Ok! I’m ready to begin with the Ludum Dare! The theme is islands… I’ll think on something… :S

I’m screenlogging my actions with a script I created on my Mac… now it’s time to Think! Think! Think!

Tags: 2D, as3, wip

I have a basic game idea that (and lets face it) is going to be commonly associated with islands, but with a (hopefully) different twist, but more on that as I flush out logic.  For now I have my map made, collision mask, and  my UI decoration

the map is 4 layers to allow some basic animation to the water, the ui has 2 overlay layers for the feel good old monitor effect (ish), and another layer for buttons which change color depending on status

next I guess I need to hammer out some gameplay rules so I know what kind of swag I need to make

flattened for BLOG!

Well, it’s been a lot of hours, and I’ve only just hit the point where I can test out all this bloody PPU code. The background layer & palettes appear to be working correctly now, all my problems were down to pretty much autopiloting my way through the tile rendering and reading code, missing off simple things like having “iY” instead of “iY * NESPPU_TILE_W” when indexing into the tiles. Bleh, it’s done, and I have a progress shot, as well as a sanity check shot:

An expression of emotion in relation to some of this pointer twiddly code

Simple test tiles and background layer generated, and also loaded in my font tile sheet.

ok, not my best LD start but I blame that on trying tofigure out additive animations when there was no need and ending up not using them anyway. anyhoo, I think this could be a good one

Click ‘more’ for the embedded build:

EDIT: woops, that shows my old LD gaame, fixed now ^_^;

[WP_UnityObject src=”http://sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/ludum/fisherIslands01.unity3d” width=”560″ height=”420″/]

Controls are WASD + mouse, just running and aiming for now

Tags: grappling hook, unity

…well maybe not web, but definitely grappling hook.

See this post in full for the embedded game build.

[WP_UnityObject src=”http://sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/ludum/fisherIslands02.unity3d” width=”560″ height=”420″/]

Controls:

• WASD to move
• spacebar to jump
• mouse to aim
• left click to fire grappling hook (if its the only thing in your hand)
• Q to swap back and hand items
• E to drop hand item (cant drop grappling hook)

Tags: fishing, grappling hook, unity

Not a bad start for my first night. I spent my first hour mulling over ideas during dinner. Over the course of the other 3.5 hrs this evening I got some initial gameplay working and am feeling confident with my codebase. Looking ahead, I have a lot more graphic work I need to do this time around which will be a challenge for me. Oh well, should be fun.

You can play my latest version here: http://www.refrag.com/2010/04/23/ld48-go/

For now – it’s time for sleep.

Welp, got my game generating islands rather than having islands wrap around the screen.

WHOA!!! Something went wrong! It’s generating an island every frame, and in the sky!

Well now that’s fixed, I think I’m done for today.

I probably shouldn’t have looked at QOGQOG’s progress report before starting my own game, since now my graphical style is going to be emulating his, but oh well. Basic platformer physics up and running, tutorial signposts with words on in place. I’ve done stuff like this many times before, so it should by rights NOT have already eaten up 1 of my 48 hours of game dev time

Cute little pirate fella, ain't he?

well, it would seem that i have given up on the ball-rolling game. with the physics in Game Maker, it just wasn’t going to happen. I am now working on a March f the mini marios – style game thingy.. dunno what is going to happen, but i’ll get the game engine going first.

So I’m thinking the game (networked multiplayer real time strategy game with trade, military, and acts of god) will be a little bit like Tigris and Euphrates. I really like that board game, and thought I’d borrow the concept of competing dynasties vying for control of a finite number of industries / institutions. In Tigris and Euphrates there is (forgive my not knowing the actual names they use in the game) farming/cultivation, religion, trade, and rule/order.

In Tigris and Euphrates, your final score is the lowest score you possess in any of these four industries/institutions. You distribute your representatives (one for each institution) among the various kingdoms in Babylon. As the kingdoms develop, your representatives earn you points for developments in the kingdom that apply to their designated institution. I don’t think I’m going to do that exactly, but what I do like the idea of doing is allowing kingdoms to merge and divide through acts of god.

So in my idea is that each player will be given a finite number of acts of god they can play. To bridge islands together, a player must invoke Global Warming Land Bridge which causes the water level to recede and reveal a land bridge beneath the surface of the ocean. This will cut off oceanic channels (changing the game board with respect to sending your ships places) and it will merge two islands. As in Tigris and Euphrates this means that leadership of the new unified kingdom/island will be contested and one of the dynasties loses out. I’m not sure of the specifics for my game, but I like this idea. The inverse operation of the Global Warming Land Bridge is not an act of god, but a simple Canal.

Anyhow, here is the screenshot I promised. It looks much cooler with motion and blinking, but Istanbul has been completely broken on Ubuntu 9.10 for over half a year now, so I can’t exactly do a screen capture of video right now

Yay I got something done. It’s not a game yet, but it is posted and should run in Your Favorite Modern Browser. Going to sleep for now, but if I’m well-behaved tomorrow I’ll release new versions as I work. When each new release is just a git push away, what excuse do I have?

First screenshot!

So it’s 8am around here. 5 hours in. Theme is islands. It’s a cool theme, although I still don’t have any idea on what to do.

Gonna search around a bit on what you guys are doing, then I’m going for some breakfast before doing some concepts.

Good luck to ya all

The basic outline of the menu for my TD is done!

It also has building placement.

Going to sleep now.

Ok. While I’m thinking for ideas I’ve made the music.

Here it is! http://www.goear.com/listen/fef2fa6/Island-Music-Rolpege

Tags: 2D, as3, journal, music

So, here’s a screenshot of my work in progress for the Islands theme.

Got some watery physics sortof going on in there, not entirely sure where I am going from here but that’s how I roll.

If you want to see the work in progress, here’s a zip for windows.  I have a build for Mac OS X as well, but I don’t know how to distribute the SDL libraries so that people can actually run it.  Press Enter/Return to get past the title screen, and press z to drop a box (or as it may be called later “Island”) into the water.  You can drop up to 100 boxes right now.  Close the “game” to reset.

http://www.drakfyre.com/LUDUMDARE17WIN.zip

I have a concept, I have a board drawing, I have my first untextured model and I’m starting to write code.  Some people have made some good progress.  I wasn’t even going to participate because I have a busy weekend but I couldn’t help myself.  The energy of others rubbed off on me so here I am at my first code jam.  I’m even taking a video blog to publish at the end so sorry for lack of screens.

Took a brainstorming nap, got up and decided not to make a Twilight themed game. I am truly sorry.

Instead, I am making a hockey game with the theme ‘islands’. Wacky!

Finally an idea has come to my brain! I’m gonna to make a kind of RTS game… but with only one player-controlled person… and this person is the player!

Yes! YOU collect the wood… YOU! collect the gold… and then build defenses… for the pirates!

The game will be called… Collect and protect!

Tags: 2D, as3, flex, Flixel, journal

For once in my Ludum Dare career this is actually a theme I like.

Gonna do some sort of pirating pillaging game loosly based on Just Cause 2. Groovy.

Woke up earlier than intended this morning (5:30am rather than 7:00am), probably due to excitement x). This might mean things are going to be a bit harder later on today, but, hey, it also means I’ve got an hour and a half headstart.

The theme is Islands, this makes me happy, I had an idea what I wanted to do for islands.

I’m a good couple of hours into development now. The first hour was mostly spent getting getting a rough visual look sorted out, and then splitting it up into useful sprites.

Then I got myself some breakfast (leftover sausage sandwhich and a mug of green tea).

Since then I’ve been getting cracking on the actual source code, putting in some tile based functionality, and code to make those tiles render prettily. It currently looks like this:

In my into post I mentioned I’d be trying to post lots of builds along the way to really show the evolution of the game, so in that spirit, here’s build no 1 (you need flash) http://jwhiting.nfshost.com/ld/17/build01.swf

You can click around to toggle between land and sea. This isn’t how the gameplay will work, it’s just my game’s going to be a bit level design centric, and as such I’m going to be putting in in-engine level design tools as I go.

So yeah, feels like a lot of time burnt already, but on the other hand, I guess I’ve done quite a bit too