As this is my first Ludum Dare (and a second compo/jam overall), I was a bit sceptical if I’ll be able to produce something. 48h is both very little and a load of time. But oh well, we signed up, so we gotta take part. The theme proved to be quite interesting. My mind was blank at first, but after sharing thoughts with a friend, we came up with a few ideas:

• dungeon master – building dungeons, which AI heroes go through
• destroy things – oh well, you are destroying things, so that makes you a villain, eh?
• reverse shmup – a bit like an RTS, when you control a zerg rush and try to kill that one overpowered bad guy hero
• no john, you are the daemons – only at the end of things, you realise you did wrong and that, in truth, you are the villain
• tranquillity lane – borrowed from Fallout 3, simply a place where you are tasked to do nasty things to people

 
Giving it some thought, I decided to go with… Nah, I won’t spoil anyone the fun. Fortunately, an old idea I had some time ago proved to (after modifying the scenario a bit) fit quite well with the theme. So far I managed to write some basic map code, three dumb-dumb enemy classes, hero movement and drawing. As you can guess from the image, the game will be kept in a very simple graphics style. Since it’s 0914 local time, I’m getting a bit sleepy, but oh well… I’ll be able to sleep for an eternity in the coffin. Enough talk, the IDE awaits!

Whoo. Not to say that I’m “almost done” or anything like that, but I’m definitely on my way to finish. Apart from implementing intro/outro and (probably) some new enemy types (maybe a boss or two), my main concern now will be rooms, as so far I have got only 13/49. 5 hours… Can do. Let’s go!

So far I got two heroes and a mob chasing them. The map is loaded from an image, since that’s easy to implement and allows for quick designing of large levels. The concept revolves around having two heroes and switching control between them every 10 seconds. (I know, pretty lame use of the theme).

I added some half-assed dynamic lights. Not really sure what to do with those. If I’m going to stay with the “swich heroes every 10 seconds” idea, I think the in-active hero will have his long light turned off. Since the player wouldn’t be able to control him and would have to rely on AI to keep the guy alive, that could add some extra stress.

I wrote a post-mortem of my game, Super Achiever 42000 Deluxe. You can read the post on my blog.

Comments are welcome!