Something is brewing..

The plan is to make a god-game, where you evolve your own perfect race of trolls, and lay waste to the races evolved by your competing gods.

Now for some sleep though…

End of day 2 status for our Jam entry:

The game is almost feature complete, and has had some tuning.

Still remains to be seen how playable it actually turns out to be, but at least it’s pretty fun to tinker with.

Works on Android as well, except there’s some investigating needed into getting smooth update speed (it’s faster and jumpier for some reason on the phone than on a desktop).

Troll Spirit is finally completed, check it out on the entry page, or download and run it right away!

In Troll Spirit you are the god of a tribe of trolls.  Nurture and evolve them, and help them vanquish all other trolls in the world!

If you have an Android device with a QR code scanner you can install the Android APK for Troll Spirit by scanning the image on the right.  Be warned though, the Android version may require a relatively fast device to play smoothly (we should probably have cut down a bit on the effects and troll count on Android).

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 6:23 pm and is filed under LD #24. 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.

Will likely use Java with LibGDX, to target the desktop and Android both.

I have some old libgdx basecode that I’ll dust off and put to good use, and I’ll borrow some parts from my recent unfinished mini LD entry as well.

Tools:

• IntelliJ IDEA (it rocks)
• Artemis entity framework (seems to keep things better organized when the game grows)
• Gimp 2.8 (yay, single window interface)
• bfxr and such for sound.
• java.lang.Random for content

gl & hf!

Some prior arrangements will see me off the computer for part of the weekend, but I’ll try to whip up a game nevertheless, especially as the theme suits a restricted time input.

Tools:

• LibGdx
• Generated art (trying to skip any time spent on actually drawing stuff).
• Possibly some other open source libraries.

No basecode, as I didn’t get around to make this post before the competition start.

Cheers!

I’m working on some kind of 3D projected 2D sprite game.  So far I have ghosts worms flying around in a cloudscape:

I’m not entirely sure where to take the game from here, maybe a 3D bullet hell shooter.

We are going to participate in the Jam again with Shiera.

The language will be Java, and we might build an Android version in addition to a desktop version.

Tools:

• IntelliJ Idea for coding
• libgdx as game library
• libgdx particle effect editor for particle effects
• Gimp for graphics
• Spine for animation
• BFXR for sound effects
• LMMS for music

We’ll also use some of my old basecode and utilities.  I’m just adding finishing touches to a high level networking library as well, if we get adventurous we might go multiplayer.

Although it would be nice to just finish a game for a change as well 😛

We scaled down our original goals a bit, and are currently well on track implementing a desert island survival game.  To still your growing hunger you need to find some food – fortunately the island is home to a wide colony of different berries – unfortunately some of them do not have beneficial effects.

The big rock is currently a placeholder for the player – apart from the player sprite we still need a bit of a user interface, and start / end screens.

The rest is polish and optional extra features.

We made it! 😀

You are a pirate, washed ashore on a deserted island after a shipwreck.  The island is infested with snakes and a sparse vegetation of variably nutritious or poisonous fruit.  Try to stay alive as many days as possible.  Sooner or later your shipmates will come and rescue you…  right?

Go give it a try!

Tags: final

I’m in again, this time in the solo competition!

Language: Java

Tools: IntelliJ, bfxr, Gimp.

Libraries: Libgdx and my own utility and maybe other libraries.

I’m building a submarine dogfight simulator.

So far I finished the underwater physics and basic rendering.  And also pretty bubbles!

The physics got pretty complicated — apart from normal gravitation and velocity updates there is buoyancy that depends on the density of the surrounding fluid, and the density in an ocean changes very slowly and non-linearily when going deeper, based on the temperature, salinity and pressure.  In the end I approximated the density formula based on looked up values.  The drag depends on the current velocity, density, object front area, as well a shape dependent experimentally discovered drag coefficient (can be approximated as 0.04 or so for streamlined shapes).

Where things get really hairy are in the bubbles though – the volume (and thus density) of an air bubble changes depending on the surrounding pressure and temperature.  Fortunately it was easy to recalculate the density (and display radius) for bubble entities on each frame, which can then be used by the rest of the physics system.  So the bubbles expand in a realistic way when they get close to the water surface, and larger bubbles rise faster than smaller.  There is also some turbulent sideways movement (in addition to prevailing current) for bubbles, which I approximated with some noise functions.

So, I’ve got some pretty bubbles, and placeholder submarines.  Still one day to add actual gameplay and all the rest…

Coded myself a procedural submarine model from cylinders and spheres:

Now getting some sleep…

My submarine simulator now has gauges showing some of its internal state:

Not sure if I will make the Jam deadline (combat still to do), but I’ve certainly had fun making this simulation!

I wrapped up my submarine simulator into a slightly playable version and submitted it.

As a game, it’s pretty unfinished – there’s no menu screen, no sounds, and no goals beyond shooting the surrounding submarines.

But as a learning experience it was great – I got the opportunity to implement a pretty accurate underwater physics engine, a 3D object-based UI, a system simulation for vehicles, build a custom underwater shader, and really learn the ease of use of game entity systems first hand.

After all that, there was not much time to craft a game as well.

On the other hand, I can now take the lessons learned and parts of the code from this project, and expand on my arsenal of useful game utility libraries and basecode.  LudumDare was a great incentive to prototype these, and a motivation to carry on developing them.  Thanks to everyone in the community!

I’m in for the compo again.  Going to code in Java, using LibGDX.

I’m planning to use some of my open source libraries, e.g. utilities and entity framework.

I might also lift some code from my previous ludum dare entries.

I’ve been toying around with 3D graphics and JBullet, coming up with this rotating colored ball universe thing:

However, turning it into the game I planned to (space trading) seems like too much effort for the time left, and my brain objects to more 3D math at the moment.

So I’m switching to a 2D pixel-graphics fantasy-themed trading game instead.

I’m participating again this time.

Tools:

• Java
• LibGDX
• Various of my libraries as base code
• Procedural programmer art
• Procedural programmer sound?

Looking forward to playing around with some 3D!

In recent compos I have taken on a bit too ambitious game ideas, and failed to finish, so I’m aiming for something simpler and 2D this time.

Tools:

• IntelliJ IDEA
• Gimp
• Bfxr
• Milkytracker if I get around to composing music

Libraries:

• Libgdx
• My utility library
• Other open source libraries as needed

Language:  Kotlin

Target platform: Android and/or cross platform Java executable.

Basecode:  Basic kotlin/android/libgdx maven project.

The coordinate transformation math for rendering an isometric map is always such a pain, but I got it working now:

The test map is just using some noise function currently, but the map system supports infinite terrain generation.

I’m probably aiming for the Jam, as I’m behind schedule a bit because I couldn’t work on the game full day yesterday (and spent way too much time redoing basic map rendering).