to keep me alive during this LD.

Tags: foodphoto

Well, there’s about 25.5 hours left, so it’s about half way.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

I think it’s a game now.   At very least, you can win or lose; there’s some limits, and everything on the screen functions as intended (except the score readout, which I honestly plan on pulling off)

The Menu to select game options is 95% done.  Here’s the rest of the stuff on the to do list:

• Other Unit Ideas – I have at least 2 more units I’d like to introduce
•  AI – The Random AI makes some very stupid mistakes.   I need to write one that works a bit better.
• Tutorial – How to play screens, etc.

Tags: LD #10 - Chain Reaction - 2007, screenshot

It’s almost playable and all the music and sound effects are in.

Yawn, darn I’m tired although I slept, in theory, at least 8 hours. Oh well. Still lots to do today. I hope to be able to continue in a couple of hours after taking the dogs out etc..

I’ve given up on the ‘food’ category, btw. Simply haven’t had the inspiration to photograph everything I’ve eaten, which so far has consisted of mass amount of different sandwiches and some oddball soup.

Seems like I had to give up on a billion ideas, but today I finally got one I liked… making progress, bit by bit. Basic mechanics are in, but still lot’s to do to make it a game. Hopefully I don’t die from Red Bull before I can finish.

Tags: LD #10 - Chain Reaction - 2007, screenshot

So far I  have implemented the controls. The red figure controls the “herd”.  Now it’s getting hard, I’m thinking about the chain reaction.

I really feel like I’ve got a decent amount done. Currently, you inderectly control the little grey thingy by telling it when to jump, and manipulate the environment by making the jewelry do things. The energy beam is just a nifty little effect that I love. There’s still little sign of the “Chain Reaction” theme, I’m brainstorming how to get that in. Maybe a good night’s sleep’ll help.

Tags: WIP Day 1

Well, I’m sticking with my original idea, and not adding a bit more, and it is coming along nicely now, finally.

We’ve hit the half-way mark, and I think I’m right on schedule. The only serious gameplay part that is missing is the ai.

Hopefully I can finish that tonight, along with a particle fx system.

Then tomorrow will be all images, sound and music

Ok, some improvements:

• The lasers explode on collision
• Added enemies with basic AI
• Stars! Lots of them.

Python was a little to slow for a few thousand stars, so I had to resort to Pyrex. Pyrex really needs better error reporting, but after looking at the generated c-file and tweaking some it worked. Now I can have 50 000 stars without problem Under 10 000 is enough though.

Next I think I have to do something about that artwork… but that’s for tomorrow.

Tags: pyrex, screenshot, stars, wip

Well, you can now buy units, only one type for now, and it costs you points.

Everything seems to be holding up, so we’ll have to see if we get anymore bugs from the current batch – but here is a screen shot of the ugly art in game 😉

Tags: screenshot

Phew, it was a lot of work but I made a level editor from scratch and integrated it into the game. The editor is made for .NET and it allows me to reorder levels, place cannons and walls and change their types and attributes. All in all pretty swell for a few hours of work and the quality of tools tend to dictate the quality of the game (at least in bigger projects :). Here is a screenshot from the editor:

Those balls are cannons and the walls are pretty obvious. This is what it looks like in the game:

As you can see I can have different types of cannons too. Also holes in the ground are possible (makes it possible to make areas where you can shoot over but not place a cannon to). It’s pretty darned late though (6am local time) and I’ve been going hot for like 18 hours straight now. I will grab a few hours Z and then continue. Things are looking good and I may very well get a game ready =).

Thank to DrPetter’s sfxr app I managed to get a decent heli sound. After wrestling the XNA sound app, I got it to pitch with the heli’s thrust value. I got rid of the polygon objects and focus now on rectangles. perhaps I need some springs… hmm. Oh and I got to get some gameplay, important that one. Anyways I gotta catch a train, there is a x-mas “smorgasbord” waiting for me 110km south… ta ta!

Tags: heli, sound

It’s getting tight. 16 hours to go, and I’d like some sleep tonight. I’ll try to set my alarm to get 5 hours, ’cause I’m gonna need as much time as I can take.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to have enough time to do any art or sound, but I should still make playable.

I just finished up a vitally important class, the guts I need to get the rotation mechanics working clean and stable. I’m actually surprised I hadn’t thought of it before the compo, but that’s what’s great about LD.

A 2D grid class.

Sure, sounds easy enough, but that’s until you want it dynamically resize able, resizing alignments (centered and/or edges), merging of grids (generating new grids that contain 2 grids), Grid merge blending (color zero style), rotation, mirroring, and element counting. And you want it made in 48 hours with a game from scratch.

So anyways, now I have a nice clean way to implement the rotation mechanics.

So after some sleep, I’ll have 8-12 hours to make it a game. I am concerned, as I haven’t yet got to start my mouse input code, or any minimalistic gui features (buttons). Off hand it sounds easy, but in 8 hours with everything else?

Even if I don’t make playable by the deadline, there’s a good chance I’ll still finish one. I think this concept has a lot of potential, and I’d love to see it through.

To sleep I go!

hey get off my game idea!

grrr this’ll show ya.. BOOT

gonna drop a timer in there and make successive waves deadlier than previous ones. then some sounds and probably a backdrop. tomorrow i continue this madness!

Tags: entry, LD #10 - Chain Reaction - 2007, screenshot

Things are going pretty well. No major crap-ups, etc… After using XNA though, I have to say, I’m not all that impressed. It’s just managed DirectX with support for loading objects (which makes it very useful, mind you). I think I’ll stick with OpenGL. -_-

Tags: screenshot

Quote from my wife: “But will my dinner beat Hamumu’s?” (she saw his dinner pics… I think she just made this personal. Very personal. Be afraid.)

Tags: foodphoto

Quote from my wife: “But will my dinner beat Hamumu’s?” (she saw his dinner pics… I think she just made this personal. Very personal. Be afraid.)

Tags: foodphoto

And no, I don’t mean killing yourself trying to win the compo, kill yourself to win my game 😀

As long as it is bug-less the entire game-logic minus the ai is finished 😀

You can attack your own units, starting a chain reaction – since you are the only player right now that means you start a chain of your clansmen under attack, but it is really cool

Look out for chess/trading-card/BfW-esque gameplay in the very near future

I didn’t start working until maybe 18 hours of the competition had passed. This was because I was wisely spending my time sleeping and playing FF7. Now I’ve started though, and even though it is not much I think I should post something about my game. Hopefully it will make me want to finish it more and make it better.

The purpose is to send energy to all the planets in the area to complete a level. The purple things in the picture are rays of energy. The grey thing in the middle is the space station, that will send out energy. You can see a comet also, followed by some particles. The rest of the particles (yellow) are from a planet that blew up when a comet hit it (this makes you lose). Never mind the thing at the bottom.

Right now I’m fighting a really annoying bug.

I’m up!

I’ve got the gameplay sorted and working, it’s not fun yet though. I’ve now begun touching up the graphics the best I can. That’ll take a good part of the next hours. After it looks ok, I’m thinking of adding some sort of scoring to the game. Then I have to do menus and such. Then some sound effects. And last, a bunch of levels. Plenty to do… Oh, and yeah. I’ll have to try to make it fun too at some point.