Land generation seems to work fine for now…

2 and a half hours until I need to walk my dog. Doing land features… Say hi to Omi!

Tags: dog, omi, pet, progress

Here is a video of the algorithm in action with random seeds at the end. Enjoy!

Tags: algorithm, generation, land, showoff, video

Time for food! After I’ll make the player able to move in the world and post a video here. Until here is a photo of one of my origami thingies:

Tags: foodphoto, origami

This is the last video, all programming work is done. I am taking a little nap and continue with the gfx. Enjoy!

Tags: video

OK, I have added all the functionality to the engine except the HUD and possibly a game menu. All tiles and sprites are done. Here is some proof:

*No I  didn’t wanted seamless texture!

See the previous post for a video of the features! 😉

Next is the HUD, game menu, and maybe some sfx.

Tags: done, gfx, screenshot

This is my first ever LudumDare out of 4 when I managed to finish my game in time. No sounds though but everything is working fine and every feature I wanted in the game is implemented. So I consider this a big success!

So what are you waiting for? Go diamond hunting on staticvoidgames.com! Just click ‘Applet’ on the left to play Gems of the Evolving Land in your browser.

Here is the entry page please rate!

Tags: done, finish, success

I always surprised when I see the mess developed after a 48 hour compo. Cleaning Mode initiated!

WARNING: Shocking photos below!

The good thing is there are still some beer in my frigde! 😀

Did you managed to keep your place clean during the compo?

Tags: after, mess

I have uploaded a walkthrough of my game Gems of the Evolving Land for thoes lazy people who don’t want to play a game.

Enjoy and comment all those mistakes in my commentation!

Really you should play it yourselfs here: GotEL on  http://staticvoidgames.com/

Tags: Gems of the Evolving Land, GotEL, video, walkthrough

I have organised my channel on youtube so you can find everything easier – I hope. Check it out!

Also I have started a review series where I try to review 5 games a day. Critics are based on my personal experience during gameplay and can be either bad or good! I review everyones game who rated mine and I also read the developement journal and rate. However I’ll not tell you how I rated and can be different from what you think by watching the video as rates can be changed and my opinion too.

Here is the first video, don’t forget to subscribe for more!

Rate my entry here!

Tags: review, video, youtube

This is the first time I really finished a game for the compo and I am myself satisfied with it, so it deservs a postmortem!

Story time…

I had nothing what I wanted to learn on this LD so I decided I will actually try to do a game this time. I chose to use Processing what I didn’t used after I learned it on the Octobers LD, so I refreshed my knowledge  in it and went shopping. Bought a lot of stuff and now the amount is proven to be enought. I didn’t slept before the compo because I had real life in the way and the theme anouncement is at 3 am here. I managed to be up by wanting to beat Notch so badly – someone posted a gif where Notch is dancing…

After the theme anounce I had now idea what to do because I thought everyone will make pokemons and misinterpret evolution with upgrading, so I rejected all this kind of stuff that came in to my mind. After some time I had an idea to make an evolving land – because land can evolve – and I always wanted to make a tilebased game. So I started to partition the window into tiles – used OOP design from the begining. First I tought I made an L-system what will evolve but I didn’t made one before and didn’t know this is a slow algorithm. So after drawing some fractals with it I finally decided to sleep a little.

After waking up – about 3 or 4 hours later – the idea of using a Game of Life algorithm imadiately banged me in the head. So I started implementing it and played a little with the  random seed and the rules. Some times later I found out I can make mountains and lakes evolving with it. This was so cool but I wanted forests there too. At first I made properties for the tiles that can hold resourcesand the forests but shortly I realized forest must be seperated because it would be bad if I can’t had forests and resources at the same time on a tile. Then fiddled some with it and put up a video.

Now from this point everything was clear for me. I started to implement a zoom function – which is the textured play view now – but I have ran into a very nasty bug which took me 3 hours to fix. After I added the rest of the functionality – like blowing up things – and made another video quckly and went to sleep.

The last day –  overslept a little – I made some gfx – with non seamless tiles – and posted a pic. After I saw my game – this was the first time I considered it a game, beore it was a simple algorithm – with textures I redesigned the code to be more modular so I can add other screens. Made the gfx for the HUD and the menu. And it’s done – about 2 minutes before the end of the competition!

What did I do right?

Closed all social sites and stuff except the #ld48 hashtag and mentions on twitter and the ludumdare channel on irc. I checked others once saturday and once sunday but didn’t red anything just what was sent for me personally and I was interested in. Also I didn’t wached any videos on YouTube just check once everyday and added new videos to the watchlater list.

Found a way to keep myself in a feel of wanting to make a great game before the compo. Mainly I wanted to beat Notch but I saw later on twitter he isn’t very motivated – that time my game was enought motivation for me though.

For every idea in my mind which took me a minute to think through I sad “Too complicated get the f*** out of my head!”. This way I managed to keep it simple and get the best ideas first almost always.

I managed to drink just as much beer so my mind is creative but at the same time I can constantly concentrate and work.

…and what not?

I was stuck with the L-system too much because I was tired and couldn’t get my mind to move on and because I like fractals too much. 😀

I messed an LD up with a nasty bug and now I wasn’t able to think through what can be the cause. And basically the code is run by magic still. I don’t know why that part of the code is working. I was so desperate I just moved around code mindlessly into ifs/elses and out and added +1s or -1s randomly to everythin, rewritten the whole thing a few times and voila! Magic! XD

After compo stuff

I made a walkthrough video of my game.

I started a review series where I try to review 5 games a day – battling with my bad english – selected mostly from those games which creators rated mine. Here is the list:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDA5CBD08ABBD9DA8&feature=view_all

Be sure to like the videos and rate my game to get into the reviews. Also subscribe so you get notified of the new episodes, and share so others can watch too!

Tags: GotEL, postmortem, review, story, video, walkthrough

We are half way through the rating phase and so far – from the comments – I think the idea is good enought to build on. For this I need a graphician and a musician – and I take the part of the programmer. The application is simple. Send me concept art and some music ideas. Full details are below…

Basically the game mechanics will be the same as now but there will be improvements and I try to describe them below.

Graphic:

• seamless tiles needed
• forests will be animated to simulate wind (not real time wind but maybe there will be several animations to play)
• I consider having transitions between the different land types within the tile, so transition is not a separate tile (but this is a tremendous amount of work so we will see)
• character and vehicle will be animated  (vehicle will be a jeep)
• there will be 2 guy and a girl character (at least and maybe they will have different special abilities)
• I don’t want to go with 3D rendered gfx

Music & sfx:

• absolutely NO Dubstep!!!
• I plan to have different genres of music in the game (I don’t know yet if it will be mission or character specific)
• mood will be the most important aspect
• yes, there will be a lot of sfx and I don’t want to go with simple bleeps and blops

What do you need to do?

Just send me concept arts, sketches, mock ups and samples of your music ideas – or anything that shows enought – so I can decide who I want to work with. You can send any amount and please do. We will go with the best one, thats all. My contacts are in my about box here in the blog. Oh, and I don’t care about your CV, I want tangible things only.

What do you need to consider before sending application

I need exactly 1 graphic and 1 music mage in the team. Ones who willing to work on the project continuously. So if working together not going well or if it turns out that someone can’t make the quality stuff the project needs then he will be replaced with someone else – I hope this thing never happens though. We will discuss business and other things in private.

To start this project I thought we can go with the October Challange. I can’t work on this before the 1st of October but keep sending stuff to me until then. Naturally we will not finish this game in 1 month – so count on that too!

I hope I was clear. Thanks for the interest!

Tags: artist, GotEL, graphic, music, needed

Hi LD25!

This time I don’t have any new hardware to learn and I’m not really interested in HTML5 games – right now – and I don’t want to mess with Angie – it would produce a lot of bugs and code mess. However in the last weeks I used Processing a lot so that will be my tool for sure.

code: Processing
gfx: Gimp2
sound: sfxr, musagi – never done any sound before though…

I’ll reuse code from my previous game GotEL if needed – not likely though. You can find it at StaticVoidGames.com.

I’ll certainly try to use my NES Framework  – for Processing – made during the CharityGameJam. Sadly no game was made based on it then but it developed more since so if you want then feel free to download the latest version here: YouTube video of it. Read the description for updates!

I wish lots of fun and plentygood experiences for the weekend!

p.s: My internet connection having problems in the past weeks and my PC does wierd things so I’ll may not be overly social during this jam.

Tags: framework, GIMP, GotEL, in, musagi, nes, processing, sfxr

I made a special maze generation algorythm to coop with my first attempt in AI… and I slept all day… BUT I’m on it now!

Tags: maze, progress, screenshot

The weekend wasn’t on my side sadly but I’m here and aiming for the jam.

In the last hour I have made a tree with the pathways in the maze – levels are procedural ofcourse. Here is a picture of the tree visualized.

Now, on to my first ever legit AI in my life: a simple DFS.

Tags: AI, dfs, maze, procedural, screenshot, tree

So I let my AI roam my procedurally generated maze. Check the video!

Tags: AI, maze, video

I did a little update video on the new things.

I have a working UI and you can select from 2 items to place in the maze – ofcourse you have to buy them first. The Traps are stationery, the monsters are simply randomly traversing the paths.

Next thing is to make them interact with each other. This is the last hard part in the project – I hope I’ll have time for some polishing too.

Tags: monsters, traps, UI, video

I’m silent lately but ofcourse I’m IN! Also this will be April’s #1GAM entry.

When I find some time you will get the missing works on YouTube, Twitter and my site. Stay tuned!
Until then check out my works. You missed 8 games and the tutorials with them not to mention free code…  Enjoy! 😉

Gear for this LD is Processing & Gimp as mostly was – still not promising sounds. No need for desktop photo as it’s about the same as last time and there is only an – irrelevant –  console development corner has been added.

See you in the compo!

Tags: GIMP, processing

I have abandoned gamedev for a long time but I’m IN for this LD for sure!

I’ve been working with C++ and SDL 2.0 for the last month and I need to finish my C++ & OpenGL demo engine so I think I’ll use Processing as usual for a change.

BTW. This is what I’m working on:

ePic Character Image and Token Generator

Check out on Facebook! We always appreciate some encouraging comments and ideas.

Tags: epic, in, processing

So my desk is ready for the challenge. I’m not really though – need some sleep.

Demos to watch (at least) for some creativity:

ASD – Happiness Is Around The Bend
CNCD & Fairlight – Ceasefire
Still – Square
ASD – The butterfly effect
Haujobb – You Should

(insert any of your favorites here… )

Tags: desk, motivation

Hey! It’s always nice to wake up to Ludum Dare. Good day!

So my plan is to eat and walk my dog. The game will be a 2D puzzle platformer – well more like a jumping puzzle platformer. It will need your full attention to play for sure.

I don’t say more but will post pictures while making progress.

Also for your daily inspiration:
Farbrausch & Neuro – Masagin
Outracks – Struct
Fairlight & Alcatraz – Uncovering static
United Force – Crystal Tension

Tags: 2D, awake, platformar, puzzle