I decided to take part in this Mini LD as a reply to a challenge issued by an ex-coworker of mine on twitter. The goal was to develop a game for the jam in just one weekend as opposed to 7Days. I’m already past the 48h mark, but my challenger forfeited so I guess it’s either a nil-nil or I win by default. Anyway, my game for this Mini-LD is called MINI WARS, as a token to a great turn-based strategy game that I love, Advance Wars (GBA and NDS).

This is how the game looks at this point. I wanted to go with a Gameboy Advance / Gameboy classic feel combined with UI elements of the Nintendo DS. All the graphics, except for the portrait and level indicator (arrow in screen 2) have been drawn by me on Friday, with some updates during the weekend.

Gameplay:

• Turn based
• 3 types of units: Infantry, Tanks and Mechs (rock-paper-scissors)
• Terrain matters: Buildings and Trees raise defense, water lowers it and bases (square buildings with a flag) restore HP each turn.
• Each unit has 16 action points. Movement costs 4 AP / TILE while shooting requires 8 AP.

Here’s a video I uploaded a few minutes ago to youtube:

Note that the AI is as dumb as a sack of puppies. Reason is that I broke the pathfinding code near the 48h mark when I updated my Grid class and had little to no time to rewrite it with many other stuff left unfinished. Probably, after the jam, I’ll re-write the entire thing from ground up and port it to Android in order to check the market (free-to-play, no IAP).

What left? Options menu, about and In-Game-Menu, + two more levels. The game is designed for 480×320 resolution, but can be upscaled from the Options Menu.

Developed using MoaiSDK and LUA (+ some C++ for some edits to the HOST – lua player).

Tags: Advance Wars, Mini Wars, turn-based, Zapaman

I have had commitments the last few days but now I have time to add a few more features before the deadline.  The game now has chat and a slightly better UI.

Play MountainKing!

Still to do:

• sound
• unit experience
• show fighting somehow
• better map

This marks the first real release of lode storm!

I spent most of this morning adding sound and some music to the game.  Me and my girlfriend recorded all of the voice overs and I composed the music too.

I want to add in a win condition check and extra levels too.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vlloxiks83hc890/lodestorm_v0.2.zip

So I got obstacle avoidance working, with thanks to some pseudocode explanations on boids here.

Units will still get stuck occasionally however, as there’s no escaping the need for pathfinding.

Now I’m wondering if my old code for influence maps will help with this. Although influence maps are used for tactical reasoning, they are very similar to potential fields (which is the one used as an alternative or supplement to traditional pathfinding, i.e. A*), so I think I can use the same code.

I shared my simple test implementation of Influence Maps in Unity. You guys can check out the source code here. Here’s my forum thread on the Unity forums.

I think you need a combination of both obstacle avoidance and pathfinding to get good AI movement.

Anyway, I would consider this tolerable for now, so I’ll move on to making a few more units.

Tags: progress, screenshot, Strat Souls, unity, unity3d

Just posted a new version of the game on kongregate with a few fixes.

My desire to make a dotalike for this competition rose out of the fact that I really enjoy dota but am unable to get my coworkers to play it with me. I wanted to make something that is similar to dota that matches the sort of games that we play and enjoy at the office, in the hope that would get them interested in the real thing. I was also interested in exploring what makes dota fun for me, and if I can find that fun thing in a week.

I have written previously about what I liked about dota, and strangely enough, I don’t think I included much of those things in the game that I made this week. What I did manage to include was a somewhat grindy game that tips over into an endstate with a surprising speed, and has some of the micro work that goes into a dota match. There isn’t as much teamwork in this game, because it turns out that organizing alliances is something that doesn’t just happen in a quick match. I suspect that alliances are a thing that can happen when you actually have time to think out the whole issue.

This is also the second multiplayer game that I have made in a row, and I think I am starting to close in on what would make a successful one. The first game we just finished is local only, but only requires two players to play. I solved the local only with this one, but added a new wrinkle, which is that you need exactly 3 players. It is a bit frustrating that social pressures force you towards certain types of games, but I suppose I could work on making this something that would support 2-x number of players. Potentially by adding teams, or by having more players at once.

The other direction that I could build this game in is to add more abilities for each player. Making the dash a triggerable state with a cooldown made it feel a ton more like dota, and I think that adding a set of ultimates for each player would add a really nice last ditch phase to the game where everyone is triggering ultimates, or saving them to exactly the right time. I am not sure if adding the tech tree / store system to this game would be a good idea or not, but having different builds for the players is something that would be interesting. Basically adding complexity to create depth.

I hope you manage to find two other players and get a game of it in.

Tags: complete, postmortem

OH HO, LOOK WHAT I HAVE OVER HERE

This land is peaceful, its inhabitants kind.

Tags: blender, progress, screenshot, Strat Souls

https://www.dropbox.com/s/megmeycl7jsbq43/raid.swf

I wanted to explore strategy without micro-managing, the idea was that you’d set the AI’s behaviours as in Dragon Age and it should run itself. I had the full gamut of selectable units and the like, but as I developed it I found it too cumbersome the more party members got involved. So I dared myself to strip it to the core.

WASD keys to move, Right mouse to shoot, that’s all that’s needed. When that’s all you have, what strategy will you employ?

I’m not happy with the game but I’m satisfied…I had to cull a lot back due to time, cpu, and brain energy (including my precious pathfinding nooooo). It’s nowhere near where I wanted it, but this is my first full game in Haxe with a home-rolled framework and I get to wake up to this game that’s begging for all the features I promised it!

I’ve learned a ton for the next LD48 — that tech is nice but a game idea is the balloon that floats you over the chasm. Too often I jump off the cliff trying to build the plane before I hit bottom. Content isn’t something that can wait until the end, I’ll learn that eventually.

Thanks sorceress for putting this together, much appreciated.

My second attempt on a Ludum Dare ^^
Enjoy Troll Defense 😀

Tags: MiniLD #44

Time to wrap things up!

I’m going to think out loud here and write my final task list:

• Finish all menu text
• Finish all upgrade purchases scripts
• Create a health bar for the Hero
• Replace the Red Sky background with a Deep Ocean one
• Implement new gun type: spread
• Implement hero speed and bullet rate increases
• Add Fortress Armor
• Make coffee
• Add Hitbox to Fortress and Hurtflash effect
• Add “bang” graphic for when Flyers and Heroes die
• Make sure Flyers collide with heroes, bullets, turrets
• Add shoot function to Flyers
• Drink coffee
• Set up CPU player to have all towers built at start
• Set up CPU to launch waves at a regular basis
• Set up CPU to make decisions at certain intervals, and either repair or make upgrades
• Title screen
• Game Over screen
• Post builds
• Crash asleep

n_n

So here it is.

So basically it’s a rip off of Z, from The Bitmap Brothers (1996), but on rails.

You “control” an army of robots that are too stupid to be controlled directly. So you have a set of waypoints when you give them direction orders. You win when you reach the enemy fort waypoint.

That’s pretty much it. It’s ugly but functional.

Source code is there, on github.

Cya late august for the next LD !

Tags: #7DRTS, rails, strategy, switch

Made a couple last little fixes this morning and here it is!

http://orchammer.com

Nazi Elves are exterminating us Orcs. We must fight back! No sleep till Berlin!

It’s a pretty fast-paced survival RTS – more and more creeps beset you as you find loot caches and build units – how long can you last, and how many of them can you take with you? As you improve your score, more units become available to you.

The current world champion is Mark Nau with 1251 total score.

That was hard work, but I think it came out ok. There’s probably tons of bugs.

Check it out here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-44/?action=preview&uid=10029

7dRTS! How can i forgot about it. It`s 23:47 in Saint-Petersburg so i still can submit my game i`ve been doing this week. Give me 10 minutes and ok, i will submit it.

Aloha Todos,

Here is my entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-44/?action=preview&uid=12154

It’s not finished, but I’m still working on it 😉

Enjoy!

Hell yeah, done! (as it is, pity)
All Your Base (AYB) is submitted and this is a post about it (All my base belongs to captain obviously).

I`ve forgot about 7dRTS till 26 of july but this week i`ve been working on this game and it is the RTS so i`m pretty sure i can submit it and have some feedback or advices.

In fact, this is the game, but the idea is to share an app that says “Hey, you can learn how to control space fleet, just try and you`ll love it!”. With an opportunity to download sertificate in PDF.

So, some things i`ll add to this game later will add more “atmosphere” to my idea and make it more convincing (to stay in touch follow me on twitter).

• .exe for windows
• .i-dont-know-OSx-format for OSx

P.S. don`t pay attention to all that “touch the screen”, just click

Hi!

Here is my entry for this LD. Unfortunately I had too little time this week, so the result is not, what I really wanted at the end.

But try and enjoy and please leave some feedback.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to spend the last two days on my game, so I haven’t added a single player campaign like I wanted. You can still play single player, but there’s no win condition.

You can play the game here. Enjoy!

This post is an announcement of failure. I’d already scheduled to go away at the weekend so I lost two days and all the momentum I’d built up by Friday. This, combined with unwillingness to reduce the scope, has meant that there’s no way it’s getting done by the end of the competition; I’m simply too attached to the idea to do a cut-and-run job.

Still, this isn’t a negative announcement of failure, I feel! I’m intending to work on this up until 7DFPS and hopefully do a stellar job worthy of my vision.

Somehow, despite losing a big chunk of code hours before the end of 7DRTS, I’ve managed to release my first mini LD game. I’m fairly happy with it, although I would have loved an extra day or two to balance the difficulty a bit and fix some of the “quirks” in the game engine.

Icarus

The game takes place in a star system with 11 planets, all colonised by the player. The star in the centre has exhausted all of it’s hydrogen causing runaway fusion to occur. This means that the player must work their way to the outer planets less affected by the solar expansion. The ultimate aim being to build an interstellar colony ship to escape from the dying sun.

I had initially planned to have some of the planets populated with an AI which would mean you must fight for control of some of the outer planets. As the game progressed their would be fewer and fewer planets and therefore resources forcing the player and the AI to fight over what little is left. By day 3 I realised this probably wouldn’t be possible within the 7 days so I had to cut it.

I’m hoping to work a little more on this, so please post any suggestions in the comments. I’ll post a full post-mortem in a few days when I’m a little less tired.

You can view the ludum dare page here.

Hey Everyone,

Me and a friend are gonna be live streaming some Minecraft for a little while, you can tune in here: twitch.tv/0creds

Hope to see you all there,

– OCreds