Got up at 2:15 to see what the theme was, then went back to sleep to get some ideas.  And the idea is:  ‘For Queen and Country’, a turn-based multiplayer strategy game.

There are 4 players, and an unexplored island divided into tiles.  The player to visit all those tiles (and thus explore the whole island) gets to claim the island for their country, and wins the game.  There are three obstacles in their way:

• Players cannot move into a space another player is already occupying.
• Players can only move if they have enough food rations.  Otherwise they will have to spend a turn foraging.  Each space will have a different number of food units, so some spaces will be more useful in this regard than others.
• Players may erect a garrison on a space which will prevent other players from moving there even if the original player has moved on.  Garrisons last 3 turns.

That’s it.  It’s probably more like a boardgame than a videogame, but I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible to make things easier on myself.  There will be the option of CPU players to make up the numbers, but I can’t guarantee they’ll be particularly smart (not being particularly smart myself).

First step: draw the island map.

yup, I fixed my triangles problem, and I even coded all the streaming PCG stuff, so already you can wander endlessly across the surface of mars. click ‘more’ to play the embedded version

[WP_UnityObject src="http://www.sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/ludum/mars01.unity3d" width="560" height="420"/]

Tags: mars, PCG, unity

yeah .. it’s a bit better .. still no idea what game will come from this!

I started a little Flixel project about a floating blob that’s looking for a girl.

Just mockups and some messy test code for now…

I coded most of the engine and I added shooting and a jetpack. I’m going to get the rest of the programming done today, then I’ll finish the levels and menu tomorrow.

Tags: ludum dare entry gravity sphere

Whew, after fighting some weird bugs and getting used to Flash Develop a little more I’ve made this:

http://www.ericmcquiggan.com/Gameuploads/ludumdare/LudumDare48.swf

The plan is you are a prospector on an island trying to find things of value to sell back to the local colony.  There is a still a bunch more to add,  my tiles are easily extend-able to different land types .

But for now, sleep.

And this is what I have:

OK, I have just little time, but I can move the objects around now, and they indicate when I can’t place them or pick them out, because they are behind another item in the fridge.

Where Is the Cheese? - Move test

I spent my first 3 hours designing the main character and coming up with an art style. I then coded the basic character movement and added a particle effect during the following 4 hours. Add in some playtesting, IRC, and blog reading and you’re looking at my entire Friday night.

I’m super tired, so I think it’s time to hit the sack. I can only hope that I remain this productive tomorrow.

Tags: first screenshot

This is my first LD, so the goal is clear — finish ANY game. I woke up in the middle of the night to see the theme, had some weird dreams about explorations in complexity theory and then woke up again an hour ago, without any idea what kind of game to do. But now i think i have at least a rough idea, what to do — some kind of mind exploring game.

Now i see, that lot’s of people have already got some content to show, where i still have just a fuzzy idea, but i’m listening to Gangpol und mit – Exploration raisonnée du verger and ‘m going to do my own rational exploration of flixel.

I think i will use Flixel for programming, maybe as3ds for datastructures, Flan for tilemaps, Allegro sprite editor and paint.net for sprites and Sfxr + musagi for music and sounds. Besides paint.net, I haven’t heard about any of this programms until a week ago, I never learned actionscript or programmed in flash, so it will be pretty funny frustexploration weekend for me… 😉

Fixed some bugs in slug so that mouse/fullscreen actually works now, and also fixed up my build system so that I could build a portable Linux executable (new build/src is here, if anyone’s interested). Assuming slug is “done” for now (haha), this means i don’t have to compile anything again for the rest of the compo, just writing Lua scripts and automatically have everything work on both Linux and Windows. Mac support would be nice too, but I don’t have a mac, so.

Now, time to get started on the actual game! I wish I had any good ideas. Guess I’ll just start making a platform engine and see where it goes from there…

Tags: slug

The compass is kind of skewiff but otherwise I’m pretty happy with this.  Now I’m going to do the old ‘soak a piece of paper in tea’ trick to create a vintage-looking paper background.  Not started coding yet…

Breakfast was delicious! 😀

I’m still getting started with this, struggling for inspiration somewhat. I’m probably going to make a third person exploration game. Hmm.

Witness particle effects with lines and rects.  11 particle systems with 100 particles in each.

Renders ok with pygame software rendering on my system.  Now to work on the game part… hrmm.  Or maybe time for some music?  Or perhaps some drawings… um, ar… or more particle systems?

Ok, preliminary prototype is already working… the “speech” system is also going ok.

Really crappy graphics for now.

taking a break for food! Unfortunately I bought noodles with octopus, and I hate those. Getting out, buy something else, losing time? hahaha no way

Left computer is only for entertainment (a megaman vid), and on the right one you see a first draft. only gonna get better 😀

have fun, everyone!

I’ve decided on my concept. (For real this time!)

The game is about a little fox cub trying to find his way home. He must explore the forest to find his family. There will be rough clues to the path, but they will take the player all over the forest. The clues will take the form of cookies placed in a rough approximation of the path.

There won’t be any dogs or other predators, the player can take their time going through the game.

There will be a nice ending, too.

I’ve got an idea for Exploration that I’ve had for awhile and wanted to do as a project.  The theme gives me a great opportunity to do it.

The idea is that you are an explorer sent to sail the world and to bring back riches and claim land in the name of the mother country.

I don’t have much at all yet.  I struggled with how I wanted to represent the world data and scrapped a few ideas before settling on a bitmap and accompanying data file.  As of now, I have it able to load up the bitmap and extra info into a class, but nothing is done with them yet.   I’m falling asleep at my desk, so I think I should get some sleep and continue fresh in the morning.

Tags: exploration, ld48_16

Ok, got my normals on the ground working ok, altered the PCG a little for better rolling landscape, added fog and some random normal mapped rocks (their scale and rotation is random, I did actually model them, I’m not getting *that* hardcore with my PCG =P)

and of course there is a playable build after the ‘more’ link (and you can turn in this one!)

Tags: mars, PCG, unity

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 8:06 am and is filed under LD #16 - Exploration - 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.

so here’s what i have so far

i’m making a town, thats about all i’m sure of right now, so this is an exotic fish store

and this is my fish and chip shop/cafe/whatever

oh yeah i know the colours are a bit bright lol

Yeah, made a dungeon generator. It sucks, so I’m not gonna use it.

It’s saturday morning, and thanks to Flixel doing pretty much everything for me, I have a robot rolling around and jumping (gonna have to take that away soon before he can earn it back).  I like his run/roll animation, it really expresses his desire to have a kitty.  The scary space monsters are actually just solid blocks right now.  I guess implementing them is next.

9 hours already gone and I’m starting work now… So… exploration… the best one of the lot, if you ask me…

Fortunately, I saw the theme before going to bed and during my sleep I already had a couple of ideas popping around…

Still don’t know the setting (space or pirates are my main two guesses), but it will feature an procedural world (very big, to be challenging) and maps to find something. To get map pieces, the player will have to overcome some challenges in the places he will explore.

Now, I just have to define a setting, a storyline (I love stories) and the type of challenges the player will face…

But first, I’ll just scan what people’s doing and get some breakfast…

Good luck everyone!

I got a idea for a game: turn based exploration and treasure hunting in the some deep dark jungle.

And this is what a ate fore breakfast, time to do some shopping and iron out the details, then some lunch and coding/art creation!

my breakfast

The tools will be c++, sfml for the coding and paint.net/gimp and sfxr/audacity for the artist side.

Tags: food, foodphoto

I’m probably going to do a text-based (GUI-based) game which explores one’s subconscious through interaction.

Or something like that, still don’t know what. I have to merge a couple of earlier ideas and thinking experiments I came up/conducted in the past.

And of course, I’ll be using almighty Flixel.

Hmmm – “Exploration” – what a theme.

It sounded really interesting at first and I’m pretty sure I voted it up, but now I’m having a bit of brain-fail trying to come up with a feasible idea. I’m tempted to try my hand at some procedural generation, but that’s gone badly for me in the past…

Tags: exploration, ideas, procedural generation, theme

I’ve got to head off to work now.  I’ve not got as much done as I had hoped, but I’ve got the hand-inked graphics done, and the title screen’s up and running barring the buttons.

(still waiting on the tea-stained paper to dry so I can use it as the background)

Well in this LD I promised my self to keep things technically simple as usually I spend some 70% of time trying something new. This time I want to reuse some old code/idea and try to keep it smiple.

Well first thing that come to my mind was to reuse this experiment Alone In Darkness So some dark caverns exploration with a twist of not seeing much all the time. Other then that traps, treasures and stuff… Buuut I don’t think that it is such a good idea… Lot needs to be done technically and probably making graphics for it won’t be so simple aether.

Another direction of my toughs was space exploration and I think I will go with that. I had idea for such game for a long time but it is too complex for 48hours so I will be cutting that idea down to simple elements for next few hours and trying to gather some prototype code together too see if has any promise at all. Wish me luck while I wish you all luck with making cool games in next 1-2 days

Tags: ideas

A hulking mass of metal drifts
effortlessly through space.

Once teeming with life,
now quiet like the dead of the night.

This is a derelict.

For the brave amongst you,
there are unbound treasures aboard
worth unimaginable fortunes,
with a wealth of information
just laying for the taking.

However.

This is a derelict for a reason.

Pray you never find out why…

Sounds menacing, doesn’t it?
Derelict will be a top down turn-based strategy game with you controlling four marines from six classes.
Your mission is simple: raid the derelict for as much as you can find.
Your marines may leave at any time.. it’s just in how many pieces you need to worry about…

ahhh wake up and makeyourself full of potassium

and write the first big todo list :

• fix the keyboard input
• fix the mouse input
• make char movement, with animation
• add map and screen scrolling
• define map in a txt file
• draw tiles
• draw trees
• draw rocks
• draw coin
• draw 10 different vegetables
• draw 3 different quest givers
• draw 3 enemies
• add to the quest giver to code to show the quest
• all the char to gather stuff
• add random code to add vegetables to places in the map
• add coin counter
• add bomb key and bomb damage
• make enemies move and attack
• buy bombs
• add life control and die event
• create bomb machine
• create main menu

Tags: banana, botanic quest, food, photo, TODO list

Ahh it’s a beautiful sunny day here for sitting inside and making games. XD

This is my mock-up of some tiles. Now, to chop ’em up and put them in a game. I wanna make three levels like this… I hope I have time!

I feel like I’m cheating a little, because I had an idea which would fit both holes and exploration… So I’m using it!

I have a feeling the scope of my idea for this LD (tentatively called “Ruins”) is way, way too broad, but here’s a screenshot from the last few hours of tinkering with the latest version of flixel (and an hour of mind numbingly drawing mediocre pixel-art leaves), and a picture of my first and second meals of the compo (…they really were both identical arrangements of pizza and wings — I promise you’re not missing anything exciting by just having a picture of one of the two):

So far the player can wander around, jump over things, and shake mangoes out of trees; and since it’s 4 AM for me now, I’m somewhat reluctantly calling that “good progress” for the first night ;p

Just remembered now that this weekend was LD16 😛

This time I’ll try something simple to write as I don’t have much time in my hands.

Freebasic will be the tool of choice to be able to code something really quick.

About the theme, I still have to think about what to do.

PSnake

First time in LD, yay!

I’m making an ASCII platformer game… No ideas at all on exploration, though.

Pre-prealpha binary (basic movement):

http://www.box.net/shared/d6d8cqpfav

Right now I’m trying to add map coloring, jumping, ladders and other basic platforming stuff 😀

Last night I had a concert and a party after that, and I was home just before 3.00am, when it all started. I like the theme, I want to make a game where you explore a level and keep getting extra abilities so you can go back and explore more.

I wanted to at least get something working with Flixel right away, so I downloaded the newest version 1.40 of Flixel and the Mode demo. Two hours later I was still not able to get things working. Turned out that Flixel was just being updated and already had changed twice since I downloaded it. The new version 1.41 did compile without errors, but the Mode game doesn’t really work like the example.

I just woke up and now I’m going to try to use Flixel and make something. If it doesn’t go well now, I’ll go back to haXe.

Hi all, gonna start right now )

Exploration – great theme. How much space exploration games for now? I like traveling in space and land on planets (reminds me of Star Control II), but need some originality in this, trying to figure out something…

Yes!! Another ludum dare! This time, I’m taking pictures of food too!! Hotdogs with salami

Yummy Hotdogs

This time I’ll still be using java, but groovy as well. Other than that, it’s all the same,  sfxr, gimp, etc
Good luck everyone!

Hi, it’s my first time here

I’ve got a crazy idea for an exploration game where you have to explore an environment using sound only, kinda like a bat with echolocation. It will have to be very simple because I’ve only got today to write it (lots of stuff to do tomorrow). I’m intending to use Flash but I never used it before so things may get ugly.

Wish me luck!

I ran into artistic problems with my idea, being that I can’t really produce the poignant graphics needed for a poignant game.

Instead, I’m making a game about searching for (And eating) hot dogs!

Here’s a mockup: (The premise is obvious)

Here’s a timelapse video of tonight’s work. Kinda got crappy near the end when I tried making a random dungeon generator.

Ludum Dare 16 – Night One

Just finished the game design for my game… it’s ambitious, but I think I can cut corners in lots of places, which is good…

Anyway, going to start by coding the procedural area generation, to get the ball running…

Drifting in the Stellar Winds
Infinite space + planet exploration

Screens with ripped art that will be replaced!


Current playable copy:

Currently Title->Menu->Game states . Game has a player class that runs around the map, and a random starfield in the background. It scrolls, I’m happy. Using flixel made that a headache since apparently FlxSprite has no Sprite elements, so I couldn’t make one when I want to manipulate pixels, but instead had to make a sprite and a custom render function that blits it over. Otherwise Flash would blit real Sprites over any Flixel objects every time the screen updates. fun.

Next up is getting the starfield to generate new data whenever approaching the current boundry, to remove borders completely. The starfield is just cosmetic so it will be constantly random and not persistent .

Ok, so it was 04:00 (am) here when the theme was announced. I kept myself awake to get the theme and then I went to sleep immediately after that.  About 10 hours later I finally got up from bed and made some morning coffee and ate a little croissant-thing with it:

I thought it might help with the idea side to sleep and maybe wake up with head full of good ideas. I don’t know if that worked at all, since I don’t have a big bunch of ideas, but there’s like 2-3 of them and I’m probably just going to start working straight away using one of them.

Tags: foodphoto

knowing myself this probably won’t be finished by the deadline

but no way in hell am i going down without a fight!

So… Exploration. Not much of an idea so far, but I think I’ll go with something tile and turn based, and see what I think of once something basic is working. Unfortunately, it seems I haven’t learned from last compo that I am rubbish at random generators, and I am considering a random generator. 😛 Ah well, can’t be as bad as last LD.

Good luck to everyone else!

Still don’t have a direction with this game, but I’m trying to get some of the mechanics out of the way. I have textboxes and questions working in a fairly tidy way. Need to get my inventory working, and then I’ll be able to start thinking about what is possible in the game!

G’morning, it’s afternoon and I have an idea in my head, and a cup of coffee in front of me. Let’s see what I can get done before the big, scary DL

Tags: foodphoto

Here is an initial screenshot for my epic tale of self-discovery among the stars. Code named: Satisfactoria.

This is in pygame, of course.  I’m taking a quick lunch break and then off to convert this baby to world coordinates.

My mantra for this project:

…It’s something between discovering and witnessing.

(Attributed to Bob Moog)

Tags: pygame, screenshot

Everyone is posting screenshots, so I think I should too.

Here it is!

It makes sense.

Right, let’s continue working.

Okay, I thought I might post with my first ~12 hours of work. The idea of my game is that you’re an idiot and you like exploring holes by jumping down them with a jet pack strapped to your back. As it turns out, the hole you happened to foolishly throw your fragile body into has a bunch of narrow passageways on the way down that you must dodge or become a patte, your choice. There will also probably be some coins/gems/rare stamps that you might just be able to grab on to as you plummet toward your inevitable death (the casual observer may consider this pointless, but remember you just threw yourself down a hole so you’re probably not the sharpest bowie knife in Australia). The movement mechanics are basically the same as asteroids, and watch your rapid descent to a flattened doom from above even if my attempt at 2.5D is a bit confusing.

You can listen to the music I recorded here, as you can hear I’m pretty terrible at that.

And here are some screenshots, as you can see I’m pretty terrible at art too! Some of it is placeholder art.

Title Screen Screenshot

Gameplay Screenshot

While sleeping for the night I came up with a solid game idea that will definitely work in both theme and being limited enough to be created in a little over 36 hours. So now to make the damn thing. But not before a hearty breakfast fit for a champion. Eggos!

Hello,

This is my first LD competition. I found my way here thanks to Dock, and his entry in LD 15.  I’m using Unity for my game engine (and models), Photoshop for textures and will be using cfxr for sound.

For anyone who has the Unity web plugin, you can play the 12-hour demo of Explorer here.

In addition, here are some dev notes:
LD48 #16: Screenshots Batch #1
LD48 #16: Log 2 (0900-1500)
LD48 #16: Log 1 (0300-0900)

I’ll be posting another update in 12 hours. Good luck to all.

Well after a LOT of thinking, I think I got an idea. Better start whipping up some code. This time I’m going with C++ and DirectX 9; will be interesting see how it goes..

Started to quickly draw a baddy.  A dwarf was suggested… which then turned into a dwarf with lasers on it.  Since the baddy needs to shoot up and down you see.

Drew a really bad BIG BAD… turned out more like a flying green pumkin than a dwarf with lasers on it.

The laser will just be an animated line, and a sound that goes bzzzzzzzz.  With of course a particle effect explosion when it hits something.

Speaking of particle effects, I kind of got my flare going.  So the flare can light up areas either thrown left or right.  Maybe will make it follow the mouse… not sure yet.

Now it’s time to go down to the pub for a friends birthday.  Feel kind of ok about maybe getting some gameplay in tomorrow… and maybe getting a basic game going.

Tags: particles for the win, PFTW, pygame, python

Well after spending a short time putting up my new chair that can about an hour ago I’ve now got it set up and am working at a more comfortable chair

And here is what my current whiteboxing is looking like

It’s extremely early and basic.

Tags: progress

I just made what will probably become all the graphics for my game. The concept is a very minimalist 4x.

Terrain Images

Game Object Images

The 24×24 size seemed to be optimal for an 800×600 resolution.

Ok, i comed up with idea i like. The transforming space ship for multipurpose space exploration!

Deep space mode – all engines turned back – fast speed, low maneuvers.

Local space mode – normal speed, high maneuvers, fighting.

Scanner mode – orbit the planet and scan for minerals, lifeforms, etc.

Planetary lander mode – land on planet and drive on wheels.

It is already 6 hours, since i woke up, but my progress is still not a bit materialized.

This is how my table looked like, when i started working on thist LD:

Nice surprise i’ve got already for breakfast was an rotten apple which looked really nice on the surface. Maybe that was some kind of warning…

But other 2 apples were allright, so i was able to prepare some meal, still not able to get brighter idea, what i want to code today.

I used three hours between breakfast and lunch to get brighter idea how the game should look like. It will be a mind exploring platformer, where the person will walk in his head through some memories. But I still don’t really know, what will be the fun part of the game and what goals should a player achieve…

Last two hours working on concrete problems, playing with my sandbox application i programmed in last two days, trying to find out, what is possible to do in Flixel with sprites, text and so on…

… still no line of code, design not at all complete and some possibilities of flixel are still mystery for me. But i’m not at all affraid, ’till now it is plain fun. Hopefully it won’t change into hell.. 😉

My plans for today:

Make at least a basic game classes and functions, try it on a tiny one-screen level, and start working on artwork, at least at conceptual level

Btw. can someone tell me how to change my profile picture in this blog and why i can’t see any of my comments to other blogs i write here, even if i post them seccond time, the system sends me a message, that i already posted the same text before… :/

Chicken rolls for lunch! Game is going a bit slowly, but I’m slowly checking off my list of mechanics I want available, then I’ll be able to build the game based upon what works.

I have a procedurally generated hex map. I’m not entirely sure where to go from here, though I’d like (for starters) a less organic-looking map. The plan is to drop the player into this world (cavern? déjà vu…), fill it with fog, and let them loose with limited vision range and line-of-sight. I’ve never done either of these things before, so I’m looking forward to figuring them out. Vision is easy, I think — cover the map with an additive-blended mask — but I’ve no idea how to go about implementing line-of-sight. Wish me luck

See? Hex map.

This is all in python, by the way. In case you were interested. Same basecode as before, caveat bugfixes, etc — I’m not entirely displeased with this progress, because I’ve only been awake for a few hours. Damn you, 2am compo time. Damn you.

Also, my camera is on loan for the weekend so I’m afraid I can’t participate in the great parallel foodie blog. Tragedy.

Just got base code working, with a tilemap rendered, and a water effect (basically the UVs of the water sprite changes according to wind direction, and the red and green components color are changing over time (to seem like waves are going up and down)).

Also got some reef things that will serve as boundaries and hazards… I can get any kind of density, according to the area’s ammount of water and such.

I’m going to add what will be the basis of my island building routine, which is a padding system which will see if any neighbour is of a certain type and grow around it with another type (for example, to make isolated reefs transform into barriers, or to grow sand around the island core).

First of all, though, take a look at what people’s been building and eat some of the banana bread I’ve just baked!

I’ll let the pictures (and captions) speak for themself…

food and candy

lunch

cookies!

Tags: foodphoto, progress

So my husband (JonnyD) has an important final he need to study for this weekend and can’t participate…  So I’ve decided to try quench his LD thirst and let him watch me program.  It feels like a good time to try, we just brought our computer back into usefulness (after 6 years of neglect), so I’m looking forward to testing it’s power.  My entry isn’t going to be great…  Time is going to be a big factor.  Most of the programs aren’t installed on the computer, the speakers don’t work yet, tablet’s not hooked up and it’s been a few years since I’ve made a full game, so I’m gonna be real slow.   Plus I have two kids climbing on me at any given moment.

So I’ll be using c++ with:

OpenGl

SDL (or Glut if learning that fails miserably) and SDL standard library

NFont

3Ds Max 10

Gimp/Photoshop Elements (depending on which get installed first)

I’m thinking of doing something mostly about  the feel of an environment with not much gameplay elements.  I’m mostly a graphics person anyway.  I hope I can get something good done!

Took me way too long to build and sculpt her, and there is so much left to be done but I better get back to the actual ‘game’ thing huh?

the build is after the more

[WP_UnityObject src=”http://www.sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/ludum/mars03.unity3d” width=”560″ height=”420″/]

IF YOU WANT TO GO FAST YOU GOTTA HOLD SPACE NOW ^_^

Tags: mars, PCG, unity

The crab and rice fought bravely but in the end I am the winner.

My webcam is horrible.

OK, I’ve figured out the basics of Flash and got a title screen and basic buttons/sound playing working.

Brie, cranberry, and chicken ciabatta. Mmm.

I remembered, just before I took the first bite, that my phone is more than just a device for playing Galcon. Lunch was a pair of brie, cranberry, and chicken ciabatta sandwiches — and I moved a Hobgoblin into the fridge, so I get to follow up this foodie binge with a bit of excellent beer. Celebratory, you ask?

No, just tasty.

Progress proceeds apace: no new screenshots, because nothing new is going on in the visual department. Lots of map-related mechanics in place, though — and I’m about twelve minutes away from having walking entities in the world. All right!

Things are looking increasingly roguelike on this end, which is nice in the sense that I finally have a direction. But a bit problematic in the ever-going-to-finish department, I’m afraid…

Tags: foodphoto

Lambdas of hills and ypsilons of mountains. Basic map is generated randomly.

Tags: progress, screenshot

Progress is going well.  I have movement, lighting, and some early sound all working well.

Controls instructions and playable after the jump.

The controls are:

W and S- Forward and Backward

A / S- Tip counter-clockwise / Clockwise

Directional keys – turn and look

[WP_UnityObject src=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3472941/ocean.unity3d” width=”560″ height=”420″/]

I’ve made some progress. I have a little fox that walks around on a window.

Well, he glides, because I don’t have the code that animates him done yet, but still!

The only problem I’m having is that pygame locks up if I try to use Python’s exit function after pygame has registered an event. That is, unless the first event it recieves is either the close button on the window or the escape key. (Both of which, as you can probably imagine, are supposed to stop the game)

I’ll be uploading a demo to my googlecode page once I’ve gotten the thing to quit when it’s supposed to.

— Mr.Dude

First fase of area generation is done…

The system is very simple, yet effective… It creates a seed from the current position in the “area grid”, and uses that to build the area…

Areas can have between 0 and 3 islands, and they are generated by starting a “squigly” of rock (mountain). Then I grow that with layers of mountain, grass and finally sand to reach the final island. The results are pretty good for such a simple algorithm…

Next step, add the boat to the mix, with simple movement controls…

Been working pretty much nonstop (other than meals) since the beginning of the compo, and this is all I have:

A colony ship and 2 fighter escorts strike out to colonize a barren planet.

Right now I have basic unit selection and movement, as well as the resource model. I don’t yet have a way to produce more units – by right, I should be able to click on the planet and these buttons “Build Fighter” and “Build Colony Ship” would pop up. But not yet. Also, there is a nominal enemy faction but I haven’t modelled any of their ships (may just do a colour swap) and they have no AI yet.

Also, I need to implement mousewheel zooming so you can get a better look at the pretty models.

But mostly I need a miracle.

Am going to sleep now…

Tired. Sleep deprived because I had to get up early in the morning (was other stuff). Hands. shaking. Fooooooood. Spent too much time for the shitty background. Meh

Food: rice + beef. Keeps stomach full

Deep Field

Ok, so lets go with something a bit more complex than I was thinking last night. Because I had a brainwave. Oasis + Weird Worlds! Colonize your star cluster while exploring. Build a civilization in 15 minutes.

Major actions: Colonize solar systems, explore and collect artifacts or scientific knowledge. Almost every action gives points and also improves your abilities. You have a limited amount of time. Might make so that there are different size clusters, but probably it’ll just be set at a number of turns that will make the game last ~ 15 minutes. The game makes you more powerful on an exponential curve. Definitely a lot of luck involved. Wonder if I should add leaderboards…

Major components:

Exploration screen – On this screen the player uses the mouse to designate new star systems for his ship to travel to. This is also the screen where he decides to activate actions like colonizing a star system, exploring, or harvesting resources.

Exploring: Will allow you to collect alien artifacts, catalogue scientific advances, etc. These will all give points, and some may also improve your ships’ capabilities.

Harvesting Resources: Play a minigame where you fly your ship into a dangerous situation. Resources are used to colonize systems.

Colonizing: Colonize a solar system. It will grow over time, trade with neighbors, and research. Trade/Growth give points, research improves your ship’s abilities.

Minigames: (Minigames will be VERY fast. Like Wario Ware fast. 20 seconds as an absolute maximum.)

Sun Diver – In the sun diver minigame, the player uses the mouse to control his ship as it collects plasma from the sun. This minigame will give you energy.

Mining Asteroids – In this minigame, the player uses the mouse to control his ship to move to specific asteroids in an asteroid field and harvest them. Gives minerals.

Mining Gas Giants – In this minigame, the player controls his ship as it drops down to a gas giant and shoots a pipe into it to suck up gasses. Gives gas.

Colonize – In this minigame, the player controls his ship as it lands on the planet and drops off the colonization materials.

Losing minigames will waste time and resources, but will never kill you or anything.

Building your civilization.

Star systems are colonized by spending a certain amount of resources, depending on what type of system it is. Each will require energy, gas, and minerals, but different ones will require different amounts.

Once a system is colonized, it starts generating points. If systems are close enough together, they’ll connect with trade routes. Trade routes increase point generation. Systems will also research, which will increase your ships’ abilities.

Stuff to do:

– Get new version of flixel running (maybe it was a bad idea to go with a new version…)

– Make exploration screen. Make ship that can be moved around by clicking on stuff with mouse. Build basic events that it can run when you reach places.

– Build progression for civilization a la star systems that grow and trade.

– Build sun diver minigame.

– Build asteroid harvester minigame.

– Build gas giant harvester minigame.

– Hook in upgradeable stuff – speed, strength, etc.

– Come up with research and artifacts that improve your ships’ abilities.

– Graphics whenever you need them, unless you use square placeholders. NEVER actually draw something with the purpose of being placeholder. It’ll stay.

– Sound

– Music if you have time. Prolly not though.

Yes, the most incredible graphics you will ever lay eyes on are right here.

All the time up until now I had no Idea what to do, the theme was nothing I’ve tackled before, I even was gonna call it quits since nothing came to my mind, but people on IRC were supportive enough to convince me not to.
Still, 6 hours of work did nothing to me, only as I sad back and made a quick back for my game an Idea sparked.

I’m gonna make a game about just getting out there and having fun, enjoying the marvel of nature, and discovering far more than you’d want to.
An exploration side view platformer.

~Spliter

I have my first demo ready! It’s not much, but it’s something!

Pick up a copy here, if you like!

The error I was having earlier seemed to be with the mixer. Apparently, I was giving the mixer too small of a buffer. Mrf.

—Mr.Dude

Now this is some actual progress. The images are randomly generated and currently I also included boost (random and shared ptr) to my pack of libraries. Enjoy the programmer art in it’s true form. Here is grass that you can go on and water you can swim in.

programmer art ftw!

Now, I’m going to make me some pie!

Mmmmmmm Einstein loves Cheerios

Tags: foodphoto

I’m a bit behind my schedule, this post is gonna be short, so that I can get back to coding.

A few things about the game I’m trying to make:
Name: Colonial Age (working title)
Short description: As you may probably guessed from the title the game is set during the colonial age. The player controls a ship and needs explore the whole map and colonize as many islands as possible.

Gameplay elements:
– Position of islands will be random
– Powerups (like superspeed, etc.)
– Rudimentary AI (there will be an enemy)
– Simple sea fights

I went to the supermarket to buy some food and now I have a pizza in the oven. Here’s image of it before it got in there:

Progress with my entry has been a bit slow – still in rough concept thinking / design phase without any actual code yet. Progress so far can almost be summed in these little editing helper tiles which aren’t even supposed to be any final gfx:

“lol”.

Isometric RPG

So what about exploration? I’m a fan of Zelda 1 where you could basically go pretty much anywhere on the overworld map right from the start. Here I’d like to do something similar to Dragon Quest 1 where the enemy difficulty partly limits your progression.

I might get the map drawing and scrolling done tomorrow. Perhaps player movement (and buckets). Probably not enemy instances or items.

Mr Magical wand will have to do the transparency mask for me. I haven’t really ordered the graphics in a sensible order. I don’t know if the stuff tiles well either.

Now I’m mighty tired. My slow start aside, I’ve been drawing all day and got a decent amount of graphics done.

Exploration as a theme left me wanting to procedurally generate a universe that I could fly about in.

I eventually realised that this way led failure, so I locallised my idea a bit more.

The idea is that you’re a member of a scavenger group and you stumble across a massive debris field. You’re told about valuable items that you need to find in the debris field so you go in there, exploring the place and trying to find them before someone else does.

I’ve managed to get the controls down, done an awesome parralax star field, done the worthless debris, done physics and collisions, done particles and done a little targeter so you know what things are before you pick them up.

Also some terrible programmer graphics. Next up is the tractor beam so you can pick up useful items.

http://www.box.net/shared/bouovfon1t

So there, basic jumping with the arrow keys, map loading, random crappy light effects.

Most of the remaining work will be done tomorrow. I must also think of a name and decide to either add some real gameplay or keep it simple.

…ok, maybe I am.

Current state as of now

I only just got a level drawn and (badly) randomly generated.  And I still don’t really know what this game will be… Oh well! I’ll keep on going.

Tags: denial, panic, screenshot

Ham, bacon, tuna and lots of cheese. Yum.

Tags: foodphoto

Damn. Why do I always do this? I’ve got bogged down in trying to get some procedural generation working and after a good 8 hours I have nothing to show for it

Well, here’s some debug text from my console at the moment:


1 1 10
3 2 10
5 3 10
layer 0
1 1 10
3 2 10
5 3 10
layer 0
# # # # #
# # # # #
# # # # #
# # # # #
# # # # #


It sounds a lot fancier than it really is 😛

Tags: bogged down, console, procedural generation

Spend the better part of 6 hours trying to find a bug in my mapping procedure… only to discover that there wasn’t one! I had set the bounds too high, and it would have worked, had I given it enough time on any of my many tests. Oh dear!

Made up for the frustration by having an awesome breakfast courtesy of my roomie, Sarah.

Tags: food, foodphoto, journal

Progression…is slow

Another screenshot of what’s going on, looks quite similar to before but I’ve done a fair bit of work that I’m happy with

And now it’s pizza time

Tags: food, progression

I spent most of the day sleeping and thinking about a idea. My first idea would be to make a jungle spy exploration game, which kind of stuck

The rest of the day I spent writing an SVG importer, so I can design my levels in Inkscape

My darling made coder’s classic: pizza and cola <3

Tags: foodphoto

I’m having cereal for lunch.

I eat alot of cereal...

Mm… Cocoa Krispies…

Breakfast food for lunch! You betcha!

I had turkey in a tomato sauce (Allegedly turkey parmesan, but it really isn’t…) for breakfast, too.

Looks nasty, but it tasted okay

Anywho, I’m gonna finish eating, then I’m gonna get back to work!

Next demo’s gonna have a world to explore!

ZAXBY’S + BLUE MOON + LUDUM DARE

Lunch is over. On to phase TWO.

Time to get serious.

Tags: belgian white, blue moon, chicken, foodphoto, zaxby's

So I’m just about seven hours into this thing, and it’s going reasonably well. Lighting works, which is cool — when you walk around the map things are revealed as you approach, then fade back into darkness as you move elsewhere. I’m probably going to duck out of here a little earlier than normal (got to catch a plane Monday at 4am, and I still haven’t packed!), so I don’t expect to get too much else into the game beyond some simple dungeon crawling mechanic.

Lighting!

Tags: screenshot

Must not give in to panic. Not already! Argh!

Got something working. Would like to make more than one level of this game. It’s being made in Construct, as I can’t code for toffee (still). You play the little guy with no legs (being cheap on the animation.)

Think I’ve gotta start working on dialogue. The map is done for this level, although it needs prettying up. Once the dialogue is done, the questy parts can go in. Phew!

Got all screens (title, instructions and end) done.

Also got first person movement working with a temporary square (had to struggle with ActionScript for it to work right – blame all the outdated Flash tutorials out there). Not that bad since I’m learning Flash today but not as good as it could be, either.

Created boat sprite (I suck so much at art!), and added boat movement for the player, considering the wind strenghts and direction…

I decided to use 3ds Max to make the boat model and then render it to make a sprite… end result would probably have been better if I’d just drawn it by hand in Photoshop, but this way I get something I can use for title screens, etc…

Think that maybe the boat is too small, but I’ll see that when I had the code for collision detection and shooting and stuff like that…