Hey all,

I’m officially anouncing my intention to participate in LD #12 as a supernoob. I’ll probably end up using HGE, as I know my way around it, more or less. I expect to be thoroughly humbled by the 48 hour deadline, as I have an intensely awful habit of starting things and not finishing them.

Good luck to everyone!

Well, this is what I’ve got so far. Not too much – though I have been sleeping for roughly 8 of the 13 hours of the competition that has elapsed so far. How do you feel about the mutant kamikaze bat with neon purple eyes and a green mouth? Should that be interchanged? I don’t know. I’ve never had a chance to meet up with one, let alone inspect its cavities.

Well, it’s pretty much official – I’m one of the worst digital artists the world has e’er seen. I’ll try and do some polish on the stuff that I’m using tomorrow to lessen the shame that I bring my ancestors.  Collision detection is also kind of an issue using HGE – I’m seeing a little why other people don’t necessarily use it. It gives you collisions really easily – but not the direction in which they’ve occurred, and I don’t really have the presence of mind to create my own solution at the moment.

If it wasn’t for that, I’d be a pretty happy camper. Still going well enough.

When you have to rewrite your collision detection code.

Which isn’t such a big deal, I guess – if it works, the game is basically done except for content-y polish-y stuff. I am learning a lot about what you can actually do in 48 hours.

PS. I think I eat a box of these almost every day. Blueberries and strawberries are the EMPERORS of fruit.

Tags: foodphoto

Well it looks like my collision detection problems are somewhat solved. I’m not entirely sure how playable this is going to end up, but I’m pretty pleased with how far I’ve gotten as a first-timer. Plus, I have owls.

I decided to, for the most part, take pictures of random crap around the room and include them as objects. And use myself as the sprite. For some reason, I have a owl-doll thing. Always watching me.

Well, I think…I did it. Maybe. It’s playable, but who knows if it’s actually fun. I am particularly proud of the title, myself. The came-up-with-in-ten-seconds guitar theme was also entertaining. An awesome competition as a whole. I wish I could’ve tweaked with the gameplay a little bit more, but c’est la vie.

You’ll need the visual studio redistributable thingybobber if you don’t have it already. You can get it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=32bc1bee-a3f9-4c13-9c99-220b62a191ee&displaylang=en

You can grab the game itself here:http://www.sendspace.com/file/hfquoi

But hooray! This was endlessly fun and I can’t wait to do it next time, and check out everyone else’s games. Hooray again.

(let me know if there are any problems with the executable or anything)

Tags: final, lots of owls

Heyo everyone,

LD15 will be my second Ludum Dare compo – I feel like I have a much better handle on it this time than my last (I did #12 last year, right around this time). And thankfully this is one of those few periods where I have an entire weekend to just shoot code out of my eyeballs. I’m going to be using some of my code from that entry, along with HGE and …I dunno. Some C++ compiler. Maybe FMOD for sound, and my masterful *cough* abilities at programmer art…

I will also be arming myself with my guitar, microphone, and baritone voice so that I may serenade you all.

I’m primarily going to fuel myself with spinach, beer, and death metal. I also refuse to relinquish my running habit this weekend – so I will occasionally be stumbling out the door to go run for an hour or so. I feel like that will probably help me come up with some ideas that border on the edge of endorphin-fueled psychosis. I am willing, for a price, to take pictures of my sweaty post-run ecstasy.

Good luck to you all! 😀

there ya go. a title screen! now you can wonder about what muslim purity has to do with caverns.

here, too, are the tools of the trade:

and last, but certainly not least, the first alcoholic beverage consumed during this fine, fine evening. or morning, is it now?

It’s raining terribly outside – I was going to go down to the local awesome coffee shop and get strawberry crepes..but I settled for cereal.

and I also have my first screenshot! …of a sprite floating in mid-air. I have to admit I’ve mostly been working on ideas about how to use a heightmap in a 2d game and what will actually make the game fun. Maybe I can manage…both?!

I’m taking a quick break after wrestling with my own framework for far too long. I thought I would get done with heightmaps at 3…ended up being more like 6. Oh well.

Basically what I’m doing is generating a heightmap from the bitmap image of the level. Thus I can make silly levels and just plain not have to worry about collision detection for going up a hill or down one, which to me is pretty sweet.

Here’s a screen from a bit ago:

I had the height map flipped and visible so I could see the problem I was having with it more closely. Turns out I was scrolling the background for the level faster than the heightmap…stupid!

Also, lunch – a toasted sandwich with grilled chicken, spinach, tons of garlic, american cheese, and hot mustard. Delicious, I say!

Well, I managed to submit something that works and is playable! That’s kind of stupendous news to me. It’s not really all that hard (or long) but I am still interested in seeing what people think of it. I’m sure the submissiony system will go up soon and we can look at everything, but till then…

Sufi: http://www.cs.stevens.edu/~pmainwar/ld15.zip

Hey guys,

I had a few people leave comments about my entry noting that it wasn’t quite working for some people. I sent it around to a bunch of friends to playtest and it seemed to go okay for them…sooo, if you’ve run into problems with my entry or would like to see if it works, please download it! If you do run into any issues, please give me some details – the program generates a log file in the Release directory which should spit out any fatal errors. (also if you’re running it through wine or something, that would be good to know!)

It’s not the best piece of gaming in the world – I just want other people to be able to legitimately criticize it.

http://www.cs.stevens.edu/~pmainwar/ld15.zip

Thanks!