Hey guys,

This is our first Ludum Dare Jam, and we can’t wait for it to start! However, we have classes at university tomorrow from 8am to 6pm, what kinda drops the time we (could) have to work on our game. No problem at all – that’s what life’s about. We’re certain we’re not the only ones that won’t be able to fully dedicate all our hours to the Ludum Dare Jam. Enough blabering, I’m proud to announce our team is composed by 6 people, and here’s what we will be using:

• C++
• Xcode (Elison Rissato and myself) and Code::Blocks (Rodrigo Bozza)
• Chien2D – which is an opensource engine for 2D games based on SDL and OpenGL
• MathCpp – a lib for vectorial and other math operations, created by one of my teachers, which is put available in one of his articles
• For Art, Rafael Chriscolo and Daniel Miranda will be using: Paint tool SAI, Fireworks CS5, Photoshop CS5 and Illustrator CS5
• For Audio, we will be using sfxr/cfxr and look for some royalty free music on the web

Hm… Counting? “Our team is composed by 6 people” and I only mentioned 5? We have a guest, that will be the one checking out how the event is going, broadcasting all the stuff (good and bad) we’re passing through on facebook and twitter, doing playtest and evaluating other games, providing psychological support…. He’s Luiz Eduardo Ribas (who should be helping on coding soon…).

Well, I guess that’s it for now. We will start our game and level design activities tomorrow at 7 am, discuss a little more during lunch, and begin coding, drawing and animating at around 7pm.

Good luck for everyone out there!!!

Regards,

Vico

After almost 12 hours, of which ~7 hours were around algorithms and data structure (yep, it kinda tells me our project is somewhat ambitious), we were able to determine how our classes would work together, and how NPC’s would avoid obstacles when “hunting” our villain. We had to read old (but gold) codes we wrote some time ago implementing steering behaviors, so that we make sure NPC’s won’t stay behind a rock, trying to unsucessfully move towards our villain. We were also able to implement some game basic data structures, like bullets, guns, and a point-n-click structure for the camera. Still, there’s a good amount of stuff to be implemented, but that’s fine – as this is our very first jam, it’s a good way to measure what we could’ve done different or less, and what we could’ve spent more time on tuning.

Our artists spent quite some time doing lots of drawing, and they’re also kinda far from finishing all the assets we foresaw in the beginning of the project. Not sure if we will be able to complete our game on time considering the game design and mechanics we planned – maybe we might consider updating it a bit so that it gets less complex and smaller, or not. We’re still unsure.

Anyway, this is just a report.    Here’s some of the conceptual art and assets our artists have been working on.

Regards,

Vico

After a lot of work hours (and 1 sleep hour), we start feeling like Dr. Frankenstein!

We are at 85% of the setup of our components/classes and now that we’re connecting them, they work like we wanted them to!!! \o/

Unfortunately, it’s most likely we will not be able to finish everything by the submission time. We might have about 2 or 3 hours tomorrow, but we’re so tired that we will probably clock out today and just go to work tomorrow. We will finish this one for sure as, even though we will not finish this one and submit on time, we’re very proud of the teamwork we developed (programmers + artists + a “joker” that keeps bugging us not to lose our speed, showing all his support :)). We’re also proud of the technical improvement on foreseeing attributes and methods we want in order to make our objects perform well during the gameplay.

This was a HUGE opportunity to increase our skills and to learn from our mistakes – we were a little greedy when we did our game and level design, plus the story we wanted to tell. Anyway, we’re still working on it and will only stop when our batteries are empty today. That’s probably why we’re gonna clock out today!

We have no other words to say than “Thank you Ludum Dare” for forcing us to our edge, for making us avoid excuses and try setting up something to be accompplished. We will definitely finish this game, and post the results here when done!

Regards,

Daniel / Elison / Luiz / Rafael / Rodrigo / Victor

Hello there 😉

So, we’re done for today – well, at least us, the developers. The artist’s got some stuff to get finished before going to bed.

We didn’t post anything today – not even what the game’s gonna be – so here’s the latest (yet only) update we have to share with you. Let’s talk about the idea and some background we had for the game, and where we’re at:

Platform: Android

Why?: We have just had some of our first Android classes and we wanted to make a game with what we learned so far.

Game idea: Gems are thrown from the bottom of the screen up and you can destroy them by touching them. On the top left corner, you have a list of gems that you should not destroy – and if you destroy any of those, your score decreases. This set of “do not destroy” gems will change in intervals of 2 or 3 seconds (still to be tested and defined). The whole game takes 10 seconds.

Where are we at?: We pretty much took care of all the coding – roughly. The artist will probably be finishing most of the art today, so we will be able to see the elements working on the game. Tomorrow will most likely be spent doing some (hopefully not a lot of) bug fixing. We’re confident we will finish everything on time. 😉

Here’s my timelapse for today – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfmz3smYeO0. The others should be assembling their timelapses too, still today – will post their links once they’re up.

Regards,

Victor

Hello, buddies!

We’ve just finished some testing round in different phones and some different Android versions… Now, it’s time for polishing, putting the time bar, putting the screen area where the “do not touch” gems will be, etc… Here, a pic we wanted to share! 😀

Hi there!

We’re so glad and proud we made it! Here’s the link to our entry

We’re looking forward to receiving votes and feedback! Please, rate our game – it’s for Android, developed in ADT, with what we learned in a few classes on Android development! Every single drawing is done based on screen size so we’d like to hear from you about how the layout was in your tablet/phone!

Good luck, everyone!

Regards,

Victor

Hello guys!

So, yesterday me and my team talked about ways to make Precious10 more “player friendly”, as it was too hardcore and not so fair…

>> Here’s the link to the postmortem version <<

Here’s what was changed:

1 ) Pause/Play button position corrected as it was attached to the screen borders
2 ) There’s a return button on the Game Over screen – better than “touching anywhere” to go back, as players could still try to kill a gem and wouldn’t see their scores
3 ) Sound feedback when the “do not destroy” gems are changed
4 ) Change in the rewarding system. Correct gems give the player extra 820ms while “do not destroy” gems take 180ms from the player. Maximum time in timer keeps at 10 seconds due to the Ludum Dare theme.
5 ) Visual feedback for correct gem touches (green ‘+’ sign) and for “do not destroy” gem touches (red ‘-‘ sign)
6 ) New score system based on how many seconds the player survived.
7 ) Opening angle for gems launching decreased from 30 degrees to 20 degrees, so that gems remain more in the middle of the screen than on the borders.
8 ) Time interval for changing the “do not destroy” gems went from 3 to 7.5 seconds.
9 ) Our artist designed a new icon
10 ) To avoid app installation conflicts, new apk is “New Precious10”

Regards,

Victor

Hello guys!

We’re glad to say that we’re now on Google Play with both Precious10 and Precious10 Unleashed (the version we did during postmortem phase).

Precious10 on Google Play

Precious10 Unleashed on Google Play

Regards,

Victor

If everything goes ok and I get to participate, I’d use:

1. Language: TypeScript
2. Editor: Atom
3. Framework: Phaser
4. Music: GarageBand and a MIDI Keyboard
5. SFX: cfxr
6. Art: Pixelmator

Good luck, everyone!