First Timer in Ludum Dare!

A little excited to get started, can’t wait!!!

Good Luck to all and …let the fun begin!

Hi everyone!

Game Concept

My Idea “The Vortex Defender”  is based on Space invaders, but instead of the enemies move from top to down, they come from a vortex in the middle to the limits of the circle, and sometimes (maybe most of the time) to the direction of the player.

The enemies move, not only in straight lines but defined by paths (some circular, others more complex).

The navigation of the player is defined by the movement around the circle, not freely inside it. This means that, it rotates around the circle maintaining the direction to the middle of the circle.

The input comes from the keyboard and mouse.

In the keyboard, the player uses the right and left key to navigate around the circle. While the mouse inputs are described in the image.

In next post, I’ll describe power ups, chain combos by killing enemies… and more. Now I’ll start prototyping in Unity3D.

Kinda sleep a little… really need it, and now I’m with a full of energy. When I woke up, I realized how stupid to name the game already… But it has to have Vortex in its name, that I’m sure of it. Now I will base this game also on Geometry Wars game… thinking of using the same base also for the visual aspect, in 2D. So I don’t have to do assets of aliens, keeping it simple.

Update

OK, just finished the 1st prototype. It (the cube) navigates around the vortex (the sphere in the middle), and shoots bullets to the center.

Concept++

Lets start with the new concept of barrier. Between the player and the enemy is a barrier that when breached the player starts to lose life, losing it all, GAME OVER. The barrier is segmented in parts, green its HP is in safe, red its danger, when it has no HP the segment disappears. making the player losing life. For every enemy contact with the outer ring zone, the enemy is destroyed, damaging HP.

Now referring upgrades, for every chain enemy destroyed without damaging HP/Barrier, at certain points the main weapon upgrades itself. Firing away more bullets.

About the power ups: a temporary invincibility barrier (affecting the determined zone), bombs (like geometry wars), and life restorers.

Next Steps

Now I’ll try to create the enemies, moving along a path, and concentrating on the player, if he is near them. Also create the barrier.

Now… back to work!!

Hello!… And yeah, I overslept again. And like I promised, you can play something, I refer to it later. (While writing this post I found a error in the prototype, that is why I am even more late updating the progress)

Update

First of all, I still didn’t complete the touhou effect of enemy patterns, never done this before, and thinking about it its giving the headaches. I’ll try to solve the problem later, maybe I need a new strategy. Thinking like this, I finished the missile attacks and the bomb special attacks.

In the first image its shown the missiles, the red circle around the player its it range, that grows as long as the player press the left mouse button, releasing it, it fires the guided missiles to the targets that were within the range. The image to the right, it the bomb example, when pressing right mouse button it creates a field, that grows, when enemies touch it, every enemy is destroyed.

Yeah, as you have seen, there’s a simple enemy pattern generator, but not the one I wanted, yet.

Concept++

I’m going to talk about this when I have something more concrete on the enemy pattern generator like touhou.

Ah! About my idea, that a friend kinda influenced to have (referred in last post), is about levels. I’ll explain instead of image. When the player finishes the current wave of enemies, he is teleported… no, he travels to the inner ring of the vortex, having there a new set of waves of enemies. Maybe I won’t implement on Ludum Dare 31, but I’ll definitely make it later.

I’ll share more insides (I have 2 more, and it need images to explain) in the next post, when I figure how to make “touhou” enemy patterns.

Next Steps

• “touhou” effect concept (this probably will take a while…)
• Start some sketches on the art, to amuse myself a little.

Some Final Words (and site of the executable)

I ended up calling the game Vortex Defender… the same name in the first post, I’m not really inspired to a better name, but the this name says everything about the game.

Link to site: http://r3igzyr.itch.io/vortex-defender

About the game, it has no GUI, no point system, no screens, and no Game Over… I just like to you play test the game mechanics and give feedback. Use the comments below, and thanks for playing.

Hello again… after a couple of hours of sleep, I realized that I don’t have a clue what the game was about…I was just going with the flow. Until two friends feedback got my head back on track. I’ll try to explain everything in this post.

Update

Somehow I was able to create a really basic “touhou” bullet pattern effect. (forgotten to turn off the sensors object of the enemies when I took the screenshot)

I would explain it how I done it, but seen the other projects of Ludum Dare 31, I realized I’m late in my schedule (even thou I don’t have one :P), so I’ll try to write it down later in here, when this Ludum Dare Jam is over.

Concept++

There is new stuff, and also I have to reformulate what I had said from the game until now.

First of all, the game concrete gameplay will be:

• shoot enemies coming from the vortex (player is already on auto-fire)
• “touhou” effect on enemies, giving hellish effect, use missiles to blast them up (to remind, missiles destroy enemies targeted by range, explained before).
• Use bomb to “save yourself” from eminent game over.
• being in the same spot will cause to lose ring HP faster, losing it all, Game Over. (use missiles)
• player will use missiles more often, while bombs are limited.

The new concepts are the progression on the game.

Every time the player completes a level, it progresses further in. But if loses lives (ring HP), it goes back to the previous ring.

Here’s a sketch of the game screen.

It has the ring HP on top, next to the blue bar below its the players level, down below the lives and the bomb. Bombs are refiled over time.

Evolving the ship, the player will have more auto-fire gun-power, more targets for missiles, more bombs to store.

Now talking about enemy movement.

Like is explained in the image, enemies move faster when targeting, slower when not. Not targeting enemies tend to go directly to the ring to cause damage. Meaning, for the enemy, the player has priority over the HP ring.

(Maybe) Enemies next to each other send message with the target (player) if they see him.

Next Steps

Thanks to a friend, I found the perfect music for the game (but still have to make some adjustments to the song). So I have to work with the song first.

Then make base GUI, implement player levels progression (with the limitations of each level), bomb counter…and so on. I’ll just go with the flow, right now. And of course thinking of the visual… I still have no clue, still didn’t decided.

Some last words for now

I know I still have 28h, but even if I don’t finish the game in the Ludum Dare Jam, I’ll continue later, I’m having a blast doing it!

Hi!

It is my 2nd time!

Last time I wasn’t so lucky to be able to finish…

But this time it’s different!! I can feel it!!!

Good Luck to all and …let the fun begin!!!