I don’t have a solid gameplay idea, but I do have a bit of a direction to go on. My laptop is rather pokey in general; and especially so with graphics; and I’m using Ruby…

Hello everyone; I’m Dan! I’m 29, don’t work professionally on games, but I am a GIS developer and it tends to involve a lot of the same graphics skills, and I’ve dabbled in gamedev for years including a few not-entirely-successful LD48 attempts. Hopefully I won’t be too far out to sea this time around.

Chances are, unfortunately, that this will be a 18-to-25 hour contest for me though. I’m going snowshoeing on Sunday morning/afternoon, tonight is date night, and I need to be (mostly) normal on sleep come Monday a.m.

Which means I’m going to have to seriously address the personal weaknesses that have kept me from finishing in the past:

• Planning. I need to have a roadmap and stick to it! I’ve got something sketched out, and am now working on some base code to have that in before things begin.
• Ambition. No full 3D rigid body dynamics for my game this time around, alas. (I consider a prior LD48 to be a resounding success, despite how pitifully far I still had to go, simply because I had a cube fall, bounce, and come to a rest on the floor. This was before ODE was considered kosher.)
• Procrastination. As helpful as brain-breaks can be, I won’t really have the time for any (besides my already-scheduled prior commitments).
• Commitment. In the past when I was limited to well under the full 48, I sort of waffled around and gave up within the first six hours. Won’t be the end of the world if I do this again, but this time I’m being a bit more serious about the goal of finishing.

Now that I’ve reminded myself of my priorites and committed myself to them by posting them for all of you to see….

Best of luck to everyone! Once I have a working basecode (priority #1 is to be able to start working on the actual game right away) I’ll see if I can get a pic o’ my desk, etc., before 9pm tonight.

Tags: iamin, intro, wellcaffinated

Well, it means that OpenGL is working (2D ortho), along with texturing, mouse interaction, and a bunch of other stuff. Normally I wait until after the theme is announced to get this stuff working, so hopefully it’ll help with my reduced time budget!

But it’s not exactly impressive to look at.

Hopefully this is my Black Triangle, or at least something 80% there. Still need to add rotation support, but that’s not too bad.

Tags: framework, screenshot, sofar

Well, it’s a start. Uploaded for reference. Less than 5min to go!

Tags: framework

Progress update: I’ve got a little bit of spaceship goodness, flying around and such. Lots of time to tweak things, still. Unfortunately there’s a math glitch somewhere; the camera is jumpy in an unpredictable way. Possibly just some numerical instability — debug it now, or keep making progress and wait until later? Decisions…

Tags: inprogress, screenshot

Blast them NMEs!

Yes, spaceships it is. ETA for “full” game (music won’t make the cut): 4 hours or so?

Wish I could get Ubuntu to take a screenshot when it’s in full-screen mode, but, alas.

Tags: inprogress, screenshot

At least, FINAL ENTRY round one.

EDIT: Round two — Fixed what was hopefully the only one or two misuses of the OpenGL API that worked on my machine but croaked on others’. Still no confirmation from a 3rd party that it runs, though. After I get back from snowshoeing, I’ll try to get it running in VirtualBox. Also, if time allows, I’ll pull out my nice nebula pic with something photoshopped since it was a photo from the ‘net.

EDIT TWO: Uploaded direct to LD. Final entry, python source version, hosted on LD. Wait, never mind. “File type goes not meet security guidelines. Try another.” … I thought I was following the instructions; I’ll try again later.

EDIT THREE: The background, although not nearly as nice, is now one done from scratch.

EDIT FOUR: Post-deadline: Added two bug fixes that ought to make it work nicer on other computers than mine. (a) Some sloppy python code was restarting the game, and not properly re-initing the display, when you clicked “start game”. (b) I was using non-power-of-two opengl textures. (c) stripped out all the subversion crap, slimming the download considerably.

EDIT FIVE: A million thanks to allefant, who wrestled with pygame + pyopengl to create a windows executable that seems to work!

Python source version. Run src/game.py from the ld48 directory.

Windows executable. Run game.exe.

I’d appreciate anyone letting me know how (if) it works. This is my first time using pygame or python, so… at least I’ve got a full day (minus all my prior engagements) to fix anything.

EDIT: Oh yeah, move with arrows and left control to fire. Use the mouse to work the menu.

Tags: final

I’ve made a quick update to my entry, to fix a minor api misuse that prevented it from working on someones’ machine last night:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/04/18/i-hereby-dub-the-spacewalls-final-entry/

Still planning on:

• Pulling out the starfield with something homebrew after a bit of time in photoshop — if I get the time.
• Virtualboxing up a windows executable.

If anyone tries to play the game, leave a comment! I’m a bit paranoid that it only works on my machine…

For now, I’m off to go snowshoeing in a National Park!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/04/18/i-hereby-dub-the-spacewalls-final-entry/

Thanks once again!

Comments if it doesn’t work, but it ought to since it does on my machine! 😉 (Fingers x’d.)

And I’m going whole hog on the LD48.

Breakfast: Tea & Toast.

Gameplay: Ambitious.

Technology: Very Ambitious.

Yum.

Yeah, well, that title is as much music or sfx as you’ll see from me. 😉

Possibly not going to have complete gameplay either, but I’ll try, and I think I’ll have some nice exploration of the things I was interested in experimenting with, assuming the sleepies don’t get me.

I’m actually excited, as I’ve gelled some complex/ambitious ideas down to where it’s a Simple Matter Of Coding. Lots of coding, unfortunately.

Oh, also on the cutting board: That dude’s arms. Wiggly leg-circles are enough to tell he’s walking, and that’s already overmuch art/animation work for the likes of me!