Checked the winning theme this morning (around 7 hours after the start of the competition) and my mind was just blank. I opened up GraphicsGale, drew a bomb which I was quite pleased with, and that was it. No ideas popped into my head, and aside from deciding I wanted to use the bomb I’d drawn, I had nothing to work on or with. I then went out for the afternoon.

I got home 3 hours ago and started doodling around, until about an hour ago I finally have an idea.

It involves trying to detonate all of the bombs on a level by sliding them around so that when one explodes, it ignites the fuses on any unlit bombs next to it. At the start of the level one or more of the bombs will already be lit, and to make things more interesting, the bombs can have different length fuses.

I’m hoping to be able to come up with a range of levels of varying difficulty, but there’s only just over a day left, I want to get at least some some sleep tonight, need to get to bed early tomorrow, and I’m in the mood for coding rather than working out level designs, so I’ll just have to hope I can get the bulk of this written tonight and in the morning, to leave me a couple of hours early evening tomorrow to put together some levels.

I’ll be coding this in FreeBASIC and just using the standard graphics library, so it’ll be cross platform and work without any dependencies, unless I also find the time to add sounds effects and music of course,  in which case it’ll need FMOD.

Got to pop out for an hour now, but when I get back I’ll put together a quick mock-up screen.

Tags: bombs, freebasic, idea, puzzle

I’m based in the UK, and decided I’d just go to bed and set an alarm to wake me up at 3am to find out what the theme was and get an idea fully worked out before possibly heading back to bed for a couple of hours.

Forgot to actually set my alarm, and had a load of things to do when I got up, so didn’t get onto here until around 11.30am – 8.5 hours already gone.

I was only going to be able to find around 15 hours this weekend anway, so any entry is going to be *very* minimalistic. Going to put together a vector font and see if anything springs to mind whilst I’m doing that.

Good luck everyone!

Oh, and jovoc’s motivation poster is absolute genius.

I’d decided before the competition got under way that I wasn’t going to be have time to actually compete, and that I was going to use the weekend as an opportunity to get back up to speed with C++ after a break of around 10 years, but with the theme being “minimalism” it was just too tempting to give it a go.

I certainly wasn’t going to have enough time to put together a decent original game in the 8 hours or so I could reasonably expect to have, and if I was going to do minimalism properly, the .EXE should be as small as possible and require no external libraries, and ideally no external resources either.

I came up with two ideas which I thought would fit the bill:

• A version of the Atari 2600 classic “Yar’s Revenge”.
• A version of the VIC20/C64 Jeff Minter classic “Gridrunner”.

I opted for the second idea as it was a game I played to death back in the day, and promptly spent 5 hours last night (going to bed at 4.30am) arsing around sketching on graph paper and putting together simple animations using OpenGL primitives. Still, I now have all the graphics I’m going to need generated in code, plus a basic framework handling game state and properly timed animation. All that’s left is writing the actual game, but I’m hoping that I’ll get 5 or 6 hours tonight which should be enough for something this simple.

After feeding it through UPX my current .EXE comes in at 13k (down from around 27k uncompressed) which I’m quite happy with, as it’s just game logic which needs to be added. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to submit something which is playable and finished at a basic level in under 15k.

I’m only just back in now after being out since first thing this morning and have a pile of urgent things to do before I’ll have chance to do any more coding, but will try and get a screenshot or two posted up before I head back out.

Only just got back now, and have about an hours worth of stuff to do before I can settle down to get any coding done. I’m still hopeful that something playable will get finished and submitted before the deadline.

Anyone who fancies listening to something different and new during the last sprint to the finish might like to check out one of our local bands here on the Isle of Man who have just released a self recorded E.P. via MySpace.

They’re called The Learning Curve, and I have to say I found their stuff quite motivating during last night’s art/coding session. The last track on their MySpace isn’t great (although the Middle 8 is pretty good) but I really like the other four.

http://www.myspace.com/thelearningcurveiom

Not sure if I’ll have much coding time this weekend, but I’ve decided if I can come up with a half decent idea to fit the theme then I’m going to try out one of the Javascript/Canvas engines.

Going to spend the next six hours trawling the Interwebs to see what the options are, and hopefully find something solid and workable.

…what was wrong with Double Zombie Rainbow? I had a great idea for that!

Oh well, I slept in and it’s nearly 10am here in the UK, so I’d better get the coffee on and dig out some crayons and a big sheet of paper.

Still not sure which Javascript framework to use or whether I should just do something else like finally try out Rebol or maybe even dust off the FreeBASIC parts of my brain, I’ve not done anything with that for years. Guess I’ll just see what ideas I come up with and which is the best fit.

Good luck everyone.

Had a load of things to do this morning/early afternoon (didn’t know about the competition until around 10pm last night) so haven’t’ started anything yet, and I’m out tonight, but have around 5 hours now to get this under way.

The plus of not getting any coding time this morning is that the ideas have had plenty of time to develop, and I’ve now settled on one which I’m really happy with. It involves a monster juicing machine. Fun times!

Going to put together some placeholder graphics and my goal is to get the basic game mechanics in place before beer-o-clock, then, hangover permitting, I’ll have most of tomorrow afternoon and evening to bring it all together. This might end up being a jam entry.

Done all I can to keep the weekend free, and so far it’s looking good.

I’ll probably be using the following:

• HTML/CSS/Javascript – most likely use canvas for rendering, but may go with standard DOM manipulation depending on the game design
• The GIMP – the lovely new native Mac version
• cfxr & Audacity – sounds effects
• Milky Tracker – if I have time to put together music
• Tiled – if I need maps
• Netbeans – IDE
• Chrome – testing and dev tools for debugging and profiling
• Mercurial – always worth having version control

Was hoping for pretty much anything but Evolution, and I actually had a cracking idea for Parallel Worlds. Oh well, let’s go!

Decided to wait up and find out what the theme was (the compo started at 2am for us here in the UK) and I now have the crayons out and will work through until I have an idea I’m happy with that should be achievable in 48 hours, then it’s time for bed. Had a really busy week, and don’t want to actually get started until I’ve had a decent amount of sleep.

Here’s my setup for the next two days:

Here’s where I’ll be hanging out for the next 48 hours.

Good luck everyone. No doubt by the time I get up some of you will already have working prototypes.

I’m having a real problem coming up with ideas for evolution that don’t involve me being capable of put together some decent art/animation, which is something I know I’d really struggle with.

Most people seem to be suggesting ideas that I personally don’t think are actually anything to do with evolution, more modification and adaption, but I’m going to keep at this until I have something which fits the theme properly and I can actually draw.

Even tried to come up with something based on the 2001 movie Evolution, but drew a blank, mainly because it was so long ago that I last watched it I can’t remember enough about the plot etc.

Had around 6 hours of broken sleep, and scrapped all of my ideas from last night as unworkable in the time I’m going to have this weekend and with my artistic ability, or lack thereof.

After breakfast (sorry, forgot to photograph it, but it was just some golden syrup porridge and tea) I opened up GIMP and did what I swore I’d not do this time around – started messing around trying to come up with graphical ideas. I regularly waste far too much time doing this rather than coding and am never overly happy with the results anyway, however, today, my procrastinating paid off, and whilst doodling I came up with an idea which has been evolving (see what I did there?) for the past hour or so.

Whilst there’s a lot more sketching out of design details to do, and plenty more art needed, I’m pretty happy with how this developing. Here’s a bit of a teaser, which really doesn’t give anything away:

Not giving much away.

My fiance Kell picked me up some if my favourite snacks earlier, and as you’ll see it’s probably not going to be the healthiest of weekends for me, especially as I’ll be missing the gym, but a high carb diet is essential for this kind of thing:

Some snacks for the weekend.

Made some reasonable progress earlier this evening, although I’m way behind where I’d like to be, and am not posting any screenshots because it’s pretty much all placeholder artwork which looks terrible.

Popped out for a few hours to do a 10km walk as part of a 24 hour relay to raise money for cancer research and just got back now (it’s shortly after 4am here in the UK) and am pretty tired, so won’t be doing any more work tonight.

Forgot to post up a picture of the only non-snacky thing I’ve eaten this evening, which was curry with lime & coriander rice and mini garlic naan breads which Kell made for us earlier:

Stopped for a quick and tasty curry with Kell.

Having gone to bed around 5am this morning (but not having done any work since before midnight) I awoke at 11.15am, had to shower and rush straight out, only getting back home an hour ago.

I’m having to strip my game design right back in order to have any chance of finishing something by the deadline in 7 hours time.

Created the engine completely from scratch, and it’s mostly complete. Am just putting together the necessary artwork and I’m going to allow myself an hour for this, then it’s map design time, for which I’m also going to allow an hour. After that it’ll be 5 hours of frantic coding, hopefully with some time for testing at the end. Sound and music are extremely unlikely to figure in any submission, unless I desperately need a brain break at some point.

This has been more of a log of the food I’ve eaten this weekend than a development blog, but in keeping with this tradition, below is what I ate for lunch. Is that far too much food? Why, yes. Did I eat it all and enjoy it? Of course. I should point out that there are only 4 sausages, which were sliced in half. Even I couldn’t have managed 8 full sausages.

Sausage & Bacon Baguette FTW!

Well, I’ve been struggling to get things done these past few hours, but it’s just not happening for me this evening, so…

…I’ve decided that I’m going to take the Javascript/Canvas library I developed yesterday, and spend the remaining six hours improving this. Of course I’ll carry on doing this well beyond the deadline.

I’m still actually quite happy with my game design for this challenge, but nowhere near as happy as I am with the game engine (and more importantly the potential I think it has) and as the game’s just not going to be anywhere near a playable or even presentable state before the deadline, I think I’d rather avoid the stress and frustration and just concentrate on something which I think will be much more beneficial in the long run.

The engine’s already pretty cool as it stands. It makes use of standard DOM features combined with decent flexible multi-layer tile and sprite engines to get great performance. Once it’s (mostly) complete I’ll of course release the source, so it’ll be available for the next LD, when I’ll be able to concentrate on the actual game. That said, no doubt I’ll still spend 50% of the time messing around in GIMP trying to ge the ideas in my head onto the screen.

Good luck to everyone still working hard on their games. Some of them look absolutely stunning, and I can’t wait to play them all.

Have decided to go with Monkey X for this one, as I’ve been looking for an opportunity to use it for quite a while.

Also picked up Ignition X and R.U.B.E. a couple of days ago, but I’ve done nothing more than install them and look at a handful of demos, so whether I use then will very much depend on the theme and my game design.

Will definitely be using Vim, GIMP and Bfxr, and quite possibly Blender, Inkscape, Audacity and SunVOX, depending on the game and how much time, if any, I have left over for adding nice things on Sunday night.

Now all we need is a good theme. Please God don’t let it be that bloody snowman.

Good luck everyone!

Not going to have much time on Saturday, maybe a few hours first thing, and with a bit odd luck the same at night, but I’ve managed to keep Sunday free, and am determined to submit something that I can be proud of.

Going with JavaScript and Pixi, and a toolset of Atom, GIMP, Tiled, SunVox, and Bfxr.

Thought there were some really good themes for this LD, but typically none of them made it through to the final round, so we’re left with the same bland, generic options as always.

Anyway, still hoping to have the time to take part, and assuming I do, will be using:

• Phaser
• GIMP
• Tiled
• SunVox
• bfxr
• Atom/Node tooling
• Cordova, assuming I have the time for a mobile version

...the theme will be one of the ones I actually liked.

This is probably the one I had the fewest ideas for, in fact, I only had one, and it wasn't great, or particularly original. Time to get the crayons out and do some brainstorming. But first, breakfast and a shower.

Normally end up eating crap all weekend, but I've had porridge, coffee and juice, there are plans for a substantial but healthy salad for lunch, and I've some home made veggie soup for this evening. For emergency snacking, should it be required, I have unsalted mixed nuts. I know how to party!

Going to stick to decaf coffee and juice, and make sure I get a solid 7 hours sleep tonight.

So, basically planning this to be a million miles away from how I normally do things.

Let's get this thing started...

As all the cool kids seem to be posting their theme suggestions, here are mine: