Yesterday I got the basic mechanics working, so decided to take a short break, tidy up the graphics a bit, and make a few sounds. Anyways here is an updated screenshot of the current look:
My computer is beginning to misbehave, so I’m going to restart it now. Back to code soon!
Just finished changing the game logic so it was less restrictive – original idea wasn’t very good to work with from a design point. So, instead of being able to move into one of 3 positions and always moving right – you can now move pretty freely around, and collection is properly implemented. I guess it’s time to go design some puzzles. Oh, I also finished up the graphics entirely now. Might add some final touches later, but next job is to come up with a series of progressively more challenging puzzles to fit the new logic.
All logic in, level progression works, win/lose conditions restart appropriately. So I put together a simple first level to introduce players to the mechanic. Take shiny thing, use it to unlock sections of the map and get to the exit (spinny purple thing). Simple. I just need to come up with a series of challenges that get progressively more difficult. This one is the first one, forces you to move in all directions, and use 1 item:
Really I’d have loved to make code to autogen these puzzles! However, time is wasting away, back to work!
It’s approaching 3am, and I may just have enough time to pop in some kind of music. May have to optimise my renderer and script code slightly, but I should have the time to spare. Don’t plan on sleeping just yet.
The game likes that you have gotten this far ^_^
First attempt at making a timelapse, quickly glued it together before going to bed this morning. Enjoy
I’m happy now Was expecting it to be a bit more difficult than it was, however I did need to optimise rendering to get it up to speed due to working in a VM – didn’t want to take the risk and release something suboptimal! Didn’t think I would get it done till later in the week, however I now know that I have a working setup on my Mac for doing Windows ports for the rest of the LDs to come!
Tomorrow: Playing all the awesome games people have made!
Once again, I’m in! Weekend freed up, Monday booked off work for sleep, and soon to stock up on food and energy drink supplies. Not sure if I’m going 2D or 3D yet, it will most likely be 2D though.
Engine: Psybrus (https://github.com/neilogd/Psybrus)
Code: C++ & GameMonkey
IDE: Xcode & Visual Studio
Art: GIMP, maybe Blender
Sound: Audacity, maybe SFXR. Actually, I may actually dig out NI Prism and make sound effects with that
So I sleep in a bit, wake up, get washed, dressed, do a quick tidy, and have some breakfast. I am still holding out hope for Dreams being the theme, but I think I have to accept it’s gonna be Architecture or something I have absolutely no idea for. Oh well, part of the fun! I will be using Psybrus again for my entry, which can be found here: https://github.com/neilogd/Psybrus. I will be using XCode and Visual Studio during the competition, aiming for a Windows release at the end of the competition, closely followed by an OSX release. There will also be a timelapse video at the end of the competition! For that I will be using ScreenNinja.
Yesterday I done my shopping run, and I’m stocked up and ready to go:
– 24 cans of Mother energy drink.
– 4 cartons of Pringles
– Block of Mozzarella
– Block of Edam
– Gnocchi
– Tub of Sesame Snaps
– Tub of Milo
– Case of James Squire Golden Ale (for the end game)
Undecided on if I’m having take away for dinner later on. Anyways, the workstation where I will be spending about 95% of the next 48 hours:
Food and drink supplies to the right, code straight ahead.
First step is out of the way, expose my AddPrimitive canvas call to script, and generate a basic wormhole for the play field. Still need to turn this into actual polygons rather than lines, and also put proper 3D perspective into it – but I have something now!
Rather boring at the moment, but time later to improve it!
There we go, 3D tunnel working properly, gives the impression of motion through it without really moving through space. Not sure if it’s correctly UV mapped, but the colours….THE COLOURS……
Don't look at it for too long.
After a bit of fiddling round with some viewport setting code (or lack of viewport setting code..), got my intermediate RT working, and got a simple texture working. I’m wanting to use this to render patterns to, and have the vortex render it back with some kind of kaleidoscope effect. No effect yet, but the framework is there. I think it’s time to start working on some mechanics, instead of being drawn into the graphics too much. I’ve still got procedural music to do yet >_<
kaleidoscope...without the mirrors.
Took longer than expected thanks to uncovering an annoying little bug with my uniform binding code. Although, now that it’s stomped and out of the way, curvature of the vortex is in and working (so you can guide your way through.
Curving through space and time
My machine gave me a bit of grief earlier, and screenninja ended up crashing and losing my timelapse. Quickly threw together a post processing pipeline, started to finalise the look of the game. Tomorrow I will be cracking on with the music gen, and also the mechanic. I won’t spoil the mechanic by telling you what it’s going to be, well, I am not 100% sure on it yet have a few ideas floating around in my head and I want to try a few of them out. It’ll mostly be to do with keeping the visuals and audio in check through movement though.
Pretty much the same as all the previous, but with more colour.
And what a fun LD! Although Saturday night, my laptop died on me completely…Xcode wouldn’t reopen, ScreenNinja crashed and burned (and lost that day of timelapse). So no timelapse this time 
However, at the last minute I pulled a mechanic together. My game, Lost Psyche, never ends, but I succeeded in making a very cool music generator. It sounds a bit repetitive structure wise due to the same percussion over and over, but I’m very pleased with how my progression and rhythm seeds work to produce the right notes. This is a project I think I will expand upon in future, possibly as an AU/VST plugin to automatically write musical phrases. Certainly beats writing myself myself 😉
Calm before the storm...
Anyhow, it’s been 26 hours since I woke up. I’ve decided not to sleep until at least 6p so I don’t wake up at a stupid o’clock! My current look I’m rocking for lack of sleep and hyper-caffeination:
I should have taken a before photo for comparison.
And a workstation aftermath photo. Not too bad, just 15 empty cans of Mother, and some bottles of well deserved Golden Ale, only 3 more in the fridge though
Rather tidy still...
That time of year has came around once again, where I have an excuse to lock myself in my bedroom, and do nothing but code, eat, and make “art”! I was planning on using C# this time round (https://github.com/neilogd/PsybrusSharp being the WIP C# port of my engine), but since I am lacking time with Christmas being around the corner, and less than a week till LD I’ll be sticking with my C++ engine, Psybrus (https://github.com/neilogd/Psybrus). However the game will be written in all C++ this time, as since last LD I’ve stripped the GameMonkey support from my engine. Back to basics for me! I’ve got my Windows development machine setup for testing my own, and rating other entries too, instead of relying on my VM.
Tools I will probably be using:
– Visual Studio 2008 & Xcode 4 for codes.
– Sublime Text 2 for general text editery.
– The GIMP & Blender for artistry.
– Renoise, Audacity & bfxr for soundness.
– Screen Ninja for timelapsing (if it doesn’t decide to crash this time).
Really looking forward to the weekend, and best of luck to all!
So, we’re all gamers, or at least..game devs right? Well, how many of us all play Starcraft 2? What I propose is forming a nice group of friendly players Maybe even having a tourney of some kind! Anyone in?
PS: You will find me on Battle.Net as neilogd.343 (I mostly hangout on NA, but also on SEA)
So my companies xmas party was last night! There was a significant quantity of whiskey, absinthe, gin and beer consumed. There is no hangover yet, I have barely slept, and I’m about to go stock up on delicious food stuffs and fruit juice pre-LD! Awwww yeah!
Morning after Neilogd
Shopping done, pasta bake in the oven, graphics tablet setup, GIMP running in my VM, about to setup Chronolapse, and I am pretty much ready to go! Good luck to everyone, not long until Kittens is announced 😀
My setup for LD!
After some technical issues with capturing, VM crashing, and laptop misbehaving…I eventually got some work done. I’ve mostly been playing around with steering behaviours trying to get the player control to feel right, going for a very fluid looking game this time around.
The swarming and avoidance behaviours are working correctly, and it’s all pretty easily tweakable too. The basic mechanic is there, all I need to implement is the goal and I have a fully functional game to mess with! No fancy graphics or anything until everything is working
