You know when you’re stretching and hopping around getting ready for a big race, then you realize you never exercise and have seriously pulled a hamstring already before it has even started?

This will be my first Ludum Dare and the warm up showed (besides being too easily distracted) I have a few things to learn.  I played around with Musagi which is awesome and added some music to my warm up project.  Put together some graphics, character animation, backgrounds, and that’s about it.  For sure I’ll need spread out my time more on other parts of game making.

I’ll be using

Flashpunk

FlashDevelop

Musagi / sfxr

Photoshop

This is going to be fun….

Wow.  This doesn’t do much for me.

Maybe I’m taking it a bit too literally but my first move is to google Minimalism.  Right now the key is to look for the seeds of inspiration.

Minimalist art, and listening to some music considered part of the Minimalist art movement.

A cup of tea helps as it’s 7:30 am here.

Taking the probably unorthodox method of doing the music first.  Musiagi…

I got started and then decided to change the type of game I’m doing.  I’m a bit behind maybe so I’ll have to be pretty efficient now.  Here’s a screenshot update of my current incarnation.

The hills have come together and finally cooperated.   I’ve added some cities and the music track is pretty much finalized.  If I can still stand the track after hours of hearing it each time I test the game that will be the true test.

Well this is starting to look like something.  Doing AI for the saucers now.  Typing as fast as I can.

I had a problem with the clouds, so I’ve skipped it for now.

That’s a lot of steak.

This little star guy is the hero.  I’d love to be able to animate him.  (assuming it goes better than my other most recent animation experiments!)

Still to do:

UFO Lasers

Player missiles

UFO tractor beams

Intro screens

Sound FX

HUD/scoring

just a quick update

I’m trying to update this as I go.  I’ve had lots of interruptions and this last problem I probably should have just skipped.  This is the kind of thing I love working on and it’s been a real brain teaser but also a real time sink.

I have to convert coords into local x,y and do a pixel transparency test in a line at an angle, plus the offsets of the images, plus I still might have some bug at the end of my blocks of ground to throw me off and more I can’t think of right now.  There are just too many variables to see how the math relates to the points on the screen in a simple way.  Anyway, finally got it.  The UFO’s fire their lasers at an angle and the explosion follows the point where the laser hits the ground as they move.  Sorry, that’s the best I can describe it at the moment!

This was quite awesome http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2009/06/24/using-bitmapdata-hittest-for-collision-detection/

Well this was my first Ludum Dare and it was awesome.  I didn’t quite complete a finished game but I came really close and I learned a lot.  All in all, a better basic strategy would have helped me finish my game, no matter what the final quality would be.   So now I have this idea of what to learn and practice before the next Ludum Dare.  Here are my thoughts  on process/strategy to follow:

1.  Setup

– an intro screen

– a how to play screen or text block on your intro, including controls description

– tries counter (if your game style has lives or limited tries) in a HUD

– scoring display in a HUD – depending on your tools, set up the containers where you’ll display some gameplay stats

This should be fast and get you up and running with the basics.

2.  Next implement basic game play conditions and update your above scoring.

If you get stuck on a game play mechanism or feature and end up coming close to the deadline, this should be where you cut features and finish with a basic playable game.

3.  graphics, music, sound

Once you have the basics in 2, you can add some flavor graphics and sound.

After 3 you can go back and forth between #2 and #3 and the rest is just making your game better and better, but you have a “finished” game at any point in time.  At least this is my current theory, I’ll tell you how it works out next time.  

And of course please vote on my game: UFO Invaders Love Steak.  Sorry, you can’t save the cows.