This is a post about development of LD29 entry Greed for Gems, you can play and rate it HERE.
This time around I’ve decided to make a screenshot every 2 hours of the compo that will picture the most significant thing I’ve done during that time. Sometimes I’ve made 2 or 3 and sometimes I’ve skipped it altogether because I was too busy trying to complete the game in time or the progress of the past 2 hours was non-detectable on screen (recording of sounds and implementing respawn and reload mechanics for example).
Anyway, those shots were a great motivation for me during the compo and a nice nostalgic inspiration after it, so I’ve finally got around to publishing some of them with comments, maybe they can inspire someone too. In some sense you can see it as a timelapse (with a step of 2 hours). Here are the most important:
Day 1, 2 hours in:
Global map generator is in and functioning, it’s quite similar to the final version actually, just a few probability variables were changed. Rectangles are rooms and number is its ‘depth’ – distance from the entrance. Every depth-14 room has a megagem in it.
Day 1, 6 hours in:
After another 2 hours the room generator was in but there’s not much to see so no screenshot for you, another 2 hours though, and rooms are actually linked to the global map, placed in world and you can switch between them (Can you find shown place on the map?). In some sense that’s a key point of development for me, at least it has no loose ends.
Day 1, 10 hours in:
At 8 hours I had working platformer mechanics (this time I’ve decided to use a publicly available code instead of spending half a day on writing my own, but in the end I’ve rewritten quite a lot of it because it was not suiting me too well and it was too much integrated with its project and I had to reintegrate it to my needs). Nothing to see in static there too, so here’s a picture from 10 hours in:
That’s one of the pictures that I like the most visually, and it probably tells that I’ve made a wrong turn somewhere later (probably shouldn’t have made tiles so dark, they were cool a bit lighter). You can see that shadows and light are added, by the placement of the light sources I guess that you could already place them at your position in game then, but I’m not sure. It’s definitely a landmark, you basically have a core gameplay here – exploration of a dark cave. Maybe I can even call it a minimum viable product.
Day 1, 14 hours in:
Another 4 hours (it seems that landmarks happen every 4 hours and I can just skip every other screenshot I have) and I have working ladder and torch placement mechanics. At last you can go not only down, but up too! Colors are very different from what you’ve seen before, at this point I’ve started doing at least SOME graphics (actually, the ground tile you see here made it to the ‘release’ so it’s kinda final). It’s also almost the end of day 1, I’ve worked only 1 hour after that and added gems to the game but there’s not much to look at (and I’ve posted day 1 results with a picture before).
Day 2, 4 hours in:
Skipping 2 hours image again, the second day, 4 hours in and I have some GUI, inventory and bats!
Bats are the first – and since I had no time to create more – the only enemies in the game. I’m satisfied with their AI, I think they actually move quite bat-like. Well, most of the times. (If you can’t notice them, they are brown rectangles)
Day 2, 7 hours in:
More graphics added, most new things you see are almost final. Also that’s almost every light source in the game on one screen.
Day 2, 10 hours in:
Main character is drawn, added megagems to the game so it at last has SOME goal. Hid them in the farthest rooms of the cave. I guess I could have submitted the game right then, it was, in a way, complete the first time during those 2 days. It still had no sounds at all, no respawn mechanics, no 2 players mode, probably few nasty bugs and some graphics were not final (you can see the old ladder that was changed before ‘release’).
Day 2, 18 hours in:
So, it’s 1 hour before compo ends, and I’ve skipped the whole 8 hours. I have some images but there’s not much to show, because first I’ve spent 3-4 hours on creating sounds, around 2 hours on adding second player to the game and implementing death and respawn mechanics and 2-3 more hours just polishing what I could with very little overall visual effect. So here is a final screenshot for you, made around half an hour before the compo ends. I was working until the very end and submitted the game around 10 minutes before the deadline and was afraid I won’t make it in time as the site was too much laggy at that time (didn’t know there was a submission hour as I always was finishing earlier and was already asleep at that point before).
Well, that was one long post, hope it at least amused you with the images. If you’re interested, please play and rate Greed for Gems and leave your comments!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$21372
Most notable changes are:
- improved scout pathfinding (they are still bad, and they're supposed to be)
- doesn't pause in background
- you can play with mouse only