So hey guys. I’ve been meaning to enter LD for ages but stuff keeps cropping up and I miss the dates. I’m not going to wait yet another 4 months, and I go off to college Monday, so what better way to kick off adulthood than with a weekend of coding? =D

So here’s what I intend to use folks:

• Gamemaker – I haven’t finished learning Flixel yet, and I’m too lazy to code in C++.
• SFXR
• FLStudio
• Crazy Awesome Maths

So yea, we shall see how this goes. I’m not a terribly great pixel artist, so I’ll will most likely end up having to draw everything with code. It’ll be some good practice as I haven’t done procedural stuff in a while, and maybe I’ll finally learn to stop tweaking everything and just make content. If all else fails, I’ll whip up something weird and crazy in a couple hours like I used to do for IRC jams.

Ummm, so introduction I guess? I’ve been coding on and off for the past 4-5 years, started in Gamemaker, moved up to C++ and recently learned Java, and been making small games since I started to learn code. (Although they are mostly compiled scraps of games. Only 2 true releases. =P)

Well, Good luck to everyone else involved. Looking forward to seeing what other great stuff you guys will pump out! ^_^

(As a quick question, are we allowed to use the extensions built into GM? It’s essentially just a simpler way to interface with a DLL, but some people might feel that is too much code written before the compo. Just in case I need to use a mp3 or physics extension to run a DLL… )

Ergonomics is key guys!

With all my junk packed up or liberated by siblings and family members, I’ve got my bed and floor for optimal support!

Yay first idea sketches.

So I think I’ve got an idea. It’s a overhead arena shooter thingy where the player has to ram into enemies to send them flying into other enemies. And in order to gain more energy to boost/ram, you have to “catch” bullets and rockets in the rear of the ship. Then add lots of environmental factors like spikes, saw blades, energy shields, lightning barriers, explosive barrels, and destructible walls, and you’ve got a room of massive retro eye candy.

Hopefully.

First Demo Screenshot

So I’ve got the player movement down (WASD and MOUSE), and a stationary enemy that randomly shoots at you. Left clicking lets the player boost temporarily and creates a ghost trail that changes the direction of bullets that pass through it to the direction of the player. So basically you are invincible and can manipulate bullets when boosting, but are vulnerable when in normal mode. I think I’ll include a simple level up system to increase the size and length of the ghost boost as you progress. Gotta fix my wall collisions first though…

Tags: juhkystar

This is the screen capture from abuot 6 hrs ago, but the game pretty much looks the same.

Alright! Awesome! So I have a playable working demo of my game concept. So anyone want to take it for a spin?

http://upurload.com/dl/?n=3627

W to GO FORWARD!

Mouse to aim!

Left mouse button to BOOST!

Boosting changes the direction of bullets!

Destroy all the spikey spinning thingys to win!!!

Does this post need more exclamation points?

YES!!!!!!!!

A tad late, but this is to say I’m in!

I’ll be using Game Maker, SFXR, Audacity, and Sai Painter.

Looking forward to seeing everyone’s games!

Tags: LD#26

Well I think I’ve come up with a decent minimalism idea. You have to defend a planet from waves of enemies, and you get satellites that shoot at certain intervals. they orbit the planet and you get more of them as you kill more aliens or cubes or whatever. But the trick is that you can only change the rotation speed of the satellites, not their fire rate or exact position. Hopefully I can make some interesting gameplay with this. Here’s a quick screenshot of what I have so far:

Tags: LD#26

Just a quick post to say I’ll be using Gamemaker along with SFXR to make a game this compo. Really looking forward to pushing myself creatively. Good luck to everyone!

Quick screenshot of what I’ve got so far:

There’s not really much to show in a screenshot at this point, but so far I’ve polished up the movement mechanics to where I want them (double jump, wall jumping, dashing, etc), and I’ve done most of the bullet mechanics, with the exception of fixing one annoying bug whenever I try to swap player position with the bullet’s.

The basic idea of the game is that you only have one bullet to attack enemies with, and you have to pick it up to reuse it. There’s quite a few unique properties to it however. The bullet can bounce off walls so it’s easier to angle it back to yourself, you can swap positions with the bullet after it’s fired to dodge attacks, you can curve the bullet by flicking the mouse, and you can buffer shooting the bullet before picking it up so that it insta-shoots for double damage. Also, the bullet homes in on the player if they are close enough just to help with picking up an object with such a small hitbox. I’ll have the mechanics just add onto each other through various pickups in the game. I might end up adding a few more ideas (like maybe charging the bullet into a MEGA bullet for boss fights, or adding a melee knockback to help when the player is trying to recover the bullet), but that’s the core gameplay for now.

Now to get some rest and work on a lot of the actual design when I wake up tomorrow!

Tags: juhkystar, LD28

Well, here’s a screenshot of what I’ve gotten done in the first 24hrs so far:

I really wish I was further along, but this will have to do. I feel like quite a few people are going to do something similar with a projectile and having to retrieve it, but OH WELL. I’m pretty happy with the mechanics of shooting and retrieving the bullet so far. There’s a few different variants of the projectile you can switch between after getting powerups like a piercing one, a bouncing one, one that floats near whatever it hits, etc. So there’s quite a few different mechanics at work right now. Also, you build up a sort of “rage gauge” (not shown in HUD yet) as you kill enemies which allows you to teleport to your bullet after you hit something. You have to keep killing things to refresh it, so if you’re good at aiming, you can just chain enemy kills and teleport all over the place. It’s pretty fun!

I also refined the movement mechanics a little more so that wall-jumping refreshes your double-jump as well as your dash, so it’s a lot easier to move around the level quickly to retrieve the bullet. I’ll probably make some timed sections to force the player to move and aim much more quickly, because otherwise you can just spend all day lining up shots, and it’s not as fun as zooming all over the place.

Now I’ve just got to add more enemies, level hazards (for both the player and the bullet), an actual end boss, and a hopefully more art. I’m pretty lacking in the art department since it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with it, but it doesn’t look TERRIBLE so that’s good enough for now. What I really need are some interesting designs/mechanics for the enemies. Time to brainstorm again!

Tags: juhkystar, LD28