It’s almost time to start coding. I’ve got a few pages of notes which hopefully will help things go smoothly during the 3 hour coding spree.

Hi to all

It’s finished but i’ll post later, now i must go back to the bed

My game:

Themes: 2/6

• True Love – NO
• Tainted Love – NO
• Inside-out – YES
• Alternate universe spinoff of a major franchise – NO
• Tetris is now a <genre other than puzzle> game! – NO
• Fishing – YES

Limitations: 4/6

• 2 button input only YES
• 1 button input only NO
• 2 colours YES
• Game must end in 60 seconds YES
• All audio must be your own voice NO
• Framerate cap at 5fps YES

Rules:  1/6

• All variable, class, function etc names must be palindromes NO
• Work with a partner NO
• Use a tool/language you have never used before NO
• Wear something absurd whilst making the entire game, upload webcam timelapse to youtube when done. NO
• Wear nothing whilst making the entire game, upload webcam timelapse to amateur porn site when done. NO
• Game must be code complete in the first 3 hours, if not, must start over. NO CODING AFTER THAT. YESSS, AND LESS

Extra Self – rules

Old and dirty flash 5 as1 coding without functions!!!

Make a game for the MINILD #24 in less than 3 hours while your girlfriend is sleeping an return to the bed before she notices!!!

It has been very funny!

I’ll post later the game and the timelapse

Working on something:

Tetris Fight Club

Not very happy with the jump attack for a few reasons including that if both players try to jump at the same time that is more than 3 keys pressed at once. But not sure what to do about that.

Have only managed to play one game with another human (embarrassingly, he wiped the floor with me) so reports of trying it out with two people would be really helpful.

Better name suggestions welcomed.

don’t have much of an idea for what the game’s going to be like, so I’m fiddling around with the menu.

THEME: fishing

LIMITATION: game ends in 60 seconds

RULE: all variable names must be palindromes (fairly easy because I’m using GameMaker :V )

Here we go. I have started creation of the tools that will actually create the main program for me, and it’s going great, minus a few idiotic bugs due to me not doing everything properly. I have also generated a few levels and tested them, they work, then I realised…oh dear lord, I forgot to add animations. Not a HUGE deal, but I have no clue how to do animations in pygame besides sprites, which I’m not using. I’ll see.

The tool also has zooming in/out, which was fun to make, and made me remember last semester’s linear algebra classes. I like it when that happens.

I’m tired, full of coke and pumpkin seeds, and I’m not sure where to go from here. I love this feeling.

Have a couple of pictures this time.

:edit: more update. Not much changed, last piece integrated and a nice animated pixel font running, also improved clouds and cloud shadows.

Over the last week I’ve done some research and setup on some new tools and APIs I haven’t used before, but I’m just now actually starting work on my project. I’m focusing mainly on just two things from the theme options: code complete in 3 hours, and using tools I haven’t used before. I picked the first because I contradicts my nature; I’m a programmer first and foremost, and my natural reflex is to hack together the quickest crappy graphics I can and spend most of the 48h on code. I think it will do me some good to focus most of my energy on the content for a project, even if it’s a 48h one. New tools/languages works well with this plan in two ways: first, a focus on content give both time and incentive to learning and applying new content tools; and second, the need to complete the code quickly will encourage me for using APIs that I have not used before. I thought about making it 1- or 2-button as well, but the necessary changes would make the game a lot slower and less fun. What kind of game I make will depend in part on how far I can get in 3 hours of coding, all I know for sure is that it will have a 2d overhead tile map.

I was going to use GLUT, but at the last minute I realized I haven’t even installed GLUT on this computer; downloaded the latest build and set up the inc/lib directories but the linker called the binaries invalid, and after a few downloading again and spending a minutes fiddling I decided to just move on. Instead I’m just using my own base application code; technically this is pre-existing, non-public code, but it doesn’t do anything GLUT can’t do, and in fact GLUT can do much more, so as my own official neutral judge, I’m going to allow it. For sound, I’ll be using fmod. As the design takes shape I may use some other minor APIs as well.

Content-wise, I’ll be making my graphics in gimp, and all my sounds will at least start life as recordings of my own voice. There will be additional content, including at least tile maps, which I will will make in Mappy. Text files will define some additional game-specific content, such as monsters, equipment, and pick-ups; how flexible these formats will be will limit what kind of game I can make, and if time allows I’ll also have some crude (and literal) scripting language, for scripting cut scenes. The latter feels like cheating the 3-hour rule, but it will not be a complete programming language, just a primitive language for creating conversations and cut-scenes.

No time like the present to get started!

Progress! I’m trying to keep motivation up, but since I’ve always had that problem, and I’m not THAT into the idea I’m designing, it’s hard. But it’s really, REALLY good exercise for those attempting to code for a living afterwards.

I’ve added:

Woot I have learned something in Java…

So, I have some kind of entity – sprite (with animation) engine “working”… Now I’ll be going for key listening (not hard), then some sound playing… And THEN gameplay

Almost have a sprite!

Just need a jump and attack anim I guess!

And our lunch:

:9

Happy Birthday, Maru!

Hey,

I will try finishing something playable this time

(although i’m kinda late already)

MY PICKS:

• Tetris is now a (Tetris is now a (Tetris is now a ) ) [recursive Game]
• Game must end in 60 seconds
• Use a tool/language you have never used before

Title: Recursion

Bunny, Chicken, Dinosaur! stars a bunny, a chicken and a dinosaur escaping to a place where their unorthodox love will be accepted.

So far I’ve gotten around to drawing sprites for the main characters. I’m thinking of relaxing the two colour restriction a little to allow two colours per layer, depending on how things look.

The next step is to get some backgrounds drawn and plan how they will be represented in game. I’m hoping to get as much planning as possible done before I start coding, due to the 3 hour rule. The code will pick up various settings from external data to allow tweaking of visuals and gameplay after the the 3 hours for coding is up. I will post some notes from the planning stage once I’m ready to start coding.

After a good night’s rest, and oversleeping, I’ve added some basic entity collisions, clipping of windows, proper entity movement, clearing of the screen, home-made camera scrolling (tied to any entity I wish), and set the two basic colors I’ll be using. Blue and yellow, not the most ideal, but it’s the way it’s in my head, so I’ll keep using that.

Sped up the timelapse record so that I can have a bit more detail while coding, and now it’s filling up my tiny Wubi partition nicely. I’ll be stopping it for extended breaks when I go out and such.

Have a picture. (Black spot is due to using Ubuntu’s ‘Take Screenshot’ app, it doesn’t usually show up)

Also, first time trying to make an original game.

Also I’ve just had a massive crisis of confidence in the idea I had, and now no longer think that it’s appropriate or any good. I can’t think of any better ideas though, so I shall plow ahead regardless.

Also I’m starting late, though I will keep to 48 hours.

Cthulu help me and this project

Theme: True Love(… kind of)
Limitation: 2 button input only
Limitation: Game must end in 60 seconds

Rules: All audio must be your own voice
-OR-
Work with a partner

Partner (in crime, not in bed) is a bit ill, so she’ll be involved if she feels any better by tomorrow. Otherwise I’m going to be making some odd noises into a microphone.

See you at 2PM GMT on Monday!

Been working a few hours now with partner – our idea’s not 100% solid, but we’re hoping to do a platformer with NPC dialogue.

Themes:
True Love/Tainted Love

Limitations:
1 button input only
(cheating with mouse I guess – or maybe ignoring all together!)

Rules:
Work with a partner
Wear nothing whilst making the entire game, upload webcam timelapse to amateur porn site when done.

Some painted background (tile-less!) probably be too difficult but I’ll try!

Girlfriend’s currently working on the NPC close up artwork, but she doesn’t want to show yet.

OK, I want to try this one because it’s so crazy!

Theme: Tetris is now a Visual Novel! (and maybe true love as well)

Limitation: All audio must be your own voice (I mean technically you’ll only use the left mouse button, frame rate isn’t very relevant for a VN, it won’t fit in 60s so that leaves the voice things)

Rule: Use a tool/language you’ve never used before: renpy (I’ve wanted to use it for a long time)

I expect to probably fail as I’m very slow at drawing and a VN is too content heavy. Not that I can write a story worth two peanuts either. Anyway good luck!

As per usual, I’m going to stay up through the first night. I hope to have something playable by morning.

After trying to work with DAME, I found that it is actually quite a pain to work with if you need, say, more than one set of sprites for a single sprite class. (For example, if you have a player character that could be of multiple classes and races as well as either gender)

Given that, I’m switching back to Tiled. It’s less fancy, but it’ll let me get the job done. Besides, I can write a TMX (“TMX” being the map format Tiled uses) parser very easily, or even retrofit one that I’ve already written to deal with this game’s data. DAME has a Flashpunk exporter, but it appears very inflexible to me.

So, here’s where I stand theme-wise:

Theme: Alternate universe spin-off (Sci-fi Dragon Warrior spin-off)

Limitations: None

Rules: Software you’ve never used before (Gimp – never in a completed game, Flashpunk tweens – not a software package, but a feature I’ve never used before)

Granted, the second “software I’ve never used” is just a “library feature I’ve never used”, but that isn’t a huge deal, I don’t think.

That being said, every time I have tried to use tweens in Flashpunk, I’ve not gotten anything happening. (As in, I apply the Tween to an Entity, and nothing happens) Any tutorials or examples folks here could point me to would be appreciated.

Peace

— Mr. Dude

There we go. Wrapping my head around some file access was hard, but not that much trouble, just Netbeans being weird. I have added message windows (which can be turned into something like menus easily with hacking on my part), image loading, and a simple demo of a moving ball. Next comes the fun stuff.

Next I’ll be adding:

• entity collision
• scrolling
• various entities

This will be the longest milestone, probably, but I’ll do my best to hurry. But first, some sleep. And a picture!

Using only one button in a platformer is an unusual way of controlling things, but I think I’ve come up with an easy way to do it.

The “Jumper” as the protagonist is called, will keep going in one direction. You can make him jump with the button, and holding down the button will cause him to stop and turn around. You can hold down the button for any length of time and the jumper with rock back and forth, indicating which direction he’ll go in once you release the button.

And the first screenshot of the game (with horribly ugly placeholder art):

I’ve loaded up my timelapse script, set it to a reasonable setting (I’m running on limited disk space here, sadly), and began coding about an hour ago. Set up my environment with Netbeans running the Python environment, 2.6.1, then installed pygame, and copied an example in to test. Everything worked fine, so I began coding, and adding a list of milestones in a second window while thinking. For each milestone I reach, I’ll make at least one blog post, detailing my progress, anecdotes, whatever I can think of.

I’m not a good coder, by any means, and I’m awful with graphics, I’m no artist, and I can’t manage an aesthetic sense if it’s implanted into my brain. So this won’t end well. But the journey could be fun.

To start off, I made a ‘@’ move on the screen automatically (as per application updates), after setting up the framework. With what I have right now, (minus resource loading, not taking that hurdle just yet), I can already make a platformer, which is the 3rd milestone. The second will be having a menu, full features on my framework, and soft-coding most things just enough to make it usable.

I’ll try to post pictures each update, but right now it’d be a useless picture, so I’ll skip this one. If I have nothing exciting, I might even add bits and pieces of the sketches I’ve done on the idea while setting up the environment.

Well, this was a useless update, but all projects start out this way. I’ll be posting another one soon, but might be taking an extended break due to it being almost morning here (damn you, timezones). We shall see.

Its my first ludum dare (Its a mini, but whatever) and im pumped

Im still sort of a noob in terms of programming, so this will be a challenge, but it’ll be fun.

Im thinking my theme will be true love, my limitation will be two colors, and I wont be using any of the rules, as well… they’re a little out there.

Good luck everyone