If I have more time today, I may continue on this, adding sound etc, but here’s RELEASE CANDIDATE 1 of my quickie.

I won’t tag this ‘final’ yet.. I’m pretty sure I have a few minutes before midnight to re-tag this =)

Well, better than nothing!

Now all I need to do is to compose some music and add extras!

They look better animated! Also, the tree zapper aren’t actually supposed to attack the butterflies.

There are buildings you can destroy, traps that make you grow, and a lovely pink background. Destruction of buildings is a little less than exciting, however….

As you may or may not have seen, I posted some “helpful” information about submitting. We seem to get asked this all the time, and I decided now might be a good time to try the upload feature.

I recently realized I’m going to have to figure out how to set up entry voting tomorrow, plus some categories to actually include. So I guess that means my time will be a little short. Oh well.

As for my game, its coming.

Got my cheesy character in (yellow box), and fixed a projection bug. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to make the stacked rectangle vs object test work yet. Plus my camera library code hasn’t been touched in over a year, so I have my doubts at how useful it is at the moment.

Looking at the clock right now, I’ll probably be up late tomorrow. With that in mind, meeting the deadline looks grim. Technically I’m not eligible anyways, as I started by gutting the PC port of Smiles (my iPhone game) and didn’t have time to do that before the compo and declare it as a library. Oh well.

Also, I suppose another goal of this compo for me was to test out my Netbook as a mobile setup. Well, I haven’t got to that either. *shrugs*

That’s okay though.

For me, this month is actually about refining my rapid prototyping process. Though I wont be submitting an entry, I’ve already made some notable “real world” improvements to my library code. Every entry of mine up until now has depended on the Allegro graphics library, where this was my first time working with my custom graphics library (with support for iPhone+GL ES and SDL+GL targets). So at the very least, I got to try it out, and make some mental notes on where to improve things (i.e. have a working base code/template program before you start).

I’ll continue posting updates throughout the day tomorrow.

5/6 powerups are coded, level format is done. need a way to finish levels.. still, this leaves me with all day tomorrow to generate content. i might try to make a boss, but i wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

Good morning. A little update. Yesterday I added The Dark Tower (player starting base) and tree zappers (drain trees for power and for simply draining trees).

After that, I wasted a lot of time on how the wall of decay etc should progress, only to ending up with something that wouldn’t work. So I’m still thinking about that. I could spend some time describing what didn’t work, but I’m not going to. Instead here’s a screenshot showing how the decay thing for the ground would look (the tree decay in this shot is just for testing purposes).

Now I have some thinking and showering to do. And breakfasting.

Well, I had a demoralizing bug that wasted 4 hours of my time and almost made me give up, but I finally managed to make some progress. Here’s my latest screenshot:

I’ve got guards moving on the wall, and enemies that move faster on land and slower when climbing. Still no actual gameplay though, so I’m not very happy with my progress.

Making steady progress. The game is playable, win and lose conditions are working. Now for more touches and lots of levels.

A preview with one and a half levels can be gotten from here: http://www.georg-rottensteiner.de/webmisc/Endurion_LD14_DoomRunner.zip

It requires DX8 installed.

I am now at the point where I’m happy with how my game works. You can win, you can lose, it doesn’t glitch when you touch stuff, and there are even a few sound effects. I made a new wall, too:

He’s not much of a wall just yet, but give him time. Anyway, I still have a lot to do, because:

* There aren’t any enemies other than the wall

* There’s only one level

* Your gun isn’t much use

* No music

So, back to work again…

I had mixed motivation levels today.  I did manage to get things to a playable point.  I should have gotten more done though.

Play my current build on line.

http://wardtek.ca/pictures/LD48-14/Doom.html

I decide to break down and learn flash so I bought a book on it 3 days ago and started reading.  Figured this competition would be good motivation and testing ground.  So far I must say I’m impressed with how easy it is to get things done in the language and how easy it is to learn.

For the game itself, I’m working on making a mini-rts style game with a focus on ‘sovereignty’ which gives you large bonuses while on your own turf.  So it turns it into a slowly advancing wall of doom!  Or something like that.  Tomorrow is all about polish.  Better (any) graphics.  Intro screens, help screens, visible win conditions, useful HUD.  Balance on gold in vs gold out and tactical management.

Controls are simple right now.  Spacebar spawns a new warrior (currently a cow) and you can let them wander about or you can click on them and move them into the field of battle.

Advancing wall of gray goo…

Finally.

The circles that make up the wall will absorb same-coloured enemy bullets. If you move into the circle and shoot, it will reappear (after a brief period) as the colour of the shot you used.

Enemies who hit the wall are immediately killed, but the circle they hit will be pushed back towards you! If the circle is pushed back too far, there is a chance that it will disappear. After three circles are gone, the entire wall disintegrates.

Currently there’s no way to regenerate the wall other than dying. However, once I implement the bomb/super attack (the next item on my agenda), the player will have a way to regenerate the wall.

Also, have an advancing wall of sickeningly cute.

So, you’re done now and want to submit an entry?

Here is what you do.

• Create an account (if you haven’t already, click here)
• Make a post (click here)
• Add the tag “Final” to your post (Instructions how)
• Upload a single screen-shot to the blog (Instructions how)
• Provide download link(s) to your file(s) (Windows Binary, Source, etc)

NOTE: It seems uploading zip files to the blog isn’t allowed with stock permissions set up. Oh well, we’ll have to go with the old way of submitting entries (i.e. link a zip file). Maybe next time.

Moving forward, we’d prefer that you upload your entries to the blog. You’re more than welcome to mirror them on your local site, but at least this way we have a 2nd copy. If your entry is especially large (50 MB+), consider uploading to the blog as a last resort (i.e. you don’t have your own web space).

Images can be named whatever, but we’d suggest entry uploads be named as follows.

UserName_LD??_MyCoolEntryName.EXT

• UserName – Your name on the forum (i.e. PoV)
• LD?? – The current competition (i.e. LD14, MiniLD09)
• MyCoolEntryName – A name for your entry (i.e. MyGame02)
• EXT – Whatever the file type is (i.e. zip, tar.bz2)

For example: PoV_LD00_MurMur2.zip

Following these naming guidelines will help us catalog entries in the future.

Flash/Browser Based Entries

If your game is a Flash or browser based game, then you can provide a link. This will make it much easier for entrants to play your game, since you can tailor the webpage as you see fit (as providing FTP accounts for everyone sound like too much work to me).

In addition, if you could upload a copy for archival purposes, that would be helpful.

Very liquid based but that is all I can manage at this time on a Sunday Morning. Being up this early and not being at a carboot sale, it’s just not natural.  I predict a more substantial bacon based brunch later to address this unholy liquid / food imbalance. MORE NING ALL!

Spent the morning profiling and banging my head against the wall, hence all the timing data on screen. Finally figured out why my game was rapidly losing FPS over time. It was all because I forgot to clear my flex canvas before drawing to it, whatever that does.

I think that about wraps up my tech stuff on the graphics, dodgy 3d in flash and all. Time to add a game, or at least some wall doom.

Picture should take you to a “playable” version. There’s nothing to do but move left and right (arrow keys) and you might have to click on the screen after you start the game to gain focus (it is a mystery).

the Louisiana BBQ down the block will get official mention in my game credits — gumbo, yam pie, baked beans, potato salad, and a snack earlier on top. I hope it’s OK that I seem to be paying more attention to my food photos than screens of my game…I’m very happy with how things are going, and I think I can I have something playable tomorrow, and hopefully with more graphics and sounds.

Tagging your posts is easy.

From inside the WordPress, scroll down past the post box to the “Tags” box.

Enter your tag in the box and click Add.

Easy. If you make a mistake, you can click the X beside the tag to remove it.

Common tags include:

• Final – for your final entries
• deskphoto – for any pictures of your work environment
• motivation – for amusing images in the spirit of the competition
• foodphoto – what you ate during a compo. Yes, we’re silly

You play on the side of the advancing wall of doom, which is trying to engulf all. The lousy civilization’s set up barriers, though, which the cloud can’t cross! Your job is to destroy these defences so that the cloud can continue its conquest.

Basic mechanics are working, the main things missing are enemies that fight back. Better graphics should be on the way, as well as some sound effects.