It’s just past 3am now. We’ve sat around for an hour brainstorming. Got some pretty rad ideas brewin’, but I think we’d better sleep on it; see what mad visions our dreams conjure!

See y’all early tomorrow. Best of luck!

Us right now… (ᴗ˳ᴗ) zzz

I feel our first day has gone really well, and I’m really happy with our progress so far for our teams first game jam. The games coming together nicely, and Craig’s done a really neat job constructing the engine.

Tomorrow will be all about turning that engine into more of a game – something a little more exciting to show you folks! Here’s a quick peek:

I feel there’s more to say, but our brains are barely functioning right now, so we’d better not touch the game. Time to sleep and get back to the action early tomorrow!

So far this has been so much fun!

Today is mostly about polish, and we’ve gotten off to a great start.

We’ve added stars with a parallax scrolling effect which has given the game a nice sense of depth. Then we’ve added arrows to help the players locate enemy ships and their movement off screen, as well as lowering the glow of non-active phases on the Phase Bar.

You can see this stuff in action bellow:

Aren’t gifs fun.

We’re currently working to implement one more priority feature – the ability to to adjust a ships use of shielding vs attack power. At default they’d sit at 50% power each, though if you desire you could ramp one up at the cost of the other.

We’ll have a small toggle bar located in the lower left corner. It looks like this:

Then after that it really will be full time polishing and tweaking. A lot of that will be in order to make the ships feel more unique.

Best of luck to all those still going! I’ve been seeing some really rad games floating about, they’re quite the distraction!

A bunch of hours ago we finally implemented the ability for the player to divert power between Shields and Attack-power (or rather, the firing frequency!) Increasing the one lowers the other, though you can never be fully shielded/damage immune.

In addition to that, when the shields power is boosted a subtle blue glow surrounds the associated ship.

You can see this in action in this here gif:

We also have menus now!

As you can see, you can click anywhere on the slider bar, or drag the slider itself to achieve the desired results.

Other additions that really make quite the difference include spinning  asteroids, as well pixel perfect collision, though you can’t really see that here. The asteroids are lurking. Waiting.

Hmm, well, I’d better shoot off and get some polish in before we submit! Craig is currently fleshing out the AI a little more, and there’s a wee more balancing to be done, time permitting.

Best of luck on the final run folks, don’t leave things too late! Just 3 hours to gooo!

We’ve submitted our game, which we’ve called Cosmos Commander, because alliteration.

The idea of the game is you give your ships commands before the conflict and then watch 10 seconds play out. Then you give them new commands for the next 10 seconds and repeat until you’re victorious. Or defeated. Preferably victorious, though.

The orders you give your ships are where they move, where they fire, and whether or not you’d like to prioritise shields or firing-rate with a slider bar. You give these commands to your ships one by one, sequentially.

Here’s a gif:

We like gifs

The pre-combat phase is not as intuitive as it ought to be, but I’m really happy with the way the game has turned out. Ludum Dare has been such a great experience, but mostly so for us as a team. We’ve learned a lot about working together and it’s been so much fun, and we’re really eager to work on more projects together.

That said, I really can’t wait for sleep… and then to play so many games. I’m really looking forward to the feedback!

This was our first Ludum Dare as a team, and the first Ludum Dare ever for 2/3 of us, and we’re so pleased with how things went!

The idea of our game is that you plan out your turn and then watch it play our over the course of 10 seconds. You get to select your ships’ flight path, where to fire, and can divert/prioritise power between shields and fire-power if you like. Repeat. The first team to destroy the other wins!

Here’s a gif of our game doing some things:

Click the image to play!

Anyway, let’s dive in shall we?

The Good:

• We’ve created a game that we find fun to play, and that will serve as the basis of a future project.
• We’re happy with the overall visuals, including a parallax background.
• We managed to implement ship variations with different characteristics. These include: differing health, movement, damage, and AI behaviours.
• We find the ability to divert power between Shields and Firepower to be a really neat feature. We didn’t think we’d get around to implementing it!

The Bad:

• As a team we weren’t always on the same page. It’s hard developing over Skype when tired.
• There is no sound, which is a bit of a problem. Its lacking existence is definitely something we regret, and something we’ve all vowed to improve on vastly.
• The planning phase is not the most intuitive system, and could really do with an overhaul.
• The game would benefit greatly from a tutorial, or more in-depth instructions.
• Multiple levels with a difficulty curve would have been an ideal way to introduce game systems and slowly ramp up the amount of units.
• The screen is a little too tight. A wider view, or the ability to zoom in and out, would be a greatly beneficial.

What we’d like to add:

• Music and sounds – Bleeps and bloops and perhaps electronic “target selected” voices. That sorta thing!
• Improved Movement System – one that shows you how far the ship can move in the period of 10 seconds, to allow for more precise planning.
• Ship upgrading and purchase – An upgrade or ship purchase system between missions, perhaps with each ship having a certain amount of points to allocate between various stats and slots for upgrades.
• More specialised ships – We’d like ships to to able to use special abilities, or provide some kind of bonus when in the radius of certain other ships (or sometimes if not in a radius).
• Friendly Fire – We’d like to find a middle ground. Not too much damage dealt to yourself, but there still should be the penalty. We’re very into the idea of having the smallest ships not deal friendly fire to one another when fighting as a close unit.
• Improved Power diversion – The ability to divert power between Shields, Firepower, and Thrusters would be pretty rad.
• Multiplayer – Yes, multiplayer would be grand.
• Radar – This would be a nice way to figure out location of enemies and allies really quick, or incoming asteroids.
• Slight Auto-aim – It would be worthwhile for us to investigate a slight bias towards the bullet flow.

So there we have it! We’re so chuffed with the feedback we’ve received, and we can’t wait to work on the game further, right after we get another project out the door first.

Ludum Dare has proven to be such a great community, and the weekend was so motivating and inspiring. It’s been a growing experience and we’ll be back for more!

If you’d like to play Cosmic Commander, you can do so HERE. Bonus points to anyone who spots a rare cameo!

– Unorthodox Games