The breakfast of champions, which is mostly leftovers from the supper of champions the night before.

I have been fruitlessly mucking about with random level generation and bumping into SIGFPEs and infinite loops. It seems to not fail now, however it doesn’t do what I want it to either. Here, have a nice picture!

Ooh, isn't it pretty?

It should be linking all the rooms up, however I have done far too much complication to my code without really thinking and it now scares me. I think I really need to rip it out and rewrite it so I know what it does. *sigh*

I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER

Phone cam shot! Om nom nom!

I’m starting to get a better feel for where my game is going. I hope I can finish most of the difficult code today and focus on content tomorrow.

Took me way too long to build and sculpt her, and there is so much left to be done but I better get back to the actual ‘game’ thing huh?

the build is after the more

(more…)

So the game I’ve come up with for exploration is something I’m calling AD2030. It’s my way of thinking of an exploration game where a lot of the exploration in this instance is indirect. For better or for worse I haven’t had much visual progress as a lot of the game is done through non-visual communication. Additionally a lesson that worked well in the last Ludum Dare was I used placeholder graphics as long as possible so I could focus on getting gameplay in there.

Meanwhile here’s what I had on my lunch break. It’s like I’m back living in my college dorm again!

Well it looks like asteroids, nothing to explore yet.   The plan is to fly around a random map making money by blowing things up and hunting for a finite amount of fuel.

I hope to have the AI make money and upgrade as well, but we will see how that goes.

After countless hours fighting with collisions and platformer stuff, I finally have something I am willing to go with. Collisions be damned.

This is probably nothing like the final game will look like, but hey, the little green guy is pretty cute.

So… my basic idea is that history is full of  “explorers” that were part of destroying native cultures and sites they find. So that sometimes it could perhaps be better to not explore at all in the first place and let these hidden paradises rest at their natural state.

Unfortunately it seems that my gameplay concept and gfx asset list is way too ambitious again so I probably have to cut a lot of corners. I hope even a part of the original idea finds it into the final game… Coding wise the “core” is done, now I just have to figure out how to actually make this fun…

Sneak peak of my main level:

The boat can now sink…

Created an animation where the boat got filled with water (just painted blue from the lowest to highest parts of the ship, in each frame). Looked bad… Tried not using blue but painting the alpha channel instead… Looked a bit better, but still terrible…

So, I decided to suck it up and I did an animation on 3ds, then extracted some frames… Doesn’t look that bad, tbh… Still needs some “splash” to it, so it looks like the boat is on water, and not floating in some netherworld… But I’ll leave that to polish time, if I have any, still lots to do to actually have a game…

I’m going to do a small break now, catch my breath, been working almost non-stop for 8 hours…

Next on the agenda, whirlpools!

Under “normal” conditions, I was going to use python with pyglet and chipmunk.  However, since I have a large extended family with tons of planned activities this weekend, and at work I’ve got a huge software release coming Monday m0rning, I’ve chosen to attempt something with Unity.

I didn’t download Unity, or even begin to learn it until last night, but already, my confidence is growing that I might actually have *something* fun to play with by tomorrow night.

Sorry, no screenshots or work area photos yet, and I won’t be able to tinker again until this evening.

I’m estimating that I’ll only have about 10 more hours to work on it before the deadline, so wish me luck.

(And please don’t beat up on me too bad for using Unity…)

-vizionary

aligned randomly for your convenience

bonk

bonk bonk

bonk bonk bonk!

2 areas done, 2 work in progress, should have 6 of the 11 planned areas done today

the goal of the game is to collect all the gems, maybe to recharge your spaceship batteries or something

Just got back from work and scanned in the tea-stained paper.  It’s not as dark as I was hoping for – maybe I didn’t leave it long enough?  Or maybe I should have used coffee?  Anyway, I reckon it still looks pretty good:

If I have time I might try and stain the edges using computery magic.

Boo yah! I like the look of this.

Progress and stuff. Aliens are all red for some reason.

Well, it’s raining all weekend, so they kinda blew my idea of going outside and taking some pictures for the game.

But instead, I came up with a great idea for this theme, a fun one, that uses all of the christmas stuff my wife collects around the house.

The name of the game is Massacre at Misfit Toy Island. You are Santa and your objective is to explore Misfit Toy Island, finding all the Misfit Toys and exterminating them (don’t worry, misfit toys will be able to defend themselves). I am kinda aiming it sort of after the classic PS2 game, Shadow of the Colossus. You sort of explore around misfit island, until you find a toy and destroy it. You have to destroy all 12 toys (12 is a good biblical number).  You should feel sort of sad after killing a misfit toy.

I have finished taking all the pictures for my graphics. Almost 7 Gigabytes of raw shots on my new Canon 7D (amazing camera btw).

Now I have a TON of processing to do to remove the backgrounds of the objects and to assemble the graphics for the backgrounds.

Let’s see how that goes. Remember, the actual game will be super simple. I’m just focusing on “Eye-Candy” for this game!

I found this article on Roguebasin, that I thought might be of interest to folks creating indoor environments procedurally.

The method described works by dividing the map into grid “cells” containing an area of map tiles, and how to use that to create a procedural world efficiently and simply. Worth a read, I’d say.

And what a nice one it was too B(

Anyway…time for a new one!

For the power of caffeine summoned by Yerba Mate…

I’ve already half of the speeches. The gameplay is simple but solid: You must find a girl and in your quest you end up knowing a little bit of the raw truth about society.

I think I’ll use tonight to add music and better graphics to the game.

Regards!

Started to quickly draw a baddy.  A dwarf was suggested… which then turned into a dwarf with lasers on it.  Since the baddy needs to shoot up and down you see.

Drew a really bad BIG BAD… turned out more like a flying green pumkin than a dwarf with lasers on it.

The laser will just be an animated line, and a sound that goes bzzzzzzzz.  With of course a particle effect explosion when it hits something.

Speaking of particle effects, I kind of got my flare going.  So the flare can light up areas either thrown left or right.  Maybe will make it follow the mouse… not sure yet.

Now it’s time to go down to the pub for a friends birthday.  Feel kind of ok about maybe getting some gameplay in tomorrow… and maybe getting a basic game going.

Although I am a bit late with it, I have a good feeling about this one. Most of my game mechanic is finished. On the picture you can see the graph of paths drawn out, red paths are active, blue are passive, and are activated, when you reach certain action nodes in the graph. You can see an action node, under the mouse, indicated by a spinning red circle. The filled red circle is you player, who travels over active paths. You can send him to an action node, by clicking on it. He will find the shortest way and follow it, until he reaches that node.

Now I need to replace the black background with scenery, red circle with a sprite, create animations for action nodes and some sounds all wrapped up as a neat puzzle. Right now I hope I can get one level together, after that the menu, and then maybe another level (my head is in the clouds).