After the movie yesterday, I decided to call it quits for the night… Woke up this morning, and implemented the stalagmites in the game…

Not feeling it, though… although the game is close to be feature complete (just need to add the ability to grab one object and use it, and the pushing of boulders), I’m not really feeling in the mood to finish it… Don’t know if I’m just being lazy, or if the game itself is failing to excite me, but I’m not sure if I’m staying in the compo much longer…

Finally some progress. Level comes from a simple bitmap like this:

And turned into a voronoi thing (real-time) in the game:

I also got some simple physics and collisions working for the player.

Now there’s enemies (at least superficially so), and they’re Dwarf Pirates. Dwarf Pirates often dwell in caves, and are the only real natural enemy of the Cave Ninjas.

Tags: dwarf, enemy, pirate

I’m starting to get a feel for where this game is going. I have NPCs working in game now, but I still have a lot of work to don on the graphics. I’m working my hardest to get the game design and goal working, and then I can come back and clean up the art towards the end!

I’m throwing the towel…

For me, 48 hours compos are about having fun developing something, and I’m honestly not having fun developing my game…

Although I think the idea is sound and that it works (although not with keyboard controls, it should have mouse controls), I’m not having fun making it, and as such I’m calling it…

Should have gone with the RPG thingy…

So good luck everyone!

So i added some puddles to the mix. They will act as farms for you civilization. Also made some music for the background, but you can’t see that on the screenshot. What you can see is, that my game si cruising along at a comfortable speed of 30FPS.

Next I will do the color filter, that will make you see only your objects, all the opponents are going to be black. I didn’t really know how to do that effectively. Parthon suggested I do a bitwise AND filter. I will use that, but It will limit me to three colors for nations: red,green and blue. But it will give me more color freedom for certain objects. Thank you Parthon.

But first: lunch.

Tags: checkpoint

Well, it took longer than it should have because I keep getting distracted by skimming forums… I did get a house drawn, and am now able to place it. Once placed the houses apply a stress in the opposite direction as the supports, and it reflects correctly on the heat map. However, I haven’t yet implemented the houses falling into the cavern, scoring, and the player turn indicator doesn’t really do anything. So I still have a ways to go…

Anyway, screenshots below. Playable version history here. (If you play the draft, the preloader hangs between 95-98% complete. It does complete though, give it a few seconds. I’ll be working on that soon too.

-TF

Coffee, Weetabix and Ribena

3 x Weetabix, Semi Skimmed Milk, Coffee and a Glass of Ribena Light, Good Morning Ludum Dare!

Today I have a scrolling tilemap, but need some little soldiers, carriers, landing craft, bunkers, doors, engineers/sappers…. OMG lol!

Cavern Club Screenshot 01 - Just text and a background image.

I’ve been up for a few hours now, after a rather lazy yesterday evening (too much Batman: Arkham Asylum riddle finding, and Professor Layton puzzle solving) and I’ve got my first graphic in the game!  Woo!

Above you can see the basic layout for the game – the top strip of the screen will show the side on view of the Cavern Club, complete with little pixel Goths, Rockers and Metalheads.  They’ll hopefully move from place to place as their needs dictate – from the tables to the dancefloor when they want to dance, from the dancefloor to the bar when they want to drink, and from the bar to the toilets (to the far right) when they…. well, when they’ve drank more than their plumbing can handle.

Unfortunately, all that happens at the moment is that the time in the top right hand corner advances (at *150 speed), I print out some sprite fonts to show what’s going on with a starting group of ten punters, who wait around for 10 in game minutes and then either pay to get in (if they have the money and the door price isn’t too steep) or they leave in disgust.

I’m not going to get this finished, realistically, but I’ve already learned a hell of a lot (for my first proper go at XNA).  To those other people stepping down, or thinking of stepping down – I’d like to offer my encouragements.   You’re close to the end, what’s to lose in just pushing a bit more and seeing what you can get at the finish line?  Everyone else, who doesn’t have time to read this – keep going, and best wishes!

Tags: caverns, first screenshot, LD #15 - Caverns - 2009, screenshot

If I was going with my original idea: a) I wouldn’t have been able to finish it and b) it probably would be a much better game without any caverns in it, so I changed direction completely and decided to just hack something together so at least I’ll get an entry.

The cave (the gray lines),  is “collapsing” around you (the red dot) must survive as long as you can… that’s it. Really weak game but at least I can finish this in the two to three hours I have left before I have to go. Still todo: score (timing), sound and if I have the time, to try to make the gameplay better.

I’ve fixed a few physics-bugs in the game and the result is a more stable game, however the screenshots looks the same so here are various stages of breakfast (instead) and a link to my source at google svn…

lunch…

and this is how it looks under my desk when I’m sitting there

Tags: deskphoto, foodphoto

its not much bit its actually been the biggest headache so far this LD =/

hopefully the game will be done soon and I can add more ticks and rejigger the player art.

playable after the link:

• Left/Right = steer
• Hold Space = Crouch (speeds up a little)
• Release Space = Jump (hold longer to jump higher)
• up/Down = Kickflip
• Tab = toggle cameras
• 1,2 & 3 = change board sound effect
• 4 = mute sound

Tags: caverns, hoverboards, LD #15 - Caverns - 2009, unity

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 9:01 am and is filed under LD #15 - Caverns - 2009. 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.

Okay! I is fixed alpha problem. Is good. I is created series of tiny pictures to represent this boy. Big discovery! When I am playing these pictures in rapid succession, is creating impression of movement, or what I like to call ‘moving picture’. I anticipate great wealth in my future for having discovered this, but for now you can enjoy the fruits of my benefits for my ‘moving picture boy’.

Now you see why I named the game this way, eh?

Scarily, LD15 ends in about 14 and a half hours.. I’ve still a lot to do, most important of which is getting font support in for some feedback!
Some sounds wouldn’t go amiss either…

However, the onslaught of nasties continues as base spawners have been implemented.
Here’s a bit in the first sector of the first moon that’s somewhat nasty:

I had just destroyed the one on the right when the screenshot clicked 😉 they take quite a beating though but at least they stay dead! There’s also a puff of smoke when something collides with a bullet or enemy. Definitely crying out for sound effects now!

What’s left in Order of Importance:
Fonts.
Picking up Researchers and Repairing ( as you can still shoot stuff so, yea..  I can change the game to destroy all enemy spawners if need be 😀 )
Sounds.
Some actual level design ( though the way the levels are built, I could whip up a lot of them in the last two hours quite easily. )

Nicities:
Frontend.
Music.

Current playable with four spawners is here: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/gamez/ludumdare/ld15/MoonsOfSubterrane-32.7z
It’s getting there.. and I might actually finish for a change!

Gonna sleep for 5 hours, get up, and finish my game.

Right now I still need leveling options, and actual levels, and a menu system, then I should be done. Oh, and music, but probably there isn’t gonna be music…

I made huge-ass dudes that can’t take cover. They’re neato:

The big dudes are *very* powerful. Also they can't take cover!

I’ve got enemies (Who stand there and get shot…)

They die, though! (Well, they disappear…)

I’ve got a camera, too. It works very well, even not blitting things that are off-screen.

(I’m glad I’m using a library that I’ve used a wrapper for! The concepts are familiar even if the language isn’t!)

They're Huge! O_O

Oh, and her gun works now!

Less QQ, More Pew Pew! OwO

I… Haven’t gotten much sleep. I fell asleep in the bathroom last evening, and woke up a few hours later just awake enough to not be able to sleep.

But, it gave me time to implement some things.

Then I tried using MinGW from Code::Blocks. (In Linux, no less)

That didn’t go too well, as the Linux version of Code::Blocks assumes that you always want glibc, which conflicts Extensively) with windows.h, which defines the schmutz that you need from WinMain, which Windows, monkey OS that it is, demands!

I’ll stick in preprocessor bits to allow building on Windows, as well as a Makefile after I’ve got the thing done. If I can’t get all of it done by tonight, I’ll just port it tomorrow morning. The rules allow that, if I recall correctly.

All in all, I can almost guarantee a game by the end. I have very little left to implement, so the only major undertaking will be the world generator, which is actually fairly likely to be done by tonight! Yeah!

Here’s to things working out, despite all of our troubles.

—Akake

It’s the start of a level layout, loaded from a file!

You can see the ground, the darker walls, the green monster lair, and the blue minerals.

I hope. Anyone out there who is slightly colorblind and can’t tell the difference between the lair and the mineral? I can fix that if it matters.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 9:27 am and is filed under LD #15 - Caverns - 2009. 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.

It’s done!

Try the game here: http://www.jarnik.info/pub/ld15/index_04.html (flash)

Some more screenshots:

Title screen

Battle rage... in the caverns!

Fatbat squad trashing the tavern

Help screens:

And that would be all, I’m going to wrap things up and submit the game.

LD has been an amazingly exciting event, I’ll be back with a chronolapse and some sort of post mortem.

Had Shreddies for breakfast (no photo again – my family already think I’m a bit odd without me photographing my breakfast cereal). Then was busy until about 12:30, so it’s time to get cracking!

Priorities today: (which I may well completely ignore…)

1. Let the player move! Left, right, jump.
2. Let the player fire bullets, rather than them appearing from the centre of the screen! Hopefully with a mouse-click, if I can get that working within a reasonable amount of time. Shouldn’t be too hard though, hopefully.
3. Have blocks interact with the player – ie, if they fall on your head you take damage.
4. Killable dinosaur, really simple.
5. Finish the level-scrolling code – I put a lot of it in already, but the level has so far been the same size as the screen.
6. Better dinosaurs.
7. Panic because I’m running out of time and still don’t have much of a game.
8. Levels, and finishing-up – sounds, maybe extra frames in animations, etc.

This will probably last me way past noon tomorrow, when my 48 hours elapse. But oh well, that’s the way it is. I like this game enough that I’ll try to produce a snazzier version after the contest has ended.

Tags: breakfast

No time for proper lunch, cookies will have to do.

The game is coming together, but still needs a lot of work.

Lunch was nothing special, just sandwiches.

Dessert was nice though: ice cream on a stick. And the photo also shows my desk area :o.

My game now has an intro , too bad it still pretty much lacks a game.

Tags: deskphoto, foodphoto

Game works! It was a bit scary for a little while… Now to fill it with more art, and fill myself with lunch! 😀

(Apologies for low quality screenshot! Eep, no time!)

Well another milestone, I suppose: I’ve got a text console and command input working now. I had to hand-roll the word wrapping and input (maybe pygame was a bad choice in this respect), but it’s done now.

I had to chop the sides off the viewport because of problems with the perspective. I’ve added hard rock now, and you can mine away the softer rock. Hopefully this will start to come together into some kind of game this afternoon – fingers crossed! I really need to figure out how to darken the walls in the distance, too. That’s been bugging me right from the start…

Yes, I do.

I’m really close to moving the player around. He can jump in and out of the tank if he’s near it. Or, he will once I figure out how to make sure that he doesn’t jump out of the tank into a wall.

Tags: foodphoto

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 11:13 am and is filed under LD #15 - Caverns - 2009. 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.

Shows how much of a noob I am really, but I just discovered that SDL lets you check keystates at any time, not just when a keypress event is raised. This makes the movement code much, much simpler. Currently attempting to let you jump, which currently conflicts horribly with the code that stops you falling through the floor… Wait a minute! I think I’ve cracked it! I just need to do a check if the vertical velocity is negative! Yay! 😀

Tags: SDL

Currently, I can place buildings of three sizes. That’s the only major change from the previous version I posted. But at least I’ve got decent error checking for overlaps now. Next live update will be a version with a selector.

Unroll your loops boys! We’ve got a milestone to hit!

–Joe Ludwig

Sadly, while I do have a milestone to hit, my brain is getting tired and not only did I realize I should have used a pretty simple loop here, but I also have too much left overall to do to refactor this section.

Screw it… I’m going to go get a coffee.
-TF

I’m now making a platform game called Cave Miner, I just spent a long time drawing some graphics. I can make simple levels now, but there is still a lot to do!

Just getting out of bed. Will be getting back to work on finishing everything up in an hour or so. My plan at the moment is something like this:

• Add a title screen (need to create graphics for this)
• Create a graphic for when the rocks hit the ground
• Fix the exe icon
• tweak the timings when objects get created and how it varies as you progress

None of these are that difficult and shouldn’t take too long, except balancing. I need to make the difficulty get gradually harder and this is based on how many objects are falling, the ratio of rocks to beans and the speed that each falls at.

With time permitting I may add more animations. Not sure yet, will see how far I get and what plans the family has.

So this is what I have so far. Download link is: http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=82059

Windows only, I’m afraid. Let me know if you have troubles with it.

I managed to utterly simplify my graphics and get a huge boost in productivity and morale. I totally failed to take pictures of the food I’ve been eating, or my horrifying desk, but there’s always LD16, right? 😀

Honestly, I’m pleased with it so far. I need to work out what the hell you’re actually doing, though… maybe destroying a block will uncover a thing that gets you to the next level? It started in my head as an RTS, where you’d tag blocks for digging by your dudes, build buildings into the backdrop, and actually encounter real caverns with amorphous bad guys in there :O but I ended up leaving it on while I made food, and discovering how cool it gets after about five minutes. Your population reaches a sort of critical mass and then ruins the landscape and dies off.

Oh yeah, right click to heal blocks, left click to damage them. Look out for the odd mutant 😀

Or experimental lava / rock texture?

Got some basic graphics sorted now just need to write the actual game…

The blue army disembarking...

Just concept in art package at the moment but… I’ll be back (still 13:05.30 to go!)

Tags: art, food, update

yeah baby we have artifacts !! =)

Glaucon lost in the cave will have to search for some artifacts so he can open the door, and look for some enlighment at the next cave…

Tags: artifacts, caverns, drawing, glaucon, LD #15 - Caverns - 2009

Good afternoon fellow competitors! Here was my lunch:

I had the Shin Ramen with spring onion, my wife had a steaming bowl of udon with a raw egg. See if you can spot the GC, DC, PS2, PS3 and TE Fighting Stick! Oh and that’s BlitzMax running there.

This is today’s progress so far. You can see my lighting system is up and running, and the map and walk animation… But still no baddie or combat animations. I’m starting to doubt I can finish this, but I’ll keep plodding on!

Well since my last post many hours before not much changed… I mean I spent pretty many hours testing some ideas I never got testing with how to simulate particle collisions without checking each colliding particle pair. Those were weird ideas and isn’t it 48h compo a place to test weird ideas 😉 Well some idas worked, some did not but here is result I am stopping at. Have spent too much time at it anyways already:

So now I will go eat something and will be turning it in to a game as it is only a toy right now. Considering not much time is left it will be something really simple… Should have been at that stage yesterday and not today heh

Hah, I almost passed out in the shower this morning. I then realized I hadn’t eaten anything for a long while. Oops.

Hooray for Ludum Dare!

(New screenshots coming soon from me)

I’m soooo censored behind schedule. Progress so far: cavern now has stalagmites and a character with a sonic board (of course this is just an excuse to not draw running animations).

Game character

Last night's dinner,. tasty noodles!

din’t get back to work last night,. beer and distractions after dinner,.  . 

But up early thismorning with jug of coffee,.

work space morning shot,. .

ok,  I added some monsters,. they are only visible when lit by the players light source.  I like the way they can hide in the shadows of the cavern’s pillars, and other structures.  Right now they just stand there,. but AI is next and I will try to get them to use the shadows as cover,.. .

as you can see I did some simple tile graphics too,. and a perlin noise based scaleing of the floor tiles creates a cool pattern effect.  I am almost to the point of having a ‘playable’  game, just a little more work and something basic should be working.

for windows.

Tags: finished

Spent most of the day so far messing with physics (Tokamak) – attempting to get boxes that can be pushed around. Sort of works now, but it’s not great… but also got the collectable gems in.  (I’ll have to do some screenshots with the lighting+bloom turned off, to show just how plain the geometry+textures really are…).  Anyway, need to add win/lose contitions, and support for more than 1 level…  And maybe some audio, but this one may have to remain silent, as I’m almost out of time…

So I’ve added music and sound fx, the last of the hazards is in and working (to the left of the above shot), and I’ve sorted out the sky so it’s smooth and gets lighter the more lightboxes you activate.  Now I just need to do some level editing and add a story screen and it’ll be ready for release!

Hmph. I already finished that frog game, but I was really not happy with it. Too simple, too ugly, too… something. Anyway, I decided to create a new game from scratch in the hours available, and I’ve been working for 5 hours now.

So gorgeous!

My game is going nowhere so rather than giving up completely or forcing myself to continue something that is not going to be finished or be any fun even if it was, I’m starting over from scratch.

It’s kind of late but for LD #3 I made a playable (if rudimentary) pygame entry starting 7 hours before the deadline so it’s not impossible.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 12:39 pm and is filed under LD #15 - Caverns - 2009. 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.

Still needs some things to kill.

Now I’m sure about it ! my wife is a cannibal !! she wants to make me fat so I can be more tasty, look how much food she is cooking for me !!

Tags: cannibal, food, foodphoto, foodpic, LD #15 - Caverns - 2009, tasty

When all else fails and you’re out of ideas…

…flying whales! XD

Okay, I made some progress, but first, snacks!

then stress-testing the physics…

.. and finally a cavern I made while playing…

Now I’m fed up with snacks and gonna go and make me a dinner with at least some nutritional content

Tags: foodphoto, screenshot

See the yellow sphere? That’s the driver of the tank, out to get those blue minerals. Both the driver and the tank respect the walls of the level now. The driver can get in and out of the tank, but only from the front. I should probably do something to make it clear to the player. If I have time, of course.

I still need to implement mineral collection, and then it is time for the monster lair to hold and release monsters. After that, a way for you to stop the monsters from coming out after the driver when he’s outside of the protection of the tank.

Then sound, then better looking graphics.

If I have time, of course. B-\

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 1:52 pm and is filed under LD #15 - Caverns - 2009. 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.

A quick update, my baddies can now fire their guns. And they can kill you!

My next task is to code up some explosions, and then terrain. Explosions shouldn’t take long, as they are simply graphical.

After that, terrain! Then I actually have a game! Yow!

—Mr. Dude

Screeny

Barely excusable as a game, its not fun but I thought I’d rather submit something than nothing.

Didnt really get into the theme, started a day late blah blah.

Zip: XOUTLD15

http://d-games.co.cc/LD15%20-%20Cave%20Invader.exe

I have a prototype! No screenshot, just an exe. This is not the game,  it’s just what the game is so far,and I need it tested! Test away, people!

Ok… Finally got the buildings to fall into the cavern. I’m having massive issues because I’ve got grids 90 degrees off from each other, and not all my grids are the same size. Definately next time I’d use a master class which stores EVERYPIECE OF DATA that ANY type of cell could want so that I only had one NxN array instead of 7 or 8…

Haven’t touched the building selector yet, or recolored the buildings for the other players. No chance I’ll get to sound I think… I’ll be lucky if I finish a UI and have an AI which does more than place random moves. Here’s a current screenshot though.

-TF

Working title is now “F equals ma”.

I wasn’t too happy with the square cave that I had going before, so I’ve replaced it with a randomly generated cave system. Now I just need some reason to explore.

Play in browser here.

I got my first test environment working in the penguin game!

Test it out (needs unity3d browser plugin):  http://deadpanda.com/lj/ld15test.html

Completed the filter,  also added the main tower object. I made the map brighter, the dark color was really hard on the eyes, once I implemented the color filter. I also have a normal tower and a factory done, now I need a HUD/GUI to make them buildable.

I find the green color relaxing. Now I’m off to play some basketball, I’ll be back in ~2h and see if I can still make a game of this.

I’ve got another playable billed uploaded along with another gameplay video for the passively curious:

Play version 0.3 here (Flash)

Watch gameplay video of version 0.3 here (YouTube)

A suitably themed main menu

Concept:
You are an extremely angry cavern. You awaken one day to find many creatures living inside of you. This pisses you off! You have a short amount of time on each level to use your cavern weapons to destroy as many creatures as you can. Kill multiple creatures with one attack to earn combo points and kill rare bonus creatures for extra score! Compete online with global leaderboards.

Controls:

• Use your mouse to click on your weapons (stalactites, geyers, etc.)
• Kill as many creatures as you can within the time limit.
• Kill all the creatures for a big bonus!

A few more screenshots with captions after the READ MORE…

Activating a geyser to score a sweet bonus!

Grabbed another bonus with a stalactite!

Global leaderboards are tied in!

Tags: angry, as3, bats, cavemen, caverns, caves, flash, highscorse, leaderboards, mochi, screenshot, stalactites, video

I lost motivation, so the game has been cut short.

Fetch.

Tags: final, LD #15 - Caverns - 2009, motivation, Windows

So far, I have what appears to be a working game. I only have one level, but they are hard to make. Essentially it’s about a Leprechaun who get’s captured and must escape.

Celtic Cavern

Tags: 2D, celtic, leprecaun, leprechaun

I think I have everything in there I need to now (including a second trick). I just want tohave a go at redoing the character and fixing up the UI a little before I call it ‘finished’

backflip alongside lava at really fast mph... how did I even come up with this?

playable after the link:

[WP_UnityObject src="http://www.sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/ludum/LD15_web09.unity3d" width="560" height="420"/]

Tags: caverns, hoverboards, LD #15 - Caverns - 2009, unity

New playable build. Got the building selector working a lot faster than I expected. Now I need to (in the order it’s likely to happen):
– Recolor Buildings so they are unique for each player
– Add tracking for the Player’s Cash (Left side of screen) and Points (Right side of screen)
– Come up with a score mechanism :eep:
– Script some type of AI to replace players 2-4. Generally thinking here, player 2 will always place the largest building he can afford on the least stressed square. Player 3 will 25% of the time place a support, rest of the time place a building on a low-stress square. Player 4 will try to collapse the human player’s buildings into the cavern… but obviously none of this has been implemented yet.
Screenie:

-TF

I am still terribly behind schedule, and  most probably won’t make it. But I have made minor progress. My sprite animation framework is implemented now. Still a long way to go.

And one more thing I learned… I really can’t pull “all nighters” anymore.

After eating a large bag of candy to wake me up, I added all my graphics to the game(programmer art!). I also added collectable gems for extra points

My game(now with Graphics!)

So, yeah, I haven’t done anything at all today. Mainly because I completely lost motivation on day-one where I just didn’t get any bursts of inspiration.

It was my plan to use Unity3D and create awesomely sweet looking 3d graphics with lots of cool gameplay, but lacking that one *good* idea, it just never happened. Also, I really suck at modelling AND drawing graphics/textures!

Late day-one, however, I did decide to just whip up a heli-flyer game using the iso tech I had sort-of implemented earlier that day, but after fiddling around for a while creating some temporary art I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. So here’s a shot of the few (crappy) things I made:

Isometric graphics textures projected onto 3D cubes

Should you not have realized it yet, this is an “I give up”-post

Tags: Failure

This is a bowl of popcorn.

LOOK AT IT!

I prefer my popcorn plain. It is much easier to grab a bite and continue working if I don’t feel the need to wipe the butter off of my hands every time.

Progress report:

The driver can exit the vehicle, pick up some mineral, return it, and go back out for more. He can’t pick up more than one mineral at a time.

Oh, he also can’t leave the level without the tank.

Next: adding monsters to their lairs. For lack of time, the AI will have to be very simple. It will cheat and chase the driver through walls. Hopefully they’ll look more like monsters than spheres of a different color. B-)

Tags: foodphoto

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 3:39 pm and is filed under LD #15 - Caverns - 2009. 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.

Yay, digging through works now

I haven’t really done anything LD wise other then tweak a few constants in the last 12 or more hours. Tons to do so trying to kick myself awake with an assault of food and sugar.

The last meal before I fell asleep and stopped producing:

Steak of Unproductiveness

Now with only about 9 hours left. Eeek!

Breakfast of inspiration

Caverns need to look cavernous (brown rectangles won’t do)

Game needs some scoring system so it has a point!

Game needs some sort of menu!

Top priorities for now.

Yeah, curry and cuppa!

Well currently code is broken but prior to the syntax bomb of new elements being added I had red and blue soldiers on the map admittedly appearing in the middle of the sea but in the game!

Now have coffee and going on a bug hunt 9:07.51 to go!

Tags: curry, food, update

I’m making some progress, although not quite as much as I would have liked.

The helicopter can now collide with the walls of the cavern. The player has a score, and the helicopter is far more controllable than it was at the end of day one.

Here’s a screenshot that shows the helicopter in a canyon in a cavern.

The helicopter flies through a cavern.

Still lots to do, such as…

• when the player reaches the end of the level they are congratulated and shown their score
• when the water reaches the helicopter it’s game over
• the helicopter should respond when it collides with the walls of the cavern (haven’t decided yet if it’ll crash or just deduct some points and continue)
• scientists
• sensible scoring
• sound effects

But it’s getting there.

Tags: screenshot

I totally overslept today. Nearly all gameplay features are implemented, but the game is still not fully finished and I still have some severe bugs to fix.

So, here is the latest screenshot:

Click on more to see what I had for lunch/dinner.

And here is what I need for lunch/dinner:

Corncob

Tiramisu

Tags: cavern defense, foodphoto

GoblinHome is about a tribe of goblins that are trying to make a new home in a cavern, but they need to make the cavern safe to live in by killing all the cave denizens(currently just blue trolls) and also ward off attacks from adventurers.

It looks like I won’t get the adventurers or the home building in on time but I should be able to get the goblins and trolls to battle which can result in either winning or losing and will therefore constitute a game.

The clock is ticking.  I added some dump trucks, and monsters that eat the pellets.  The monsters get hurt by the wrong colored pelets, if 3 monsters die, your game is over.  They also get bonus points for consecutive pellets eaten.

There are a lot of items/features that I wanted to add in today, but with the deadline looming I’m going to settle for adding high scores and spend the rest of the time adding levels.

Tags: foodphoto

Well, it’s more colorful anyways… Fixed a bug which caused the stress grid to recalculate itself up to 800 times per frame o.O Score and cash displays in progress and coming up next…

-TF

Well, this is getting odd:

Beyond the edge of the world, there are... odd floating blocks that shouldn't exist.

I’m currently sorting-out level scrolling. But due to something odd and inexplicable, when you go beyond the level you get odd floating blocks. And invisible ones like the one I’m standing on. No idea why at all, but hopefully it should soon be sorted – I’m going to try changing the level format to a vector of arrays rather than a 2D array, and add new columns to the end of the level as needed.

Ah, just looked it up and apparently vectors of arrays shouldn’t work, so there goes that. Actually, I could use a struct… Yeah, sorted I think.

I’ve added dinosaurs, finally! Well, a dinosaur.

DINOSAUR!!!!

The dinosaur sits there until a rock drops on its head, then it dies – flipping and sliding down the screen. Stylish. Unfortunately, that’s all it does.

While I’m mentioning flipping images, I might as well also mention the terrible memory leak I had. I was flipping the images dynamically, which created countless identical images that were never deleted. Ew. Sorted now though, phew!

I really, really should have set-up a framework before the weekend, it would have made all this much easier…

Currently have 16 hours, 20 minutes left of my 48 hours. Though a lot of that will be sleeping. Better get up early tomorrow then!

Tags: dinosaur, screenshot

Available here.

Pretty happy with it, even though it is a bit shit. At least I got it finished.

Tags: final collapse flash

They chase you, and they look better at doing so than I would have thought. Now I have to implement player death.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 4:50 pm and is filed under LD #15 - Caverns - 2009. 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.

I added a dummy main character to get the movements working and it can now walk and jump, now I still need to draw the actual character.

Here is a pic I forgot in my last post:

And I just cooked (and ate) supper:

Gah. Massively overslept. Need to add progression, levels, and a score system. Those are most important.

I’ve uploaded an entry. I’m not linking here yet, because I’m planning on making it better, but it’s uploaded. Right now, I’m totally stuck – I’ve got code to switch to a new level, but it doesn’t work. I can’t figure out why it won’t, either. I’ve been asking on IRC, but haven’t gotten a response, so unless I find out what’s wrong, I don’t get a better entry.

That’s right, LD15 is over for me It’s been the most exciting event for me in a really long time.

Check my submission here – http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-15/?action=preview&uid=1163

Features downloadable flash (.exe), on-line playable version and full sources (graphics included).

Tools:
– FlashDevelop (+Flex3), coded in ActionScript 3
– sfxr
– musagi
– Inkscape
– Gimp
– OpenCanvas + Wacom tablet

Libraries:
– Flixel v1.25
– TweenLite v6.21

Thanks to LD (and TIGS), I’ve discovered some really amazing tools.

Sfxr is a final SFX solution for me (at least as long as I stick with platformers) – lets you create wide variety of chiptune sound effects with a few simple tweaks (or a single “Randomize” click).

Musagi proved to be quite a handy tool. Although I have some musical background, I’ve never composed anything and was always a bit hestant about make music tracks on my own. Thanks to Musagi, I can set up a simple tune in a few minutes – nothing original, but just enough to break the silence barrier during the gameplay.

Flixel is also my new friend. It’s an AS3 library for Flash platformers and even though its quite specifically focused, you can tweak it your way, if you are a bit serious with Actionscript.

GIMP is an old acquaintance for me, so I used it to create pixel graphics for the game. For static things it’s quite OK, because sticking with it quite some time. But I feel it’s not the best solution for animations and tiles.

Got some good sleep last night, woke up and started working again.  I figured out why the monsters were having issues walking more than one space (missing else before an if), but they keep walking through walls and sometimes the player.  I’ll have to insert some more debug code to figure it out.  I also had a Concurrency exception last night that I seemed to have fixed by placing a syncronized block around the code that loops through a LinkedList.  So far it hasn’t come back.  I also added the status area to the right.

Here’s a screen shot with the monsters:

Monsters! Green are slowest, pink are faster, and blue are fastest. Damage also escalates.

For breakfast, I just had a bowl of granola cereal:

Sunday breakfast, Granola cereal.

After I can figure out this monster collision stuff, I’ll work on whips.

Tags: foodphoto, ld48_15, screenshot

Bad news! Yesterday I had to help my aunt move, which took up most of the day. But I’m still slaving away, desperately trying to make this thing fun to play. I started off with just a random assortment of ideas and no real direction, so the final game will likely reflect that. Oh well, some of those random ideas are actually pretty cool! I’m excited to see what people think of them.

Anyways: new screenshot + music to show off!

Broken Cave Robot

So the title sums it all up. I just can’t motivate myself today. I’m hoping I’ll get back into it in time to py2exe it (as HybridMind suggested) so Windows users won’t have any problems running it. Though at this point there’s really not much to play. I suppose my error in this contest began at the beginning: I wasn’t prepared at all, and really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I am, however, quite proud that I at least got something running, something playable, for my very first LD.

Finished, and with 7 hours and 38 minutes left too! I added a few crappy sounds. Get it at http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-15/?action=preview&uid=1059

Yay, added shiny gold! Well, actually I have mostly worked with sound fx since last update.

hurray !

• main menu = done
  
• level reading = done
• level changing = done
• collecting artifacts = done
• map scroll = done

• npcs generation = missing
• lifes = missing
• attack = missing

Tags: checkpoint, LD #15 - Caverns - 2009

I’ve finished plugging in a bunch of sound effects for Angry Caverns and you can hear and play the result here (Flash)

Now I’m off to use Reason to compose a quick main menu loop and at least one level loop…

Then it will be time to generate some more levels than 1  !

EDIT: If anyone plays and the sounds are too loud / soft / annoying.. feel free to let me know!  Thanks 

Tags: angry, as3, caverns, flash, sfxr, sound, update

Cavern Tycoon Final Screenshot

Check it out here or at its page on my site here.

Let me know if there’s any problems not known, or just send an email if you like the idea. Thanks so much guys. I’ll write a proper postmortem later. But this has been an amazing experience.

Tags: final, finished, journal, progress, update, Windows

Well I now have two unit’s appearing and the logic starting to come together for them to shoot at each other…

Only they shoot at each other making a racket but no shot’s are dislpayed or hit anything, time left 6:54.00 !

Plan – So get shot’s and movement to work, then let loose 2000 units to check it works!

Here’s a work in progress. Click on this link and open the .html file when prompted. You’ll need Unity web player to run it.

Use WASD or arrow keys to steer the helicopter. There are 8 scientists. Fly over them to rescue them.

I’d like to say I went down with a glorious ring of the clock, as the time ran out. But if I were to burn through the night, chuging something that would resemble coffee jello I would surely be out for the better part of tommorow. And I just can’t afford that. I guess this LD is just not to be.

I need to prepare myself better next time. My game this time had some potential, It wasn’t jsut some lame ass idea I usually go with. But I spent almost no time on it the first day, just enough to get my framework up. And today I bravely took on my herculean task thinking I could still salvage it, and at least make it playable. But I have failed again.

Next time I need better preperations all around. Just a good idea or refeined game engine just don’t work out. You need the package. So until next time, I will either finish up my SDL framework or learn some other killer framework or game engine. I will also buy a box of energy drinks and burn through saturday and sunday. I will find a peacefull spot, where I won’t be distracted by every little event. I will try to take monday off, so I can charge to the finish line, and more importantly, have a day dedicated to sleep. Also I will prepare for any other possible scenario, that could prevent me from finishing a kick ass game ( mother nature will not have the best of me!).

Tags: give up

I wish I were on a different time zone. About 8 hours to the end of the compo, but I need to go to bed in 1 hour so I can wake up early and go to work

Anyway, progress until now: the character now can collide against stalagmites and bleeds to reflect that. Bleeding is achieved with particles and the collisions are detected with simple rect bounding boxes.

Character bleeding

I don’t think I’ll be able to include enemies, power-up’s or falling stalactites. However, I’ll try to include victory and game over conditions…

Lets see, I got on the computer at what, 10:30 ish, and now it is 3:12. (should have waited two minuets to write this.)  After much coding, I finally have cavern generation working.  Every cavern you’ll see is generated by the game from scratch including the first cavern you start in.  While you play the game will seamlessly generate the next cavern in the background.  It will then place it on chance with coming in at a random point on the direction your mining, and if the space it wants to be placed in is open.  What’s left is to do a tiny bit of finishing up on cavern generation including adding things like stalagmites and mushrooms to make the caverns more interesting.  Then I will hopefully get some music made that will play in the background.  After that I want to add a goal to the game (collect as many mushrooms as you can?) and some other goodies that will make it fun to play.

A lot of the entries this time around look extremely nifty, I think that’s why it’s taken me so long to show off my own stuff.

Stalactites go down, stalagmites go up

You can also check out an early build (mostly showing off the art) here.

It took me a while to come up with a concept that I liked. Spent a little too much time playing around with the art.  Still shouldn’t take too long to program the whole thing and toss some sound effects in.

The main concept is your a little guy with telekinesis holding off zombies with stalactites and stalagmites.

The end result for LD will be pretty simple, with more time and Box2D I think the concept would be really nifty.

I finished drawing my main character in Tile Studio:

And here he is in the game:

Well this is all I have so far: you, a zombie, and torch to hit it with. I have nice flame effects going on, all hand animated.

I don’t know if I’ll have enough to enter this with, oh well, it’s bee fun drawing it all.

Here was my dinner, hand-made sushi from Kana…

I timelapsed the whole weekend, and although most of it’s not really interesting, the part I spent making art was kind of cool. Posted for your enjoyment.

Timelapse: http://zandermilroy.com/LD15/onefifth/inkscape_unicycle.avi

Coverart: http://zandermilroy.com/LD15/onefifth/UnicycleCover.png (larger than previous post)

Tags: coverart, timelapse, unicycle

I can’t believe how far some of you guys got… I must be looking at the compo site too often. New build is up, here. I’ve implemented scoring, couple of bugfixes. 6 hours left, I need to:
– Set computer behaviors
– Set Win/Loss conditions
– Write Instructions
– Add a help button
– Add a reset button
– Do whatever gameplay tuning I have time for… don’t think it will be much.

-TF

Umm… I mean:

I made BOTH my sound effects and music [samples] with help of sfxr!

Thanks DrPetter.

PS. edit: If somebody has a link to most recent version of sfxr (which has the mutate/random buttons etc as seen in some latest screenshots), please post here. The sfxr home page seems to be down.

so I’m kinda new at this whole thing. I’ve never actually had an LD weekend free before, so for my first try, I wanted to go for something so simple that I would definitely get it finished. mission accomplished.

it takes place in a cavern, but I went for a less literal interpretation than most people did, it seems. I had a false start trying with Löve before figuring that maybe ludum dare WASN’T the ideal time to learn Lua’s many nuances, so I fell back on pygame.

best played with the volume turned up, and nobody within earshot. WASD to break blocks, arrow keys to move, alt-enter for full screen (maybe). work your way through the bricks to get to the end of Sally’s cavern.

Windows, source

Tags: final, pygame, vulgar metaphor

Hi everybody!

I’m getting a lot of comments in IRC about things, so I figure I’d start a post to collect them all.

So if you have any thoughts about how thing ran this weekend, or the voting, post a reply here.  This way, they’re all in one place, and we can see them when we get a chance.

Thanks!

Ok I have burned soooo much time on getting my dumb little spaceship to collide against the cavern walls, and now Ive got it working … sorta, but its good enough for now

Less than 6 hours to go and I am just now starting on the game parts … wish me luck

That’s me reached my third milestone!
Seems like it’s third time lucky, this time ( this is my third main ludumdare ) and I might actually really finish this on time

Obligatory screenshot:

All game mechanics are implemented and work, it’s now a case of sorting the levels out properly, and sound!
There’s meant to be 25 levels in all ( or atleast, I’ve made space for 25 levels) – five areas per moon.
Each moon has a different graphic set ( read, I’ve changed the colours in GIMP 😉 ) and a different amount of rooms per cavern. Your first moon – Chronos – starts with 4×4 caves, whereas the last moon – Wenut – will have 8×8 caves.
Oh and be warned, the gravity changes per sector 😉 Chronos Sector 1 is fairly light, Sector 2 is heavy as sin, but 3 – 5 are about average.

Currently, Chronos is complete… though some of the rooms could be tightened up a bit, but it works for the moment. Rest of the moons are just repeats of Chronos for the time being.
Playable is here – http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/gamez/ludumdare/ld15/MoonsOfSubterrane-44.7z

Now for some sound!