Signing up for the competition seems to be in order. It’s my first one, so hopefully it goes swimmingly.

I’m going to use my old XNA framework engine, but I’ll utilize ANX to get rid of the framework dependency. I tested it a few times and it seems to work mostly fine, except for Rendertargets which leak memory bad and crash the whole thing! Apparently fullscreen support is missing as well which is a bit of a bummer.

I might just ship two versions then eh, when/if I get something done of course.

Here is the codebase for those interested.

Have a nice day.

Tags: code, LD#26, Saying hello

So I basically ditched the theme right away and concentrated my efforts on an idea I got from a few of the other themes, which sadly didn’t make it.

I’ll keep it quiet for now, but hopefully I have enough time to implement most of the necessary features to show it off.

Here’s little something something to give you an idea anyways:

Tags: HAL, LD#26

After a good amount of sleep, I’m now in a condition to continue hacking together the rest of the game.

Got the interface pretty much done yesterday, so now it’s time for the fun stuff.

Here’s my progress pic of the day. Looks exiting, right?

Tags: 24h, interface, progress

Clone Colony Frontier is out now.
Take an exercise in futility as you watch your brave clone workers perish one by one in the ruthless hands of Space Germs and Space Famine.

Also Potato certified. Although it’s quite a rare occurrence to see one in space.

Release
and
Source
(the submitter bugged out on me with this one).

And now I’m going to sleep a bit, before tackling the thousand or so games…

Tags: CCF, Clone Colony Frontier, complete

Basing a game on Jam code can be tricky.

The idea of the game I’m very much fond of, but to improve on it I’d have to write quite a few additional systems while rewriting bits and pieces here and there. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to do so recently as I’ll have to work on other projects at the moment.

This project was a learning experience when it comes to building abstract and passive simulation structure and returning to it is a high priority for me as there are much more important ideas and concepts to (un)cover.

The post jam version eradicates a heap of bugs (hopefully not introducing many more in the process) and implements a few additional and missing mechanics.

There is also a quicksave/load feature now.

Been working on the project a bit.

Certain obstacles hindered my progress (holidays, games, overall winter laziness), but I’m relatively ok with the current state of things. It’s not feature complete and not even winnable at the moment, basically a prototype of sorts.

The interesting challenge for me in this project is implementing a data driven system, I’ve been working on for many a month, to a real game for the first time.

That also ate some time from adding game features, as I had to create additional functionality for said system and rewire existing code around.

Lot’s of fun, as always, and once again LD further cements my jamming philosophy.

It’s not about adhering to a terrible theme, but rather starting an interesting project for future development.

Web, Linux and Mac builds now available.

Linux and Mac versions haven’t been tested. Give them a try if you can and let me know how it works out.

The only thing that might go wrong is the data loading, this being Unity and all.

Hopefully not.

Play games and have fun.

Like prophesied I didn’t have the time to implement any gameplay. Having to work on a Monday tends to get in the way of creative expression and sleeping late for that matter.

Nonetheless I did get some optimization done. While it still tends to slow down when zoomed out and in full swing, it’s an undeniable improvement.

Try it out if you can muster the will to do so. As for the rest, take another Gif(t) from the Gods!

Tags: finished, gif, jam, progress

A quick update. Improves AI and framerate. There is also a simulation speed toggle for those interested.
Still no gameplay though. Should get more onto that now.

Also no gif this time. Will do one when there is more action between the factions.
It will be glorious! (for some sides of the conflict…)

Give it a try.

Tags: new version, progress, update

To battle! Glory awaits!
Not that you can take any part in it yet.

Gameplay is next on the list, you have my word on it.

And as promised, Time to Gif!

(I should probably remove the trippy background next time….)

For a more controllable/zoomable/immersable experience click here!

Tags: battle, conquest, gif, progress, simulation, war

Slowing down a bit I think. Some sleep would do… or maybe just a prolonged break.
The main mechanics are still missing!
It’s going to be great.
I’ll keep telling myself that.

Tags: gif, no game, no mechanics, progress, report

Let’s call it 50% why not, no need to throw in the towel yet.
Here are two of the three (count’em) lab machines available for genetic experiments. The green one, codename “Duper”, is fully functional, unlike the blue “Mixer” on the right, which just destroys the resources at the moment.

Most of the (back)ground work is done now so It’s time for GUI coding.
And here I was having so much fun…

Tags: gif, GUI incoming, jam, machines, progress, report

Just a little warning for anyone using the same setup.
In the current version of Unity 5 with the UnityVS plugin I’ve noticed some actions like renaming or moving a folder to sometimes fail terribly by crashing or even removing the folder completely.

That just happened again. This time in the main scripts folder.
Luckily I only lost about half an hour of work or so and recovered fast, but it bears repeating:

Don’t forget to backup/commit often!

Time for a looooong break.

Tags: PSA

Salutations and celebrations! The deed is done. I had a plan and more or less managed to complete it.
Very little sleeping was done in total (7h), not a lot of junk food was eaten surprisingly and even the shower got a bit of use.

It seems Google Drive has changed again and the hosting doesn’t quite work for Unity Web player anymore. Any ideas to go around this kind of stuff?

Well a gif walkthrough will just have to do then.

Tags: complete, compo, gif, happy, hungry, Progress Report, sleepy

Let’s start with a GIF, why not.

Play it now

or read on.

Inspiration:

Recently I’ve been playing a lot of Startopia and utterly loving it. As such even before the theme voting started I was positive about working on a management simulation. There were many acceptable themes on the last batch; Grow, Adapt to survive, Harvest, Indirect Control; but alas they were not to be. I went to sleep a bit worried, but after waking up (mere 2 hours later!) I had the plan more or less down. Take Big Pharma, but rather than creating beneficial drugs, this lab would churn out harmful viruses.

The process:

Code, eat, sleep, code, eat, sleep, code, time’s up!
Nothing out of ordinary there. Slept less than in prior jams, but I really didn’t have time to catch any more Zs.

Programming:

Never worked on a management simulation before and to make it even harder I decided to do it the proper, efficient way. Rather than having all entities in a list which would get iterated though every AI update step, they are stored in temporary lists based on their current purpose. Seems simple enough, except coding while sleepy is a surefire way to miss a few of those, now crucial, list manipulations. Forget even one of them at any state change and soon resources are permanently stuck to the floor and the droids fail to update their tasks.

In the initial release that happened a lot. Now after a few days, all the bugs have been squished (as far as I know!).

Future and beyond:

The PostJam version is on the works. First I’ll implement some interface improvements and missing features I had no time to do. After that, time will tell. There are only so many projects I can work on at a time, but this feels like a keeper.

Play it now

or watch the GIF again I suppose?

Tags: bug fixes, gif, post-mortem

The Post jam release has been out for a while, but now, after a few versions, it’s complete enough to warrant a shoutout.

All basic mechanics and the user interface are fully functional. It’s still missing certain inconsequential things like a title screen, a way to win; nothing too bad.

Play it here

Tags: gif, post-jam

Apart from a few hiccups in the Blender animation pipeline, importing the model to Unity wasn’t a big deal.

Pretty, huh? A little bit of paint and we’ll have ourselves a nice All-Purpose-Armored-Vehicle™

Tags: animation, blender, gif, graphics, LD33, mech, mecha, progress

A postmortem will arrive in the future, meanwhile…

Get stomping!

.

Tags: complete, compo, finished, LD #33, mech, mecha, superiority, tactical

Play it here

Or continue reading to uncover important life lessons.

Overview

This time around I tried something else. Historically my plan has always been to come up with an ambitious programming heavy design and get it done (with varying results). This time the theme didn’t inspire any kind of grand design so I decided to take a walk on the other side.

The very opposite side, where few programmers dare to venture..

Graphics first!

24 hours later I had created a single asset, the mech.

To do this I had to relearn my rusty Blender skills (they’d been rusting ever since last LD) and apply a hefty amount of new found graphic artist abilities on top of that:

Modelling, rigging, inverse kinematics, animating, texturing, the list goes on (no it doesn’t, but that sound more dramatic!).

The rest (not sleep, unfortunately [as you’ll soon see {foreshadowing!}])

With only one day left for programming (and modelling other assets) there was no chance to both reach for the moon and cook up a delicious pie from the sky masterpiece.

I settled for a simple design about the player, piloting a mech, attacking a non-military target thus triggering nearby militia to action.

I did come up with some further backstory in the darkest hours of my plight development process, but implementing any of that fell soundly beyond achievable limits, as did sound to that matter.

Impact (on body and soul)

Monday I got sick. I would wager a very pretty penny that this was caused by not sleeping enough thus disturbing the immune defense system from doing its job. This is the first time for me, so maybe I’m just becoming older. Nonetheless, next time there will be more naps.

The future

The cut features will be implemented in a Post Jam version. I have one additional learning opportunity to pursue, but the less I say about that the better. It might not work out.

Lessons learned

• Sleep a bit more
• Learning is great, but learning the tools sould be done before the jam

The next LD will be about over ambitious ideas again. It’s been a while…

Tags: animated gif, gif, LD #33, post-mortem, postmortem

Play it here

The first Post-Jam version is now out! Had some technical difficulties with the web builds (HTML5 build has terrible audio support and itch.io didn’t like the Unity web build for some reason) so now there aren’t any! Desktop builds all the way, eh.

Do try and rate the jam build as well will ya?

Tags: audio, LD33, mech, mecha, post-jam, sounds, tactical superiority, update