Here it is, “The Haunting”.

Game includes all instructions and 12 levels of gameplay. In fact, this is my most complete game in terms of gameplay for a 48-hour compo.

Game can be downloaded from here: Covenant_LD14_Haunting.zip (6 Mb)

C++ source for game and framework is included in the zip file.

While making the levels, I’ve found some bugs, unfortunatly… It’s possible to get stuck on a level (doesn’t happen too often) and sometimes some possessed walls disappear.

Anyway, the game is actually fun (for me, at least)… Reminds me of those old-school games, where it was all about the gameplay…

For the first time in a LD submission, I didn’t make any music for this… Wasn’t inspired enough to do so, which sucks… The sound, although it was done very fast (with SFXR), is also not the best I’ve done (the funny sounds I usually do with my mike work better)…

Anyway, hope you enjoy, and feel free to send comments my way!

Tags: final

Here’s the timelapse for my entry… Text got cut off in someplaces because of the font I used… :\

Timelapse

Tags: timelapse

Woot, another compo…

I’ve just finished building a small framework, derived from my last one…

Amazing features:

– D3D9 initialization
– 2d graphics system (sprites and camera system)
– Texture manager (for resource cleanup, etc)
– 3d system (FFP based, lights, meshes, camera)
– 3ds reader (in case I want to go 3d this time, since I model much better than I draw)
– Application/Screen document model

And that’s it, I think…

You can download it and use it at will: http://clientes.netvisao.pt/~dandrade/Framework_LD15.rar

Going to use the same tools as always: VC2008, D3D9, sfxr, Photoshop, 3d Studio, Chronolapse for the timelapse video… Still don’t know what I’ll use for the music, but I’ll think of something…

Hope the theme is a bit better than “Advancing Wall of Doom”… They seem better this time, actually… except for zombies, which I kind of think limits what you can do… at least in 48 hours…

Anyway, good luck everyone, have fun and catch you in some hours!

Just woke up, 7 hours into the compo…

Caverns… now that’s an easy theme… There’s so much stuff I can do:

– Cave-based RTS
– Squad-based top down shooter
– First person explorer
– Dungeon Keeper-like simulator
– RPG taken place underground

Etc, etc, etc…

Only thing is trying to find something original, with fresh gameplay, that I can actually pull off in the 48-hours, with my crap graphic skills…

Anyway, time to search the net for Caverns pictures and stuff like that to get in the mood…

Well, my research has found me lots of interesting tidbits of information about caves, and some nice terms I can use in the game story (like troglobites and trogolophiles!).

I feel kind of torn between a tactical, turn-based squad based game deep in a series of caverns, or go for from more action-oriented concept.

For now, I’m going to code a random cave generator, so I can get that out of the way, since I’m 90% likely of be using something like that for the game…

*coding*taptaptapclicktapclicktapclick*

40 minutes later, and baseing my generation code on http://benhem.com/dev/dunjons/ , I’m happy with the results:

Now to get some 3d rendering of this going… and yes, 3d because it will look cooler! I’m that sort of guy!

3d maze is done… I tried adding a bit of noise to the walls, to look more “cave-like”, but the result wasn’t that great… End result: too many polys and not enough detail…

Anyway, maybe with some props and stuff, it will look more interesting…

The first image is just full light of the procedurally generated map:

The second one is more “conceptual”… I still don’t know what I’m doing in this competition, really, but I like this visual, so I’ll probably do something that can work with this…

Now to get my thinking hat once again, and to think of an actual game!

Since I didn’t have any solid ideas for the game, I continued working on the rendering of the map…

Added holes, water and lava to it… These are not procedurally generated… So, the current “level design” system is to generate a base cave, and then add by hand stuff like the water, lava and holes (according to the gameplay).

Wondering how I can animate the lava and water… wanted to do some UV animation, but without shaders I have no idea how to do it (in D3D).. just added an up and down movement to the meshes, just to make it a bit more dynamic.

Anyway, I got a concept for a game…

A robot is sent into the caves, to provide rock samples or something… but the player (which is a scientist) kind of skimmed on the project, and the robot is plain dumb, and not intelligent as supposed… So, he has to help it collect the samples, by use of another robot (one that can’t get the rock samples itself). This robot is controlled by the player, and the player has to make him pickup objects, etc to help the other one gather the samples…

Might work…

Presenting the driller, the stupid robot with a simple behavior: always hovers in the direction he’s facing until he faces an obstacle (for now, everything is an obstacle, later lava/water/holes will be lethal), then he tries to run right… if he can’t, he’ll turn left… if he can’t, he’ll walk backwards…

I got the driller to move around, with the camera focused on him (with some controls for zoom and rotation):

Now, to model and add the helper robot…

Last hours were productive (albeit slow for my usual form, I’m getting old…).

I added the Helper robot, which is the one controled by the player:

and got his controls working (was easier than expected, since it’s controled by the arrow keys, but it is relative to the camera)…

Anyway, added the first real “gameplay” element: the gems… This is what the Driller robot has to get…

On the image, he’s currently picking up one of the crystals… he can only mine what’s right in front of him.

He’ll also be able to destroy stalagmites, which act as obstacles for the Helper robot, so that might add to an interesting gameplay bit…

Now, time for dinner and a movie (so my wife doesn’t feel neglected! :))..: Going to see the new Tarantino one…

Have fun everyone, and good luck!

After the movie yesterday, I decided to call it quits for the night… Woke up this morning, and implemented the stalagmites in the game…

Not feeling it, though… although the game is close to be feature complete (just need to add the ability to grab one object and use it, and the pushing of boulders), I’m not really feeling in the mood to finish it… Don’t know if I’m just being lazy, or if the game itself is failing to excite me, but I’m not sure if I’m staying in the compo much longer…

I’m throwing the towel…

For me, 48 hours compos are about having fun developing something, and I’m honestly not having fun developing my game…

Although I think the idea is sound and that it works (although not with keyboard controls, it should have mouse controls), I’m not having fun making it, and as such I’m calling it…

Should have gone with the RPG thingy…

So good luck everyone!

Well, since everyone’s saying what they’re going to do and that they are participating, and since I have no personality of my own, I’m going to do the same…

Going to use the same framework of last time:

– D3D9 initialization
– 2d graphics system (sprites and camera system)
– Texture manager (for resource cleanup, etc)
– 3d system (FFP based, lights, meshes, camera)
– 3ds reader (in case I want to go 3d this time, since I model much better than I draw)
– Application/Screen document model

And that’s it, I think…

You can download it and use it at will: http://clientes.netvisao.pt/~dandrade/Framework_LD15.rar

Going to use the same tools as always: VC2008, D3D9, sfxr, Photoshop, 3d Studio, Chronolapse for the timelapse video… Still don’t know what I’ll use for the music, but I’ll think of something…

Themes look scary… If it’s Twilight Fandom, I’ll throw the towel right away… :\

Anyway, good luck everyone, have fun and catch you in some hours!

9 hours already gone and I’m starting work now… So… exploration… the best one of the lot, if you ask me…

Fortunately, I saw the theme before going to bed and during my sleep I already had a couple of ideas popping around…

Still don’t know the setting (space or pirates are my main two guesses), but it will feature an procedural world (very big, to be challenging) and maps to find something. To get map pieces, the player will have to overcome some challenges in the places he will explore.

Now, I just have to define a setting, a storyline (I love stories) and the type of challenges the player will face…

But first, I’ll just scan what people’s doing and get some breakfast…

Good luck everyone!

Just finished the game design for my game… it’s ambitious, but I think I can cut corners in lots of places, which is good…

Anyway, going to start by coding the procedural area generation, to get the ball running…

Just got base code working, with a tilemap rendered, and a water effect (basically the UVs of the water sprite changes according to wind direction, and the red and green components color are changing over time (to seem like waves are going up and down)).

Also got some reef things that will serve as boundaries and hazards… I can get any kind of density, according to the area’s ammount of water and such.

I’m going to add what will be the basis of my island building routine, which is a padding system which will see if any neighbour is of a certain type and grow around it with another type (for example, to make isolated reefs transform into barriers, or to grow sand around the island core).

First of all, though, take a look at what people’s been building and eat some of the banana bread I’ve just baked!

First fase of area generation is done…

The system is very simple, yet effective… It creates a seed from the current position in the “area grid”, and uses that to build the area…

Areas can have between 0 and 3 islands, and they are generated by starting a “squigly” of rock (mountain). Then I grow that with layers of mountain, grass and finally sand to reach the final island. The results are pretty good for such a simple algorithm…

Next step, add the boat to the mix, with simple movement controls…

Created boat sprite (I suck so much at art!), and added boat movement for the player, considering the wind strenghts and direction…

I decided to use 3ds Max to make the boat model and then render it to make a sprite… end result would probably have been better if I’d just drawn it by hand in Photoshop, but this way I get something I can use for title screens, etc…

Think that maybe the boat is too small, but I’ll see that when I had the code for collision detection and shooting and stuff like that…

The boat can now sink…

Created an animation where the boat got filled with water (just painted blue from the lowest to highest parts of the ship, in each frame). Looked bad… Tried not using blue but painting the alpha channel instead… Looked a bit better, but still terrible…

So, I decided to suck it up and I did an animation on 3ds, then extracted some frames… Doesn’t look that bad, tbh… Still needs some “splash” to it, so it looks like the boat is on water, and not floating in some netherworld… But I’ll leave that to polish time, if I have any, still lots to do to actually have a game…

I’m going to do a small break now, catch my breath, been working almost non-stop for 8 hours…

Next on the agenda, whirlpools!

Got whirlpools and enemies working… Well, more or less…

Whirlpools work, by dragging the ship in their direction… get too close and there’s no escaping…

The enemies already wander around, but they don’t attack or persuit the player yet… Going to add shooting on the player’s ship first…

Still thinking on exactly the AI of the boats will work… I’m thinking on making them “target” the side of our ship, if possible and try to navigate according to that, shooting whenever they have a good chance of hitting… Got to add some kind of prediction on the shoot dir so it has any chance of hitting…

Anyway, shooting time!

12 hours of straight work, 22 hours of competition so far… Still so much to do, I think that (as usual) I bit more than I could chew…

Anyway, got shooting working, along with sinking of enemy ships, with some GUI elements…

Decided to use a particle system as the shot… Doesn’t look like a cannonball, but to be honest I missed the flair of the particle systems… have to try using one for the trail of the ship, might not look so crummy…

When it hits the enemy ship, you get a nice display of how much damage you dealt:

The yellow number on top of the player’s ship is the ammount of gold he received from the kill… This will (hopefully) serve to buy shovels (to dig) and upgrades for the ship (better cannons, better sails, etc).

Also added a display for the ammount of gold the player has:

Think I’m going to stop for now… Time to get some quality time with the missus, or else she’ll kill me!

Still missing:

• Enemy shooting/AI
• Home port (for buying stuff – repairs, sails, rudders, cannons, shovels, maps)
• Walking around and digging stuff out of the ground
• UI to check maps during navigation
• Load/Save (the game might take a bit to finish, I think)
• Logo/Splash/Menu/Instructions
• Music and SFX

Wish list (stuff I’d like to do if I have the time for it):

• Savages on islands
• Typhoons
• Kraken!
• Game story (slideshow explaining the story)