Explore the depths of ancient caverns which hold secrets about gravity. Walking is not possible. The stones you have collected can be used to activate Graviblocks which can pull and push you around. Its a puzzle game where getting stuck means restarting the level. Find the exit into the next cavern to advance to.. possibly more doom.

http://z-machines.com/zacs_files/youmustfinishtherace.mp3
I think that people will be pleasantly surprised by the sound effects in Cavern Tycoon.

There’s a movable player character, level loading, and the rudiments of player projectiles. There’s no collision detection though, and the terrain isn’t modifiable yet. Things are progressing, but I don’t have much time to participate this time around. I think I’ll at least get something done by the deadline.

Well, it’s a tentative name. I couldn’t come up with anything better than that.

Anyway, I’ve made some progress, as shown below. There’s also a little webstart demo if anybody wants to try. It’s not quite what I’d like my game to be, but it’s better than nothing.

Play the demo

Day 1 of my first LD is over and after almost 18 hours of work, I have some sort of a game.

I enjoyed doodling on a tablet after a really long time

Unfortunatelly, I underestimated planning and created a system that is too complex to balance in order to produce fun. It’s just too random – sometimes too easy, sometimes too hard. I’ll try to tweak it tomorrow and see if I can get it a little bit more enjoyable.

Music would be nice and also adding multiple levels could make it more interesting (they’re procedurally generated, so no sweat).

The frogdog character that keeps popping up is probably a product of my fatigue

Goodnight, fellow LDers (2:24am in Prague)

I spent the entire evening trying to get Physaxe to work like I want it to, but I give up! I´m sure it´s possible to make a good platform engine with Physaxe, but it´s not going to happen this weekend and not with the tiny bit of documentation I could find.

Time for plan B, I’ll stick with rectangular tiles and make a simple platform game without those beautiful slopes.

BTW, here is some food I ate:

Spaceman Jimmy has been stranded inside an asteroid! He is quickly discovering how inconvenient zero gravity is.

Shoot the aliens before they hug you to death! (Disclaimer: death may not actually occur.)

Play in browser here.

My cave is very square at the moment. I want to implement some cool per-pixel collision detection on the cave walls, but Box2D won’t let me do that and I’m not going to let myself reimplement a physics engine.

All these things have been added/improved!

Zoooom!

Playable after the link:

(more…)

So , my first blog post on the ld site.

I actually participated in ld#1 aaages ago, but then I rediscoverd the whole joyful concept now.

Now I’m working on a guy that’s in a cave with a laser.

There’s also a robot in the cave that wants something that you have. So defeat his army.

made in unity, so I’ll link to the unity web version

This version has enemies spawning and moving somewhat silly around and jumping.

The enemies don’t hurt you yet, and they move like idiots. Shoot them anyways. it’s fun to shoot.

As the remnants of Hurricane Danny thrash against the windows on it’s way out to sea I’ve finished with my dinner and half-finished with my beer.  Been working on the game now since 5am EST and it is now almost 8pm.  I had way too much coffee a few hours ago and in some attempt to bring my nervous system’s ballast back in line I’m having a Corona. 

The game is going well so far.  Angry Caverns is starting to be fun and I’m starting to refine some of the ideas and mechanics with all the time I’ve spent playing it.  I hope I can get a bunch more finished tonight before I have to crash though.  As soon as I start nearing this point in the competition (usually about 15 hours of dev in) I start getting a little loopy and distracted.  If I can just stay focused for as long as possible I can lay the ground work for a productive day tomorrow.  Well.. back to the game dev!

Been coding for almost 18 hours. (with breaks of various sizes, but none too long)

Game is progressing well. I now have a player, and he can shoot. And there is enemies, and some of them shoot. And player can pick up stuff, and the player can die in different ways. And the player can win the game. And there is a highscore list. And stuff.

The plan tomorrow is to create an intro, a you-won-the-game-outro, credits, make pretty graphics (can’t get much worse anyway), fix the music so it doesn’t sound like crap (it’s generated on the fly by the computer, and it doesn’t do a good job). I have a TODO list here somewhere between the windows, but I’m too tired to check if I forgot to mention something.

Here is a picture of Mr Monocle riding his penny-farthing on some railway tracks, and an Evil Gnome shooting at him. And there is also a ruby. Collect it to get $500.

I had a couple of false starts last night, but today’s been more productive, and I have this little fly-around-and-bump-into-walls thing going:

If you like, you can play around with it here: http://www.thewasabiproject.com/flash-games/play/ld15-xue/

I think I’ll be calling it “Xue”, but I’m not entirely settled on that yet.

Oh, and here’s what was today’s breakfast — it was responsible mostly for fueling the bump-into-walls part, I think…

Last post of the day before turning in. I finally settled on a name, Cavern Copter. It has been great to get so much time today, although I’m not sure if my wife appreciated my absence. And I nearly forgot to feed the ancient and venerable hamster.

Ideally this would run in the Unity web player, but I can’t get it to work with the WordPress plug-in, even though the same file works fine from a “normal” web page.

Windows build here.

Fly the helicopter with WASD or the cursor keys.

Now I’m going to sleep and think about that bottle of Battle of Britain Ale that I’ve promised myself as a reward. Should really take a picture of it. Or drink it.

Well, here’s my work space 15 minute before the competition started:

I got gedit and a terminal, so I’m good to go. But looking at the other posts, I got a bit self-conscious about how modest my setup is, so I decided to take this show on the road.

LDing on the subway!

Harvard!

MIT!

Boston Public Library!

Hey, they had a book. Now I can totally make a 3D game!

first person view

here is the mouth of the beast, the fateful cavern… IN 3D! (Procedural caves produced with the 12345/3 Game of Life rules, with some alterations) I was able to get rid of most of the deadends by randomly killing blocks in one round of a large sum. It is actually pretty nice now, as far as generation goes. Now to make this texture better, and implement enemies…

After doing pretty much nothing, and just messing around, I finally got something that actually seems a little decent.

Now maybe I can work on the actual game part.

"I am in Darkness | Disoriented."

"I can hear things | Coming for me..."

"... A Light! | Hallucination | Reality?"

It’s looking like I’ll actually finish this or at least get it playable.

I’ve got my level in game now… but it’s not screencappable until I have a character (unless you like the black area at the top of the frame ^^; ) Yes, character is next, and then, all the rest of the background art. Hoorah!

Thank goodness for that trusty flashlight!

I’m making a lot of progress, though certain little bugs still pop of from time to time. I’m slowly squishing them. Overall, I think things are looking pretty good for this stage of the competition. Still, I plan to add a few more really fun features and changes to the Cave of Peril!

So ..

My “fancy slime engine” was a fail.

So ..

That’s where plan B comes in.

Stay tunes for more details, as they become available.

Dun dun duuuuUUNNNNNnnn..

-Phil