Well I got my entry submitted – just.

It was nowhere near finished. I mean, it’s possible to play (if you ignore the bugs), but many of the graphics left in there were still placeholders, there’s no text on the title screen or end screen, no sounds, etc etc. If I’d not spent so much time on the procedural generation I would have had time for this stuff. Bah.

So, what did I end up with? As a daring adventurer you have broken into a long lost pharoh’s tomb in search of treasure. Can you find all 16 treasures hidden within the labyrinthian 5-level pyramid? If you are to do so, you will have to be on watch for sealed rooms and corridors which you can break open with your pickaxe (enter key). Every new game starts with a new random layout for infinite fun*

* actual fun may vary

There’s one big bug which I didn’t have time to fix – often when you start the game you get “assertion error”. I put an assertion in to check that treasures were being placed properly, and this assertion sometimes fails, meaning that not all the treasures can be placed for some reason. Hey – at least they game doesn’t let you start a game which is impossible to finish 😛

Timelapse to come soon

I’ve put together my timelapse video! It’s on youtube here:

Frimkron’s LD16 Timelapse Video

I didn’t leave it recording while I was asleep and I stuck footage from the 2 days together – that’s why there’s a jump in the middle. As you can see I spent the entire first day working on the maze generation *eyeroll*

Tags: timelapse, youtube

Hi everybody!

Islands sounds like a good theme and I’ve already got a fairly good idea for a game which I might just be able to pull off in the next 48 hours.

So for this entry I will be using:

* Python
* Pygame
* Pygame-fenix
* Pycatcher (If I can get it working)
* Graphics gale
* GIMP
* Rosegarden / Cakewalk
* Sfxr

One of my main goals this time round is to get some music in there, so I’m going to have to round off my gameplay and graphics with plenty of time to spare for that, I think.

Anyway, good luck everybody!

Tags: hello, theme, tools

Well here’s what I have after 7-ish hours work:

Those things on the rock platforms are placeholder cannon graphics.

Hopefully my game is going to magically transform itself into a sort of turn-based strategy game where you have to fire cannons at the enemy (a la Worms), from islands in the sky.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get Fiona’s timelapse program working this time round and I didn’t want to waste any more time setting up a capture program. In retrospect I really should have had that prepared before the competition started. So no timelapse from me I’m afraid

Well I spent far too much time creating graphics for the cannons, even though I rendered them:

You can also see one of the soldier sprites I’ve drawn in this shot. He’s currently defying gravity.

I’m calling it a day for today, but tomorrow I hope to do some serious catching up (as always!) I may have to scale down my ambitions for this project. I want to get some kind of turn-based aim-and-shoot-stuff game in place as early as possible tomorrow, then I can see where I’m at and decide what to prioritise.

Tags: cannon, rendered, screenshot, soldier, sprite

Well, I’m going to have to give up, I’m afraid. Here’s a screenshot of the latest version:

I’m not going to submit it because there’s nothing even resembling a game in there.

When I got up on Saturday I had a really good idea for a game, and I still think the idea is a good one, but unfortunately over the last day-and-a-bit I’ve just not been able to keep up the pace required to see it take shape.

The game was going to be a worms-style turn-based aim-and-shoot type game, but with the idea of strategically capturing islands thrown in there too – by launching soldiers onto unclaimed islands, building more cannons there, and increasing the chances of hitting and damaging your opponent’s fortress.

I’m going to blame this one on the fact that I’ve not slept very well over the last few days and this weekend I was severly lacking in energy and enthusiasm.

I’m a little disappointed with myself to say the least, because I’d been looking forward to this LD for weeks and I thought the theme was pretty flexible and inspiring.

I will endevour to finish this game at a later date, because I feel I really need to do justice to my original idea and in particular I would love to see it as a network game.

And next time, I’m going to do the following:

• Prepare – I should have got my timelapse software ready, as well as any libraries I would need and so on. I should also have familiarised myself with a good 3d modeler for Linux.
• Sleep – More sleep before the competition and I probably would have had a decent game by now.
• Keep it very simple – I’ve decided that if the core gameplay can’t realistically be finished in the first day, then the idea is too complicated. I tend to be far too ambitious when it comes to picking a game idea, either by incorporating some experimental code idea or by underestimating the work required for a seemingly simple feature because of a lack of experience with it.
• Stick to what I know – I wasted a lot of time trying to paint sprites in Gimp, then finding that they were anti-aliased onto the wrong colour background and fixing the outlines them to work with colour-keyed alpha. In the end I gave up and switched back to pixelling sprites in Graphics Gale (though none of these have made it into my screenshot)

Tags: final, gave up, I quit, post-mortem, rant

I saw this and thought of Ludum Dare….

This is how Sid Meier creates a game in 48 hours:

Game Godfather Sid Meier and the 48-Hour Game

Tags: 48 hours, sid meier, video

Time to declare the tools I guess I might be using for this weekend’s competition:

Code

• Pygame
• PyOpenGL – I’m still getting to grips with it but I might use LD as a crash course
• Pygame-fenix
• Myrmidon
• My misc utils
• Eclipse
• PyDev
• Py2exe

Graphics

• Graphics Gale
• GIMP

Sound

• sfxr
• Cakewalk SONAR
• Rosegarden

Tags: tools

Hi everyone.

Well I woke up not long ago and have spent some time brainstorming around the theme. I think it’s one of those themes where you either take it literally as intended or do something very clever with it. Not being clever enough, my current idea is simply a vertical shooter where you collect defeated enemies and fire them back. Something I’ve not considered yet is where that cycle begins – but I’m sure I’ll work something out.

Good luck everybody!

Tags: brainstorming, First post

Ok, here’s a screenshot of the single graphic I have drawn and the window I have got it appearing in:

I tried to get Felix to design me a game, but she hates the theme.

Tags: cat, first screenshot

I think I’ve been neglecting my screenshot duties, so here you go:

This pretty much sums up the extent of my game at the end of day 1. There are some enemies, you shoot at you. You can shoot at them and collect their broken hull.

I had really hoped to be a lot further along, but that’s always the way it goes. Tomorrow I’ll get the whole enemies-as-weapons thing in there, player damage, enemy patterns, etc etc. Right now it’s time to do some serious sleeping.

Good night!

Tags: end of day 1, screenshot, sleeptime

I’m awake, breakfasted and ready to start hammering out code again. This is my priority list for the next few hours:

1. Player death
2. First enemy weapon
3. Ammo counter
4. Flight pattern system
5. Level scripting system
6. See where we go from there

Tags: breakfast, morning, start of day 2

Time for an update. Not much has changed since last time, visually. But underneith I’ve got a system for scripting enemy patterns and stuff, which is pretty nifty. Python’s generators are great for this kind of thing.

Here’s a screenshot:

The things glowing yellow are dead enemies that you can collect and become ammo as shown in the right sidebar. So the star-shaped enemies become shurikens that you can fire back with. This means I now actually comply with the theme! Hurrah!

Next I’m going to try and throw in some more enemies, then think about sound, I suppose.

Tags: enemies as weapons, screenshot, shurikens

Well I just uploaded my entry, but it was grossly unfinished as the ending will show. I’ll sort out my timelapse tomorrow and maybe write a post-mortem. I had fun, but I don’t think I’ll be finishing this game any time soon. The code is pretty clean and all, but the game itself just doesn’t do much for me. Probably because it doesn’t do much at all 😉

Tags: submitted, uploaded

My timelapse is uploaded!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiHW9Kum49I

Tags: timelapse, uploaded, youtube

I have a good feeling about this LD. I missed the last one so I’m going to make up for it this time with extra awesomeness. It’s a 4-day weekend here in the UK, thanks to some guy getting married or something, so I’ll have extra time to get my environment, tools and libraries ready beforehand, maybe get some food in the fridge in preparation, etc. And on the Monday I’ll be able to do that jam thing that all the cool kids are doing these days. It’ll be fun to see how far the momentum takes me, post-deadline.

My toolset:

• nano – yeah I code in nano. Shut up.
• Myrmidon – a PyOpenGL-based 2D framework by Fiona
• pythonutils – a small collection of miscellaneous util functions I wrote
• py2exe – creates standalone Windows exe from a python program.
• Graphics Gale – still my favourite pixel editor for animation. Luckily it works reasonably in Wine
• The GIMP – open-source paint program
• Rosegarden – an open-source sequencer I’m still getting to grips with
• sfxr – MSPaint for sound
• Audacity – sound editor for cleaning up stuff
• PyCatcher – for making a timelapse. Fiona fixed it!
• Lots of paper – for brainstorming

And some rules I’m laying down for myself, to help avoid the mistakes of previous attempts at this:

• Prepare – I’m going to make sure I get enough sleep beforehand
• Keep it simple – I’m going to pick an idea that I believe I could make in half a day, and if I really have it done by then, I’ll give it some serious polish
• Don’t be clever – I’m not going to try too hard to be clever with the theme or to invent a whole new genre
• Suppress desire for clean code – I decided after the last competition that I would put less focus on code quality
• Make it fun – I’m going to put more focus on tweaking my gameplay until it plays well
• Make time for audio – I never get any sounds or music done. But this time will be different!

Tags: im in, LD20, preparation, tools

Ok, just got up and checked the theme. Wow – didn’t see that one coming! It’s certainly an interesting one. I think to fully do the theme justice I’m going to have to do a Zelda parody of some kind.

I have an idea, anyway. And hopefully its not too ambitious. I’m churning the idea around in my head still, trying to refine it into something as simple as possible. Like I said in my earlier post, I want to have my game more or less complete in half a day so I can spend the majority of the time tweaking and polishing it.

Well, here goes! Good luck, everyone!

Tags: begin, good luck, parody, theme, wtf, zelda

It’s time for a screenshot:

Not much to see, I’ve got a scrolling tilemap in place.

Next I’m going to get somethings moving around on it!

Tags: screenshot, scrolling, tilemap

Well I’m calling it a day for day 1. Here’s a screenshot so far:

I’m going for some kind of vertical shooter involving a tank. But there’s not much in the way of gameplay in there yet. My hopes for getting a fully-playable game in place in half a day were maybe unrealistic.

I think if I’m going to fulfil my intention of having lots of tweaking and polishing time, I’m going to have to scale down my idea a bit. I’ll sleep on it and I should have a revised plan in the morning.

Tags: end of day 1, moblin, screenshot, tank

I’ve made a fair bit of progress on day 2, but I have a lot of work to squeeze into the next few hours to get something playable together.

I’ve done a cheap and cheerful intro sequence though, and here’s a screen from it:

I’m current racking my brains trying to come up with a way I can alter my game to make it more of a challenge, while at the same time trying to finish off bits that are required just for it to work properly.

Anyway, I should get back to work!

Tags: dangerous to go alone, intro, progress, screenshot