_y+5)/16);
 int TY = int((player_y-8)/16);
 if ( (current_map[RX][RY] || current_map[LX][LY]) && player_vspeed > 0 )
 {
 player_vspeed = 0;
 player_y = RY*16-12;
 }
 if (current_map[RX][RY] || current_map[LX][LY] )
 {
 //On ground.
 if (up)
 {
 up = false;
 player_vspeed = -5; //Jump speed.
 }
 if (!left && !right)
 {
 player_hspeed = player_hspeed * 0.8; //Horizontal velocity damping.
 }
 if (left)
 {
 player_hspeed = max(-3,player_hspeed - 0.3); //Accelerate to the left, with a maximum speed.
 }
 if (right)
 {
 player_hspeed = min(3,player_hspeed + 0.3); //Accelerate to the right, with a maximum speed.
 }
 }
 else
 {
 player_vspeed = player_vspeed + 0.3; //Gravity. Accelerate down.
 //In air.
 if (left)
 {
 player_hspeed = max(-3,player_hspeed - 0.1); //For, in the air, horizontal acceleration from arrow keys.
 }
 if (right)
 {
 player_hspeed = min(3,player_hspeed + 0.1);
 }
 }
 if (current_map[RX][TY] || current_map[LX][TY] )
 {
 player_vspeed = 0;
 player_y = player_y + 2; //Hit the floor.
 }
 if (current_map[int((player_x+8.1)/16)][MY] && player_hspeed >= 0)
 {
 player_x = int((player_x+8.1)/16)*16-8.2;
 player_hspeed = 0; //Hit a wall.
 }
 if (current_map[int((player_x-8.1)/16)][MY] && player_hspeed <= 0)
 {
 player_x = int((player_x-8.1)/16)*16 + 24.2;
 player_hspeed = 0; //Hit a wall.
 }
 player_y = player_y + player_vspeed; //Accelerate the player.
 player_x = player_x + player_hspeed;
 player_vspeed = min(player_vspeed,5);

I don’t think any of the themes should catch me totally off guard…

I’m sort of happy with my game from last LD, but not nearly enough. I hope to do a lot better in executing a FUN game. To do that I’m going to abolish plans of storyline unless it’s really excellent and I can turn it into mechanics as well, and add it in after I have a fun game.

What I have so far as my idea is a basic topdown shooter.

I’m thinking of procedurally generated levels, because I can make it considerably more complex that way and focus on the feel and art of the game. Also because I was expecting randomly generated to win and I’m ignoring the fact it didn’t. 20 votes is very close. 😮

So in my first half hour of coding I’ve drawn a scalable gear… I’m not sure if this is relevant. We’ll see.

Well… Revising from my original more abstract idea, I want to make this a more peaceful, ambient game.

So I took the rough looking walls I had coded and made them look stony; then I added grass, and, tada, you’re on an island.

This game is going to play pretty straight forward. Basically, you’re surviving on an island where largely the elements as opposed to enemies are the danger. Most of the game will consist of searching for food.

Preliminary screenshot attached. I should post more updates throughout the compo, so you’ll see it evolving. That is, if I finish.

Which this looks fun enough that I will.

I plan on having the world be constantly regenerating, so the island won’t be very similar after a few days.

Well, I’ve been sleeping… But now I’m up and working.

I’ve added snakes, which are going to be the general enemy. I’m not sure how you’re going to actually fight them, but you’ll fend them off with fire.

You can also see the rudimentary clock at the top of the screen; right now it’s night.

I have a basic level gen working (I need to tweak it.).

It basically layers boxes to clear / add outlines, and ends up working pretty well with the snakes and all.

Now I need to make day and night do something, namely, affect the snakes’ behavior. I also need to make fruit-bearing palm trees to provide the sustenance of the game, and also possible for building walls / buildings and stoof.