All the traps are in, and now I just need to tidy up various bits and pieces.  Here’s a screenshot of all the traps:

And there’s another alpha build here: http://www.niallmoody.com/downloads/ld14/DieYouStupidHurdlers-alpha3.zip

After sleeping late today, I’m needing to crack on.  Here’s the current state of play:

The backstory is something about pixel-world being invaded by the sugary-snacks-of-doom.  I think I’ve being eating too much candy this weekend…

The player is the purple cube.  The orange blobs are pick-ups.  The impending wall o’doom should be obvious.  The gameplay is basically ‘survive long enough to win’.  However right now, there is no gameplay code.  Things move around, but nothing interacts with anything else.  (Though the teeth do look pretty good when they decide to come charging forward.

Now i need to go eat.  Something non-sugary would probably be best.

Squeeze Maze – Ludum Dare 14

This was my third attempt at Ludum – the first time I made something way to complicated – and while it did get finished it was too complicated and did not do that well. My second try I was only able to get on the PC 6 of the 48 hours so while I completed something it was also fairly week.

This time – I had my tools ready before hand, and a pretty good schedule. I picked a simple concept and wanted to see how far I could go with it and am happy with my work,.

The tools

PC Athalon 2600XP running Windows XP, 1 Gig or Ram

Scratch for those of you who are not familar with it – it’s designed by MIT as a teaching tool for young programmers.  You build blocks of code. It’s very visual which is why the code directory is all snapshots of the code from the different sprites.

Reasons why I think this is a good platform for Ludums.

Multi – threading made easy each physical sets of blocks is it’s own thread.

Good messaging – sending broadcasts to every ‘object/thread’ is easy – limited in you can only send a fixed message with no variables.

Sprite Tools – in the code, rotate, hide, resize and move are all right and standard commands.

Easy to debug – the visual nature of the code as well as the single stepping option helps stretch the 24 hours.

Other tools

Pixel Art – Kolourpaint, Harmwave, www.cooltext.com and my LG515 cell phone, took a shot of my lawn, some decorative rock and some bricks.

Audio tools – cgMusic, sfxr, audacity, my LG515 cell phone, and  format factory

I am getting the following error when I try to send it through the blog.

File type does not meet security guidelines. Try another.

So you can get it at

http://ludum.twobrotherssoftware.com/SqueezeMaze.zip

UPDATE:

Sadly there was a tiny bug in the final version of my game – the line “state = STATE_LEVEL;” was missing, so no pause screen would be shown between levels (although the code for layout and mechanics of that screen was already in there, as can be seen in the source).

I have fixed this and uploaded a new version to my site as both zip and webstart. I realize that this may not be taken into consideration when judging the entry, but I thought I should at least upload the entry as it was meant to be (and as I was certain it was!)

• Webstart
• ZIP file

Sorry about that!

—

ORIGINAL POST:

Okay, here’s the final version of “Sky Upon Us!”, my entry for LD14.

I tried to upload the zip file containing launch files for Windows, Linux and OSX to the blog. Sadly, WordPress wouldn’t accept it even if I changed the file extention. Meanwhile, the game can be downloaded or started from all the following links:

• SkyUponUs.zip (Including Windows .exe and Linux/OSX .sh files)
• Java Webstart 1 (Java 1.4+, retroweave)
• Java Webstart 2 (Java 1.5+)

While the game didn’t quite turn out the way I hoped, I’m still happy with most of it. However, the gameplay does get a bit repetetive; excuse!

As always, any comments are warmly appreciated!

A screenshot from the game:

Food photo for me and pythong (picture related).

Meetup at university, with three kinds of Fritz Cola and tasty food (except we forget plates).

Now if the wireless was a little bit more stable for me…

It took me more than I had planned to finish the game, but it is done!

Music, ending, extras, all complete!

(Looks much better in full size)

Download Link 1: Download

Download Link 2: Download

I don’t seem to be able to upload it to the blog. It says “File type doesn’t meet security guidelines” even though it is a .zip file. I may need help on that issue.

argh !! the pigs are flooding the sea with the batteries, or cans ?, who knows =)

A friend of mine has come in from out of town for the night, so a few of us went to one of our favorite college spots: Allende Restaurant, or what I like to affectionately call Club Allende. They have the best burritos in Chicago!

I ordered a vegetarian burrito and horchata (rice water).

That burrito is going DOWN!

It seems that most of my pictures this competition are of the food I’ve been eating, so here’s picture of my “work environment”:

What you don’t see on the blanket to the left in the picture is my cat Diego. Gizmo was on the chair on the right. They wait until I write a line of code, and then they pounce. I should move this effort into my office for some privacy.

Speaking of code, I have about 13 hours left in the compo and almost no code. This is going to be either a lot of fun or a lot of pain. And I know I’m having lunch with my parents today, so that’s even less time. Wish me luck!

I didn’t get much done last night,. I work best in the morning.  must be the coffee!

You can see the “wall” collapsing in the back,. and the loosely defined pac-”worm”, that is the player, runs toward the screen in an attempt to escape it,. . Here the Advancing Wall is an Advancing Collapse of Doom.  This is going to be a bit rought, but something will be done.  I’m going to add some good/bad objects to play with on the wall, and then synth some sounds and music,. .  this all depends on how much time I get to work today,. . fingers crossed.

Play online! or download the source.

I would have loved to have worked on it a bit more, but alas I have to sleep for paintball tomorrow. Life is tough.

It has been great fun, and thanks to everyone on #tigirc and #Walls for keeping me awake.

I can’t get the media uploader working so I’m going to just link this for now. This is a game where you play an aspiring super-villain trying to make his big break and complete his thesis by crushing a hero in a death trap. Unfortunately, he cannot afford a very good death trap, or a lock to keep the hero from escaping. Push the wall to crush the hero before the cops take you down or rescue the hero!

Thanks to all who supported and encouraged me in the production of this game. First thing I’ve made without THE MAN telling me what to do! Woo!

Game is here

Source code is here

02:44
Have a menu, and more importantly a working “game state” thingy to switch cleanly from menu to game and back, and possibly a help screen or prefs. Not always obvious since Löve don’t let you control the game loop (you overload functions like draw(), update(), mousepressed(), etc, and they are called by the engine). Also, it’s late and I should sleep a bit. Game mechanics are almost complete.

02:51
Yeah, going to bed. I’m affraid I’m now useless.

09:40
Allright, it’s a nice morning to make a winning entry. *Back to work, lazy ass!*

10:38
Now with a goal, a winning condition, and two game modes.

12:16
Added the critters. They just walk around and wait to be blasted away. Oh yeah

14:05
Face sorting is working. Took three different algorithms… And I’m pretty sure this one doesn’t cover every case either. But it seems to be quite OK anyway.

16:26
Just lost two hours researching and implementing an ear-clipping algorithm. Cause: opengl (and thus Löve) can’t draw non convex polygons. And I really need to draw one. I must admit I had fun coding that. But still, two hours…

I’ve got the basic mud traps up and running (mud slows the hurdlers down so the wall can catch them), so hopefully I should be able to add the other trap types really quickly now.  A screenshot:

Last night I spent way too long on making the ground for my game. I’m using a Perlin noise function and wanted to modify it so it the edges would fit together, but couldn’t get that to work that way. Anyway, this is my first screen shot:

This morning there was the yearly fair here (just like during LD12) and I went to take pictures for a local newsletter. Now I really need to work hard and get something finished!

And here is some more food I ate:

I think it looks pretty good. Made some other changes, to.

So what we have here:

…is my latest screenshot. I think it actually looks pretty nice by now: we have an actual backdrop (thanks to Universe Image Creator), slightly nicer sun sprite, and scrolling/zooming implemented.

There’s also some more gameplay now, hardy visible in that screenshot though. This may still go somewhere after all; I’m very afraid of time running out though.

For now, I’ll make myself some tortellini though.

lol. Looks like the aftermath of a paintball game.

I’ve done quite a lot although it might not look like it. Game has an actual beginning. (This is the first screen)

Gonna carry on just making levels from now on I think.

Oh yeah, the game is now called “Happy Blob is Unhappy” too.

I’ve added mini dark towers (is the prime thing used to spread darkness) and also finally decided on a dark vs. light (perhaps earlier mentioned as decay) thing.

Here’s a shot with lots of mini dark towers, so almost everything is dark, except where the butterflies fly. So in a normal game, you’d need to eliminate those.

Still need to add some sort of attacking unit to the light side, adding building interface, winning conditions, and a few levels. It might need a few others things too before it feels like an actualy game, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I probably won’t have time to make it a good game, honestly.

Last night I wasn’t too happy with my mockup:

But I even switched to C++ because it allowed me to add some features that I wanted to do for a while. Also, I ate delicious tempeh burgers:

And suddenly, my game looked a lot better! I also had some ideas for more interesting gameplay last night, so today I’ll hopefully be more productive:

Walls of doom are now in..

Should finish in time. Probably wont have any player/weapon models or sound/music, but I will have a game done this time.. yay!