I’m clearing my schedule, and trying to lay the ground-work to enter on Friday! I have no clue what I’ll be working in, since I do work with Java on Android, normally… If anybody can suggest something, I’m all ears. Otherwise, I’m thinking I’ll spend the week familiarizing myself with a pre-made framework, like pygame. In short, my tools:
I’m excited!
I’m hoping to complete the world’s first mission-based, side-scrolling real estate development sim! You play as the Demon Princess. Rather than ascending to the throne of hell, however, your life-long ambition is to run a successful real estate development company. You’ve just run away from Hell, and it’s your first day on the job. Now clear out the spider infestations from those basements! But wait… it’s dangerous to go alone. Take this…!
I’m learning pygame on the fly for this one. Uh… hope I’m not dumb for choosing something I have no experience with… I’ve already got some level music, at least.
Alright, it turns out that I’m a lot bigger newb than I expected. Time to scale things back! No more Demon Princess Real Estate Warriors. I’m going for something simpler, with no mode changes or anything. Maybe I can get something more complex together in the future. In the meantime, I still have high hopes for this concept!
Well, I made quite a bit of progress. I hope to have my engine totally finished by tomorrow night, so I can spend all of Sunday mapping everything out and getting the art together. It was unwise to choose to work in a language that I didn’t know, but things are coming together, so it’s all cool 
I can’t wait to get up early tomorrow to make the oden I got from the Japanese grocery store! Then I’m going to implement some collision detection, the mouse physics, and start breaking my code up into objects and getting it data-driven. I really want to get some cool stuff happening with blend effects, too.
In the meantime, sleep! Night all.
I’m making Oden!
Time to work my ASS off! I need this engine SPARKLING by tonight.
I’ve got animation, much of my engine together, and a few map screens already! I have a few more gameplay mechanics to implement, and collision, and a TON more map screens to make, but I’m entering the home stretch. This is awesome! I’m going to FINISH!
Lessons for the future:
Here we go! Good luck to everybody still working!
Finally implemented a title screen! I named the game Spark, after the murderous source of light you acquire. Honestly, I’m starting to feel… proud!? Still so much to do though! I have music, one sound effect, a few map screens, and I’m mostly satisfied with movement. All I need now are enemies, MORE maps, and maybe a few tweaks to the engine. Let’s do this!
Woo! After busting serious ass, I’ve “finished” and turned in my game! If you want to give it a play, you’ll need python and pygame installed. Here’s a link to the source:
http://brianschulman.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Spark.zip
I’m proud to have finished, even if I missed the compo deadline. There were some issues there, but now I’ll know to prepare better beforehand. Speaking of, I’ve totally got a post-mortem to write up. Long story short, though, I learned a good bit about work in Python and game development in general. This is a huge first for me, and I’m psyched to move on to the next stage! LD 21!!
I’ll get a video of the game up soon, to save people the effort of grabbing Python and pygame. In the meantime, I’m dead tired, totally full on an awesome burrito, and satisfied. Night all!
I’ll be doing an Android app, which, while limiting my audience, will be helpful in making me a stronger coder. I can’t wait to hear the theme!
Tools:
Photoshop CS3
FruityLoops 7
Eclipse
This radical java game framework for Android, which I will share, shortly
Crap, I took a nap! Anyway, back up, and I hope to get my movement system and some enemy behavior/physics in place. I’m laying the groundwork for a properly flexible map system, with the ability to grab data from external storage, but it’s still early, and I’m more screwing with basic mechanics than anything else. If I can make good progress on the movement system, I’ll take another nap, get up, and start making levels throughout the day.
My android app is coming along! Just got enemies animating. Need to finish plugging in assets, implement two or three more large features, then generate some levels and screens! Damn, I’m coming down to the wire again, but my entry will be a lot more sophisticated this time. This one has been fun!
Tags: android, escape, final escape, java, LD21, ludum dare 21
I made it in on time, without the upload issues, and actually had a decently sophisticated engine by the end of things! Yet another awesome LD experience.
Some though, post-mortem:
Have more of my engine assembled beforehand – avoid wasting TONS of time on collision and movement stuff, and also avoid the spaghetti code I ended up writing.
Place a premium on powerful/accessible level creation – I meant to implement external storage, for maps/screens, but I didn’t quite get there.
Make sure to get the core mechanics assembled/playable from the earliest, as opposed to working mostly on tech until… say, mid-day Saturday.
This time around, I think I’m going to take it easy on the graphics and sound. Instead, I’ll focus on pure story. My plan: a multiplayer, online puzzle game. I’ll be working in PHP, with a bit of JS front-end. Maybe some html and css as a template. I have some interesting ideas for something atmospheric, and connected to the theme Hope to start serving things up to outside users in short order!