Dang! I checked the site today and found out the 4th of july plans I made yesterday are going to be in the way. Oh well — good luck to everyone! I’ll probably lurk around IRC to test games, distract people, and a generally give bad advice.
Let’s get that MiniLD#2 category up!
Ok, if nothing else, my GUI is working. There is ZERO game at this point, but huzzah anyway. Behold, my extremely simple and weird looking user interface!
I’ve been working on the level editor for the past few hours (yeah, hours… I suck). It is mostly done — now that the parts are coming together it hopefully won’t be too bad to put the rest of it together and actually create some viable levels for the game. One of the bigger tricks I got hung up on was making the level so much larger than the editor window. I didn’t realize it, but this is my first time making levels bigger than the screen so I had to figure out all the scrolling behavior I needed/wanted. Not too bad, but something new.
Before I can complete the editor, I need the art, so I just did that for a while. Quite frankly, the art is embarrassing. I’m not an artist at all, and the time constraints compound that into pure crap. So – apologies to everyone in advance. 😀
I haven’t even started on sound, although I grabbed a copy of “flight of the bumblebees” for the main music. 😀
This marks the first moment a level is actually loaded in game. I haven’t put the scrolling from the level editor into the main game yet (but it should be trivial), so all you get is this boring screenshot with some bees flying around for no reason. Note the terrible art, including the artifacts or whatever that green line on the aluminum siding building is called… 😀
It is always nice to see it all start to come together. Game is probably 30% done. 18 hours and 6 minutes remaining… As usual I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time. For the real LD coming up I’ll block out my schedule and tell everyone else to get lost.
I’m pretty tired so I think I’ll sleep tonight. I’ll try the uberman naps first, but I don’t expect that to help so I’ll likely have a 4 hour or so nap. It is knocking a quarter of my dev time off, but I just don’t function well without sleep and this is crunch time.
Well, I’ve been pushing hard all day. There are 2 hours left and I’m really not as close as I would like, but I am further than I expected. There are a couple big bugs I need to find quickly then I need the packaging to magically work (which it won’t since it has an incomplete version of MUA, rabbyt, and open gl 3).
Still on the plate after those bugs are the levels, the level system itself, winning :D, sound and music. I’ve cut the pause screen and saving out, but I suspect I’ll still be soundless :(. Especially since pyglet sound doesn’t work on vista – a fact I forgot until just now.
Craaappppp
Well, I’m not super proud of it, but I’m out of time. I didn’t get to music or sound, and there are still some nasty bugs with some of the bee numbers. You can play all the way through though — the levels suck and the art is worse.
Unfortunately, it just isnt that fun. I’ll have to get some feedback from everyone to see what can make it better.
I’ll probably make an executable later, as well as the time lapse.
And a screenshot:
Tags: final
Ok, I’ve been trying to make an executable of my game all morning but I can’t make it work. PyOpenGL 3.x has always been a problem because of the setuptools, but in 3.0.0b1 I had a working solution, sort of. Now, however, I can’t get that to work and am just running into this error over and over:
“RuntimeError: Unable to find an implementation for the ‘win32’ (‘nt’) platform”
The only things I could find online are similar problems with no responses or solutions.
Does anybody have any advice?
Tags: py2exe
Edited: Added XP version
Ok, after some great no-brainer advice I hadn’t even thought of, I downgraded my openGL and easily made the executable.
You can grab it here for Vista
or
Here for XP
As in the previous post – the idea seems fun to me, but the product just doesn’t do it enough. Please have a play through and give me your comments and advice.
One thing I’m sure it needs is a targeting system for the bees. For some reason I took this out mid-development… It was probably before the humans would flee from the bees stinging them. Anyway, now its a pain in the ass to follow humans around, so I’ll be adding a way for the bees to track their targets.
Another thing to adjust is the scrolling. I think I’ll increase the area on the edges where scrolling starts, but make the distance you pass over it scale the scrolling. In other words, if you are fairly close to the side you won’t scroll as fast as right at the side. Thoughts?
Tags: exe
Hey Everyone,
Over the last few days I’ve been working on a program to manage the playing and judging of games during the competition. I’ve reached the beta stage and need your help.
Here is the full link – http://keeyai.com/2008/07/16/compo-game-loader/ – please give it a read.
Tags: compogameloader
So many people posting that this will be their first LD! It is great to see the community growing!
Welcome to ludum dare and good luck!
Tags: motivation
Ok, the compo has officially started! I’m already intimidated by everyone’s food photos. I guess I’ll have to step it up hard core. I didn’t make it to the store today, so I have to go without the water jug this time around. Sad…
Anyway – all contestants new and old: don’t forget to make your gameinfo.xml file for the Compo Game Loader. Instructions and Checklist found here.
Good luck, and don’t forget the owls!
Tags: cgl
A much needed update: There are about 29 hours left in the competition. Already people have posted some very impressive looking screenshots!
I spent the morning losing a fight with pyode and have removed it completely from my program, replacing it with pymunk instead. Hopefully I can get pymunk going on linux — that really hurt us in pyweek, so it’s important that I get it working.
After/during that, I took an hour to help a friend move, but when I got there they didn’t need me anymore. :/ That’s ok – breaks are good, right?
Now I’m finally starting to get into my game – the physics is working and I have most of the infrastructure laid out. I don’t know if I have time to finish (above mentioned friend is coming over later as well), but as of right now I’m still going to try.
Also, I finally got the laptop out so I can get the pictures from the camera online.
Behold, the command center!
Friday’s Food:
Kolaches for Breakfast this morning!
Tags: foodphoto
The last day is here. I’ve woken up with just under 12 hours to go. Can I make it? We shall see… Still to do: all the AI, firing cannons, sound, music, and the major panning effect I had planned for the fight phase.
To power up, I made pancakes for breakfast. Breakfast is so much more malleable than the other meals…
Here is the obligatory phallic pancake for the roommate:
And a spiral pancake! Culinary skills++
Finally, here is last night’s more standard fare – burritos with rice, beans, and cranberry juice.
Good job!9 Hours and 45 Minutes left. I just finished the music and got it working in game, making this my first LD entry with sound of any kind. The song is crap, but hey, I’m still proud of it. I did it all on my guitar (even the ‘drum’ parts) using audacity. The three phases are in, although there is no AI and the cannons don’t actually fire. The turns are still set on very short for debugging, but it does cycle all the way through. There are still some bugs to fix, and the AI to create. If I finish all that, I’ll put in sound effects.
Tags: journal
I’m finally finished! And with 1 hour and 11 minutes left for packaging. Here it is: Up!
Up! is a rampart-like game where you have 3 phases – first you build your tower, then you get cannons based on your tower’s height, then you use those cannons to try to take out the enemy tower. Each turn gives you less and less time to build until finally someone is the winner!
Source Link: http://keeyai.com/files/up.zip
Source with wav (no AVBin dependency): http://keeyai.com/files/up-noavbin.zip
Source with no music (if it crashes in linux when looping the music, try this): http://keeyai.com/files/up-nomusic.zip
Windows Exe: http://keeyai.com/files/up_exe.zip
Linux executable on its way.
A Screenshot!
Tags: final
Tough i is hard to compete with PC considering i have no idea how my cannonballs fly… Adding some mini-map or scrolling or camera following cannonballs would help a lot.
Tags: motivation
Also programmers are notorious for being bad artists so don’t feel bad.