Solved the stalemate on the game design by adding another color… that breaks the pattern and makes the game more fun…

Now I already have win and lose situations, with all the flow in it…

As usual, took me longer than I wanted, the glue structure of the game (get to the next level and such things…)

Anyway, this part is done… game starts, goes to the first level, if you’re successful (that is, if you can build the tower with bricks to spare), you go to the next level, otherwise, you get to repeat it…

Now to add the lives indicator, and add the game over and well done screens…

I’m a bit worried about sound… I doubt I can make it work today and tomorrow I won’t have the gear for it… K

Tags: journal, LD42, log

Ended up on the phone for about an hour, and went to the grocery store for a few small things. Came back and made homemade salsa.

The game is coming along. The lines that make up the tower all behave like walls, and the staircases finally behave like staircases! Meaning that you can use them to get between floors. This is great progress, and I’d be really happy if only I didn’t know all the hacky stuff that’s going on behind the scenes. I’m actually thinking about writing some unit tests for the collision and game logic code, since it was a really touch and go process to get the stairs working correctly.

My dog is dying for some attention, so we’re going for a walk, and I’m going to consider what to do next. The easiest thing would be to add items to pick up (keys for locked doors, I’m thinking). But the most technically difficult would be enemies patrolling the floors, since it’s entirely turn based at this point (I only draw when a key is pressed). So I would have to add an animation thread to get something moving on its own.

Tags: foodphoto

End of day 1 for me.. after a lot of messing around with physics and n00b flash stuff, I have something playable to work with.  The cats appear from the top and are controlled tetris-style.  The aim is just to stack them as high as possible.

…well, I am not yet sure whether I will really try and compete, or if not. It’s been crazy busy around here for a while, and I dunno if I want to devote the time needed to really make this go…

That being said, I do have some nice prgress for about 3 hours work to show. Basically there are two images, one a black and white only, showing where cities can and cannot exist, the other a color version.

Cities are randomly generated, and you can make more.

Here’s a screenie:

Here’s a bit of what I’ve been eating. The first dish, believe it or not, is Maruchan Ramen Noodles. I prepared them Thai style, stir-fried with chicken, cole-slaw mix, peanut butter and a chili-garlic sauce. It was my first try at this recipe and it was delicious.

The second dish is what I am eating right now: Chicken and Artichoke Casserole. Probably my favorite dinner right now, short of Paella. So delicious; and easy to make.

Both were prepared by me.

Tags: foodphoto

I’m changing concepts yet again… my last idea didn’t make any sense.

Now my gameplay can be described as “Moonbase Commander” meets “Tower Defense”. Which should be pretty cool. So it’s yet another tower-defense game but different. If you’ve never played moonbase commander you should look for it.

I’m still learning to use Ogre so im not sure if I can pull it off but we’ll see.

I spent the morning mostly making some gun tower models and getting them into Ogre. Now I’m going to see if I can get something playable.

Tags: journal

The idea in my game is that you don’t control any of the tiny men directly, but rather just build buildings for them use use. It’s working relatively well right now, and the code for adding new buildings is actually not that horrible.

However, the AI sucks. 😉 They frequently pick up rocks only to run away with them and get lost in the woods. I’m trying not to add a too complex AI as I believe much of the fun in games like this comes from figuring out how the AI works and exploiting that.. besides, there’s not much time left.

Looks like i’m not the only one with the problem:

I have a working prototype but the game is not inherently fun. Dang. It does make kinda fun blowing up the building though. So far you can set up the bombs and some protection and need to get a certain percentage of the Tower razed. Right now there’s not too much challenge in there. I’ll have to find something tomorrow (i hope to dream the solution up during the night).

I’m leaving the level design for tomorrow as well. At least i have half the menu system going, so the drag part is mostly done. This leaves lots of time for late bug inducing 😉

I took a little longer than I expected to get back from lunch.

That’s a Turkey Twister sandwich on pretzel bread and fries, and I ordered a basket of tater tots. As you can see, I tried to make a tower. Maybe it is more like a ziggurat?

Tags: foodphoto

LDT +1755

Local time: 22:55

I fixed the collision code, and did a bunch of small improvements. I also slacked of the last hour or so to rest my eyes. I should start planning level 2.

A snack:

Supper my wonderful girlfriend cooked:

Tags: foodphoto, journal

Tou is comming along slowly. The sprites are way harder than i thought at first. But I think i am a good half through the whole thing, which should give me just enough time to finnish. But sadly no sound.

Here a pic:

Tags: journal, Tou

Though I’d post before I knock off for tonight. It’s you basic climb the tower knock off (I don’t know what the original is called and I don’t think I ever played it)

So far I have all the media assets (textures and sounds), the tower is drawn with our damsel in distress and the enemies but no ledges yet. You can fly the player about the tower (via invisible owls) but there is no other game play yet. Tomorrow I’m going to start with drawing the ledges from map files then onto player movement physics.

I’m on my way!

hhhh didnt have time to post my pizza muhahhhaha to busy doing a special attack 😛

so here it is Bon Apetit XD

ohh you know you want a piece! >:} well you won’t get any! its all mine!

I’m almost finished with my game engine (rather, I believe I am); I’ve done numerous improvements to the game since my last journal (one would hope so) so right now I’ve just got to finish off the game. I also composed another short song for the game. No real great new screenshots though.

Tags: journal

I’ve gotten as far as having a demo to show. It’s Java webstart this time – will probably create an exe wrapper for the game before submission tomorrow. Try it if you like!

Tags: demo, LD #12 - The Tower - 2008, Towerball

Looks like I got the basics of gameplay right, although it’s not really a game yet. Tomorrow will be mainly about finishing code, add score, better graphics, and above all, level design. Unfortunately I don’t know how to make music nor have the time to add sound effects.

Lunch: LD baked potatoes with sauteed veggies on top.  Hard to tell that it says LD, but I swear it does.

Dinner: grilled cheese with tomato soup and horchata.  We tried burning LD into the bread by putting butter in the shape of the letters, but it cooked evenly anyway.

Tags: foodphoto, horchata, taters

More progress shots! Wee!

I spent the past couple of hours trying to get a simple spacial partitioning system working so ray/triangle intersection tests between game objects and the world mesh would be reasonably quick … or so I hoped.  On my machine the frame rate drops horribly with even as few as 10 intersection tests per frame!  I guess Python’s not a good platform to write a 3D engine in. 

Tags: LD #12 - The Tower - 2008