In the steamy, sensual rivercave of my mind
I stumble, I stagger, I stammer
Like some crazy South Korean circus clown
Lost, lonely, lifeless, laconically lazy
Marooned, marooned
I’m on a lagoon
I am an island
I am an isthmus
I come from Bermuda
I don’t believe in christmas
Look out! oh sinister holy man
Look out! oh righteous Bolshevik
I care no longer for your petty problems
I make my own decisions now
Today I laugh, I joke, I chitter chatter chitter
But tomorrow, tomorrow I go to Phillip Island

Greetings. I thought this was my fourth LD, but after looking back it must be my third. Apparently I can’t count. I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Assuming this is my third time, that leaves the score so far at 1-1: I finished LD11 with a half-decent entry, and bombed out on LD12 due to too much time spent trying to make my unfamiliar dev environment work (for the record, Flex can go die in a fire).

Back with a vengeance, and this time I’m planning to eschew Flash in favour of trusty old C++. Madness? Or… genius?

See, C++ has a few advantages.

• Every library on the planet (that I care about) works with it out of the box. (Unlike D, and everything Flash.)
• The tool support, in the form of Visual Studio, is unparalleled. Unless you count .NET, but there’s no way I’m learning C# as part of Ludum Dare. I made that mistake already with Flex.
• I’m using it at work now – to make games, no less! w00t! – so I’m a lot more familiar with it than in previous LDs.
• The compiler has strict error-checking. I used to hate this, but after further experience with Python I’ve seen the light. I like having my mistakes caught early!

Will probably use Irrlicht or SDL as my main platform, depending, and I have all the usual suspects for content generation in mind: GIMP, Inkscape, sfxr, Audacity, maybe Blender if I get ambitious (hate the old interface – might try the beta).

…

Wait, Islands? Really? Bah humbug. First priority: Take a walk and brainstorm.

There where soooooo many good ideas this time around. Islands? Really? I mean, at least it isn’t forest, although I think Id win that by default. Islands? Well, queue 50 pirate themed platformer’s, one awesome nautical sim, about 75 terrible asteroid games set on a boat (maybe 20 of them will have the boat shoot sideways, and 10 of those will let you choose what side…)

Allright, all moaning aside, I just don’t have a clue what to do with this theme.

now start thinking about islands before going to sleep

Tags: desk, deskphoto

Okay folks.  Here are a couple of pictures of my work area:

Now it’s off to ponder what to do with islands…..

I am making a Pirates-like game, but using procedurally generated islands. Just a fun trader sim/tycoon.

I figured I should do a motivational poster this time; I couldn’t find a picture, and I couldn’t think of anything motivating, so here goes:

Tags: motivation

So, we have a theme! Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I usually like to start off brainstorming in MS Paint. Haven’t thought of anything wonderful yet, but it’s a pretty good theme.

Good luck, everyone!

Ok, so here’s my idea. You are the island — your island can float around, you put guns on it, it shoots other islands. You collect the land from the islands you destroy, which allows you to expand the size of your island. Also there might be a designer mode where you design your island. Or it might be random. Dunno yet.

Well some crazy wacky thing happened and now I feel like entering.
Desk photo’s first.

If you’re wondering:

Tags: deskphoto

Going to work…(earlier this evening…)
Signs are up on door….
back home, finishing dinner
then dishes, seeing what theme is, start clothes maybe to brainstorm…
oh good, hasn’t been picked yet!
I’ll be looking forward to see results, after doggy eats so she doesn’t go demon on me…
well, I got another 13 minutes before start…
guess I can quit this and start laundry…:)
WOOT!!! Island is the theme!!!
Lets get started!!!!
Time to start laundry for brainstorming….
Might as well post starter blog…

I actually just took a (very rainy) walk, and I have an idea… since I failed to finish last time and I thought that one turned out fun (Tron-style FPS with colorful grids and whatnot), I’ll probably reuse that concept, but re-imagined with islands (obviously..). I’m not terribly happy with something so similar to what I did last time, but it beats anything else I can think of right now… and I know it’s fairly unique, even if I’ve personally done it before…

Okay. I did some research. Facts!

1. There was a comic book villain called island man or something like that, I think it was X-men, but I know it was one of the X’s (force, factor, Excalibur, neXt? They kinda all run together….) and umm… they where looking for him, cuz there was a huge mutant power blip on there finding powerful mutants robot, and they couldnt find him, and then the discovered he WAS the island. It would have been a great plot twist if the cover hadnt given it away. I remember feeling jipped.

2.”To escape to an island in a dream may mean the peace of solitude is needed by the dreamer. A further
meaning is that the dreamer is afraid of the surrounding waters of her unconscious and wishes to
remain isolated from her inner feelings.”

3.(from a veterinary text…)

“A cluster of cells or an isolated piece of tissue.

* blood i’s — aggregations of mesenchymal cells in the angioblast of the embryo, developing into

vascular endothelium and blood cells.
* i. of Calleja — discrete group of very small nerve cells in the olfactory tubercle of the

forebrain.
* i’s of Langerhans — see islet of Langerhans.
* i. outbreak — outbreak limited to a specific population, usually a herd, caused often by a

localized lack of immunity in a closed herd.”

This could actually be awesome, I dunno what to do with it.

4. Those concrete things in parking lots and streets, sometimes the ones in streets have grass or plants, depending on where you are (traffic islands… yeah… Im reaching.)

5.”John Donne –
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

That last one might actually be useful. This is apparently how my brain works. Maybe Ill just make a game about pirates, they can collect treasure. God that sounds boring.

Anyone doing a strategy game or need a world map? Satellite photos of Hawaii make a great source for lo-fi pixel graphics:

Darn, if I hadn’t already made Pangaea it would have been a perfect fit for this theme.

I’m using this for the splash screen:

I’m probably going to try for a trading game.  Most likely something similar to Port Royale 2 or Patrician, though that might change after I’ve had some time to think about it more.  The idea sounds a bit overly ambitious for 48 hours.

In one sentence: “Island puzzles, like Lolo with more destructibility.”

Specific feature ideas:

• Cute PC character (somehow this has to fit into a 20×20 tile without animation)
• Turn-based, on-the-grid movement. High technology is to be avoided for LD.
• Bombs that can be picked up and thrown, but need an external trigger
• A projectile pickup(should it be a rock, a bow+arrow, or a pistol? hmm….) the player can choose when to fire
• Projectiles that, instead of instantly hitting, move at two tiles per turn
• Walls of various kinds, some of which are destructable – but part of the puzzle is to figure out which ones
• Cannons and cannonballs as an alternative to the projectile pickup
• Pirate enemies of various kinds that fire their own projectiles or swing swords when the player is in range! I’ll need to think about simple “AI” patterns that work into a puzzle design.
• Player goal: Make it from one end of the island to the other in each level (docks at either end)
• Stretch feature: Fire that spreads. Don’t know how this would work into a puzzle.

Schedule estimates:

• Basic player movement and collision – 1h
• Create and integrate a tileset in Pro Motion – 3h
• Level layout data files and keys to skip through levels, level exits – 1h
• Implement projectile pickups – 1h
• Implement cannons, bombs and destructability – 1h
• Pirate AI #1 – 1h
• Pirate AI #2 – 1h
• HUD and title screen – 2h
• Create and integrate sound – 5h
• Level design – 5h
• Sleep – ~10h(Running a small deficit is OK, but it’s not worth it to try to power through.)
• Breaks – 6h

Estimate: 37h

I’ll set a tentative milestone for 8:00 on the 24th (PST) to have a one-level demo going.

Then the rest of the time can be spent on fit+finish.

Welp it’s been an hour of work already, and things are going rather smoothly. Have a screenshot:

OH MAN THE ISLAND

So anyways the idea is a sort of island-village Sim thing. basically here’s how things work so far:

Right clicking places a ground block, a ground block with nothing on top has grass grow on it, a ground block completely surrounded becomes a darker block! i’m currently working on the HUD (seen on top) and adding different types of blocks!

Just got back from the bar (err..bier garden), and have already nailed down what I want to do. I am going to put down some design notes and start in on it first thing in the morning. I am going to be using:

• C++/SDL
• Untouched code from my last Ludum Dare entry (Coffee Caverns)
• Sfxr
• Potentially musagi for music
• Paint.NET

Initially I wasn’t too thrilled with the theme, but whatever. I think I have something that will be doable in the time I have, since I have a couple of obligations this weekend that I can’t back out of, has a fairly simple game mechanic and I think will be fun once it’s finished.

Tags: LD17

With more speed!

Three people have already submit entries!  You better work faster!

Tags: motivation

It’s 4:09am. It’s my birthday(i’m 24, factfans).

I need to sleep, let my brain dream me up a great idea 😀
See you in 8 hours or so!

Well, theme’s up, and it’s actually quite an interesting one. I’ve got an essay to write before I start, but I figured I may as well post something acknowledging the theme and spamming out some ideas. I’ll develop them initially with a walk around town and the nearby hills, and then in photoshop probably. I probably won’t do very much content generation, sticking with lofi sprites and the like. most of my ideas should stand up well enough without much content anyway.

• Islands, space edition.
  1. basically, a large scale arena shooter on gravity “islands”, which would function as small planetoids.
  2. 3 weapons, RPS style (rifleman beats sharpshooter beats pointman beats rifleman, based on damage buffs/nerfs)
  3. basic AI
  4. 2 teams
  5. fast paced, probably 30 or so actors per team, switchable between them.
• Islands, catastrophe edition
  1. platformer
  2. apocalypse setting, the sky is falling etc (waves of meteors or solar flares or whatever
  3. running from island to island, which is just cover and safety from the radiation
  4. enemies in the islands, which are very hard to kill
  5. maybe destructible terrain lets you expose the creeps to the radiation or meteors or whatever, to kill them and let you stay in the island for longer, waiting out the storm.
  6. either survival (procedural landscape) or safehouse (discrete levels, possibly still PG) level format.
  7. maybe the radiation/meteors erodes the islands? who knows
• Islands, literal edition
  1. top down survival rpg.
  2. maybe there is something coming in from the sea, like evil sea slug people or something.
  3. chance of escape -> win? maybe. i kind of like playing games knowing there’s a futility behind it. if there is no win condition, i’ll need some sort of high score chart then (longest survival, best general defense etc)
  4. are you one manning it or do I want to go to the trouble of coding friendly AI? remains to be seen
  5. many ways to skin yourself: starvation, thirst, murdered by evil sea slugs, drowning.
  6. resource management: building walls to help keep the slug people out (especially when you’re sleeping), managing food and water.
  7. Limited resources? wood is from trees etc, you can catch fish, but maybe you have limited bullets (if you have a gun) or water (maybe you can find caches and stuff though? caves! giant bats and gremlins and freaky deep buried stuff)
  8. mostly closed system? you cant eat the slugs (they’ll poison you), but maybe there’s other animals around, and they could fight too, and die out?
  9. probably entirely fantasy based. all made up organisms etc.

That’s it for me for a while, I’m off to do english and go for a walk. hopefully I can make a decision before the party tonight and get something coded up. I’m looking towards #3 at the moment, but comments would be awesome 😀

Feedback sought on this:

I am going to do a real time strategy game that is inspired by Starcraft and ATC Air Traffic Controller Simulator from the bsdgames package.

For the uninitiated, atc is an all keyboard-driven game to be played in your favorite terminal emulator. All of the controls are commands that you issue to individual planes attempting to get them to land. I think that by factoring out the mouse, I’ll simplify my programming a bit, and get to tickle my fetish for frenzied keyboard commands.

The rub, and this is what I want feedback on: What do people think of an entry that has no single player mode? I’m planning to run a server (or several) in San Francisco so that everyone can connect quickly and easily and begin playing immediately. By factoring out single player mode, I am avoiding having to write an AI player for the game. To my mind that is a big simplification, and will make it much more practical to finish this game in 48 hours.

The only problem is that I have no idea if this will fly. Is this acceptable to the LD community? How would I reconcile player instantiation versus the long lifecycle of the server? Should the game restart periodically? Should there be a win condition that ends the round? I can’t decide.

Please give me your opinions!

Haha its a little idea I had a while ago that works perfect for “islands”

basically youre a guy who just NEEDS to get to this island, so you jump out of a plane

as you fall you move yourself through the air to get powerups and stuff

I may also ad a shoot function, where you can pull out a gun and try to shoot yourself (but you’ll dodge… yourself) to get extra points

idk random idea haha

I was thinking of trying to find a calypso stream on the net and use that as my music. What do you guys think? Would that be against the rules?

It's a (sandy) island!

Generated from a hex-string.

Not the most elegant solution, but it works.

PREMISE: Small and diverse platforming challenges spread across many small floating islands (think Mario Galaxy, but 2D, linear, no crazy gravity, and not in space!).

So, here is my pitch.

A sea with lots of tiny unexplored islands. You set sail with in your small sail boat, looking for an islands of your own. The ones near the shore have already been taken, you have to try in the open waters.

The game will be online. I will host a server, that will have a generated map, and a list of islands. Once you find an island, the server will tell you if it has been discovered yet. If it has, you will see its name, and the explorer who found it. Otherwise you will get to name the island and plant a flags so to speak. Also you could leave a message for future visitors.

Might incorporate fishing into this game. 😀

Tags: exploring, idea

It’s pretty amazing! (not really)

So yeah, got some WACKY GRADIENTS and some islands which look identical! (and scroll, but you can’t tell from the screenshot) Next is different shapes of islands, and possibly clouds.

Tags: first screenshot, screenshot

Not 100% clear on what the goal of the game is, but i have a somewhat vague idea, i’m sure it will turn out decent in the end.

I has a pulse and everything.

So, first off I woke up. This was an important step in starting my day. Had I not woken up (I suppose I still may not have, maybe Ill wake up after coding my basic engine and the theme will be something I like better, or it will still be islands and this LD will actually just be groundhogs day…)

Next, I got breakfast. Today is a very important day, that day being friday. As of such!

HOTDOGS!!!!1111 and dorito filth.

Loaded with mustard and sauerkraut. I do this every friday. No, really.

Well, I usually skip the chips.

Soooo good!

This one had cheese. It was nummy. I still have one more for later, tho Ill probably get a pizza at like midnight. (hurrah late night delivery.)

Sharing hotdogs with pretty girls = mandatory!

Eating breakfast with mah wife pretty much makes every day a good day.

After that, we hung out, I kinda geeked out at her about ideas for different themes, none of those themes being islands.

I had an awesome one for Isolation where its top down and you spend the whole game in a large metropolitan area like SF or newyork or something, sept totally fake, and the main character is really vibrantly colored, and the whole game is you trying to find a bar, and being lost and asking people for directions, but whenever you ask someone for directions it pauses and shows a dialogue screen with pictures of faces, sept the people dont have faces, just heads with shadows where the eyes and mouths should be, and give really basic 1 to three word responses to whatever you ask them, then, when you finally find the bar, you either get a scene where the player walks into a dimly lit room with nothing but some bar stools and a vending machine labeled beer, buys a drink, starts drinking it, and it fades to black, OR if you talked to tuns of people, walks into a well lit bar full of interesting looking people, talks to the bartender, who has a face and some personality, bartender asks how he’s doing, he responds with “fine” bartender asks what he wants, he says “beer,” his face slowly fades away during the conversation (just make the features an alpha layer… pretty simple) and it ends with him sitting at the bar drinking alone, then fades to black….

Ohh well, not that one.

If it was Pretentious art game, I was gonna make a game where an art critique beats the crap out of various paintings and sculptures and artists,  ala streets of rage. (Yeah, I realize my first idea was a pretentious art game, but if it was pretentious art game I planned to make a murder simulator. I was actually thinking about calling it murder simulator.)

Evolution was going to be a metroidvania… Seems obvious.

OHHhhh Well, I think I have a good idea for an island themed bullet hell, so enough procrastination.

… ohyeah,  I also walked her to work, picked up some coffee (I was out, Im on cup 2 so far, probably about to have cup three then get to work,) then proceeded to pick up some icecream (she works at an icecream parlor, I get free icecream, its organic, and relatively freshly made, meaning her boss makes a bunch of the stuff every week or so, its friggin amazing.)

Then, walked home and booted my computer, only to find the dare had just started. Ohboy.

Here is my current very minimal workspace. I am working on (i.e. sometime in the future), going to get new outlets put in as well as get a new desktop pc built. And yes, that is a sword…

Tags: desk, deskphoto, LD17

I think I’ve been inspired by Desktop Dungeons and Settlers of Catan. Pseudorandomly generated islands, five different resources gathered from three different squares: a civilization’s attempts to ESCAPE ARMAGEDDON THROUGH MAGIC.

(ignore the debug graphics off on the right)

Islands is a boring/unexpected theme.

Anyways, my current idea looks like this:

I want my game to look like THIS. Will it happen?

So… here’s what my art style will be. HA! Looks like I won’t be finishing my game.

AGAIN.

Ok I cant go to sleep without an idea to dream about and this is the main idea : a RTS to simulate the construction of barrages to stop the flood of an island

this island is the island of paquetá, that is nice place that I hope we cant let the flood destroy …

Tags: before sleep, draft, islands, paqueta

Yup, It should rock.

Alright, well. I got a game, and Im already totally done with the graphics! Go me. (Not serious even a little… although I think that is the idea.)

1. An island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide.

2. Except as provided for in paragraph 3, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf of an island are determined in accordance with the provisions of this Convention applicable to other land territory.

3. Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.

source : http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part8.htm

Tags: island, law of sea, un

Basic engine is there and works – input, game state management, load of utility stuff. The NES layer – currently only the PPU, is mostly written. Palettes correctly handled, utility functions for rotating palettes, and Background and OBJ rendering code is complete. Now to tie it into the final render down to an SDL_Surface. Drawn up my font sheet for the BG layer too

My desktop. Ordered (by my standards 😉 )

Try to spot the Manny Calavera figure I made!

using unity it was pretty easy in creating islands and get a beginning setting. that’s the easy part. now to think of some basic gameplay..

in my computer I have only 5 songs with island in the title, and it’s on loop for ultimate island experience.

mastodon – islands, the decemberists – island, the melvins – dog island, weezer – island in the sun, and tom waits – coney island baby

Tags: islands, unity, unity3d

Tags: code, dream, sleep

Yay for programmer art?

Well, I’ve got tiles and movement down. Got a couple issues with collision at the moment because it’s like 6am and I have yet to make me some coffee. 😀

Tags: flash, programmer art

Didn’t get that much done this hour, enough for a screenshot though!

As you can see, the HUD is a little more complete, i’ll be working on it as i add more tiles. Speaking of tiles, i have two new ones. the tree tile, see in the HUD, which can be chopped down, and the super-rock at the bottom, which cannot be destroyed (i made those after i realised you could destroy the bottom layer of the island for profit and have an odd looking floating island). so yeah, next step is switching between different tiles to place, and then adding more tiles!

First decent prototype, and my first post at Ludum Dare.  It’s gonna be a swimmy jumpy thing.  There’s no art yet, but I’ve got a preliminary version of the movement here: http://ludusnovus.net/previews/islands.swf.  You’ll need to click on it to give it focus.

Yeah, I’m making an island-based TD.

Turning out good so far.

I’m shooting for an inter-island trading sort of game, with occasional pirate attacks and random events to perturb the world economy.  I want to approach this LD differently from last time(s); just staying calm and trying to work more assuredly, getting sleep and stuff like that.  This game is a little ambitious, but I’ve got backup plans in case the original idea is too complex.

Aaaand it’s bedtime. (5AM!) I’m actually pretty pleased with this; when you’re starting totally from scratch, getting pictures on the screen is a big deal!

So, I’m going to make an island training game.  I’m looking for something between Age of Discovery and Wolfpack Empire; of all things.   I think it’ll be good and fun.

Here’s some islands to enjoy:

Kinda basic now, but I wan to concentrate on gameplay this time instead of spending the first 24 hours on rendering, like last time.

so i’m being forced by the authorities (my mom) to take an hour or so break, so i’m going to post this then take said break!

first of all, screeny:

so as you can see I’ve added one new tile, wood, which you get for chopping down trees, and you can also see how many tiles the game will have in total (9) on a side note, the scrolling between tiles actually works now, by using the scroll wheel! there are quite a few timing problems i’ll have to fix probably on day 2, like making trees grow slowly, so you can’t spam cut-grow trees for wood. ideally chopping the wood will take time too. but that’s all for later, for now, i’m off to read or something!

…I came up with an okay looking game. Unfortunately I spent way too long getting the grass to randomly generate, so there’s no game play as yet.

Fiddling around with OpenGL trying to get Vertex Buffer Objects working with Textures inside pyglet.

Yeah, figuring this out was something I should have done before the competition.

Anyway, the first attempt resulted in some weird duplication effect when I tried to rotate the camera… will have to spend a couple of hours tomorrow figuring the rest of this out. Again, I don’t expect to turn out a game by the end of the 48 hours, but maybe I’ll have figured out enough to have a little something running. Maybe. Possibly.

And now, off to bed.

It’s going to be a self-biographical barely-geographical blow-shit-up game.

Yeaaah

Always bet on ... nevermind

Ideas I have now:
Hover-type Platformer!
-Use your hoverjets to collect

parts and fuel gems for your

ship! Escape the sinking islands

before you go down with them!

Grapple puzzle idea(ha ha ha)
-Your island’s stability is

getting worse. Grab stray parts

of earth with your grappling hook

equiped mining ship to glue up

your island. Watch out for air

pirates and other miners!

Brolly Hopper
-Oh noes! It’s flooding my old

boy! Quick, escape the flood by

jumping from roof top to roof

top!See a jump that’s too far?

Not a chance with your brolly!

Glide from roof top to roof top

in this island city. Can you get

to safety before time runs out?

Use tea for longer glides! Don’t

forget cheesey crackers either

for higher jumps!

Architech
-The gods have demanded that, in order to appease their rath, a giant statue of their chieftan, Lord Watchamaicallhim. To do this, we need to make bricks out of the islands stones. Are quarry’s are limited. So after that, you must venture to other islands and take from those resources. Be careful though! Other tribes are knowledgable of the gods demands and will do anything to stop you! Fight them by throwing the stones at their warriors! If you kill enough in the gods names, the gods will be pleased by your sacrifices, and let you use their powers. Be careful though, time is running out for judgement. If the gods are not appeased for x days, they will wreck havoc upon our lands.

Let’s at least start with some music. And hope lmms doesn’t crash on me. A quick check on that one guys predictions first…

Island Defenders
-Our island is under attack! Stop the invaders from destroying the command tower! Pick from one of three scenarios: Tall Island, Long Island, Fat Island. Defend with gun placements, unit types, and secret weapons to keep the the Nazi’s off our shores til reinforcements arrive in x days. Once we get that radio tower rebuilt it’ll bring ’em even faster.

Song1 done…

Paper time!!!!…(it’s raining, I hope the power don’t go out <_>)

Listen:

Try to guess what game I’m cloning:

Map Renderer First Shot

Are those clouds… or something more sinister?

Headed down a path to create perlin noise islands, going to back track and go with something simpler.

Nothing to show, yet. I took some time to craft the basic structure of the game in a neatly componentized fashion, but I’m sitting right on the threshold of having a screenshottable game showing colored boxes, one of which will be able to move and collide. I just need to do some integration work to load the map file and propagate input. Once I have that, adding more actors and rules will be a snap, so I’ll have real gameplay in just a few more hours of work.

Now I will take a nice long break to eat dinner and see the Goonies, which is playing at midnight at the Del Mar. Whoo.

So yeah, islands now have three different shapes as promised, and now there’s a BOAT!!! that you can control vertically. No clouds, though. D:

I flounded a bit.  I admit, I wasn’t really prepared for the islands theme.  But I think I finally hammered something out that should be A) doable in the time allotted, and B) fun, C) something I can code up easily.

The idea is that you are a volcano god.  A jealous one.  (Is there any other?)  You’ve got your happy little islands, filled with worshiping natives, but then you become aware that some other miscreants on OTHER islands are worshiping another volcano god.  This will not do!

Here’s my concept screenshot:

So, it’s time you start putting all that worship energy to good use — by launching fireballs at the other god’s islands!  Every time you hit one island, you kill some of the natives, but also knock off a few who then swim to nearby islands.  This increases the worship power coming from a single island (allowing the god to fire it faster), but if all islands are sunk, the other god is out of the game.  Who wants a god that nobody is left alive to worship?

Well, okay, it sounds simple and maybe a little stupid, but it’s the best I’ve seen.  Props to Ember for giving me the idea!  Anyway, it’ll be fun coding all those little native behaviors!

Weel, after 3:10 hours a dont have a final ideia yet! The first idea that i have was about pirate, then when i saw the various others participants using this ideia, i changed my mind. So i have 3 ideias :

1- Marines turtles-
The player control a little turtle, since the birth until the procriation, visiting other islands and knowing others animals

2-Sufing —
The player will surf in a surf competition through various islands, the gameplay is high inspired in the tony hawks

3- Islands card
The player will make a archpelago using card with efects and quantify of that efect
So, i will sleep, and later i choose one idea, see ya!

Well I think I’ve gotten the basic server set up, feel free to help test.

telnet: jplur.no-ip.org 5057

I found out that telnet is disabled in windows vista and 7, not hard to turn it on, but I’m looking into getting a web based client set up for added easiness.

No idea what kind of game it will be, but I’m going to zzzzzzzzzz and hope something comes to me.

Food for the weekend, or at least until tomorrow night.

• Two parts caffeine, one part “juice” (also coffee, not shown)
• Turkey samwich on rye (was tasty)
• Hawaiian Punch — omg Hawaii is islands!!!

Also, I finally know the direction I’m going, but I’ll wait until I actually have something to show.

Good luck, everyone!

Multitasking

It must fit the theme! …right?

Anyway, I’ll need to take a break soon, so until next time:

See? Island. Right there.

And… Elevators? On a giant floating island?

Yes, yes there are elevators on giant floating islands. Didn't you know?

Feedback appreciated.

Islands. There are many types.

just a screenshot of jumpman hurtling towards an island

also im gonna sleep now

I bet you want to know what those buttons do, don’t you?

Well right now they outline themselves, and nothing more. I haven’t actually hooked up the game mechanics yet. That will happen tomorrow, hopefully eventually along with some less nasty art.

I guess we’re about three and a half hours in, and it turns out I spent all that time on just the idea!

Thought it might be cool to share my whiteboard:

The accel curve drawn there is pretty much exactly the worst I could have picked for hard-to-explain reasons.

Title ideas.

It doesn’t really communicate the game idea well

At this point I think I’m going to try a kind of offbeat movement scheme combined with grabbing and throwing things.  I’m not sure those things combine well, but I guess I’ll find out!

Tags: whiteboard progess idea update

Random Islands

Here be random islands with player placing.

Since I won’t be able to use anything near 48 hours I’ll start something smallish. Randomized islands with some kind of fighting/building. Nothing particularely innovative but still…
I’ll try to get some AI going, a two player only game would be too damn bland.

This should be plenty fuel for my ambitions. I may look messy (my style of cooking), but you can believe me, It’s delicious. Yum yum.

I chugged a Shark this morning, and it really gave me a kick. I’m buzzing like a bee, which is probably a bad thing, gets hard to focus.

Tags: breakfast, foodphoto

First few hours of work… did some brainstorming. Have a title and a concept… in a nutshell:

Sky Traders of Jupiter – going the “sky islands” route… retro sci-fi themed trading game with procedural generation and a dynamic economic model.

Progress so far, one pretty, animated background. Here’s a still, but it looks better in motion (with multiple layers of parallax):

While I’m working my game for LD17…

I would like to show some pictures of my work of my game:

That’s all I’ll show today, please wait for the whole game to be finished…

I now have, on paper:

Name: Island Jetter

Type: Open World Movement: Hovering, stays still on ground + collection Style: 2d

Story(short version): You just crash land on an island after a fierce storm during a plane race. You notice it’s still raining and the island chain your on is starting to sink. You need to collect 4/5 parts to get off the island. You equip Steam boots, Sonar Headphones, and Magnetic gloves for part retreival. Can you get off the island and still win the race?

There are also, hopefully, 3 different endings. Win, death, and lose conditions.

I also have a rough map.

Last blog tonight.

Drawing skills = void();

Been thinking on what to make, and got halfway through setting up a platformer engine before I gave up on that idea. I am now working on a ball-rolling game. could be interesting

Screenshot. it's more than it looks like...

My initial idea for this competition met with tradgedy. Blender3d runs at an abysmal frame-rate on my new Ubuntu install. Oh well, next idea!

I did a bit of browsing for inspiration and of course came across Dan Cook’s PlanetCute sprites and SmallWorld sprites. I think I will try to emulate that styl a bit when designing my own graphics (although not as good of course!). The great thing about those graphics is that they are extensible – you can layer them together in a way to make something larger from simple graphical elements.

I went for a walk and thought about what technology to use instead of Blender3d. You can make a 2d game with almost any technology. All you really need is something to display sprites, and HTML5 has this functionality.

I’ve started hacking on something which runs in the browser, using basic graphics, procedurally generated worlds. My goal for today is to get a virtual world going that you can walk around in and then I will see where I go from there.

update: i just remembered these old character graphics i made:

I think I’ll try to animate and use them for this project. They’re from this post which also has some stuff about randomly generating maps that I will try to re-use.

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