I’m taking the extra time to do something extra for the moddability of my entry. Why? Because spending an hour to implement this is probably going to yield more positive results than the extra few enemy waves I might design instead. I’d already made it easy for myself to work with content by defining enemy waves and dialogs outside the game code with a simple syntax, and now I’m making it work with the enemy definitions as well. I’m not going to make movement patterns moddable, though, because that would be a freaking ton of work >_>

Well, I’m throwing in the towel for LD. Maybe I’ll wrap some stuff up tomorrow so I can at least get it out for the Jam. My problem is that on Friday, I was forced into mowing the lawn after explaining that any time was fine except for this weekend. Then I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning trying to get even a bit done but ended up doing little but working in circles trying to get an idea and later in the night just struggling to stay awake. So I went to sleep for 3 hours, and made painfully little progress on Saturday. I was so tired I decided to just sleep for as long as I was tired and slept from 11 to almost 9. Productivity today skyrocketed, but 14 hours just wasn’t enough to get it all done. I’m so close to being finished, but there’s simply no way for me to squeeze it into 2 hours, especially considering how tired I’m starting to get and how fed up I am with the bizarre bugs I’m getting after making some minor changes to make the enemy templates get read from a moddable external file rather than the hard code. So this is thanks for the motivation to get back working on a game I started a while back and a cruel insult because you stole my sanity yesterday. Oh, how I wish I had just gone to sleep Friday night ;(

My game is almost finished, now that I’m working on a restful night of sleep. It’s got a heavy emphasis on the fact that it’s moddable, and as a result the actual game isn’t terribly long. I expect to get my entry up and available within the next couple hours.

Special thanks goes to LandsharkMeww for helping test the game and taking a look at its data files a bit and giving me a second opinion.

Check it out!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=rate&uid=1540

For the past few months I’ve been slowly working on a sweet game, and I just recently got the graphics engine code working properly. It’s a library for BlitzMax that makes it phenomenally easy to handle ASCII graphics coupled with a specialized paint program for the creation of ASCII “images” to use with the engine.

You can download it for yourself at http://rolep.webs.com/ASCII%20engine.rar

So to make my entry this time, I’m planning on using sfxr for sound effects, Famitracker for music, BlitzMax for programming, and my own engine and paint program for the graphics.

A motivational video for the TIG’ers among us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJFyz73MRcg

20 minutes in and I’ve got a lovely game idea and a single image to help keep me on track.

I have a solid game idea and a great foundation to work with. In a mere 3 hours of work I expect to have everything except for content done. I love my graphics engine, it cuts out so much middle-man engine work that I’ve always redone for every game I make.

It’s going to be a mystery game, by the way. You’re a detective trying to solve the brutal murder of a seemingly sweet and innocent old woman while another rival detective seems to be trying to sabotage your efforts.

It’s discovery because you’re discovering clues and the awesome story I laid out for the game.

And the courtroom, in which the first opening scene of the game is to occur:

To do:

* items and inventory
* dialog interaction with NPCs
* content

After about 4 hours of work and 3 hours of sleep I’ve about finished the introductory scene.

I’m very nearly done with the behind-the-scenes codestuff and have begun working on the actual game.

Through this I’ve decided how the game will be played. Instead of actually working to solve the crime like I was originally thinking, you’re finding the clues in hopes of discovering who killed the old woman and why, and why you end up in prison when the whole thing is over. Essentially, I’m shifting the focus from investigation of the crime to pure discovery of the plot.

In the meantime, another screenshot.

The background technical code is now 100% done. Now I’m working solely on content creation.

The intro and the first level are finished. Behold, in all its ASCII’d glory

Download

My game’s plot is gaining momentum now. I just hope I’ll be able to fit it all into the game within the 48 hours.

You can download the latest released build here.

Populating a scene with NPCs and clues is a very mundane process, so to help keep my mind from falling asleep too quickly I thought I’d post another screenshot.

Still chugging along, trying to fit the whole story into 48 hours