Compo rules says: "Compo games are created entirely from scratch by one person, in just 48 hours."
But they also say: "You’re free to start with any base-code you may have."
How do these two fit together?
This will be my first LD. I've been meaning to have a go at this for years, but never quite got around to it before.
Recently I started playing with the Godot engine, and so far have found it pretty quick to learn and easy to use. This gave me the push I needed to decide to enter this time.
Whether I'll finish anything, who knows? But I'm certainly going to try!
My family know that I will be busy all weekend, and I've been tinkering with Godot trying to de-risk as much as I can so that I can hopefully spend most of the time doing productive stuff rather than trying to figure out how things are supposed to work!
Looking forward to the start...
I'm seriously considering it...
Relying on my subconscious coming up with something AMAZING whilst I sleep. See you all tomorrow, when I'll start writing ... something.
Greetings from the UK! Slept on the theme, but didn't come up with anything super thematic. Have got an idea though which loosely fits the theme in that you have limited visibility (you see 'nothing' of the level), and you have 'nothing' as a useable item. Anyway, two hours and one coffee in, and have done very little other than writing ideas and spending too much time looking for tilesets.
Think I'm going to make use of these - 6000 32x32 dungeon themed tiles: https://opengameart.org/content/dungeon-crawl-32x32-tiles https://opengameart.org/content/dungeon-crawl-32x32-tiles-supplemental
Nothing much yet, but hey, IT HAS BEGUN!
Coffee number two, and then time for some Human League.
And you can't even see them moving. :-(
Time for coffee 3 and, I think, Brian Eno - Apollo Atmospheres & Soundtracks. Next - monster time! (And they'd better be a lot faster than pushable blocks or there's no way I'm going to get finished.)
So, my first attempt to move monsters around using physics is a little wonky. Here is a monster walking towards the player. Sort of.
Next up: - Fix the wonky physics. - Coffee number 4 (or is it 5?). Maybe the last one for today. Maybe. - Mike Oldfield - Ommadawn
Ok, so after FAR TOO MUCH TIME fiddling with Physics, the monster movement is now less bad. They at least now no longer oscillate themselves off to infinity. Not that happy with it, but it'll have to do for now as I have a zillion other things to do if I'm going to get all the mechanics in there today. Still cautiously optimistic, though I've had too many things taking far too long so far.
Next up: - Lighting (not just visuals, but a vital part of the (intended) gameplay) - Simple Minds (Best of) - Find something to drink that isn't coffee and isn't alcohol (yet).
So after hours of frustration with trying to get lighting to behave the way I want, I spent a bit of time on dynamic torches. This went much better.
Next: - A glass of wine - Simple Minds (was going to listen to them hours ago, but didn't quite happen) - Monsters reacting to light. - Maybe bedtime?
Monster movement is still totally weird, but this is starting to come together at last, and become slightly game like. The monsters are keen to be close to you, but they fear the light.
And now I am very definitely going to bed. Still a ton to do tomorrow, but I'm reasonably happy with where I've got to.
Not part of the original concept, but now there are pickups. I really need to stop adding mechanics soon...
No real levels yet, no win or lose conditions, lighting not working how I want (and this is key to gameplay), monster movement still wonky, and no sounds.
On the plus side, I am pretty happy with what I have managed to get done so far. Due to work and other commitments, I'm going to have very little time to do anything other than submit tomorrow.
14 hours yesterday. 7 so far today. I'm maybe 75% done, so probably doable, but I guess it is going to be a late evening tonight.
Time for more coffee, and music from BabyBird.
So, after another 9 hours: - Level changing works - Can now win/lose (die/progress). - A couple of 'real' levels (though pretty minimal, sadly). - Lighting behaving better - though still not correct. - A gui of sorts.
Really wanted to get some more (substantial) levels done, and wanted to get sound in there as well, but I'm pretty much out of time now.
Tomorrow will be busy at work :-(, and I have evening commitments, so I probably won't be able to do much more than package and upload.
Anyway, it is game-like, and I'm pretty pleased with what I've managed. 2:40 AM now, and after 17 hours today, I'm stopping.
https://spacewumpus.itch.io/shadowy-monster-land
https://spacewumpus.itch.io/shadowy-monster-land
And now I need to rush off...
Please help me get off the danger page by rating my game - the monsters thank you!
As a mini incentive - once I am off the danger page, I'll post a timelapse video of development!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/shadowy-monster-land
(HTML5, or Windows download)
I used Chronolapse to time-lapse record the development of my game 'Shadowy Monster Land' (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/shadowy-monster-land - Please rate!).
Here (https://gofile.io/?c=RNPotJ) is the resulting video - 2.5 days of development squashed into 4 minutes! One screenshot every 30 seconds, then a couple of long periods where nothing happened deleted.
And here (because why not - let's call it art) is the average of all frames:
