I woke up this morning discovering the horrific theme of Chain Reaction, I was pretty bummed that something like Evolution didn’t win and to be honest, I was doubting if I could come up with anything that wasn’t just another Boomshine clone. Well, I sketched around a bit and came up with some ideas that involved chains reacting to input 😉

Originally I was gonna do some kind of “throw your rope and catch something” kind of game, but by tweaking spring properties I stumbled upon something that feels much better to play. You’ll play as some snake-like creature, and have to either kill enemies, or collect stuff by bashing your tail into them/it.

So this is a debug view of the current condition of the game. I prefer writing the gameplay mechanics before delving into doing the artsy fartsy stuff.

So I kinda went back and forth between some ideas I had sketched out. They all involved the same mechanic though, so I was basically just figuring out which was more fun.

I came to realize that there’s simply too many possibilities with this setup. There could be major amounts of violence, I mean, just look at the spikes on those tails! But, I think i’ll simply make it into some kind of sports game, i.e. get the ball into your opponents goal, at least just for the compo entry. I will, however, be keeping the spiky tails.

Dinner will be had in approximately 30 seconds.

A bit progress here; it’s now possible to actually score! I took a really lousy approach to getting score displayed on the ground.. It’s a quad with texture coordinates, and then I have a texture for each number (i.e. 1, 2 and 3). Not very awesome performance wise, but meh.

Since I woke up i’ve mostly been making graphical improvements, e.g. colored players, textured field barriers.. But I also implemented a better camera, so every moving thing should now be visible at all (most) times.

Later I will try to model a better looking goal, and possibly add a menu.

A few things have been implemented since last entry; most notably the springy goals. Well, only the back of the goals actually. They add nothing gameplay-wise, but they’re kinda fun to watch when a ball is hammered into them. Barrier advertisement textures have also been made, i’m not crazy about them but they’ll do for now.

What I really need to get started on are the controls. The gamepad controls are perfect, but the majority of people here does not have such a peripheral so keyboard/mouse support is essential. Keyboard is currently supported, but man, it feels quite crappy. I think pure mouse control would be better.

Added support for various control schemes, and prettied up the display:

A couple sounds are in also! Thanks DrPetter! (sfxr)

The outcome of these 48 hours is a reasonably decent game, that just barely stays within the theme. Taking that aside, I do think it’s good fun to play and that’s all that matters.

Hopefully at least a few people will be able to try it out, but since there is no single-player component it gets a little bit dull playing by yourself

The entry can downloaded from here:

Download Final! (src included)

Watch capture (stream)
Watch capture (xvid)

Tags: final, xna

This theme was horrible to think up ideas for, I mean, games usually rely on the player expecting what happens. However, I did write a small platformer with just one level which tries to incorporate this idea of having something unexpected happen, so that the player then has to think up a way around.

I’m not sure i’ll continue working on it, as i’m not terribly excited about the game idea. Meh.

It requires .NET2.0, XNA 2.0, shader 1.1 and updated DirectX dll’s ( )

Try it here

To abide by the rules I hereby deliver a link to my work-in-progress library; all it really does is provide a way of binding game behaviors to “entities”, and getting a hold of them again. Oh, and it’s written for .NET3.

Download

Not much to show, but I guess that fits the theme perfectly. The reason is that I have spent all my time on coming up with an idea that
I didn’t hate.

What you’re seeing here is a 3d model infested with nasty stuff. It’s your job to shake these things off.

Had some troubles with math earlier, but that should be fixed now. Here’s a shot of a more complex model in action, where some blobs have been shaken off to the left.

There’s still one major issue with the ArcBall implementation (to rotate the model intuitively) which really needs to work before it’s playable.

ArcBall rotation still isn’t working, and i’ve basically given up on trying to fix it. Below you can see what i’ve spent my morning doing.

• Gradient background
• Fonts
• Better shading for the main model
• Better shading for dirt
• Improved model for dirt specks

<3

But here’s my main-menu:

The colored text at the top is bouncing up and down, and the model below is rotating to give a preview of the level.

Here’s some of the latest models:

In other news, I suck at composing music so I have made sure that people can turn it off in my game.

Finally done, here it is!

Do not be afraid to shake it up, shake it up, sha..

The entry can be downloaded from here:

Download

Watch capture (stream)
Watch capture (xvid)

Requirements:

.NET 3/3.5
XNA 2.0

up2date DirectX dll’s

Tags: final, shake, xna

Here’s what I have to show so far. It’s supposed to take place on a rooftop where you direct the wind in ways that will make it blow crates over the edge.. and quite possibly end up killing people and the occasional owl at the bottom of the tower.

mid-day1

More progress shots! Wee!

More visuals: