Hello, everyone!

This is my first LD and I figured, since I was planning on using some of my personal code library for whatever I end up doing (Unless it turns out that I’m doing something completely different) that I would make it available and perhaps put up some other information.

First, the personal code library: Mapping Utilities. This is a small library that contains a set of classes to quickly define rectangular arrays of various sorts, including a mapping to a hex map (Including directionality options). I’m not certain about how efficient the code is, but I’ve been using it for some time. Feel free to make use of it

Second, I’m already planning on going through some cross platform fun by using Java and especially libGDX (LWJGL style) with a focus on making a game that I’ll be able to play (And enjoy) on my adroid phone. For the most part I’ll be doing my development in the NetBeans IDE switching to Eclipse if/when I get to the point where I want to test it on my phone.

Tags: compo, java, libgdx, prelimenary

One of the only things I voted a -1 for. Oh, well!

I think that I do have an idea that will work for it.

 

Thoughts on “Tiny World”

• The world starts as tiny.
• The world can grow, but should optimally be small.
•  Size of “World” can be based on perception.

So, my idea is a semi-strategy game based on a mixture of these.

 

Tiny World- A War of Ideal

In the void there is an idea, one that to grow will need souls to believe in it. For souls to exist they must have a place to live. So an idea begets a world. Souls will come to world, will believe in the idea. But the power of an idea is limited and ideas have trouble coexisting in the same world.

Tags: idea, premise, strategy

Bah! I’m probably biting off more than I can chew with my current plans!

Basically, building on my earlier post about the Ideas, Souls and Worlds I started to implement some stuff. Starting with the worlds of course!

 

So, I’m using the personal library that I posted before the start of the Compo to make a ‘hex map’ world for the souls/ideas to inhabit. Typically a single Idea and the Souls who believe it inhabit a single world. They go about their business, thinking thoughts about their Idea, developing it and making it theirs. However, since they’re in space and there’s never just one idea there are several different worlds. Each world moves through space (I haven’t decided how it’ll work yet!) and they can end up colliding.

When a world collides, the souls that believe the idea go to war. When one side, or the other, is destroyed (By annihilating the source of their idea) the war ends. After a war is over, portions of the world can be destroyed by exerting belief in the idea. This is the mechanic by which the player controls the size of their world, by breaking off chunks of their world and letting them float through space. It’s the algorithm that manages the breaking up of worlds that I’m having the fun with.

Currently, my plan is that I’ll do a contiguous search from certain points, move all contiguous tiles to another map basically the same size, then shift all of the non-empty tiles to the as far left as I can, then as far up as I can (As close to X=0 and Y=0). It’s sort of working, but there’s some small part of it that’s messing up and driving me crazy!

 

So I’m thinking of scraping this for now and just implementing the code that controls Soul movement on the map and the like (When I wake up tomorrow that is!)

 

Night LDers!

Tags: game, java, mechanics

I just don’t know where the time went!

 

However, I think I’m not ready to once more attempt to wrastle with the code that I have and the idea. Hopefully, I can get the basic “AI” and stuff for the unit control ready without a problem. I’m thinking that most of the control for the game will be handled by a semi-stupid AI, mostly ‘If no task, wander aimlessly’ and ‘If at war, attack units attack, defense units move towards closest invader’ sort. After all, the AI is just supposed to be simple souls protecting their Idea, not super intelligent stuff!

 

Also trying to decide if I still want to implement the whole ‘world splitting’ thing, but I guess that can come up when I have the AI done.

So, after messing around with things for several hours, and discovering that I was mostly making a few (Silly) mistakes, like not updating a unit’s internal position information after moving it on the map’s datastructure, I’ve got a Soul roaming around aimlessly on my map.  Also had to set up the drawing of the map (Which is currently crude) and the like. Note the “cool” graphics.

Next stop is checking whether it’ll go to a ‘goal’ correctly.

Ugh! So, I’m using libGDX as the primary Framework for doing all of my drawing, and while it seems to work fairly great for the most part, I’m running into some weird/awkward things with it.

As you can see, on the two different tiles (The one with the table and the cross) it looks like the image is being scaled to be one pixel thinner. It’s happening on the 3rd and 6th sprite on my sheet (Each image is 40×34). I’m probably just going to use a single image for each tile if I can’t figure out why it’s doing that!

 

Anyway, I’ve got some minor ‘building’ based activities down.

Tags: error, libgdx, scaling

Well, I’m on towards the home stretch (I hope)!

I have one more piece of “AI” to implement, and that’s the controller for enemies and it’s going to be a very stupid one given the rules of the game, however they’re really just there to mess with the player, heh, so they don’t have to be very smart, just have to be bastads.

While doing that, I get to implement something that’ll ‘destroy’ tiles, changes tiles, and attempts to convert neutral units to your side. Then I can test the game. Still haven’t decided when/how collisions are going to occur, but that’ll happen shortly.

I’ve gotten buttons in there, but I still need to actually write some other stuff for them to really work, other than the turn button that is. Hah.

Anyway, this is a screen that shows my initial implementation, with two units on the screen, the blue’s yours and the yellow/orange is neutral.

 

Currently, the indication of your territory is based on the tile type that’s painted. I’m thinking of keeping everything the same, except maybe making the tiles more.. tile-like when it comes to differentiating edges. These are the sprites I’m using, and yes I did kind of cheap out on the Souls because I was having trouble making a flat colour version of them that looks right to me.

#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Well, this has been a learning experience a fun one!

Success- As I said in my actual submission, the success of this was partial. It’s sort of a game, but not really a good game. It’s more of a proof of concept than anything else. I am planning on going back and polishing it up, actually making it playable as well as adding in extras in like actual animation.

It did prove something to me, something that I thought was true but wasn’t sure about, and that’s that I tend to focus on the most difficult part of a program to the exclusion of all else (Seen in me taking about sixteen hours of the 48 working on something that I’m probably not even going to use when I’m done with the game). I just need to better manage my time, and I should do much better.

Priority for next time

• Come up with premise
• Decide on mechanics and implement basics
• Basic graphics
• Implement ‘fancier’ parts of the mechanics, that make the game better.
• Work on more graphics
• Work on sound

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2012 at 8:19 pm and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This is more of a “Dear Lord Why do I have so much other stuff to do!?”

Anyway, I’ve got an idea that I’d like to try out (And, unlike last time, I actually know how to use the UI system of the program I’m planning to use, so that I don’t have to worry about getting a really derpy, hard to deal with UI. Well, badly drawn ’cause I had no idea how bits and pieces worked. Hah.) I’m using Java and LibGDX with a plan to make Dekstop, Android (For my Traverse, yay!) and GWT/HTML5 versions.

My idea is that I’m going to make a ‘Evolution of a World’ sort of game, mostly with the world reacting to, and evolving based on, the actions of the player. Initially, it was going to be the world trying to react to a monster, and evolving to hurt it’s ‘weaknesses’, which the monster would develop as it evolved/leveled up, then I thought that I’d make two games in one.

1) A sort of Turn based strategy/chess game, where the player and the AI (Both playing ‘gods’ of opposing types good/evil, etc) spend points accumulated during their prior turn to change the world. In some cases, this is creating some sort of world object, spending points to evolve chosen creatures and the like. And creating and leveling up an avatar. Death of an Avatar hurts a bit, but when one dies, you get back a portion of the points spent on them (Log Scaled so that spending a lot on a single avatar will return less when they finally die.) Avatars can be sent to a world object created by the opposing side to try to destroy it or convert it or they can be assigned to defend an area.

2) Is sort of a mini-game. When you send an Avatar to attempt to destroy/convert a place you have the option of controlling the the avatar on its way. This is played like a simple Rogue-Like game, that allows your avatar to collect items/EXP (Which are points for your side to spend during your next turn).

 

Now, why this is such a problem for me? Well, I’ve got plans for this evening and then tomorrow evening. Which’ll cut most of a day out of the 48! Dear lord why!?

I might be in for LD this weekend. Right now, I’m feeling like I’m completely, utterly dead! A head cold, and maybe more, that’s already ruined quite a few plans, and made the final’s week difficult!

Anyway, if I do compete, it will be my second year, and hopefully I will do better than last time. I spent too much time on art, and algorithms, that never ended up being used and too little time on actually designing the interface and the gameplay. In the end, it fell apart because it wasn’t really a game, but more of a partial, unexplained simulation.

This time, I’m spending a bit of time prior to make sure I know how to work with the interface (I actually learned libGDX’s table/theme set-up, but that went away, so now I’m learning their newer version!) And hopefully, I’ll be able to remember that having a playable game is more important than having a fun idea.

My tools:

System: Probably my Win7 64bit laptop, or my monstrous desktop.

Language: Java

IDE: Eclipse (With Android plug-ins)

Art: paint.net. maybe some gimp.

Sound: http://www.bfxr.net/ and maybe something else, if the game needs music (I have an idea for some themes that don’t.)

Libraries: libGDX

Basis: None, though I’ll probably make use of various tutorials. Yay.

Target Platform: Desktop and Android through libGDX (Maybe html5, but I’m ignorant of how to get it to work.)

 

 

Tags: ld25

Well, definitely not the one that I was hoping for. Which would have been “The End of the World” for which I had what I thought of as a fairly sad tale to tell through a puzzle/exploration platformer.

So I’m left with “You are the Villain”, which always makes me want to go a different direction. When you’re playing the Villian, it’s typically because you want to have fun being bad. You want to wreck stuff and feel a sense of domination over the weak. You want to be in control.

So, my idea is:

“Ransom from Space”: You are the leader of a interstellar crime syndicate, who use extortion, smuggling and other tactics, to make money from the various planets in your part of the arm. While smuggling and the other tactics are good for business, you’re a right bastard and prefer to use extortion.

So, you do things like:

Position meteorites into orbit around the planet, with the threat that you might bring them raining down upon the planet.

Threaten to release a plague upon a world.

Send out propaganda that you have a planet buster that you’ll use.

 

Of course, it’s a balance issue. If you follow through with a threat, planets will fear you more, but they’ll also be more willing to send their military after you. If you don’t follow through, people won’t fear you as much because you’ve got no spine.

Well, again I decide that I should probably be in on the LD this time. Unlike the last two times, I don’t have anything particularly time consuming to do and I do not foresee getting sick within the next three days (I hope, I hope, I hope).

So I’ll be joining in! (Though, some time will be eaten up by travel since I’ll be house sitting for most of the competition).

I’ll be making use of:

Platform: My Win7 Laptop and my two Android devices to do some secondary testing if I get an idea that’ll fit on Android. >.>

Library: libGDX (Which is fantastic)

Art: Paint.net, Gimp, maybe Blender

Music: Abundant Music ( http://abundant-music.com/ ), and then probably one of the other generators for sound effects.

So, I’ve had several interruptions that have stopped me from working on things (I had company last night, slept in, and I’m now hanging out at my friend’s family’s place, house sitting!) Currently, I have the logic behind it mostly written up. Working on the graphics and game now.

Premise: You’re a monster breeder. Maybe an evil scientist, maybe something else, but who cares (The story is Minimal too!) Anyway, they’ve gotten loose in your factory and you can only capture one of them, so you have to make them fight each other or gas them in special rooms. You bred them for power, not for smarts, so they won’t try to break down doors, and will always try to move forward, turning only when they can’t (And randomly turning left or right if both are open).

Anyway, here’s an image of a randomly generated factory. Still working on setting up the doors and stuff. :3

And here’s my lunch. Yay! Somewhat underdone bacon cheese burger! With Nacho Doritos. Delicious.

Well, I’m working on things while house sitting for some family friends who live out in the middle of nowhere. Luckily for me, they have all of the amenities that would be needed to be comfortable. Except that their water has gone out. Which means that instead of just stepping out and turning on a water house for their horses I might end up having to drive back into town to get water instead. I’ve already had to use five gallon jugs to water them and what I had wasn’t nearly enough.

 

When it comes to the actual game? Well, I’m having issues with libGDX that I really should have checked on before I started the competition (However, I was having fun with other things). For some reason, the skinning functionality isn’t working quite right (It’s tossing up errors about it not having the right Style for the ScrollPane when I can read it and it says it does.)

I’m in and, like usual, I don’t feel that hot about what I’ll be able to get done this weekend. I have a work deadline this coming Monday and my GF’s back in town after a week long work trip so it’s likely that my weekend is going to be eaten away by non-LD stuff. However, I tend to enjoy the mad rush to get things done!

 

My platform: Eclipse ADT on Windows

My language: Java

My Library: LibGDX

My Art thinger: No clue yet! (Probably paint.net)

So, I’d been thinking about many of the other themes and had a few ideas for several of them. This was not one. I know that many people wanted it– obviously– but to me this isn’t really a [b]theme[/b] it’s a mechanic. But enough about that. One of the ideas that I did have– For Evil vs. Evil– was going to have something of a ten second mechanic in it anyway so I decided to go with that. So, here’s the idea!

 

Aliens vs. Zombies

You are either the Aliens or the Zombies attempting to harvest the human race. Every ten seconds of game play you’re able to provide your side with a set of instructions that will, hopefully, allow them to collect enough humans to win a given game.

As the Aliens you are Research Assistants for a Professor of Human Studies on your planet and you’ve been tasked with collecting as many human specimens as you can before the Zombie outbreak kills them off. Your UFO has the ability to instantly move between points, fry zombies or abduct humans. Being a group of RAs means that you’re pretty lazy, and without your Professor yelling at you, you’ve got no initiative and so after completing a single task you spend the rest of the time slacking off.

As the Zombies you’re just a mindless horde of Zombies. The only control you has is that for every <number> of Zombies you have in your Horde you can set swarming locations that your Zombies will attempt to move towards (Always towards the closest). Since they’re somewhat stupid, they’ll also chase after any human they see, then upon losing sight of them, will return to moving towards the nearest spawn point.

 

Progress: Little! Beyond deciding on the game play style and some things. Initially had the game based on position Vectors with circular collisions for map Entities (Zombies/Humans) and rectangles for buildings. Decided that this would badly limit some map designs since it’d prevent ‘mazes’ without having hundreds of rectangles for the walls. Instead, I decided to go with a discrete grid map, using a simple Bresenham’s to check LOS for Entities. For maps I’m just going to use a two png style, one that stores map data and one that stores the actual map. If I have time, I might have the maps destructible by the Aliens.

Unlike the last several competitions, I SHOULD be in this time with nothing there to really mess with me. Finals will have finished and I SHOULD have everything turned in. Further, I won’t be house sitting, I don’t believe that I have any engagements (Though I might have guests at some points) that are pressing. I won’t have to worry about the animals I’m taking care of being dehydrated or the dogs getting sick due to age.

Perhaps even more importantly I’ve actually spent some time learning how to work the UI system that I’m planning to use. Most of my prior attempts at the LD have failed due to me not providing a UI which caused them to be more of simulations than actual games. I created a game for an HCI class (Human Computer Interaction) I took this semester and spent a great deal of time learning how the UI system of LibGDX works, even down to splitting their example UI Skin into is component parts so that I can generate my own texture atlases and include it.

 

Platform: My Dell Laptop (Windows 8, yay)

Language: Java 6 (Targeting Android as well, hopefully)

IDE: Eclipse ADT Verion

Library: LibGDX

Graphics: 2D gimp and paint.net, 3D Blender

Sound: Probably http://www.nosoapradio.us/, http://abundant-music.com/ and SFXR or BFXR

Well, well, well! This is a theme I can actually get behind. I’ve already got a game idea to play around with and if I can get it done quickly enough I might work on a second one.

Fire Damp

You play the part of a Knocker Man, a person who is called when Fire Damp– Methane and the other flammable gasses that accumulate in coal mines– is discovered. It’s your job to go into the deeps, with little more than a glowing worm and a little cricket that makes noise when around Fire Damp and set it off. To do this, you have two tools: The Candle-ona-Stick and the Flaming Rag Slinger. The Candle-ona-Stick allows you to light fire damp from a short distance away. The Flaming Rag Slinger launches a fiery rag in the chosen direction, lighting the fire damp. Depending on how far you are away from the fire is how much damage you take. Too close and you die!

Now, why would you EVER want to use the Candle-ona-Stick? Well, because the Flaming Rag Slinger doesn’t make for good stories. And that’s what you’re trying for. You’re trying to accumulate the best record and story, so that when you finally retire you’ll have an easy time finding yourself a wife and believe you me saying, “An’ then I lit the candle, the sounds of the mine shiftin’ an’ the props creakin’ all ’round me, an’ I thrust it forward into the heart of the darkness. There was a moment of silence, then the ROAR of Fire Damp burning hit me, an’ then the BLAST hit me, an’ I was thrown back. But here I am, alive and well.” is quite a bit more interesting to the opposite sex than “I ran back a ways and chucked a burnin’ ball of rags down the tunnel. The explosion barely even reached me.” After all, who wants a SMART mate when you can have a DARING one.

(The idea is vaguely based on the Knocker Men described in the Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchet. :D)

Tags: idea, pratchet, pterry

I wasn’t certain if I would be in on this because of Graduate School stuff and other “fun”, but what I’ve got is going together better than I expected.

 

Information (Since I didn’t before. :3)

Platform: Java with libGDX

Art: Paint.net

Sound: Random Generator and probably http://abundant-music.com/

 

Idea: Big surprise, it’s a dungeon delve/exploration platformer. Basically with the player attempting to collect all of the dragon idols beneath the surface (Hwa hwa hwa, I didn’t like this choice).

State: I’ve got the basic platforming functionality done including ladders (Static placed at the start) and ropes (placed by the player), fall damage, collisions and the like.

 

Unluckily, the area I’m in has been having high winds and it’s killing my sinuses/allergies.

Tags: java, ld29, libgdx, platformer

So, I’ve attempted to the LD several times over the last few years and it always seems that one thing or another pops up and prevents me from actually getting anything done… Or I just fail terribly (Like the last two times). This year? It’s the job hunt thing. I might be starting a new job and when I do, its hours– important because I need to make rent– might likely encroach on the time that I have to participate.

Anyway, if I’m in I’m making use of:

Language: Java & LibGDX

IDE: Idea Intellij

Art: Paint.net

Sound: Don’t know, never seem to get around to it (Probably one of the random generators from the Tools page.)

Tags: LD30