LD13 December 5–8, 2008

It’s a snake!

In-development snake for Mini Ludum Dare #7

A giant man-eating, martini-sipping serpent. The snake is moving and looking sharp; gameplay is a little more elusive at this point. It’s a Python/pyglet window. Official end time would be sunday at 18:00 GMT+1.

Martini not pictured.

– Simon

Tags: martini, snake

Fog, and multiple entities

Nothing earthshaking or groundbreaking from me this compo, I’m afraid. Progress is happening, and I’m adding useful stuff to the engine — fog of exploration, embarking/debarking, and dialog! — but don’t expect anything innovative.

Current state of tHMSBiHMZQ:

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 14:54 UTC
i like the tiles a lot…

Baby Steps

I have a very simple scaleable paint by pixel tool up and running, which is meant to form the core of my gameplay. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s pretty on the inside, programatically speaking.

 

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 13:17 UTC
for some reason.. the little image you drew looks like an abstact strongbad.. hehe

End of day 1

you can play the latest version here:

http://www.sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/celly09.html

Tags: cells soft body

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 01:53 UTC
That’s really technologically impressive for 24 hours! Are you going to be sharing your code when it’s done? I’m curious how you accomplished a couple of things, because this game is completely different from the type of thing I usually build in Flash. 😛
08. Feb 2009 · 08:39 UTC
sure, is there anything specific you want to know about? its quite a mess so if you let me know I’ll make sure that part is commented :)
08. Feb 2009 · 11:20 UTC
really cool look to this. I enjoy all the little bar chart stats on the bottom as well. the lasso capture seems to be really flexible and fun to capture with. I suck at using the arrow keys for this though and keep running into cells and resetting my score. I think I would have an easier time if this was mouse based perhaps or at the very least if the arrow keys were tuned a little better. I’d also love to see some source commented or not as I’ve been gathering examples of various flash code for the day coming soon where I’ll be trying to learn that beast. :)

Sifting through life.

Well, progress has been pretty good today.  I’ve been using LÖVE http://love2d.org/ for the first time to do this, and it’s been a very pleasant experience so far.

I’m up to the stage at which I’ve got something that is basically a complete, if unexciting game, which is a really nice place to be at the end of day one. Still not sure how motivated I’m going to be tomorrow, but ultimately I’d be okay with going ‘final’ with what I’ve got now, so I’ll be happy even if I barely touch it.

A screenshot to show how things look at the moment:

Microscope fauna screenshot.

The idea is you sift through undiscovered lifeforms, naming them as you go, and ultimately hoping against hope for a sample of one particularly mythical species to arrive. It’s distinctly casual in nature, to the point of being more a toy than a game. That sits oddly with me, but I think trying to force challenge into it wouldn’t feel right either, so I’ll guess I’ll stick with the way it is.

First day progress

First, I present you an awesome screenshot!

Screenshot

Second, you try to figure out what my game is about!

Third, I tell you! The basic setup in my game is: You’re a photographer hunting for specific properties in strange animals. You might for example be given the task of taking photographs of creatures with the legs of an elephant and the tail of a lion. You zoom around the savannah trying to find animals that are weird enough to make the cover of a magazine and if you manage to fill the film with great material the score will also be godlike!

So far I’ve got the base for the creature creation and camera. Tomorrow I’ll probably first work on identifying which animals are in the picture you just took. Then I’ll just have to slap on some scoring stuff and more content (as you can see the animals aren’t very different yet :P) and presto!

Tags: cryptozoology, work-in-progress

Comments

07. Feb 2009 · 21:49 UTC
Hehe. It looks like a lot of us are doing games that involve animals with interchangeable body parts. :)
Anonymous
07. Feb 2009 · 22:20 UTC
Wow, those animals must have remained successfully hidden so thanks to the evolution of their bright pink coats!

Tile set

Someone asked me how I made these tiles. I drew the pattern for the tree’s tops on graph paper, the rest is just pixeling in photoshop. Nothing fancy, the same thing could be done in paint.

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 14:49 UTC
Thank You 😀

First Playable

My work in progress is up at http://davidrlorentz.com/files/cryptidia_v01.html.

Tomorrow I aim to make the game internet-enabled, and add what little bit of polish I can. The bizarre output is there to stay, though. This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever worked on.

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 13:53 UTC
i thought from the screenshot it was a tetris-style game.
08. Feb 2009 · 14:33 UTC
hehe– I like when it asks you if you want to meet your cryptid! :)

First entry, first day, many lessons

Hi, I’m new here. I’ve been lurking and playing ld games for a few years, but this is the first time I’ve put up.

My entry is far from done. If you’d like source or the work in progress, here’s my release page.

The 48 hour deadline has been great. I don’t have much gameplay, but I do have things working under Windows, which is a great relief. I didn’t leave Ubuntu until earlier this evening, and never having done python dev on windows I was certain this would be my downfall. Thankfully, py2exe is pretty much the most awesome thing ever and Cython is great for wrapping GL, so tie it all together with Box2D and pygame and I have something that looks game-like.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes already. Most notably, I wrote physics and a quadtree before convincing myself I was being ridiculous. Now Box2D is in an all is happy. I had great organization and coding discipline for the first 3 hours; now everything is mush. But a game! Tomorrow I might actually have a finished sort-of game! Hooray! I suppose the rest of you have been on this emotional rollercoaster before.

Comments

phren
08. Feb 2009 · 07:22 UTC
No worries, the next time you’ll probably be able to be disciplined for 3,5 hours! 😛 Looking forward to checking your game out when I get mine done. :)
08. Feb 2009 · 12:32 UTC
hah; it’s pretty cute already :)

Into the dark, physics tweaking, abyss

So, like always, I think up a way too ambitious game mechanic and fail to realize it before its too late :(

Anyways, the above shot shows my progress so far. Every graphic is placeholder, and basically all there is to the game at the moment is controlling the arms of an undersea-monster. I spent pretty much the entire first day just tweaking the physics parameters, and im still not satisfied 😐

Cryptozoology update…

Here is a current screenshot from my simple cryptozoology puzzle game.  It is coming along fairly well schedule wise.  I have 3 of 4 crpytid puzzles completed and just need to draw one more so that is good.  I still need sounds and maybe score a little game soundtrack for it too later.  Need a menu, perhaps highscores just for practice coding that and still searching for a title I like.

I’m glad that I finally picked a game scope that allowed me to have something playable early on and really gave me time for polish, tuning, and asset creation.  As this is my 4th LD (2 full, 2 mini) maybe I’m FINALLY learning something about scope.  😉  If anything, I probably went too far on the side of simple but we shall see.

Tags: cryptid, cryptozoology, gosu, puzzle, ruby, screenshot, update

The Black Yeti

Keeping things minimal.  Just going to work on this for a couple of hours probably, in flash as well.  I found the topic relatively uninspirational, but I’m sort of happy with that, because it gives me an excuse to toss off something small :)

(some of the other stuff here is looking pretty nice…)

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 13:18 UTC
well.. the tileset is intriguing. :) looking forward to seeing how this comes together in your game.

First time – first try :-)

Hello, LD world! Here’s my first LD entry :-)

I’ve been subscribed to LD for a very long time, and always had in mind “I’ll do LD next time”, “I’ll do LD next time”, … Now, even though it is second day of MiniLD #7, I’ll do it THIS time :-) Just a simple game, just to be there, just to try it out.

Now, one more thing I want to try is Python. I use it from time to time for some scripts I need, and I generally like it as a language. What I want to do is feel it in “the real thing”.

Finally, I’d like to try myself as an artist. On my jobs I do pure programming (plus management being lead programmer on all projects I work on). So, let’s see what I can do as an artist.

See you soon with some pictures…

Martini Serpents


Final build. I’ll be honest; I’m an hour late. So, yeah, I spend 49 hours on the game.

A Windows executable is available here (6Mb). Source is included, so if you have Python and pyglet 1.1 installed it should run anywhere.

Instructions:

There are 5 martinis in the game. The first sepent to get all 5 wins. The only way to gain martinis is to steal them by attacking the opponent serpent. To attack, simply click with the mouse. After an attack, a period of time must pass before a new attack can be launched. The cusor lights up red when the cooldown is over and the target is within range.

Edit: Play as the Coral snake, choosing the Milk snake for opponent and go for easy mode, for you first couple of plays.

-Simon

Edit: On a development note, I am pleased with the outcome – I’m especially glad I took out a couple of hours to do all the instruction screens and messages. BUT, if I have 1 regret, it is that I didn’t make more serpents to choose from. The framework is there, I just needed to paint some textures and find some fun paramter values. Oh well, that’s the horror of The Deadline for you. :)

Tags: final, martini, pyglet, python

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 15:38 UTC
the movement is pretty cool, dude; sometimes i sort of wished it was zoomed out a little, but then it would be harder to aim; maybe in an idea world have the camera pan out to always show both snakes?
09. Feb 2009 · 10:48 UTC
its pretty cool to look at, but the play seemed odd, it felt like I wasnt doing very well, but I was winning.
09. Feb 2009 · 12:43 UTC
love the snake movement and the graphical look of the game. it is fun to ‘drive’ the snake. I don’t really understand the whole martini thing. I also thought I had to go and find martini’s on the board. I guess the martini’s are really score? Anyway, I seem to suck at this game because I thought I was hitting the milksnake good but it said I lost every time.
09. Feb 2009 · 16:54 UTC
The snake movement looked really nice but the way it moved the screen didn’t help my headache. I found it rather difficult to control and didn’t manage to win even on easy mode.
fallspace
09. Feb 2009 · 17:00 UTC
If they didn’t go after the martinis, they would not be serpents but regular snakes, right? I guess the martini mechanic made more sense saturday evening :)
DifferentMike
10. Feb 2009 · 20:50 UTC
I liked the look and feel, especially the pause screen. The view would have worked better for me if it were more zoomed out or if the zoom were user-controlled. I did manage to win, though. :)
phren
12. Feb 2009 · 16:51 UTC
The movement of the snakes was pretty cool but it made controlling the snake pretty hard and it didn’t feel responsive.

Well, it looks like I’m not going to get any further on my entry, pretty bored with my idea now. Having said that this *is* a complete entry, it’s just not as fun/interesting as I’d hoped it’d be.

So yes, here it is: fauna.zip faunasrc.zip

You can browse through the vast array of remarkably similar species, and name them to your hearts content, there’s even some internet based sharing of names, (but it’s decidedly flimsy, and involves lame command prompt windows popping up momentarily).

*sigh*, not my finest hour, I think I might stick with a more conventional game idea next time around, and/or only enter if I’m actually feeling fairly commited. It was good for trying out LÖVE though.

Obligitrary screenshot:
Final screenshot

Tags: final

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 16:17 UTC
i think that’s really original and generally cool!
08. Feb 2009 · 18:30 UTC
I find your game very pleasurable! I am glad I could contribute some geni to the pseudoscientific community. Some more variety would be great, but what this game does have is a very clear art direction. :)
cap
09. Feb 2009 · 02:15 UTC
Ok, increpare, I promise I’m not stalking you. That said, my gameplay session went like this:
09. Feb 2009 · 10:45 UTC
I actually really like this, I think it would really work well if it was in a browser and people could just come along and name stuff, also if there were a bestiary of all discovered species that would be cool too 😀
09. Feb 2009 · 12:37 UTC
ok — this is strangely compelling. I think I added a LOT of bug names. :)
fallspace
09. Feb 2009 · 16:48 UTC
This is excellent! A lot of fun.
fallspace
09. Feb 2009 · 19:16 UTC
Oh, I would’ve also mentioned that I think it is very commendable that you, designwise, went with where your implementation took you, instead of forcing some structured gameplay on what is a fun toy in itself.
DifferentMike
10. Feb 2009 · 21:03 UTC
I had a lot of fun just scrolling around and looking at the names of the critters. “Wurgle” is my favorite. :) I personally didn’t see any of my creature names re-appear in the game, which was slightly disappointing, though it’s really cool that I was able to name them and see a lot of increpares.

A week or two ago I read about LÖVE for the first time, I’m glad to see that it worked out so well for you! :)
phren
12. Feb 2009 · 16:57 UTC
Oh lord, I didn’t read the description so I went and named my two first creatures fucker and faggot before realizing it’s sending the stuff to a server. 😀
MrPiglet
12. Feb 2009 · 17:32 UTC
Hehe, well thanks guys :) I truly didn’t expect the feedback to be this overwhelmingly positive (and amusing). Very glad people have been enjoying it, and it’s been awesome seeing the species names filling out a bit.

Missing Link

There has been reports of big hairy man running in the woods. It must be a missing link of evolution! You have to capture it with your stun gun.

Controls:

WASD – move

Left shift – target

Mouse – shoot

Python: http://olli.sikstus.com/missing_link.zip

Win32 (no sounds because I had problems with py2exe and pygame.mixer): http://olli.sikstus.com/missing_link_win32_nosound.zip

I have actually coded only few hours today. I had lack of motivation because my game didn’t turn out very fun to play. But I quickly finished it, so it’s playable, not very fun though.

Tags: final

Comments

09. Feb 2009 · 10:38 UTC
I just get a ‘configuration is incorrect’ error when I try to run the exe, I’ll try the python version later once its installed
09. Feb 2009 · 12:22 UTC
well — the music is creepy enough! heh. I searched the map for awhile before I encountered bigfoot and then it took me a bit to corner him. I like the delay in targetting because it added nice tension. bigfoot totally killed me the first time. I went back to that damn forest though and I tracked his ass down and bagged him the second time! Take that missing link. :)

Cryzoku Art

I’ve just finished making pictures for my game. It’s gonna be sudoku-like game. After drawing 5 images, I saw it would take me lot of time to draw it all, so I’ll simply flip 4 images :-) Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Ok, that’s about it. Now, let’s do some programming… :-)

Finished

Hi everyone! I just finished my first LD-entry.

My goal was to make a simple 2D-game where the player is supposed to catch butterflies with different kind of nets and weapons. As I didn’t have as much time to code today as I thought I had, the end result is rather simple but I’m really happy I managed to finish something! Hope you enjoy it!

I used Python 2.5 and Pygame. The windows executable can be downloaded from here

Thanks!

Tags: final

Comments

09. Feb 2009 · 10:35 UTC
its pretty simple but not bad at all, for running out of time you did well to have a win condition and interface :)
09. Feb 2009 · 12:09 UTC
the graphics / animations work really well! It is ‘fun’ somehow to throw your net out there and the butterflies look really great and move very flutterly.
09. Feb 2009 · 13:30 UTC
Very solid game. I like it lots!

Finished – Pinapple22

Comments

08. Feb 2009 · 19:25 UTC
yet another entirely lovely game from you;
08. Feb 2009 · 23:43 UTC
nice game.. I enjoyed playing it even though I’m not very good at it. :)
cap
09. Feb 2009 · 01:45 UTC
I like the main mechanic; it’s fun and it feels really solid. Did it take you long to find the right parameters for the movement and lasso physics?
09. Feb 2009 · 09:26 UTC
increpare: HybridMind:

thanks! <3
DifferentMike
09. Feb 2009 · 23:58 UTC
I really enjoyed watching this game come together. I loved the graphics. Very clean and simple. The lasso mechanics were a lot of fun. The way the oval freaks out when he gets hit is fantastic. The only place I got a little confused was with the game’s time – I would have like a little more feedback related to it. OTOH, watching my combo scores was a lot of fun. Overall, a really interesting, lovely game.
10. Feb 2009 · 02:18 UTC
Interesting experiment. I like the lasso effect but for some reason I wanted to see it constrict movement and collide even before I let it go.
phren
12. Feb 2009 · 17:05 UTC
The graphics are really cool in a simplistic way. The main mechanic is neat, but it didn’t really movitivate me to play longer. Maybe some kind of sense of urgency could’ve helped. :)