This should be fun. I’ll give it my best hopefully I can actually finish something. This compo reminds me of weekend coding projects in College.
I’m gonna use:
1. Java
2. Eclipse IDE
3. Tiled
4. Audacity
5. Gimp
Good luck all
First time using Tiled and it took way too long to get loaded and into a basic JFrame. I had to do crazy things to get it to find resources from the class loader. Ugh!!!
Anyways I also made those crappy tiles for the basic map that I will probably never get around to polishing. Next is working out all the game logic, story characters etc. I am gonna try keeping that completely separate from the engine code and have the engine just hook into the game logic. Based on a gamasutra article Separation Of Gameplay
Thought the idea was a nice way to make code that you can easily integrate with another engine and that will also make it easier to port to other languages, platforms as well. But I am doing it just to be able to not have to worry about the graphics code which I’ve done hundreds of times already.
Cause I don’t want to commit to a name right away I code named my game “Project Stark”.
It’s a lonely space adventure. Ideas are still coming in but focusing on the fact that you are completely ‘alone’.
Here’s my eclipse window.
Got a couple of item sprites done. Their not perfect but if I put anymore time into them I’ll be even more behind.
Can you tell what those are, lolz.
So for this my first Ludum Dare compo, 16 hour and a half hours or so left and very little in the way of progress. Yeah I definitely won’t be finished without some miracle code. And a substantial jolt of energy.
I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was, that’s for sure. Not giving up yet and hopefully will have something to show for my time spent. I was able at the very least, to come up with a game idea, work out tons of design notes for a promising framework which I will definitely improve upon before the next compo and have it released and ready to go.
But there is still time for me to at get something done, so wish me luck.
G’Night all see you in 4 hours hopefully.
Tags: 4 hours sleep, sleep, sleeptime
Ok here goes another one. I wasn’t able to participate in the last LD but after my first LD#22. I want more. The first was such a good person test of my own fortitude ingenuity and skills I want redemption. Last time the need for spending hours getting my car fixed caused me not to make any more progress than an idea and a couple test maps.
I tell you this time will be different. I am not going to switch technologies from the last time I took this dare although I am leaving out Tiled gonna go simple text files or simple binary formats if I need maps or other level content.
I haven’t published my personal map editor so that won’t be used anything and everything I will be making from scratch so probably lots of work to be done but I figure as don’t go overboard on the game features I will be good.
Oooo this means I get lots of Coffee and perhaps lots of mountain dew.
Edit: see adendum for additions (i.e. Eclipse and Machinations)
Sorry I didn’t mention these before I’ll be using:
Eclipse
and possibly if I can manage it and actually like it
Rather than pen and paper idea drawing. Though I hope I don’t get lost in the possibilities of modeling the resource flows with machinations.
Good luck kittens!
Evolution! oh how you are a fickle old concept…
7 hours in and I am stumped perhaps sleep and dreams will help cure me. I started on writing lots of code and I finished with this
Oh how I love the white screen don’t you it’s really evolving into a nice game. I am probably gonna just ditch the code and do it as simple as possible tomorrow so I have at least something for this LD. As you can see not even a title in there, lolz. Kittens where are you!
Damn evolution… still no clear idea but I am pushing forward trying to make something of this compo. This is my first attempt at an isometric style graphics never really done it before so I am skipping the perspective for now.
It doesn’t look that great but at least it isn’t terrible. Now to get some sort of play in there, god I have no clue what to do doesn’t look like I’ll have much but we’ll see. It’s not over yet.
Got it, dude just freakin scale by .5 in y and qed.
Grrr maths how I love to hate you. Now to fix my positioning mat’s. And move on to some good stuff.
So first time doing iso…but I still think the math is off a little bit but no matter that isn’t important it looks good enough to me.
progress, is progress at least. Let me know what you think of the look. Scale .5 don’t know if that is typical for iso or not. Thanks!
Good news! I have my first content file format in an LD competition and here it is, as generic as you can get it
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,O,_,_,_,O,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,O,_,_,_,O,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,O,_,_,_,O,_,_,
_,_,O,_,_,_,O,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,O,_,_,_,O,_,_,
_,_,O,_,_,_,O,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,O,_,_,_,O,_,_,
_,O,O,_,_,_,O,O,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
_,O,O,_,_,_,O,O,_,
_,_,O,_,_,_,O,_,_,
_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,
So this is what it generates:
It needs a bit of work but at least I can begin moving forward this time around my first compo I was barely able to into the programming, getting better this time around but still I dunno I think I’m behind, by like alot. What do you think?
So yeah I have a level editor with a preview to make all kinds of nice things it still needs some features in order to make some nicer objects but if this is all I have to work with it will do the job.
Layers to the right of the grid, gotta fix the grid loading it’s kind of mirror right now. I seem to always get myself in to mirroring issues.
Ok maybe some sleep before the final trek begins.
I succeeded again at failing…some may not be excited by this and I know many people don’t understand it or may drop out if they know they aren’t going to finish. As for me I will always try down to the last second. I will fail to finish there is no question with only less than 3 hours and 30 minutes left at the time of this writing it’s near impossible for me to finish. But for those of you who need a reason for never giving up in a competition like this there is one thing you can count on, you will always come away with something. You can keep working on the game you started you will walk away knowing how much you can get done and what areas you have to focus in to be a more efficient programmer. Simply because if you write buggy code it eats up your time, if you don’t know how to do a piece of code and spend too long on it you will know how to do it next time. If you get stuck on the theme you fight through lack of creativity, if you miss the mark on in anyway it sets you back so definitely all a bunch of wins use every second you can get to work your way through just one more piece of code or content it is well worth it.
Just some stats,
LD#22 I did
646 project code
1373 engine code
2019 total lines
LD#24 I have done
3457 lines of code, one project this time, all written over this weekend
Post Mortem
More importantly than LOC is the fact that I experimented with isometric for the first time and figured out somethings I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do in such a short time. I was also able to create work through some engine concepts I’ve been toying around with in my brain for the last couple years now. I consider this to be a serious win and will definitely do everything I can to participate in the next competition.
Early on I could not come up with something to save my life, I mean evolution really!!!. Needless to say I started coding after the first couple of hours hoping something would eventually come to me which it kind of did but didn’t really take shape until towards the end of the first day of the compo. I made an editor which btw took very little time to make but unfortunately I didn’t realize that I should just put content in anyway I knew how instead of trying to fill-in the gaps in code with the engine related parts. I spent entirely too much time in the beginning of the compo making a complex input handling system which had some bugs and ate up a few hours dealing with those issues and then had to be refactored. Fortunately unlike last time I caught myself and started with more basic working code and doing the piece by piece building and refactoring after you get a piece to work.
I’ve found myself jumping in and making some very messy code at first that does only a single thing of what I really want and then after it’s working I rip it apart and refactor it. Seems to work, sometimes it’s a pain and you can loose a lot of time debugging again if you aren’t careful when you coded it or when your ripping it apart. Some codes just don’t want to be RIP…PED apart. Oh wells damn those codes.
So eventually I just said ok I am gonna do some isometric type stuff so I made all the GeneralPath stuff which is a lot of fun, making shapes and stuff with, then I had at least a bunch of tiles I could do something with and this is where things just dropped off the edge of the world. I said ok cool I can do isometric now there were some problems with it and some painters algorithm issues and instead of dealing with those I started making engines again. *Shakes* fist at engines, make games damn u make games, it’s not fair to the game to just have engine code. I should have continued the trail of adding a little bit of ugly code to make another piece of the puzzle and refactor it later to extend and reuse it. But instead I spent all my time on engine pieces hence the 3457 lines of code. *Shakes head* and uh *face palm*
Only in this last hour did I freaking realize what I had done to myself, so frustrating. Anyways my advice to um myself and whoever reads is start making content and gameplay mechanics immediately and always work on them don’t spend any time in structure or other types of code like file system code, make it as dirty as you have to, be creative about how to save time. These of course are things to apply next time which I can already say I am desperately looking forward too.
Final progress images
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
Some final screenshots for your amusement.
As always it’s been a pl…challenge and extremely fun…I will definitely be here for next compo we’ll see if I come a little bit more prepared I only really remembered about it this time a couple weeks before the competition started. I guess that is what email reminders and calendar events are for.
I can’t wait to start playing some of the games people managed to make and of course see who wins this evolution theme.
ttfn ta ta for now.
So third times the charm they say, but I don’t believe ’em. I’m in for the Compo. I’ll be using the following
Good luck all, remember keep a beer handy when productivity starts to drop.
Kitten power.
This is what I have so far.
I can’t do characters, and it will probably take me some time. He’s just um funky, lol and way too big. These are 32×32 tiles scaled by a factor of 2.
Oh so much time so little to do…wait…strike that reverse it!!!!
I don’t even have a decent map format, editor or auto-gen algo yet. Man this is going to a tough one…better get cracking.
Yeah um looks like I am so behind I need to make a good sprint to catch up. The map editor needs to function like now. collision detection needed to be written hours ago.
Nothing to show since last screenshot which is sad, ultimately I spent too much energy last night didn’t go to sleep till like 5am woke up around 7ish cause of my dog. Ultimately was drinking coffee by 9:30. Then I got nothing done, watched TV. Did some web dev for a couple hours, cause I needed to get going on it.
Plan:
– Basic Menu and UI graphics (kis)
– Collision Detection
– Map Editor
– Inventory System
– More Graphics
Not exactly in that order, at this point I feel like I need to work on all of them at once.
I’ll be using pretty much core Java, would do js but I haven’t had any time to actually try making games with js, so Java it shall be.
My main goal this time around is to actually get something submitted, I would be happy with a blank window displaying some text, in the past LD’s I kept myself from submission simply because there just wasn’t anything playable but there is probably something to be said for submitting and updating often. I mean once it’s out there you can stop worrying about not submitting. It’s a bit of mind game that’s played here at the Ludum Dare seemingly impossible competition.
What no kittens anymore?
Wow….really don’t like it! And by a landslide of positive votes only two themes got positives. And way to go with the most obscure one out of all of them.
I think we need a group therapy session on how not to make it harder to design a game.
Oh well I’m sure I’ll think of something in the morning…good luck all!
Got the theme last night. Headed to bed shortly after, but before I did. I did some concept art and some brainstorming. I have my idea and some art already woot. Now to figure out what I’m going to build it in.
Used Pixly on my phone for these