Hum, well, here’s my breakfast. Wasn’t easy to build The Tower, even though I cheated and it’s leaning against the glass. Now about coding a game.. or even finding an idea for one.. that will come next.
Progress is good, so here’s the current progress:
It loads a crude inkscape .svg file via Slick’s svg parser and converts it into some platforms and a player start position. The player can run along a platform but can’t jump yet so that’s next on my list. Small break first because my hands are cramping up and I need caffeine…
I’m so far behind and my code isn’t working like it should!
At least I’ve got some stuff done though, so it isn’t completely hopeless 
Just a quick screenshot before I’m back to work.
I am making a 3D game and I was thinking it might be easiest if I designed it to require an analog control joystick or gamepad. Does anybody here not have a joystick of some kind?
Also, I might as well tell about my current progress. I have a nice start to my 3d engine with loading .OBJ meshes and textures and correctly rendering them. This is going smoother than I thought it would.
got a bunch of stuff done, not too bad for the first quarter.
todo:
– getting the workers(black pixels) to automate building crates(brown boxes) all they’re doing now is hop up and down for no reason randomly
– getting the falling rooms to crush other rooms when they hit, this is the basic gameplay mechanic – falling rooms destroy, worker built crates support, reach the top to win
off to sleep I go
Tags: journal
After performing my obligitory strategic sleep, I feel refreshed and optimisitic. The key is to sleep long enough to forget the long drawn-out pain of setting up my environment last night but little enough to give me enough time to make up for all the time tracking down F#$(*%!#(INg dependency errors.
So now I’m back on the train – or the tower as it were. My work in progress title is “Tower of Abba”. But it shouldnt have anything to do with the rock band with the same name (although they may have a cameo somewhere).
The game is a defense style game where you rotate around a round tower made up of bricks. Little sprites try to climb up the tower while you set traps on bricks to stop them.
Remember my ludum dare friends – do it for the funz!
Tags: journal
So, my idea was to create a game around an air-traffic control tower in a troubled country.
Players have to manage their air space and land all the planes successfully. Planes refuel and stock up on aid supplies to deliver to the people. Take off too early, and you don’t move any supplies. Land too late, and you crash.
Can YOU keep all your birds in the air?
I have spent way too much to create a rather crude world generator. Well, maybe not so bad really, but the output does not always seem to make any sense. Guess I can improve Mr Parameters when I got a game.
I’ve finished with the laundry, and also had a bit of lunch. The famous Salmon and Stuff dish.
Tags: foodphoto, generation, log, screenshot
Progress is going extremely well…
I already have level definitions, rendering code, some game logic, input, etc… Only thing that’s lacking is an actual gameplay idea… or better, a decision on the gameplay decision. My wife’s been helping me with ideas, and I have 3 or 4 possible gameplay paths available, I just don’t know which one is more fun/less work…
Anyway, here’s some photos and such…
At my desk, heavy in thought:
My cat ready to pounce the mouse:
48 hour salad (all done with tomatoes and olives by my wife):
Brain food for lunch: burgers, mediterranean salad, cooked mushrooms, raw carrots… everything the body and mind need:
And the game screeny:
The blocks of any color can be placed in the tower structure, and they’ll fall down until they found another block or get to the ground…
Tags: breakfast, desk, foodphoto, journal, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008, log, screenshot
I should really REALLY have spent some time with Flex before attempting something of this scale with it.
Still, I’ve (only just) got the thing started now, and now I can maybe turn my mock-ups into something resembling a game, although nearing the 25% mark and with nothing to show for it is not encouraging…
I can’t seem to decide between doing “proper” rope physics (with collisions between the rope and platforms etc.) and some kind of hideous cheesy hack and ignoring platform collisions for the sake of getting something done quickly.
I suspect this could make or break the game, so I should probably get it done quickly and see how it goes either way…
Tags: motivation
LDT +1125
Local Time: 16:23
I made a horrible level format decision, collisions are against rectangles that have to be entered by hand. So I made a super level editor. Still tedious, but feasible. I think I’ll have enough time to make a second level tomorrow.
Ugly isn’t it?
Tools used so far:
)Tags: journal
I just spent a day not working on Ludum Dare entries again (aside from the brief foray into löve fiascos)! This time me and a friend had a real life adventure involving tunnels, towers, tall ships, thousands of people, pirates on stilts, some ice cream mocca thing, and music, including caribbean, jazz, music boxes, sea shanties, and musical air strike sirens.
Unfortunately my camera’s battery went out just as I was approaching the tower, so there’s not much to show. My friend’s camera worked fine, but that memory card is apparently incompatible with my card reader. Oh well.
Anyway. Here’s a tunnel!
It had these totally ancient cave paintings in it.
The tunnel eventually led us to the vicinity of the Rosenkrantz Tower!
Its oldest parts are from the 13th century, and it’s completely filled with cramped passages and endless spiral staircases. The roof had a magnificent view of the aforementioned tall ships and masses of people, which you’ll have to imagine since my camera went out. You can see a mast or two in the above picture though.
Now. Should I start coding? Hm.
Explosions are done…
They even look cute… Anyway, now I have to decide on exactly the gameplay is… I can drop blocks from wherever I want and they explode if they come in 8-way contact with blocks of the same color… So now, I just have to decide between the explicit building (where the player has to place blocks so they don’t blow up, according to some pattern and as fast as possible – this option would have me change the 8-way collision to 4-way, I think, or else it’s just alternating stuff. This choice is also more work in the level design thing); or the implicit building, where blocks come out of the sky and the player has to change their color while they drop, so that they don’t explode when they land… This last option is much easier, since it becomes more or less random and I just have to design towers… I’ll do a break now and decide…
Tags: journal, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008, log, screenshot
Well, by “game” I don’t mean something you can play. But it is something you can watch as all the (temp art, in case there was any doubt…) elements function as intended: the owls ascend the stairs and even descend again if they reach the top. The archer as you can see fires arrows at them. He can even kill the first one before they get past him! The excitement is palpitatious!! Things are going well, I think, though I am dreading the actual real implementation.
My game is this: tower defense, inside the tower itself. Eventually, there will be a pile of gold that the owls are stealing at the top. You of course strew archers, chefs, and yetis about the tower to stop them. The twist is that instead of buying generic units, you buy specific heroes as they show up visiting your inn (so a random element to that). So you might dump Archie the archer after a while for Blog the barbarian. The end goal is something with 100+ different guys (some not too different, like an archer who does more damage or fires faster than another), and a lot of wacky variety. Don’t think there will be 100 of them by tomorrow, though.
Tags: tower defense
