So I’m planning on entering LD for the first time. I’ve wanted to do this for a while, but awkward times (for those of us in New Zealand) have put a dampener on the last few. Not this time though!

I’m going to use C++ & OpenSceneGraph, and probably openAL for sound. My previous games were developed in VisualBasic & DirectX, so things may be a little interesting. Experience wise, I’m studying my final year of Engineering, and have been programming for ages. I rarely manage to finish anything I start, but with any luck I’ll contain feature creep enough to write something playable during the competition. LD11 here we come.

To add to the conglomeration of photos, here’s my workspace for the moment.

Tags: day1, journal

and kicking. It also runs.

I’ve decided upon a type of who-dunnit-mystery-game (minimal clues), though I’ve yet to pin down the details. I’m going for a very minimalist art style (obviously), but also a fairly minimalistic puzzle style gameplay. More updates as I figure things out.

Anyhow, here’s what’s on screen after hour 5.

Tags: day1, game, journal

After being otherwise occupied for several hours and eating tea, it was good to get back to work on the whodunnit. In the last few hours I’ve not written any code, nor drawn any art, but I have produced a prodigal amount of waste paper. The end result is that the algorithms which drive the scenarios (it’s dynamically generated each time) seem to be working – at least on paper.

The camera’s gone walkabouts, so pictures of the mess will be up later. Tomorrow is implementing everything, but for now I’m off to bed.

Tags: day1, journal

A late lunch on day 2 (Sunday), we picked up pizza to maximize coding time.
Triorph on the bottom left, I’m on the right.

Tags: day2, food

I was planning on posting this 2 hours ago, but it took a little longer than I expected to get it working. This is the 2 hallways and parlour, generated differently each time.  A number of rooms branch off the hallways (not visible here), in one of which the murder takes place.

I’m devoting the next few hours to implementing the timeline – sorting out who goes where, when.

Tags: day2, journal

The house is now generated, both graphically and topologically (so characters no longer teleport between rooms on opposite sides of the house).

One worry I have is that these short ‘whodunnits’ are going to prove too difficult or unintuitive for most people to solve. I guess it’s a very specific target audience.

Tags: day2, journal

Yay!

After many, many, many hours, the murder generator is now working. It will generate, consistent with the house, a mystery for you to solve. I’ve now got 2 hours to write an interface for it, and until that happens (or doesn’t, depending on how well things go), here’s a screenshot of the console.

Exciting! It shows where each person was over time, and then an output of the logic used to solve the murder. Note that it generates this differently each time (aren’t I proud).

Oh and a footnote. It seems to have developed memory issues, and crashes nearly 50% of the startups. At this stage, this is something people will have to live with :/

Tags: day3, journal

This is a procedurally generated whodunnit. Minimal clues, minimal interaction, and a very minimal appearance.

A crime has been committed in Lord Fletcher’s manor. Someone has been murdered.

Upon arriving at the scene, you are told who is deceased, where their body was found, and what they were murdered with. You must interview the residents, trace their movements, and ascertain the identity of the killer.

The murderer, being unlikely to confess, will fabricate lies. The innocent residents, however, will tell the truth. By careful deduction and investigation, you will slowly build up a picture of the crime, and catch the guilty party.

Pretty screenshot.

Playable Version : Ubuntu Binary + Source (rar, 1.8mb)

Windows Port : Windows Binary (zip, 2.5mb)

It may crash on startup, so keep trying until it runs :/. Under linux, you’ll need OpenSceneGraph-1.2.2 to compile it (apt-get libopenscenegraph-dev)

(Update : Someone wrote a wonderful post-mortem of this game and saved me the work of doing it myself!)

Tags: day3, final, journal

Congratulations to everyone who finished, or even just attempted the LD11. I really enjoyed it, and will be back for more!

I’ve slept 2 hours in the last 2-and-a-bit days, and am seeing triple. Had a meeting this afternoon with three of my course advisors, and could barely stagger along in my Monday evening social sport.

Regardless, I managed to hold up long enough to also fix some show stopping bugs, and write a comprehensive guide to playing “The Butler Did It”. Original unplayable version is still available if you want to use it for judging (*ouch*), but give this one a whirl and catch a murderer.

Looking forward to a good long sleep, and then working my way through 60 minimalistic games. Probably a windows port of TBDI, too.

Tags: day3, journal

Well, it’s here!

A Windows port of ‘The Butler Did It‘ is now available for download. It’s unchanged from the linux version (except the bits coded so badly the compiler wouldn’t let me get away with).

Download, run, and keep trying until it manages to start without crashing.

Windows Binary (zip, 2.5 mb)

Tags: journal

So I’ve got around to compiling my 2GB of screenshots into a timelapse. You can see a long period at the start when visitors came round and I got absolutely no work done, but things get more and more frantic as the deadline approaches.

It looks like I never slept – but this is because there’s no screenshots from when the computer was off.

http://www.surrealix.com/ludumdare/timelapse.html

Tags: journal, timelapse

Greetings from NZ.

So I’m planning to enter my second LudumDare, Zombie Rainbows notwithstanding.  The times are a little inconvenient, starting Saturday afternoon and not finishing until well into the workday on Monday. I’m simply going to have to code faster to wrap everything up by Sunday afternoon.

I’m using C++ and SDL/OpenGL. I’ve written a few helper classes and methods that make life easier. They’re downloadable from my website, but I’ll add the disclaimer that they’re not finished, and there’s a memory leak (or two). I’m currently downloading the amazing Fluid Studios MMGR to track down the issue and fix it. I’ll be using GIMP and Inkscape for graphics, drawing with my TabletPC, and I currently have no idea what I’m doing for Audio.

I hope to do better than my last LudumDare attempt where I scored highly with my graphics, but the gameplay was nonexistent. I have more experience this time around, having worked as the lead programmer on Doc Clock, an upcoming WiiWare title.

Here’s the obligatory crappy-cellphone-camera workspace photo:

And now I’m going to mow the lawn before it rains.

So it’s two hours in and I’ve yet to write a line of code (on my game, at any rate). This is probably for the best though.

Instead, I spent the first hour trying to get my wireless working on my laptop. I formatted and reinstalled windows last weekend, and I’ve not had to use wireless since. Matters were compounded by the fact that the wireless adapter isn’t actually the model that’s listed on the laptop manufacturers’ website.

The second hour was spent trying to find my old screenshot program so that I can take a timelapse. It was written in VB, and I no longer have the exe, and don’t have Visual Studio 6 installed. So I tried to find something lightweight and suitable online. Nothing really impressed me, so I wrote one. You can download it from here (Windows only). It’ll ask for a path (which needs to end in a slash – ie: C:\Screenshots\”); a count (files are saved as 0001, 0002 etc, so this is the first number); and the time between screenshots in seconds.

So, now I’m going to start on the game. I’ve got a couple of ideas.

The one I’m currently liking is a fairly straightforward take on the theme. It’s a brutal platformer where you dismember enemies to use their arms/legs as bludgeons, and their heads as projectiles.

The other would be a more cerebral game. “You are your own worst enemy”, a puzzle game where you disrupt your future (or past) self by the actions you do in the present. I like this idea, but it would require a bit more thinking to get it playable.

edit: Due to the terrible hack I used for the Screenshot program, it wipes the clipboard each time it takes a picture. Watch out!

I’ve decided upon my genre/game/application/whatsit. It’s going to be a fairly gruesome platformer done in a film-noir style. Assuming I get time for art, that is.

As it stands, I spent four hours implementing a verlet physics engine, two hours implementing collision detection, and finally started on gameplay during the last hour. I can create levels with arbritrary collision geometry, put ragdolls into the level, throw them around, and most importantly, dismember them!

This all fits into my grand game plan where you are required to dismember enemies and use their heads, legs, arms, or tentacles (aliens, maybe?) as weapons.

The artwork is currently all stick-figure, but the code is already written allowing me to replace the sticks with graphics. All I need to do is draw something.

.

In lieu of awesome graphics, here are some awesome ragdolls. Naturally they look better in action.

The ragdoll being punched or kicked or shot in the chest:

Ragdoll being dragged around a level:

Dismemberment!

So in the spirit of actually getting some gameplay into the game, I made a player class, and dropped it into the game. It’s a horrid colour, but it moves when you press the arrow keys, and jumps on command. It also doesn’t fall through the ground.

Note the blue box, which bounces down the hill, reacting and colliding realistically. I’m not sure what gameplay purpose it can serve, but now I’ve got the ability to use it, I probably should.

I need some enemies in the game too, so I recolored the player to green, made enemies red, and gave them a body (the blue stick figure). I also added a simple uppercut type attack where you knock the enemy out and send them flying.

Here’s a sequence of shots showing the attack, because it’s too much effort to record and upload video.

Now, well and truly time to get some sleep. Good night and happy coding!

My entry finally has something in common with the theme. It’s not much, and it’s only fun for about 12 seconds, but you can now use enemies as weapons against each other.

To celebrate, I tried to capture a video to show. It bought my computer to its knees, and then crashed it. So I wrote a function that saved frames to disk (the framerate varied depending upon disk write speed), encoded them (an hour learning about directshow filters), and then figured out how to put it into an HTML5 video canvas.  It probably wasn’t worth the time, but at this point I’m not going to finish my entry anyway.

So, watch the video (firefox/opera), or download the file.

I’m finished!

The game isn’t.

But it’s as complete as I’m going to get it. Sadly, I didn’t get time to put any graphics into the game, nor any scoring, nor a win condition (or a loose condition). You’ll require a bit of imagination to play it, but surprisingly, it’s fun. Download Zombies as Weapons and give it a go.

Because it has Zombies. And ragdoll physics. And you can pick the zombies up and throw them at each other.

Like this:

And this:

The game’s a 213KB zip file, and currently only works on Windows:

Zombies as Weapons

Good luck, good night, and good zombie hunting.

Tags: final

Sixteen hours and twelve minutes.

Compressed into a timelapse video for your viewing pleasure. Because I wrote a physics engine, procedurally generated characters, and then ran out of time for graphics, it’s not edge-of-the-seat thrilling to watch. But it’s amazing how much time I spend typing code, I’m surprised my fingers haven’t fallen off.

Watch in your browser (firefox/opera). Or download the file.

Don’t forget to use Zombies as Weapons by downloading my game. It’s more fun than this timelapse, I promise.

I’m In!

Wait … what?

Due to an overwhelming dose of real life, my LD entry became a little delayed. However, I’m escaping real life for the next 13 hours to write one quarter of an LD game. (in one quarter of the usual time). I’m hoping I can write the correct quarter – so that I come out with a playable game at the end.

I’ll be using my own framework on top of SDL, which – if you’d like to join me in this quarter-LD madness – can be downloaded here. As usual, it’s buggy and incomplete, but hopefully will save me time in the end. Despite being based on SDL I use a bunch of windows stuff, so it’s Windows Only.

I’m also recording my adventure using my screenshot capture program from LD18. You can download it from here (Windows only). It’ll ask for a path (which needs to end in a slash – ie: C:\Screenshots\”); a count (files are saved as 0001, 0002 etc, so this is the first number); and the time between screenshots in seconds. Due to the wonderful hack I used to write it, it wipes the clipboard every time it takes an image. Beware!

Onto the game …

With time racing past, I need to write something very (very) simple. So I’m aiming for a physics-based puzzle adventure platform game with RPG elements.  Without the RPG stuff, or the adventure stuff, or the puzzle stuff.

Onwards and upwards! (Or sideways to the next platform).