Pretty happy with the way this turned out, in the end:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=11560
There’s a load more I could’ve done, but the essence of it is there.
I did enjoy the Thief games back in the day. Top-down ones can be fun too (:
Hope you enjoy having a play!
Hi everyone!
I thought I’d write a bit of a post-mortem for my game, Thievery, but in doing so decided on something a bit different. From my git logs for the game, I have a reasonable record of what happened when (and can take a fair guess at the rest), and thought I’d post it to see if it’s of interest. The stats at the end were interesting for me (:
My game is about helping a thief sneak around and steal gold from houses and pickpocket guards, while avoiding capture by the guards and guard dogs. Note that the times listed below include a fair bit of time spent on “art” – it was definitely programmer art, so nothing too impressive, but it still took time (:
Saturday December 15
02:00 Theme announced; I'd decided to sleep through and find out in the morning 08:00 Woke up; started getting ready and brainstorming at the same time 08:30 Started work on Thievery 09:08 Got a basic loop running, with newly-created background and placeholder player sprite 10:15 Added player movement 12:53 Added dagger shooting, after spend ages on sprite rotation 13:18 Finished lunch 14:13 Put guard & thief images in 14:46 Can now shoot guards with daggers, using rectangle collisions 14:57 Limited player movement to the screen dimensions 15:45 Back from 45 mins jogging 16:39 Added basic stats, plus dying animations for characters 16:49 Added damage animation 18:51 Added houses 19:20 Wrote some basic level loading code 19:40 Finished dinner 20:31 Fixed rectangle collisions (for daggers/houses, etc) 20:58 Added circle collisions (for living/moving things) 21:46 Added chests 23:54 Added looting 00:30 Guards now chase the player when seen 00:56 Guards now hit the player when in range 01:10 Now reports player death, and forces restarting 02:13 Added guard patrol routes
Sunday December 16
08:00 Woke up 08:30 Back to work 10:03 Guards now move around obstacles, instead of getting stuck 10:23 Added pausing 11:07 Guards now can't see through houses 12:39 Added basic events system and character chatter 13:40 Back from an hour at the gym 14:00 Finished lunch 15:48 Added more events with chatter, and a win screen 16:48 Added guard vision cones 18:00 Back from meeting friends for 45 minutes 18:20 Guard vision cones now turn red when chasing 19:32 Added better level data 19:50 Guards can now only see forwards 20:00 Finished dinner 21:09 Added intro screen 21:15 Guards can now see at 90 degrees at close range 22:09 Added guard dogs 22:35 Added Pickpocketing 00:07 Added sounds, including triggering from events 00:49 Added music - main and win screen 01:30 Windows build fixes: paths, extra keys 01:49 Added guard alerts 01:58 Submitted Linux version 02:00 Deadline for development (start of submission hour) 02:06 Submitted Windows version
Overall totals:
Final points
I had a great time creating this game. I’m glad that many of you have had a play and enjoyed it, and hope you all enjoyed yourselves making your own games as well (: Good luck to all in the voting!
Tags: postmortem
Hi all!
After missing LD26 due to family commitments, I’m back in for LD27. Looking forward to it!
I’m using another new technology this time: Emscripten, to compile C++ code using SDL (and ideally OpenGL) into JavaScript code playable in a web page. The guys have done a remarkably good job on that; I’ve just been trying it out recently, and it’s really cool. I’m in the middle of a bit of indecision about exactly which libraries to use, as I’ve been playing with SDL, and that’s really cool, but unfortunately not all of it is implemented in Emscripten yet – including some things I was going to depend on, such as setting colours and transparency levels for surface blitting. I’m having a last-minute look into using the WebGL subset of OpenGL ES 2 in it, in the hope that I can get everything going that I need – though the question arises whether it’s really worth using WebGL via Emscripten as opposed to just WebGL in JavaScript… hmmm (:
The little bit of my own library code I’ve been using, to make sure I can actually get something going in the time, is here.
Adding to this interesting situation is my current lack of Internet access from home. Well, luckily there’s an Internet cafe nearby, but that may lead to me finishing early, as they’re not likely to be open when LD27 closes at 2am Sunday night, UK time… I have some ideas about uploading at the last minute via my mobile phone, but we’ll see.
Target Platform: Web
Language: C++ / Emscripten / JavaScript / HTML5 / WebGL (wheeee)
Development Environment: QtCreator on Linux (Kubuntu 13.04)
Graphics: GIMP
Sound: SFXR + Autotracker
Good luck to all, and may your bugs be few and uncomplicated!
I was really looking forward to LD28. Nothing like having an excuse to programme something fun! Unfortunately I’m now going to be away this weekend, so will have to give it a miss – but at least it’s for positive reasons… I have a couple of job interviews coming up (:
Enjoy yourselves in the compo, and may the best game win! See you here again next time (:
Hi all!
I skipped Ludum Dare 28 due to job interviews in Seattle… and now I’m here! It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like to start a jam at 6pm (PST) instead of 2am (BST) for a change (: (I missed LD29 and 30 due to other commitments)
Who else is joining in from the Seattle area? Just curious!
Anyway, game-wise, I’ll probably go for something web-based this time. I haven’t had enough spare time to look into APIs much, but these seem likely:
Dev platform: Visual Studio on Windows
Language: TypeScript most likely
Potential libraries: Babylon.js, Cannon.js, maybe Three.js; whatever works
Programmer art: Inkscape, GIMP
Audio: Autotracker, BFXR
Looking forward to getting back into it! (:
I’d like to say a quick thank you to whomever it was that mentioned Phaser.js recently… I set it up last night (then ran out of time), and it looks very cool and easy to use. In the longer term, I’m still interested in Babylon.js, but I think there’s more that I can mess up there when rushing around during the compo, and bugs aren’t things I enjoy (;
I’m curious now about comparing Phaser.js and Cocos2d-x. At first glance, Phaser looks a bit easier, but Cocos2d seems to provide a bit more control. I doubt I’ll have the time to really look into it just now, but maybe for next time (: I’d be curious to hear opinions, though – if anyone notices this post among the hundreds going past at the moment!
Guess I’ve been pretty quiet on the board for this LD… I’ve been rushing to work out what I want to do and how to do it, and changed the game style at around the mid-way mark. It looks like things are coming together, though; let’s just hope there’s enough fun game in there at the end! I’d post a screen shot, but it’s full of messy debug info at present.
I’m seeing some very interesting game ideas out there. Good luck to everyone in the final stretch!
Once again I’m almost a little surprised that I managed to get things finished in time. Much of the credit goes to the makers of the very awesome Phaser.js, which pretty much did exactly what I told it every time – which actually isn’t as common among libraries as you might think! Any bits of time I lost were from silly mistakes I made in coding (and there were several), or weird bugs in other software (I’m looking at you, Gimp!) – but largely all went pretty smoothly. I even managed to get the time to leave the house twice…
My game started out as a sort of a Gauntlet thing, but due to the odd structure of it (a sort of ever-changing maze on the one screen) it became clear at about the half-way point that I wasn’t going to be able to get that to work in time. I turned it into a fairly simple little puzzle game, and I think it turned out pretty well. I had enough game mechanics to keep play going for a little while, and could’ve made a few more levels if I’d had the time, but it’s probably enough as is.
I didn’t get time to polish things to make a more well-rounded experience, such as adding menus, game restarting, and other such bits – and there’s no music – but never mind. Other things I was going to do included improving the animations (you can’t see much changing in the up/down player movement), adding water splash and rock rolling effects, making the charge only last for a limited time, and adding some hints to explain what to do. Never mind.
If you get a chance to have a play, let me know what you think!
I’ve been in for this compo for so long that I almost forgot to post it. In! (with bells on, as they say)
Coding: TypeScript, Phaser.js (/.ts), Visual Studio
Programmer art: Either GIMP or Paint.NET (I know GIMP better, but it’s very slow with a drawing tablet in Windows, and Paint.NET seems to do most of the same stuff)
Sound: BFXR of course (or maybe SFXR if I reboot into Linux at some point)
Music: LMMS if I get time; Autotracker if I don’t
Other: Maybe Tiled if it’s relevant to the type of game I do
Best of luck to everyone! Hope you have a most excellent and awesome time.
One particular shout-out goes to the Seattle Games Co-op people… good luck, and maybe see some of you soon! (though not in person for the compo – there’s no space left, after all)
I’m folding them. This will be my first entered-but-unfinished Ludum Dare, but I never did come up with an idea I really liked. I tried out a frog racing game for a while (the weapon being their tongues to catch nearby creatures with or knock opponents away) and then a platformer with a net to catch enemies and a grappling hook to swing around on, but neither really seemed to be going all that well – and when it started to feel like work (like my regular job), then I figured I might just use my weekend on something else (:
Hope the rest of you enjoy the competition, though. Good luck to you all!