I’m TaslemGuy. I hope to participate in either the Ludum Dare Competition or the Ludum Dare Jam. I’m not sure which, because I’ve never participated in any Ludum Dare before, or really any game design competition.

Basically, a quick top-down shooter with smartbots defending a base I’ve designed.

Not exactly sure what the goal is, other than that the AI are decent at using strategy.

The map’s data looks cool, also.

So the theme is evolution and the curse is broken! The problem is that I was stuck for ideas.

I combined a couple of the ideas I had previously and flipped them around until they seemed to work together right, and I ended up with a decent plan for a simplistic upgrade-oriented RTS.

I’m working with Processing, which is an open-source library/IDE for Java which makes graphics convenient and faster than J2D.

I’ve implemented pathfinding, which you can see here. 100 paths per frame drop the FPS to only 50, so it’s efficient enough that I’m going to stick with it.

I’ve come a long way since my last post here. For instance, it now has a name: “Warspace”. I’ve added enemies and players and player control, as well as two unit types.

Along the way I’ve also written my own LISP parser to describe level data, though it’s hardly a good one or complete.

Progress screenshot:

(not pictured: particle effects)

The game is now somewhat between a typical RTS and a puzzler. I’m going to try to push it more towards the former, but I’m not sure where it’s going to end up.