And a first timer too!

One neat idea – three concepts – no idea which one to use.

I guess I should have a prototype ready this evening. Music & Menus tomorrow. Sounds like a plan 😀

First day of my first LD will end soon – Time for a recap:

I couldn’t spent the whole 24h developing but I guess I got around 7-8 out of it. After juggling ideas, I came up with three concepts for the game. I sketched all three and after laying them side by side we had a winner. What I did from there:

• setting up a project in eclipse with slick as lib
• entity framework
• simple (temporary) graphics (gimp)
• simple movement
• simple enemy
• better movement
• better enemy movement
• shooting stuff
• hitting stuff
• displaying the points, lives & bombs
• first sounds (sfxr)

And for day two I also got some more to do:

• final artwork
• more enemies
• menus
•     -> main menu -> mini logo
•     -> howto screen
•     -> game-over screen (and matching event)
•     -> highscore screen (nice to have) -> highscore to XML
• MUSIC
• more sound effects
• play with words
• joypad support (nice to have)
• polishing (find the right rythm/speed for everything)
• playtesting -> GOTO polishing
• release
• sleep

Well, that’ll be a long day 😀

LD26 – Halftime

Everything is starting to come together. Changed some graphics around. The heart & bomb icons are gone again as I didn’t like them. Not sure if they’re coming back. At this moment I’m happy with the way it looks.

WORDHUNTER in-game

But there are still 2 small bugs left. First one with the edge off the screen (player still manages to get outside the borders and I have no clues why). Second is a little offset between the position of the mouse and the shot. I’ll figure this out in the polishing process. First thing in the morning I created some menus and a page for possible high-scores.

WORDHUNTER menu

Still missing some music, scoring system (which isn’t that hard) and some more enemies. I’ll start with the last one, then scoring, then music. Joypad support is off the table for today, there are more important things to do

It’s playable now. You can shoot stuff, you can die, the game can end. There’s still no music but more sound effects. I’m happy with the current state but I see trouble coming. Tried to package a demo and it didn’t work at all. Instead of using my last 3h (have to work tomorrow) with coding/music, seems I have to sort out THAT first. Sucks. Anyone else using Slick2D and knows how to export his game? The wiki way doesn’t work (for me).

WORDHUNTER – in-game – 3h left

I changed the enemies again because naked characters didn’t look that good. I also added exploding animations (which I’d like to redo again if there’s some time left). Oh, I forgot: There’s a pause button now

WORDHUNTER v100 in-game

Just submitted my entry. I did some more fine tuning but some stuff is still missing. Like REAL music. There is music. But it’s, well, minimal. I finished everything from my list ecxept:

• More enemies (currently only one in 3 different colors/strength)
• Music (No time)
• Joypad support (also no time)

I’ll add those things in the next days, when there’s some time to spare. I just made a new list with those tasks and some more (like highscores) for the future. But for now: Get some sleep.

Enjoy the game!

Link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22527

wordhunter v100 in-game

WORDHUNTER is a twin stick shooter (like Geometry Wars) where you shoot at characters. If you get a word together your multiplier rises. Well, that’s it. Two sentences for two days work. I started late at about 12 PM (GMT+1) Saturday. I had the idea of shooting characters early, but three different concepts to make a game out of it. One being a space invaders clone. I choose the twin stick genre and got started. I worked with black squares and a triangle as temporary art. The explosion was done by hand in Gimp because I wasn’t happy with the results of explosion-generators. Spent some hours with my girlfriends Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Got at coding again at 12 pm. The stress was building up and my head started to tell me that I could just quit, but I wasn’t going to quit as I had a working prototype at that point and I NEEDED to finish. But no game over event, no high-scores, menus or music. I started with the menus, trying to get them right at the first time (which I did), then the game over event. After a (late) lunch I wanted to compile a demo for play testing  That’s where the terror started. I used Slick2D before, in other prototypes, but I did never reach the state to actually export a game. In that moment, high-scores were cut and the music fell a bit short. I was aiming to enter the game at 12 pm (because I had to work on Monday) and entered it at 2 am I guess. Cooled down a bit after that. Viewed other submissions and finally got some sleep. I’m happy with the result, well, if you get over that fact that it get’s too hard too soon. And the hit boxes have a slight (8 px) offset to the right. And words are hard to get. But well, it was my first time and I loved it. I already fixed a lot of bugs for a release the next days on my website.

What went great:

• I had a Slick2D  template ready
• Used OpenMPT, Gimp & sfxr before
• Some experience in game writing from a couple of prototypes/demos
• Went out with my dog a couple of times to get fresh air and free my mind – That helped a lot
• Setting myself a deadline was good
• Trying to export a play testing demo was a good idea

What went no so great:

• Exporting – You should figure out what you need and have to do BEFORE entering a contest 😉
• If you need pixel explosions – do them by hand. Don’t try out 3 different generators for nothing
• I thought my idea was small enough to get everything done – it wasn’t. Next time: Start small – Use the time I have left to add stuff.
• I had to cut some stuff in the end: High score lists, better Music, more types of enemies and better balancing of waves.

For the next time:

• Take Monday off
• Get to bed early on Friday and start directly at 4am

Thank you for reading and enjoy the game. And if you liked it, rate & visit my website soon for a better version

PLAY WORDHUNTER NOW!

Tags: 2D, LD#26, post-mortem, postmortem, screenshot