This is the first time I’ve done a game compo, so I’ve no idea how it’s going to turn out

I’ll be using SDL, SDL_image and PortAudio (and C++), and some basic template code I’ve had for a while (window setup, a drawing wrapper, random number generator etc.).  You can see it here: http://www.niallmoody.com/downloads/GameTemplate.zip

Hopefully I’ll manage to do Linux and OSX versions as well as a Windows one of whatever it is that I come up with, but we’ll see how things go…

So I’ve got up, showered, done some morning yoga, had breakfast, done my weekly grocery shopping and now I’m ready to go.

Luckily for me the wall of doom theme was the one theme I’d already been able to come up with a concrete idea for.  It’ll be called ‘Die, you stupid hurdlers!’ and you’ll play the part of a wall who hates hurdlers, and tries to set traps to trip them up so he can crush them (hurdlers obviously run faster than walls can).  It’ll be a bit Tower Defence-ish…

My desk:

(the bear in the corner is an Atari Punk Console I put inside a teddy bear – you twiddle the knobs in his ears to play him.  He probably won’t be getting used for the competition)

I’m going with an ink on paper (recycled, ‘bamboo’ colour) visual style, and I’ve just got a title screen up and running:

I wrote a wee command line app to take the greyscale ink jpegs from my scanner, and convert them into RGBA pngs with the inverse average of the RGB components becoming the alpha channel (i.e. any white spaces in the original image are made transparent).  This way I can just draw the ink images on top of the recyled paper image , and not worry about the (white) paper I did the inking on.

Okay, it’s lunch time.  And lunch time is story time…

You are Wally the wall.  You hate hurdlers.  You have hated hurdlers ever since your girlfriend (Tina the Shopping Trolley) ran off with a handsome, athletic, talented hurdler called Harry.  At the time you were too small to do anything (being little more than a bollard), but now you’re all grown up and determined to take your revenge on all the hurdlers of the world.

By going round to athletics tracks prior to a big race and setting traps, you can trip and crush the stupid handsome, athletic, talented hurdlers beneath your mighty bricks and make them pay.  And maybe you’ll be able to win Tina back…

Also, a 1st screenshot of the game itself.

It’s just the track and the wall (in need of some scaling) at the moment.  I’m not sure what to do about the track showing through the wall – maybe I’ll fill it in with a solid colour?

There are now hurdles in the game!

(and I coloured in the wall too)

The idea is that you get a small number of points before each race to do something that will trip a hurdler up.  To start with, you’ll just be able to move the hurdles so the hurdlers are knocked out of their stride, but hopefully I’ll be able to add traps and things too for later levels.  And each hurdler you crush beneath the wall will give you an extra point for the next level.

I’ve started on the hurdlers now.  Here’s a shot of them getting chased by the wall:

I should probably make them run at different speeds, but that can wait.  Right now I’ve got to get them to trip when they meet a hurdle that’s not in the right place…

Right, all the gameplay’s basically there – now it’s just a matter of filling things out with sounds and traps.  So, here’s an alpha version (Windows only, I’m afraid): http://www.niallmoody.com/downloads/ld14/DieYouStupidHurdlers-alpha1.zip I’m really surprised by how well this thing’s gone so far.  Any comments would be most welcome

Also, what I had for dinner:

(cheese and tomato rice, plus Irn Bru)

So I’ve had a good night’s rest and spent the morning adding sounds to the game.  I recorded them all myself so they’re a bit, um, ‘lo-fi’.  But I reckon that probably goes with the visual style.  I videoed myself while I was making them, so I might try and edit that into a video if I have time.

The new alpha’s at: http://www.niallmoody.com/downloads/ld14/DieYouStupidHurdlers-alpha2.zip I think the only things I’ve added since the last one are the sounds and the background music, but there might be more I’ve forgotten.

Next, traps!

I’ve got the basic mud traps up and running (mud slows the hurdlers down so the wall can catch them), so hopefully I should be able to add the other trap types really quickly now.  A screenshot:

All the traps are in, and now I just need to tidy up various bits and pieces.  Here’s a screenshot of all the traps:

And there’s another alpha build here: http://www.niallmoody.com/downloads/ld14/DieYouStupidHurdlers-alpha3.zip

Okay, here it is:

The (Windows, binary) download link is here.

The source code is here.

Also, you can download the command line program I did to convert RGB jpegs to RGBA pngs here (includes source).

I’m afraid I’m too tired to do Linux and OSX versions, but I do intend to put them up eventually (probably next weekend, considering).

Also, I just realised I forgot to say at the start that I was using libogg and libvorbis for the audiofiles.  Hopefully that won’t be a problem?

Tags: final, screenshot

This past week has been pretty busy for me, so I’ve only just managed to get these up, but here are the Linux and OSX versions of Die, you Stupid Hurdlers!:

Linux (build from source – includes configure script, and MSVC and XCode projects)

OSX

Also a slightly updated Windows version that defaults to more sensible graphic options on startup.

I’m quite pleased with how it all turned out.  It’s not particularly great as a game, but I’m really happy with the style and the wee story, and the fact that I was able to get it finished within 48 hours without having to cut any major corners   The whole experience was a really good one, and I definitely plan to take part in the next one.

Given the comments, I should probably explain a little about the positioning of traps and hurdles.  Basically the main problem is that I didn’t paint the lanes straight, which means that the game will often place traps slightly away from where you’d expect them to be, because it works with straight lines as opposed to my wobbly inking.  I didn’t find this much of a problem myself, but in retrospect what I should have done was draw a wee icon that showed you exactly where your trap was going to end up.  Also, the hurdles can only be moved one ‘step’ to the left or right of their original position.

Some other notes; the game uses OpenGL for the graphics, which means you might find it a bit slow if you’ve got an old graphics card.  There are various things you can do though.  First, make sure anti-aliasing’s not turned on (it doesn’t do anything in this game anyway, since it’s all just bitmaps).  The versions I posted above have it off by default, but if you downloaded the original Windows version it will be on.  To switch it off, open the GameTemplate.conf file (see the latest readme), and change a 6 to a 0.  If that doesn’t work, try reducing the resolution, with the w and h parameters in the GameTemplate.conf file.  Finally, there is a buggy 2D renderer you could switch on, but in my experience it’s quite a bit slower than the OpenGL renderer because it does everything on the CPU (to switch it on, set s to 1 in GameTemplate.conf).  To be honest I’d be surprised if you need to go that far though – the game runs just fine as is on my old G4 macmini.

Finally, here’s a shot of most of the graphics for the game, in their original form (warning: SPOILERS 😉 ) :

This’ll be my second LD.  Hopefully it’ll go as well as the last one.

I’ll be doing my coding in C++, and using SDL and SDL_image, as well as PortAudio and libvorbisfile for the audio.  The whole thing will be based on the same game template code I used for the last one (you can see it here).

…and not particularly happy with the theme.  I think I’ve got an idea, but it’s a bit complicated and it might be a pain to implement.  We’ll see…

My very untidy desk:

A better one than before, anyway.  It’s going to be a puzzle platformer type thing, called Caverns of Light.  The story is that for some reason, there’s no light anymore on the surface of the planet, but there is below it, in the aforementioned caverns.  So you have to go down and bring the light back up from these caverns, by setting up a series of right-angled prism thingies.  Hopefully it won’t be too complicated to implement.  I’ll aim to get the basic mechanics up and running by the end of today, and if that works out, I can set about adding enemies and level editing tomorrow.

First step I think is to create a level editor though – I’ll see if I can get that done by lunch.

Here’s an initial mockup of the tile graphics:

The background’s a placeholder, but other than that everything’s ready (well, the quit button anyway, the other two don’t do anything just yet).

It’s still missing the ability to save and move around or zoom the level out, but it’s basically there.  Now I’m going to empty the washing machine and have lunch.

I’ve spent a bit too much time fiddling with the level editor and changing the cave background tile, but here’s what the player character’s going to look like:

Hopefully now I can get on with the business of coding the game itself…

The collision detection’s pretty ropey, but you can now zoom your little robot about the place like a proper platformer.  Next step is to get the screen to scroll as you move about the level.  Then it’s onto the beams of light themselves…

I made myself a mozzarella pizza for dinner.  It looks the part, but I think I need to work on my sauce-making skills – there was definitely something missing…

Game-wise, I’ve got the scrolling mostly working except for a weird offset between the player character and the rest of the level that’s suddenly appeared.  I’m going to try and fix that now, then hopefully I can get the light beams up and running before bed.