A: Name of the game: The Knights of Alentejo

B: Description (140 chars): It is about knights and a servant.One has swords, other, a shield.The servant can spy.They must descend into a dungeon to destroy a portal.

C: One mockup image:

D: Definition of Done: 3 levels, 3 enemy types, 1 boss (no sound of any kind yet ;- ])

I wanted  to make this game for very long and this is the perfect chance. Its definitly “getting things done”. And its about DESCENDING into a dungeon to DESTROY a portal. Did I mention its a very dirty place?

how I expect to manage this?

I will use a game engine I was working on. Its very crude and will need a lot more code, but I guess I can handle it. I also belive that keeping the fun at the core helps you focusing on whats essential and cutting things as you go.

To complicate things more, I just got back from work ( Its 10:30 here in Rio – the Mini-LD started at 11 AM here) and I will have to stop the work tomorrow night. But I still belive I can make it a fun game to play.

This is my first time here (previously, I was part of two Global Gam Jams).  Hope I didn’t screw it up.

Yeah, maybe I overslept. Again. Its 10 am here and I’m still having breakfast. Last night, I got some pretty interesting stuff: fixed all bugs that prevented me to get-things-done ™ and finished the basical mechanics of the game. The knights and the monsters now can attack, die, kill. The knights can also finish a level and a new level now loads in case all the alive knights exit it. Today I want to do some very un-get-things-done thing, rewrite a lot of code. But that will be needed to get rid of more bugs.

In a few words: Yesterday, I went from a tiny scrolling overview of small characters in a big map to the real game.

What’s next: Add some better speciallization to the characters (stats like defense, visibility, etc), more inteligence to the monsters. A Boss would be a good idea. Also game over and a title screen would help.

Oblig. screenshots:

The Knights at their starting position for the first level. We actually see all regular enemy varieties.

Not the game, really 😉 Just my desk, like someone else posted.

Fuel ( black tea ).

“brainstorming”.

Long version: I actually don’t have much to report. I had to go out with my girlfriend and what I expected to last just a few hours, lasted the double ( hope you guys know how persuasive women can be ;-] ).

But don’t blame her (or me), since she wants me to finish this game and wants to see it ( she’s into gamedev too ).

What did I do earlier today?

– Game now is true turn-based.

– Spawn bug fixed (people were spawning inside walls, etc).

– Finished characterization (defense, attack, life, etc ) for both the Knights and the boss.

– Got a pretty cool idea for the title screen, game over screen and fininshed screen. And its going to be real easy to do.

– Also got a general idea on the final boss.

– Got some very funny ideas for a backstory.

In the end, its only missing the final boss and those screens. Oh, and there is also a bug on the “seeking” algorithm for the monsters. Gonna finish it before anything else.

Now, on the not so cool ideas: I did some math and its better for me to go to sleep now and wake up early tomorrow, refreshed and full of ideas than go to work now, tired, and wake up late tomorrow, almost on the deadline.

Short version: In my local time, the deadline is 11 AM. If I work now, I would go to bed some 2 AM and wake up at 10 AM. If I go to sleep now, I wake up 8 AM. Pretty obvious, isn’t it?

Due to my lack of proper time sense, I wasted too much time on useless stuff while coding this project.

But I’m glad to report that I managed to acomplish everything promissed. It flickers badly, has a few nasty bugs, but in the end, IT WORKS!

It was funny how I spent the last half-hour just balancing the game and the boss.

I had great ideas on how to tell the funny game story or on how to make a awesome boss, but I decided to get-things-done, ship it and leave those ideas for a future expansion ( for those who saw me @ IRC, probably know I’m very focused on Android and J2ME and I would love to port the game for these platforms).

In the end, the boss den was made into a forth level. Not bad!

Now, its time to figure out how to upload(?) the game.

Screenshot:

edit: now I realize I sent it 3 minutes to my deadline!

Of course. I know I can do a LOT better than this, but my focus wasn’t really on quality, but rather on finding how to improve my “Get Things Done ™” skills. The most important skill from this skill-set is to see your limitations (mine was more of time than of knowledge or anything like that), set yourself a reasonable goal and accomplish that. In that sense, I believe I was very successful. And most of all, I had lots of fun knowing you folks!

I hope to be here more often on more LDs and MiniLDs!

Thanks for all of you.

I just realized one small but funny mistake:

The game takes place on the portuguese province of Tras-os-montes, but that province is not on the alentejo!

That will need a rectification very soon…Tomorrow I’ll also set up the game embedded on a webpage.

So long, and  thanks for all the D’s 😉

Yep, Ive been absent for quite a while.

But  coincidently, I just got my publishing keys to Google Play, so, why not try my hands at this challenge?

Firstly, I’m imposing myself a challenge inside this challenge: how fast can I code a simple game like a minesweeper? I should handle this easily, after all, until some 6 months ago, for almost 3 years, I was a professional casual game developer.

And so, I sat yesterday to start it. In a very TDD way, I wrote most of the premise code, some simple framework to the Android Activity flux. Right now, I have most of the code in place, but not everything is plugged in, since it still require some refactoring to conform to everything else.

Now, the oblig. screenshot:

Of course, this is very wrong, from a minesweeper point of view. But I must tell you the tiles are reversed. And everything behind the “unrevealed” tiles are being rendered the same.

I plan to release this TODAY.

My second project for this month, and I’m going to work on it next weekend, is a life-game-based arcade game: You shoot goo ( gosper gliders ) and you must erradicate all remaining goo.

I wrote this game before, I must admit. It was the very first thing I wrote when my former boss (from the game studio) gave me some time to acquaint myself with the iPhone SDK. It was cool, but buggy as hell. Now I want to write it in Java for Android, with proper graphics and everything.

My third project for the month is GOOD remake in Android for my MiniLD#26 game: Knights of Alentejo. Currently, it works in a very flawed state, but requires a keyboard and lacks menus and everything else. I will make it into a POLISHED game.

My final (and very unlikely) project for the month is to take my pet project, a 3D game engine I’m writing in Android Java and make a simple “Stealth Spy” game out of it. Since it has sort of dynamic lightning, I want to make something different out of it, other than another FPS.

And thats pretty much all I want to do. Of course, everything will be free, ad-free and open source. Hope you guys enjoy it!

UPDATE:

Things look a little more promising. But of course, I need better. BADLY.

Gonna ask my GF to make me something better. She’s a really good artist.

Hello folks.

I had a few hiccups with my ISP (I’m ready to take legal actions and I’m already subscribing to another), so I could not really post here.

The minesweeper game in 24 hours was a success! I had to make a few more tweaks, but all in all, 95% of the damn thing went by on the first few hours. Got it into Google Play a few hours ago. It’s not polished and hardly stands against the quality standards of a LudumDare game you guys pull around here. But I guess it’s good sign when you’re addicted to your own game. I guess this is my first game that I consistently can’t stop playing a game authored by me.

Looks like crap, but my girlfriend will make me some better art: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=br.odb.sonarminefield&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImJyLm9kYi5zb25hcm1pbmVmaWVsZCJd

That was a warm-up. Now, for the really cool games. My #2 project is called “Kill the Conwoids”.

I guess anyone that has ever implemented a Conway’s game of life has once wondered about using it on a game. As I said before, I actually did implement this as a game while working as a intern on a small game studio in Rio de Janeiro. Now I want to make it a better game.

Work has already commenced. Stay tuned.

Ooops, just was McFunkypants (hilarious) presentation on the challenge. The only way to comply to it is to make a lite version and a full version.

Personally, I don’t like using adsense. It disrupts the whole experience. Maybe I will try it too. Who knows. Luckly, I already have everything set up.

I must say I’m quite sad to announce this: I’m out of the challenge.

It seems my Google Wallet can’t be configured properly with my current credit card, as it is not accepted worldwide. In Brazil, to make a new International card would take too long. Without a card, I can’t take payments from sold games.

This is specially sad since I got a MASSIVE speed improvement on my 3D game engine this weekend and successfully implemented the Game-Of-Life for my little “arcade game”. It even fires gosper gliders into the big bacteria blob!

I still plan to finish the said games, but I will keep it free, as said on my first post of the challenge.

Sorry for your time and space.

I’m in!

Probably gonna use Java or Javascript. I have a sort of a library of my own for those.

Gonna try posting live streams of my work on G+ and, of course, pictures here.

My project is a very small, simple one.

No. That’s a lie.

I realized there is no multi-head, multiplayer focused, opensource  submarine simulator out there, so I decided to write one. This LD Jam will produce a prototype of it. That’s one kind of game my father would always play with me (Silent Service, for NES).

Multi-head? What do I mean with that?

Simple: If you ever tried playing a submarine simulator, you will quickly realize it puts THE ENTIRE SHIP under your command. And while this is cool for a ride, seems somewhat unsuitable for combat, where you quick and precise responses from every station. I remember getting annoyed by the “change current station” behaviour of 688 Attack Sub. I would try to lock on a sonar signal, but switching to weapons and locking a torpedo was so cumbersome that I would always lose the lock.

So, in my simulador, every station is a separate application you can (and should) run on a separate machine (or tablet, or phone). You could even invite some friends over and have them fill in for every station available! Cool, huh?!

…And what if, on top of that, you could compete with other human-controlled submarine? Take some other 5 friends of you can go for a 3 x 3 competition! But that multiplayer server will have to wait for a while.

About graphics: for this prototype, there will be none. The simulator itself will be kind of a Telnet server on steroids, opening a telnet connection for each available station and offering a text interface to command that part of the ship. Eventually, I will have graphical clients. I have SVG handling libraries I’m itching to use for a eventual Cartography station.

What I intend to deliver: a simple “multi-head” submarine simulator, but not focusing that much on realism.

I grew up playing A LOT of Microprose simulators, specially in the Stealth Fighter series. I would love to deliver a game with at least one mission mimicking that kind of simulation.

What do I already have: some basic modelling of the simulation with a Futuristic Scenario as an example (I intend to have historic scenarios as well) , a generic submarine and underwater base. The sub is still static, but slowing coming to “life”.

To be fair, I had a few setbacks and chose a very ambitious theme – But I believe this is a cool project worth the shot.

License: 3-Clause BSD.

Edit: I lied again – I haven’t checked much about submarine simulators, but there seems to be very few of it.

Edit 2: don’t know about you, but I had buckets of playing those simulators when I was a kid. And as much as I feel annoyed by some aspects of 688 Attack Sub, it’s still darn fine simulator .

Edit 3: for clarity

You know – sometimes you must know your limits. Just because you had a cool idea, doesn’t mean it is suitable for a Game Jam. And that was my case.

I worked tirelesly on saturday, barfing some 50 skelleton Java classes that kind of modelled a submarine simulation, with targets, objectives, scenarios, ships, bases, etc. But then, came the implementation task. And it dragged.

It’s doesn’t help that I had a case of sickness in the family and basically lost my sunday on a very important visitation. And it was well worth it. I have no regrets.

I want to really finish this prototype by the end of the week – I trully believe that I can at least prototype the multi-head aspect of it. I already have a moving submarine (actually, a 3D vertex in the middle of a void 3D space) that submerges, activates a periscope (that does nothing), can change it’s thrust and steer around. Pretty much the basics.

More than just a prototype, I really want this to become the final project for post grad. program I’m currently enrolled into.

Also worth noticing this; This simulation has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BRAZILLIAN NAVY. It was modelled around the Los Angeles class. Why am I disclaiming this? That’s because I work there – but not on submarines or anything, but rather with payroll systems.

I failed, but this from failure, a nice thing might spring to life.

It’s been a while.

I want to renew my “C++ drivers license”, so I’m going with it this time. C++ and SDL.

I’m still sketching a few ideas on what’s feasible. But I feel it’s time to tackle a action plataformer, or maybe a war game.

Decided to go with a 3D simple platformer, and this is what I got so far:

Basic movement from our hero, blue cube

Collision between player and platformsBasic gravity

My intent here is to add a timer and have the player jump around to reach for a specially marked platform.

So, just after I wrote my last post here, I came up with the definite game mechanic:

• You have a jetpack with a limited fuel supply (white bar at the bottom of the screen) and you must visit the platforms in the order given by a colored square in the top-right corner of the screen.
• After you finish visiting it, you complete the level. Fail to do it with your current fuel supply and it’s game over.

It’s in a very raw state, with some platforms failing to register collision at at, but it’s playable.

I also came up with a name: Jetpack Floating Island Inspector

Tomorrow, I plan to finish at least some more of it and hopefully fix that bug. Too bad I have a family lunch to attend to (hopefully, isn’t going to take the whole day).

The way I see it, it’s great already – I have accomplished this much in a little over 12 hours of hard work. Specially considering that I started with a blank Emacs screen and I’m only using C++, SDL and SDL_gfx.

Screenshot from the ARM version (have some timing issues, but it’s playable):

BTW: source code available at https://github.com/TheFakeMontyOnTheRun/island-domination

BSD License.

Someone with a Raspberry Pi, PLEASE COMPILE THIS!

Hey folks, a quick reminder: look at the comments from your posts!

I just caught a load of positive comments in my previous (years old!) posts. I wasn’t aware of such positiveness going on in the community!

If only I have seen those before, maybe wouldn’t have quit some of the jams and compos I took part of.

I’m glad to announce that I just submitted The Underfunded Floating Island Jetpack Inspector for the Jam. Also submitted x86 binary and source tar.gz.

(Github link in the description)

It was fun and unexpected in many ways.

It was mostly developed over Saturday, with some bug fix during the Sunday morning. In the Sunday afternoon, got some particle effects and minor refactoring.

Today was mostly for sounds and other screens.

It is not a polished product and I know it suffers from timing issues. I intend to fix it later.