So, I finally decided to give it a real try. I guess I’ll be using Python with PyGame, just so that I can keep myself in “python form” if nothing else.

Looking forward to this.

Okay, I am ready to start this now. I’ve been busy earlier today but I am free now. What’s the theme?

. . .

Oh, no..  I have no idea what “Advancing Wall of Doom” is supposed to mean. Damn, I have to be very lucky to make anything with this theme in mind.

Tags: theme

Sorry for the crappy camera. Everything is set up. I have to come up with some simple idea now.

Fortunately, I came up with some simple idea. So I started working on assets. This is what is done so far. I don’t think I will need more. Now onto basic engine.

The rule of Ludum Dare says that you must program the gameplay.

Since I decided to use Construct, development tool which is not verified by LDers yet, I thought about whether my game will be considered fair or not. Construct does let you program your game – though the programming paradigm is little different. So, from that point of view, my decision is fine. However, Construct provides several facilities which make game development easier and which may or may not be available in other programming environments allowed by Ludum Dare.

The following list describes these facilities:

• Map editor
• Animation editor
• Collision
• Platform movement

Everything else will be coded.

There are several disadvantages which will certainly not appeal to some LDers. These are:

• It’s Windows only
• It requires latest DirectX

Am I fair enough? I don’t know. But I am certainly going to try and finish my entry.

Cheers

For a change, I started to play around with music. I was in a need of some club music for one of the levels in the game, so I thought about making some club tune. Since most of the sounds I made so far are chip, I thought about making chip-club tune.

The result wasn’t that great.

Chip-version

Trance version

Tags: music, trance

Hall of Choices is almost done. Only Party, Casino and Doctor doors left to implement.

Tags: tigs

I don’t like bugs.

Tags: bugs, tigs

Construct doesn’t come with proper fade transition, so I thought about writing my own. Construct uses HLSL for effects, so I thought it’s a good chance to learn a bit about shader programming.

It was a failure (given the deadline pressure). I just gave up and decided not to use any transitions.

If by any chance anyone here is familiar with HLSL and knows or has an HLSL snippet which performs fade-away fade-in transition that would be great.

Tags: Failure, HLSL, shaders, tigs

I am tired, asleep, not that motivated, scared and to top it off I think I am falling in love with my idea. The fact that I am so careful with my idea proves this.

Having made similar mistake in the past I am confident that I can avoid falling into the trap once again. I will repeat the mantra to scale down my idea and be satisfied with it. It’s going to be a little bit hard, but hopefully it will work.

Wish me good luck.

And now onto some simulation stuff. I have to get rid of some interesting but not prioritized details. Less disorders. Less woman types. Less job types.

Tags: falling in love, tigs

I’m just coming back from doctor and guys I have very important news to tell you – she’s pregnant. I am very happy, but kinda surprised. I am already thinking about name. I hope it will be beautiful, but I think I can live even if it’s the ugliest baby in the world. We don’t know when she’s going to come to our world, but we are routing for very soon.

I’ll let you know if anything new happens.

Cheers

Tags: happy, pregnancy, tigs

Is there anything worse than giving up just after building momentum because of being so much tired?

My motivation is at its peak, I even enjoy playing what I made so far, but I am so tired I want to sleep so badly.

Which means – deja vu – I failed to meet the deadline. However, I hope to finish the game and post it some other day here. Pity I wasn’t able to make it within set time-frame.

Cheers everyone

Tags: deadline, tigs

I’m probably going to do a text-based (GUI-based) game which explores one’s subconscious through interaction.

Or something like that, still don’t know what. I have to merge a couple of earlier ideas and thinking experiments I came up/conducted in the past.

And of course, I’ll be using almighty Flixel.

I’m quite sad that I have so little inspiration to design games these days.

I think I should just go back and finish the “Flixel for Game Makers” tutorial I started writing recently. :/

Okay, I think I’ve come up with something interesting and simple enough, but I am not sure it fits the theme quite well.

Don’t want to spoil it now but I’ll write down some keywords.

RPG, screen-by-screen, neon, weird, phobic protagonist, clubbing, city

Now making screenies.

Tags: tigs

Mmmm.. I have something.

Tags: tigs flixel

…doesn’t suit the theme anymore. ):

Tags: tigs flixel

Well, no longer exploration but the quality-effort trade-off seems quite fair so I decided to finish this game and keep posting about it here.

Room backgrounds coming along nicely. Here is another one:

Now I have to figure out where I’ll place the character stats.  Currently, there are three of them: confidence, pleasure, health. But I might add more as I develop the story.

Tags: tigs flixel

The theme kind of surprised me! I didn’t see it in the final round I think but it’s better than what I feared the most! Actually, I like it. It made me think about couple of games which utilized world ‘island’ as the core concept. Games like Adventure Island, that indie game Stranded 2, the less known IslandBiz game and a couple of others.

In short, I’m interested and would like to finish my entry this time.

I will keep you updated.

–Miroslav

Tags: Flixel, tigs