Okay, porting a boids-style steering system to Monocle was probably not a good use of competition time.  And in the end the movement didn’t really look good and I threw it away and replaced it with something simple.  Oh, it would be nice to learn the lesson to do it the simple way the first time…

CMake, how I love it when you just work.

CMake, how I hate it when you don’t work.

I should have prepared for this compo by having a basic, buildable project ready to go.

In trying to create the barest project for LD20, I’ve copied the directory structure and CMake build scripts from my LD18 game, which still builds just fine by the way, and changed references from LD18 to LD20.

And for some reason, with a basic main function and a bare-bones Game class that does nothing, I get a build error.

I notice that for some reason, even though I tell it to build the files in my source/game directory, it seems to be ignoring it. It doesn’t ignore it in my LD18 project, though.

First, for posterity (and my sanity), the command to get debug output is “make VERBOSE=1″. I always forget it and have to do searches online to find it, and sometimes CMake searches aren’t easy to do. I need to keep these notes somewhere handy for the future.

Next, I saw that it wasn’t finding my project library. Basically, my game has a main.cpp, and it links to the library created by the game subdirectory. What’s nice about having the game built as a library is that I can also build a test binary if I was using unit tests by linking to that same game library instead of building the object files twice.

After looking at the CMakeLists.txt files and comparing them to the ones in my LD18 project multiple times, I finally saw the culprit:

TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES (gbgames-ld20-bin gbgamesld20-lib ....

It should link to gbgames-ld20-lib. It was missing a frickin’ dash. Looking closely at the error message, I would have seen the missing dash there as well, but…GAH!

And this is how you lose about 40 minutes during a Ludum Dare compo. B-(

Luckily, I finally got the project building and running, so now I can get some lunch.

1 day, seven and a half hours left. Eat fast.

Hooray, I kind-of have some playabilitinessification.

So far, you can move around, and trhow an anchor at the little red dudes that come out of the huts,to knock them over. Then you have to pick-up your achor before you can throw it again, which at the moment is a huge drag, and it’s hard to hit things with the anchor… Hmmm.

The idea is that after throwing, you’ll have a chain to the anchor, and you’ll run round knocking dudes over with it. I may well get nothing else done, which is a bit rubbish! Too much time spent fiddling with the (veeery basic) animations.

Screenshot!

It’s sort-of, kind-of, playable here.

What’s there not to love?

Anyway just wanted to share an early screen of my game with you guys.

Have physics up and running, now to figure out what to do with it

Nyan out!

Finally got basic interaction in so now the player can craft using resources bought and create items to sell to heroes that try to overcome the threat of the evil empire! I hope to have heroes level up and come back and buy more stuff if they survive.

Basic crafting and automous fighting is in!

I’m quite happy with the progress so far, although I fear there will be a huge balancing act in the end.

I woke up 16 hours ago and now is a good time to afford some diner. I feel bad for last few hours because I was looking for simple yet efficient way to implement lighting in my game but no success except one tutorial which will help but not today. I’ll make that tomorrow for today, I have next plans:

- Make nice torch particle system
- Pickups
- Some cheap monsters
- Maybe some additional mechanics

After that, I’ll find suitable place in my bed

classic pizza with very spicy peppers + beer

The engine is practically finished. Loads of spiffy stuff. The sounds are sweet. The graphics are sweet. The gameplay is ferocious and won’t hesitate to castrate you.

tic tac, the clock is running.

Unfortunatly for us, Abe’s netbook keep on crashing, his punny laptop couldn’t handle the hight level of awesomeness we trying to make him compil.

The engin still needs many tweaks before beeing able to be concider as prototype.
I guess those hardware issues are part of the challenge.

Anyway Mr Aries have finish the first music layer :
Have a loook !

For my part i m starting animations and content variation in order to generate our levels.

sorry, this lib viewing is a crappy but it stills give you a little update.

Take and keep the good work !

(definitly a great experience sharing this wek end with you mates)

I am trying to do an automatic procedural quest thing – probably foolish, but here’s what I have:

I WANT A KITTEH!

YOU MUST DO SOMETHING FOR ME FIRST

YOU MUST DO SOMETHING FOR ME FIRST

YOU MUST DO SOMETHING FOR ME FIRST

YOU ALREADY HAVE IT!

OK, ALRIGHT, I’ll GIVE IT TO YOU.

OK, ALRIGHT, I’ll GIVE IT TO YOU.

OK, ALRIGHT, I’ll GIVE IT TO YOU.

KITTEH!

That is, the player was assigned a subquest to get something else, and from that subquest, another subquest, nesting (in this case) three deep.

Apart from some strange blue becoming green antics, the base systems and building objects seem to be working, next step. Add the outlet goal blocks and the game play element of getting a particular block and having to figure out how best to use it.

I’m RDP from a macbook at the moment which means i’ve lost print screen button… when I get a break I’ll figure it out.

Woke up today a little later then I’d have liked, but with a plan fully in my head.  Super simple RPG system coupled with a pet/minion battle mechanic.  It’s dangerous to go alone.  Here, take this guy!  I also woke up to the lovely, lovely smell of the catbox being well overdue for a cleaning and no litter in the house, and a fridge devoid of food.

Letting my fiancée, who isn’t coding a game in 48 hours, sleep in I went off to the store to repair these things and decided on spoiling us for this stressful weekend.  Recently we discovered our local grocery store has a good stock of quality cheeses, and nothin’ says goodmorning like a good sliver of bree and fresh baked croissants.

So, finally sitting down to code and I’m realizing that me not knowing basically anything about the differences between actionscript 2 and 3 was not the best idea when going into something like this.  Caffeine? Check.

sadly, the title has nothing to do with my game.
I’m getting a new computer, no idea what I’m looking for. When I get it I’m going to have to go through a good hour of transferring over important files and hooking it up. This could set my LD back  by a while.

Still working with XNA: have a basic level editor, steering for three NPC types, three kinds of bait, collision, and some range visualization stuff for testing/debugging purposes.  Still need to add obstacles/walls so I can start working on some level design.  Many b&w graphics, but still need NPC animations, as well as environment art.

There isn’t much new from last night, mostly I just made the character different, made him walk better, as well as the whale. As you can see you can now ride the whale by stepping on a dock. given that a whale is close enough. Right now I’m trying to make you get off the whale somehow. Current attempts are buggy and involve instantly jumping back onto the whale.

Does anyone know whether making a(n almost exact) Zelda clone would be a copyright infringement? Also how about the rules of LD and using the same graphics as Zelda?

PS despite the fact that I am planning an almost exact copy, the difference should be worth it, so yes, I know that just copying Zelda defeats the purpose, but I do have a reason for wanting to make it as reminiscent of Zelda as possible.

–
Mikhail Rudoy

16 hours in, 32 to go – I don’t know if I’ve made it to 1/3rd completion yet, but I do have my first test prototype mocked up. No graphics yet, and none of the collecting survivors mechanic, just a test of the swing/release controls. Play it here:

Click the image to play the control test prototype

And here is another page from my notebook expanding on the design I’m going for with the controls.

Controls concept sketch

And now it is time to start working on some graphics.

My current progress in my attempt to beat grand master loudumb i’ve done the following:

The player can shoot;

The ending song has been made as well as some ambient loops;

Some of the artwork has been done;

I have a plot. ;

Wow, it’s been a hard day. I spent nearly 6 hours non stop shopping with the girlfriend and my feet, legs, arms and back hurt like hell. I’ve been trying to code and do some minor artwork but it’s all gone nowhere really, at least nowhere fast. And it looks like I’ve been going at a dead end now – it’s time for a pretty large rethinking. But it’s gonna be a fairly large project… Damnation to it all.

I feel the pain from being away from C++ and game programming for so long – I need to constantly refresh on functions, classes and whatnot. The venture into Perl, Haskell, Lisp and whatever has sure made me a better coder, but now I just feel like a damn slow one! I got off to such a great start, but now it’s falling apart a bit.

Now I have some positive things too. My girlfriend is ever supporting and I think she understands the hours I want to put into this this and tomorrow night. I think I have a really, really great idea for the game!

You’re gonna play the role of an alien or some sort of divine spirit, I was thinking of the guy from Tron Legacy who was set to create a perfect world, who has been given an imbalazer which will let him to transform plants and animals. Then you should create a system of sorts, something like a digital circuit, which will emit sounds when an animal reaches a goal or a function or similar. This way you can create all sorts of circuits, with the ultimate goal of being able to create binary algebra – so you can make a calculator or whatever. The sound thing is partly from me being lazy (don’t have to spend all day making something that sounds like music) but also so you can create your own song!

Phew.

Now it’s barbecue time and I’m preparing for a long coding night tonight.

I’ve decided to do proper room transitions like the 2d zeldas. I could just have done a hard cut between rooms but I always think that doesn’t give you a proper sense of space, so it kills a lot of the fun of exploration. That does mean dealing with multiple coordinate spaces though (there’s no such thing as “world” space any more).

Still, I can walk between rooms, which is nice.

To keep things simpler, I’ve limited it to one exit/entrance per side. That slightly restricts the available room designs but not much I think.