It’ll be my first LudumDare, and one of my few finished piece of work.

I write javascript using prototype.js, do arts with gimp, do sounds with sfxr and play them with soundmanager2.

I may add music made with http://inudge.net/.

If you’re wondering, it’s the skill I’ve built during 5 year of lazy programming 😀

Thing start to work pretty nicely, but I’m running out of time and I’ve still load of stuff I want to add.

Anyway, the game is playable can be tested on my dropbox and here is a screenshoot :

Not Alone have now hit the submitted zone.

It’s 2am here so I’m a bit tired. Tired but happy. Even if I haven’t done what I’ve planned, I’m submitting a full game.

There is a simple plot, there is character, there is pussy and kitty, and lot of bad guys.

I hope you’ll like it. I’ve loved to do it.

Even these crappy game over screen.

ps: I’m proud of these crappy game over screen. Be proud of your games, of your silly mechanics, of your dumb graphics, of you storyless plot. That’s what you have done, and other may have not.

Tags: postmortem

I’m back and it’ll be my second Ludum Dare in a row. My second ever too. Just like the last time, I’ll do thing looking like game using javascript, pixel from gimp and sound from sfxr. Maybe even music comming from a tonematrix.

I don’t know if I’ve specified last time, I use prototype.js as library. I’ve also a few project I want to turn into real thing. So if I can fit one of them into #LD23’s theme, I might turn later my entry into something more refined.

Well, we’ll see. I just hope you’ll get as much pleasure from the result as I get from doing it. Not like last time 😉

I’m back ! And I’ll write JS DOM one more time !

Why would you ask ? ’cause canvas is for hipster! And I’m not an hipster, I’m a lazy code writer. So hopefully, you’ll get some more polished JS fun than my previous, unfinished, minecraftesque rogue-like.

30 minutes I’ve been out of my bed. Damn cat.

I kinda don’t like the theme, but a theme is a theme. My first plan was to go with an old project. I add written down a start for a story, come up with a few mechanics. Both gameplay and the story were involving evolution. But I’ll scrap it. I’ll not do a pokémon™ game for a ludum dare. It would go against the “can be published right after the LD”.

By the way, I’ve forget to put sugar in my coffee. Bitter coffee isn’t sweet.

So, I needed a plan B. While making the coffee, I’ve take a look at a dictionary. I’m french, so I don’t know if evolution can be used everywhere to talk about military stuff moving in a planned fashion or acrobat doing their stuff. And thoses didn’t inspire me. But disease can evolve. Like a cancer. So I think I’ll go with that.

Plan B will be «Disease EX{pt}3/1»

Damn this coffee.

Live code.

Might be broken.

Ok, time for an update.
Thing aren’t moving as fast as I would. I think having movies instead of music as audio background wasn’t such a bright idea. Plus problem with girlfriend. Mood isn’t really there, but it’s ludume dare time, so let talk about the game.

click for a screenshot of my playground

You can try it here » Disease EX {p,t} 3/1 «. Right now, there is feedback when you press button (hjkl + xc), 2 title screen, a main menu, a movable cursor and panel. So no gameplay yet.

Plan is to put you in the skin of bacteria. A lot of them. Multicellularity, they act like a whole. They have found a nucleus, nobody know how, and they have discovered they can use it to evolve, nobody know why. Problem, maybe you are not the only bacteria here to have this faculty.

I’ll call it a game if I can manage to add fog of war, mechanism to grow and salvage environment and fight the bad guys. Or, to put it in more common terms, EX{p}lore, EX{p}and, EX{p}loit, EX{t}erminate. Yeah, it’s a 4X game.

Only 2 hours left and I need to implement some turns mechanisms.

And my head is really somewhere else, I don’t like that.

I hope I can submit something playable, but I have some serious doubt about this.

I didn’t particpate last time, for the exactly same reason I’ll participate this time.

Like always, it’s gonna be javascript, plain old html, css.
Gimp for image, maybe a bit of flash and sfxr for sound.

Look like I’ve broken the game on local. One of the tool I use is also broken.

Sound like usual LD :]
Beside that, moral haven’t been this high since a long time.

I’ve spend something like an hour or two fighting with chromium, css, columns, space coming from nowhere.

When I was on the verge of losing my sanity, I’ve just removed all the columns junk and done it with float. I took 2 minutes and work exactly like I want. Up to 9 little square of 4x4px in a big square of 24x24px, with a gap of 3px between every little square.

Look like I’ve overlooked the effect of border. I need to adapt the design I wanted after all. Well, it’s only aesthetic.

First preview of the actual game. It will feature three of unit (red, green, blue) and 4 kind of terrain (red, green, blue, gray). Gray is neutral, the other can only be crossed by unit of the same color.  Combat system will be really simple. Red beat Green, Green beat Blue, Blue beat Red. If you are outnumbered, you can’t attack. When you attack, you take the place of your foe.

I might add black unit later which can be attacked or attack any color, but the winner lose as much unit as the loser had. I would like to add two kind of building, one which provide unit and another acting like a flag. If it’s taken, you win. Not sure about the second.

[ps] you can “play” at this place, but it’s my working copy, break every now and then.

Look like I’m out.

I love what I have done. You can take a look at Pixel Love Quest! at this link. But as cool as it look, their is still no gameplay. I was simply unable to get the motivation to add some. Certainly because the idea simpy doesn’t work and I known it since the beginning.

I’ve fixed myself on a few rules since the beginning. Three kind of unit and ground, Red, Green, Blue, plus a neutral gray ground. Unit need to be of the right color to go through. Each kind of unit can beat another one.
The combat system should have been minimalist. Red erase Green but can do nothing against Blue. Simply that can’t work. Weakness in trio work pretty well. But if you require some color to get through, then I have serious doubt.
There was also the “source” system. You could turn 9 unit, the maximum a cell can accept, into a generator for unit. But what if you put a Green source on a Green ground ? Red can walk on Green ground. Stuck.

Theses mechanics doesn’t work. I have set these in stone since the beginning and I realize I’ve been pushing this stone since then. I have some nice graphics. I have some elements for a story I really like. I have a nice gui. But my non-implemented game mechanics sucks. So rather than submitting a non-game, I’ll simply pass this time.

Maybe I’ll try some other mechanics on it later.

First day wasn’t what I was hoping for. I wanted to get the core game working to hop on the ambitious part. 16h remaining and I have only tweaked my own engine to accept mouse input.

Here is a candy. Grab it before someone else do it!

Well, I’ll try to do something.
Anyway, like always, html + javascript. Prototype.js, not the evil JQuery. No canvas either, I don’t know how to use these. Only basic javascript, should be playable on smartphe, tablet, laptop. Maybe even old school phone like those based on nokia S40 OS.

My other LD entries are at GkR’s lair, most of them unfinished with a little library taking shape over the time.

I wake up one hour ago and I’m already on my plan B. Well, it’s ludum dare, time is precious.

First idea was an aquaponics garden. You are a survivor from some space crash and you are all alone in you emergency shuttle with an aquaponics garden, providing you with food and oxygen that you need to balance.
Needless to say, gameplay wasn’t framed, only lightly outlined. This would require a ton of balancing and a ton of different thing to do before it start to look like a game.

So, plan B. King of the Hill.
6 Hill, from different dimension, mysteriously connect together. Certainly because planets are aligned. 5 Hill come from kingdom full of warrior. The last one only offer a big, sturdy doors.
Idea is simple, you choose a warrior, warrior climb on top of the Hill and fight. After 10 victory in a row, the doors open and you get your ending.
I should have the time to do that.

I tend to prioritize social stuff on most computer related thing. It’s a way to keep my sanity. Which mean that today, I spend something like 9h out of house, mostly eating. So not much progress.

I’m trying to sort out how heroku work. Every attempt at multiplayer ended in failure but I still try again. Victory of hope over experience or something like that.

Beside that, I’ve mostly pinned down how fight will work. I’ve also sketched a few screen. I should do that more often, I like how they look.

I spend most of my day fighting with my tools. Pretty much everyone of them in one way or another.

My problem was to give update about their progress to every player and not everyone. It’s multiplayer. I haven’t thought about broadcasting progress, would have saved me half a day. In the end, turn out that flask-socketio provide an object request.namespace and it look like I can use that.

It was… frustrating.
Well, I learned a thing or two. It wasn’t that bad