Well, turns out, that I have to make a game in 8 hours! Awesome!

Friday, I went to my school dance and had ablast, I regret nothing. Saturday, I spent a day with my family for my birthday, no regrets.

So now I’m going to be making a dice game in under 8 hours with the minimalist theme. Sounds lovely.

Wish me luck!

HEY!

HEY LISTEN!

As you can probably tell by the annoying fairy voice, I’m participating in Ludum Dare 30! I enjoy thinking out of teh box, and for this Ludum Dare I’m going to be making a sort of text adventure using the program Quest as my tool.
This obviously means that there won’t really be any graphics or sounds. I’m neither an artist or a musician, but instead a writer. Well, I look forward to seeing what you all (and myself as well) can produce! Until next time,

-NRathbone

In all my excitement last night about finally committing to this, I forgot to post my obligatory desk picture!

If you can’t tell, I’m in a dorm room at college. We’ll see how the workload adjusts to this brave new world of Ludum Dare. Cheers!

-NRathbone

Howdy! I am continuing work on my text adventure game. I’ve got a few nifty areas so far, but I needed a break. So, I decided to see if I could create a title screen for my new game…

A Broken Planet!

Yes, that’s right. A planet. A world. Singular. No “s” at the end. But hey, I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve, like —

Oh, trying to trick me again, huh? Well, it won’t work!

Cheers!

-NRathbone

Hello chaps!
It’s been about 12 hours since I started this endeavor. Which means that there are only 24 hours left in this entire competition! How exciting! I’ve done a lot more work on the text adventure “A Broken Planet”, but I might need some feedback. In the screenshot below,

It seems that I might’ve found a nice style for this game. However, I’m not sure if the text is too unreadable. If it is, what might I do to change it? If not, are there any suggestions as to make it even better? Reply now!

In any case, development has gone really well so far. Quest has been a nice tool to work with, and after this competition I’ll be sure to continue making this game better! I’ve got a simple story going on as well. I’m not sure how well my ideas can be realized yet, but I’ll be sure to try my hardest! Thanks for reading!

Cheers!
-NRathbone

I’m tired. I’ve been up for over sixteen hours, and I’m gonna have to start late tomorrow, leaving me only about eight or nine hours to actually finish the game, unless I go for the Jam instead. It’s been a really fun experience, especially getting my roommate to playtest my game for me. In no particular order, here are some of my notes and his comments:

– Maybe add an inspect command.
– Add both “unlock door” and “enter code” in one area.
– “Disturbingly lonesome.”
– Needs more interactivity.
– Too many overused cliches.
– “Why can’t I turn.”
– “Why can’t I flip the table.”
– Some descriptions are too wordy.

You could be saying these things and many more once I release my game eventually,
A BROKEN PLANET!

Sorry, no screens this time. I’m too tired to get out the snipping tool again.
Goodnight for now,
NRathbone

The text adventure has been “completed!” But, wait! What’s with the quotes? Well, I’ll tell you, helpful voice!

The game isn’t exactly “complete” in that I don’t think I’ll ever stop working on it. I finished it for the compo, yes, but I probably could’ve added more had I not been tired from not doing anything productive other than this. But, without further ado, here’s my new game (my first actual video game!) A BROKEN PLANET!

I’ll do a postmortem entry once I sleep and get college work done. It’s been a really fun weekend making this thing! Let me know about any game breaking bugs, too. I need to know that 😛

Cheers!

-NRathbone

Hello gents! I made a game this weekend, and it was glorious. Specifically, I made a little text adventure about a man on a spaceship. Here’s how I did it:

Step One: The Preparation

I actually had no intention of participating in this Ludum Dare, truth be told. I technically didn’t even know it was going on until two days before it started, but whatever. I made an “I’m In!” post, detailing my tool I would use, a text adventure designer called Quest. I told people that I was making a game to keep myself accountable, and on the day of the competition I made sure to have enough rest, make sure my tools worked, and then the theme was announced. Connected Worlds. I didn’t have any ideas at 9:00 P.M., and my roommates were watching The Princess Bride and Clue that night (both of which I do not regret watching), so I decided to sleep on it. I woke up and started work about 13 hours in, ready to begin coding.

Step Two: The Brainstorm

After taking a shower, I began to think of ways I could use Connected Worlds to make a game. Immediately, my mind went to sci-fi themes. I began concocting a story about a guy on a spaceship looking at a planet. “Okay,” I thought to myself, “lets run with that. Why is the man on a spaceship? Why is the spaceship hovering above a planet?” I decided that the spaceship could’ve been for the last remnant of humanity. The man had been on the spaceship either as an engineer or a passenger himself. Yet, he was locked in an observatory floating above a barren planet. The spaceship was above the planet so to be close enough to actually have humans ferried to it to be rescued. Obviously, something must have happened as it seems he was the only human there.

“Okay, so I have a basic premise, how will that fit with the theme?” I needed a way to implement the “Connected” in “Connected Worlds”. I’m not exactly sure why, but at the time I couldn’t get the picture of a gyroscope out of my head. So, why not use that to go to other places? I added a gyroscope, some string to wind it up, and more background and flavor text to the single room the man was in, now I just needed the mechanic.

Step Three: The Undertaking

I decided that, for this simple game, I wouldn’t need that much gyroscopic logic. I added a Use function that basically said, “If the player and the gyroscope are in the same room (either by inventory otherwise), add both the string and the gyroscope to the inventory. Then, if the player is in the observatory, move him to the research lab.” It was simple, and it could only be used one-way for now, but it was good. So, I needed a research lab to get this party going. I created another room, gave it flavor text and research equipment, and added a journal of research notes the player could interact with. I figured the gyroscope mechanic could work by shifting the player between different sets of related memories, thus he was connected to this world he was floating above. It never explicitly states that the player went to the planet below, but I think it might be able to be inferred…? Maybe.

Anyway, I had the basic mechanic down, and I had a new place for the player to explore. I created a hallway connected to the lab, a greenhouse, and the lobby, which was locked down with a keypad. The player could explore the greenhouse, which was filled with dead plants (which I later added in that you could eat, because reasons.) and had a bulletin board by the door with notes, one of which was a keycode. Boom! First puzzle down! I was on a roll. By this time, it was about 6 hours into my actual work, most of which involved writing flavor text to everything. I enjoy that. I added the correct code to the keypad, and went to work creating the lobby.

Step Four: The Fatigue

I have to admit, I was getting pretty fatigued though. There was so much stuff that could potentially be interacted with it overwhelmed me. Thus, I didn’t add many things in the lobby, not at first anyway. The only thing you could actually interact with was an id card on the desk, which triggered a set of flashbacks designed to blatantly tell the player the horrible things he had done. I’m not very subtle, which my roommate pointed out to me while playtesting. Everything important to the player had interaction text along the lines of “This looks vaguely familiar to you, but you can’t quite place it.” So basically most things the player could interact with had that flavor text. I contemplated ending the game right there at the lobby, polishing it up on Day Two and submitting it, but I decided against it. I needed sleep to clear my head from all the work I had done.

Day One Progress:
Five rooms, 18 interactable objects. I’m not sure how many words I wrote. That would be a nice feature, actually.

Step Five: The Finish Line

It had been nearly 36 hours since the competition started, and I went to church that morning. I got back with only about 8 hours to actually do anything. I began adding a few more rooms to the game, specifically a barrack for the scientists in the lab, a bathroom for said scientists, an airlock next to the observatory, and a bridge that would later be the end of the game. I changed most of the flavor text based on my playtester’s decisions to eat dead plants and break everything, as well as his premise of my blatant familiarity complex. Things were looking good, but I as suffering from more fatigue. I had just “finished” everything up to the bridge at about 4 hours left when I decided that I needed a break. I quickly coded in an ending at the bridge (“Does this smell like chloroform to you?”) giving off the impression that the protagonist was not alone on that ship, and played the game some more to check that there were no obvious grammatical or game-breaking errors. In the end, I had a lot of fun making this game. Thanks for reading this, folks!

Final Count:
Nine rooms, 26 interactable objects, six objects you can take with you, an entity in both the bathroom and the bridge, and two endings. Stay away from dead plants, folks.

So, what exactly went right?