Just to indicate my attempt to develop a game for the compo. I most probably won’t have any time twomorrow, and I had lots of things to do to-day (like packing all my stuff for the travel, back-up a bunch of things on the server, and so on, and on…). But hopefully, I’ll at least make something playable, yay ☆

Things I’m going to use:

Language: Javascript (yep, pure browser javascript)
Libraries: Prototype, Scriptaculous and Lily (my work-in-progress gaming framework that has almost nothing anyways)
Editors: The old’n’good SciTe
Graphics: Fireworks, maybe Inkscape or GIMP.
Sounds: sfxr
Music: Melody-raiser? I guess…
Work recording: ChronoLapse

Well, I think it’s about this. Now to the game I have in mind. While I did the obligatory-stuff-number-1 I thought about several kinds of gameplay (I even did some research at every little break), and came with a turn-based exploration game. It would be a mix of turn-based strategy (divide & conquest), with a sort of dugeon crawling set on a maze. I was going to use a proper dungeon, but it’s a heck more simpler to write a procedural maze generator.

So, the player is a stream of consciousness that’s trying to recover a lost memory, and to do so it can divide itself into little functional parts (namely Destroyers — which will take care of any enemies, — Guardians — which will protect the player, — Collectors — which will collect the fragments of memory, — and Explorators — which will search for the exit). At each turn the player can choose between divide itself, or walk around. The functional parts are indivisible, so they can only be dragged around.

To win, one must collect the fragments of memory (which should unfold some sort of story I haven’t thought of yet) and find the portal that leads out of the current maze. Sorta simplistic (maybe not all that simplistic, but I just have to worry about the core anyways. UI and rendering are already coded for me =D)

Well, I haven’t implemented any of the core gameplay, actually. Just the most basic of the engine and the procedural level generation. And it works 😀

That’s my desktop. There’s not too much thing there, as my books and mangas and other stuff stays on the shelf :3 Anyways, there’s still work to do, and I hope I can finish it to-day 😀

Here: http://www.mottaweb.com.br/project/oblivious/game/

There’s no gameplay really implemented yet. I mean, it’s just a maze game for now, but hopefully I will implement the turn-based strategy part 😀

Fixed the issues with scrolling, that I should’ve wrote before going shopping, but, well, I completly forgot that D:

You can play the game from here: http://www.mottaweb.com.br/project/oblivious/game/

It should work on any standard browser (Opera, Chrome, Firefox or Safari), maybe it will work on M$’s IEerie, but I haven’t tested and don’t want to mess with all the issues of that browser alone. Not to say, IEerie’s javascript is dog slow, so you’re better up playing on one of those four browser I’ve listed 😀

Anyways, this is the todo list for the rest of the day:

• Write base actor class
• Fix light handling to support multiple actors
• Implement player class (for TBS)
• Implement status bar
• Implement Explorer/Collector classes
• Implement win conditions
• Sprinkle collectable items through the map
• Make portal acessible only with certain items
• Make graphics
• Implement main menu / help screen
• Implement baddies and sprinkle them trhough the map
• Implement the Guardian/Soldier classes
• Implements minimap

Well, that’s more or less this. Maybe I’ll take something out and add others.

Don’t have time to colour, but yay, let’s get back to coding what I currently have into a fun game 😀

So, I’m not going to write a TBS in a maze, instead I’ll make a simple maze-crawler. The player has to find his way out the maze, but he has to be quick or he’ll run out of his torche. To help the player, there’ll be replacements for the torche sprinkled over the maze, and the player can cast creatures (with a limited lifespan) to help him search for the exit.

Well, I’m still not too sure about the creatures part. I think it would be fun for the game, but I dunno if I’ll have time to implement this. Anyways, here’s the updated todo-list:

• Sprinkle collectable items over the map.
• Implement win conditions / lose conditions
• Make menu screens, game over and such
• Fix light handling to support multiple light sources
• Implement explorer classes and ways for the player to cast them

Pretty, isn’t it?

So, submited my final entry. Source code with my gaming library is included (though, it doesn’t has that much yet). Now, I’m gonna grab some coffee and finish packing my stuff, or my father is going to kill me for don’t giving any thought to tomorrow’s travel 😀

Good luck for the ones who’re still fighting to make it in time for the compo :3

After deciding that I was going to enter the Ludum Dare #16, despiste the almost completly lack of time I`d have to work on the weekend, I was able to finish my entry, somehow. Of course, it didn`t turned out like I wanted it to be, most because of the lack of time, but also because I hadn`t really a definite set goal until the last hours.

Deciding to go with javascript was a lifesaver. At first I wanted to write my game with Python and PyGame, but I`d end up spending too much time on rendering and UI implementation, and with javascript that was already hard-coded into the browser for me, so all that`d be left was to write the game logic. Of course, javascript has its issues, like you`re not guaranted fully compatibility between browsers (even with the standard ones, something may behave oddly), and that`s what made me cut that M$ IEerie from the list of supported browser before I even started writing a line of code.

More about it after the cut :3 (It’s rather long, but has a concept art to make for it :D)

—the concept—

Is it cruel? Maybe, but not more than knowingly turning your face away from what you have done. What lies beyond those fragments of memory, lingering in the dark maze of consciousness? More importantly, will you have the courage to face the unknown or will you choose the large path, living on, in eternal oblivion…?

As you see, I think with stories. At first, I was going for a Turn-Based Strategy game with some dungeon crawling, however, since I couldn’t spend too much time working on a fully fledged procedural dungeon building algorithm, I went with the easier maze generation. Yeah, I could’ve just ported the algorithm I’ve written for Underground Tower, but it’s not really done, and there’s lots of issues there I hadn’t the time to address yet.

The player objective would be to collect memories and uncover the game’s story (which I still haven’t thought of besides that introduction up there). While exploring the maze of consciousness the player would gradually fade out by the sweet lies that lies at each one of the walls of the labyrinth, eating away any “silly” try to look at the “real” world. Therefore, collectable reasonings for staying alive would be found lying around the place.

The memories where when the story of the game would come, but I haven’t had the time to code this part. Not that it would be difficult to code the part of collecting memories (it was just a matter of inheriting the cCollectable class), but to arrange it to make a good story would.

It all could’ve work… if only I haven’t tomorrow’s trip planned.

—the goodies—

That said, there were some good parts about this game. First, the wonders of javascript prototyping. I was afraid to don’t even finish my entry, but I was able to accomplish a fair amount of work without really having a gaming library (mine isn’t complete and it hasn’t much useful things for games right now). Kudos for the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries for making my life easier too, working with pure javascript is not that fun, must I say, but these libraries make your life a heck easier.

I’ve also learned to write a procedural maze generator using Depth-First Search algorithm. It was quite fun, easy and quick to implement, actually, and it works neat. I think I couldn’t ask for more, could I?

Surprisingly, I had time to sketch a main menu background and a javascript motivational. I wanted to color the motivational, but I’m dog slow at this and don’t have a tablet. So… yeah, it’d take me ages D:

Last, but not least, I had quite fun participating. Even with all the swearing while I was shopping and looking at the clock, seeing I was wasting a precious, precious time. Well, I wish I spent more time chatting with peoples on IRC and so, I haven’t really talked on IRC, I guess.

—the baddies—

Well, now to the part that really matters: what went wrong.

• Lack of time (and this must come first, as I planned a game without the proper time to implement it)
• Light handling on the maze has a bug which won’t fade the illuminated cells if they can’t be reached by the player’s light radius.
• Didn’t had the time to implement things I wanted, like the story and the auto-explorers (whom could be cast to search for something)
• Points are meaningless when they don’t mean anything in game.
• No sounds and music whatsoever. I’d want to put a suspenseful music together with the story, and maybe some footsteps sound. But haven’t time for neither.
• Lack of gameplay and difficult progression, since I haven’t time to test any other than “Does it works? Fine, submission where?”
• Things takes so long to load, and there’s no preloader for images. Minifying the javascript and putting everything on a single source file would solve this, though.

—the conclusion—

While I have other projects to work with (RED -spider lily- and some libraries), I think I’ll work on this game first. Either because it’s simpler and shouldn’t take me too long to finish, and because working on it I can work on my Lily library at the same time. And I’m thinking about porting RED -spider lily- to web, instead of continue on Python. But that will depend on some design issues I still have to address.

Some feedback on the game would be really nice :3

So… I currently have absolutely no good ideas on what to do for the theme. I hope I can sort that out soon (or I’ll just pick a bad idea and try to make it as fun as possible).

This will probably be a browser-based game, again. Time to fire up Emacs and start brainstorming…

Is exactly what I’m aiming for with Bottle.

I’ll be writing everything in JavaScript, using DOM rendering and CSS for styling, rather than canvas — this should reduce a little of complexity and stuff, since I don’t have to handle almost nothing myself in the drawing pipeline. Of course, I’ll be using Emacs with js3-mode for writing everything. I’ll also record a timelapse so you can see how much I procrastinate while coding stuff :3

Anyways, Bottle’s design is pretty simple. You have several artefacts which represent worlds. These artefacts can be placed upon a top-down tiled map to materialise, and later on, and after that, they can be used to create attack units — each world grants the ability to create and handle a single unit. The placement of artefacts upon the map affect the properties of the world, and therefore the powers a unit may carry. Units are them used to colonise other worlds for your control. Colonised worlds are made into new artefacts that you can use to improve your powers. Colonise every-little-thing to win.

Oh, yeah, this will be a Turn Based Strategy game :3