I’m finally having an idea !

Above is a screenshot of a fake isometric view with ugly sprite overlapping.

Core mechanics are implemented, tomorrow work will be about level designing, UI, power-ups and if i’ve got enough time, leveling.

I’m working on the menu right now, then I’ll be back to real coding !

I just drew the power-ups, here is the batman one !

I feel like i’ve experienced the exact same scenario as my LD20 :

I started late, trying not to aim too high, but still wanting to add some fancy stuff like XP, ending up at -5 minutes without any thought on level designing.

What went right :

• I haven’t been stucked by any coding issue
• It’s not as ugly as i thought it would be
• I made a batman costume !

• I spent too much time implementing XP, thinking about level scaling, how you would xp… Next time, no leveling
• Consequence of previous point is that i didn’t spent any time on the levels, and that’s what a game usually is, good level design
• Shipping with bugs, i think i stupidly broke my score counter in the last 10minutes, also the level up window is buggy
• No sound

I think i would have finished it with one more day but that would still be an unfunny game based on XP instead of cool mechanics. I’ll try to shape it into something playable in the future.

Let me share my admiration for “Step Off” by intmain, which has basically the same *concept* but is waaaay more fun, cool feeling and awesome graphics.

You can try mine here.

The timelapse:

Tags: post-mortem, timelapse

• The whole code workflow : the past ludumdares contained some nice surprises, bugs, physics related issues… But from start to finish i didn’t encounter many problems on that project (if you don’t count network settings).
• The server didn’t fall down \o/ (much).
• Lidfrid which is another LudumDarer helped me gather attention on the game & debug stuff ! (check his game !)
• Once people understood the rules it was fun to play (for me at least), some strategies were actually involved. Me & Lidfrid were more the middle guys while Amodo & Norgg were the kind to work on their own around the map

• I started late on the LD48, i wish i could have made it for the LD48 but i haven’t. It’s in the jam right now :3
• I am not used to work with flash stuff and for whatever the reason i decided to host the web server myself instead of just shipping a *.swf file on a dropbox. Too much fight with my firewall.
• Policy server file : when doing networking through a browser the server has to give the client a policy file. I spent quite some time trying to understand why the server wouldn’t recognize the client policy file request. I didn’t see one space at the end of the request…
• A few server downtimes since the ip was actually hard-coded and my ISP is updating it every day i had to make a few changes but it was actually quickly fixed by changing / adding servers.
• The font ! There’s a chat in the game so i had to find a cool font, i did find it but there were no punctuations, no numbers : just letters. It was a bit frustrating.

I wish i would have allowed me a bit more time for the instructions, most players are complaining about that. Even with a screen at the start of the game, it didn’t work well, grey on grey  and just a few lines of text are not good enough.

After not understanding the rules you are not helped much within the game as well, there’s not enough visual feedback about where you can build a tower or when you can build them. The list of the players on the right were actually a ranked list, but i’m not sure many players understood that since there was no indication whatsoever. I should show the percentage of the map conquered and the % of the map you have to conquer to win the game. Basically more feedback for everything.

I’ve already made a *lagfree* version of the game but since it didn’t take much time to code, it would have been better added in the submitted version.

I’m going to put the project on github, i’m not sure i will work on it right away since i have other projects but after adding more feedback features as explained earlier, one cool thing would be to make it totally cross-platform between C++, Flash & HTML builds. I’ve actually used the flash networking library for that project but i’d like to use haxe networking and see how it goes.

Languages used :

• Client-Side : Haxe + Nme  (mostly Flash lib)
• Server-Side : Python + Twisted

Tools used :

• Photoshop
• Chronolapse
• Sublime Text 2

Link to the game

I didn’t like True Blood much but what i hated the most was that stupid Sookie character.

She’s now the name of my network library >:(

IDE : Sublime Text
Languages : Haxe (client), Python (server)
Libraries : NME / qookie (haxe),  sookie / twisted (python)
Art : Bfxr, Photoshop
X : Chronolapse, Snippy, Dropbox Screen Grabber

Wootsch wootsch

Failing Making multiplayer online games most of my LD’s i’m really curious to know who’s with me in the genre, there were a few but really fun ones a few LDs ago, i remember a fighting platformer and some really frenetic  and good-looking mining game (WITH LASERS).

I’m in again hoping it will be better than my last one, aiming for some simple and decent mechanic to come out of my brain, more in the spirit of The last Square.

I’ll be using :

• Haxe : flash client-side, c++ server-side
• OpenFL
• PyxelEdit
• GraphicsGale
• Bfxr
• Photoshop
• My ECS + Networking library

Who will dare making a MMO ?

:'(

Pew Pew !

Poc Poc Poc Poc Poc Poc Poc Poc Poc Poc

I lost a bit too much time on the animation and flipping code, been annoyed by offsets…

The animation  is kinda meh but i will come back to it if i’ll find the time; i will continue working on the feeling part a bit and i then i’ll start adding the server.

Got collisions working.

Pew Pew

Poc Poc Poc Poc Ouch Ouch Poc Ouch Poc Poc Poc Ouch Poc

Too bad you don’t have the sound :'(

(just kidding, there’s none)

Dat wave

:'(

The game is working in multiplayer but i have an annoying issue where a player disconnection make the server crash.

I suspect a socket block error killing the app but being silenced by my try/catch that i’m using for buffering datas, not sure about that but i’ve been spending way too much time on a non-game-related bug and while i’m often glad to make the stretch until 3AM i don’t feel like i’ll be able to wrap this up on time.

I might participate in the Jam but i’m really uncertain that i’ll be able to fix this bug, seems too obscure and tight to my whole net lib to go the YOLO way. I’m a bit sad but it was a really good stress for my libraries

I hope to finish it at some point though.

:'(

Poc Poc Poc Bwaaahh…

Seems like i finally fixed the server but i need to see how it behaves with real players. I might be able to make a build in one hour or two.

If you’re using the awesome pixel editor Pyxel Edit (free version) and you happen to be a haxe user, you can probably use my importer.

https://github.com/Dvergar/PyxelEdit-Map-Importer

This is a really simple project but this is still time you can save for something else. You can basically retrieve a tile array of each layer and this is framework agnostic; but if you’re using openFL, i made a helper.

Here is an example on how to retrieve datas for three layers named “background”, “walls” and “objects” in Pyxel Edit and draw them on screen:

import flash.display.Sprite;
 import openfl.Assets;
 
 import pmi.PyxelMapImporter;
 import pmi.OpenflHelper;
 
 class Main extends Sprite
 {
 public function new()
 {
 super();
 var pyxelMap = new PyxelMapImporter(Assets.getText("assets/map.xml"));
 var background = pyxelMap.getDatasFromLayer("background");
 var walls = pyxelMap.getDatasFromLayer("walls");
 var objects = pyxelMap.getDatasFromLayer("objects");
 var tilemapBackground = OpenflHelper.getTilesheetArray(background);
 var tilemapWalls = OpenflHelper.getTilesheetArray(walls);
 var tilemapObjects = OpenflHelper.getTilesheetArray(objects);
 var tilesheet = OpenflHelper.getTilesheet("assets/map.png");
 
 tilesheet.drawTiles(flash.Lib.current.graphics, tilemapBackground);
 tilesheet.drawTiles(flash.Lib.current.graphics, tilemapWalls);
 tilesheet.drawTiles(flash.Lib.current.graphics, tilemapObjects);
 }
 }

As requested and since i finally have a game idea i’m listing my tools :

• Photoshop
• GraphicsGale
• Pyxel Edit
• Sublime Text 2
• sfxr

Programming-wise :

• Client-side: Haxe/OpenFL/Enh/Anette
• Server-side: Haxe/Enh/Anette
• Enh: my entity system library with network support
• Anette: my network library
• Pyxel Edit map importer