This is my 4-hour late declaration of intent to join MiniLD 28 and also my first progress update.

I really don’t have time to participate this weekend, but the theme is just too awesome to pass up on!

I’m going to try to do a simple little tribute to The Ancient Art of War. I’m using AS3 & Flixel (for the first time) so please wish me luck – I’m going to need it!

Here’s an early screenshot:

Menu Screen

The title says it all… or maybe not. Let me explain the basics of what I’m gonna work on: you have some sort of convoy to protect and it has to travel from point A to point B in a given time. To do this, you can only use two commands which affect the physics of an area: you attract or repulse the objects in that area (each having differents properties, such as weight, damage caused around it when destroyed, attraction/repulsion (pulses) or bonuses such as more shields for your convoy, extra time or even time freezing).

Let’s code !

I didn’t really have a goal set yesterday. I had a few ideas, but nothing concrete. Last night, an hour or two before I went to bed (which was about 2 hours before it started), I decided to create some sort of hacking game where you and a team of people have to achieve a specific end goal for your country before you hit a specific deadline or else. So a cyber war, basically. It would be a bit like uplink, but also quite different. I have a bunch of ideas for the end result, including a realtime office mode, multiple ways of dealing with things, and an interactive world where you are not alone. Lots of stuff, too much for one weekend, but it was fun to think about. Whether it’ll be fun to play, I don’t know, but still.

So today I worked on it for a bit. I’m creating it in WPF (which is .NET), because it’s GUI heavy and I know it well enough to get something done in it. I have a bunch of stuff done, but still a lot to do for it to be a proper game. I’ve created a nice little world, one which is filled with about 20.000 people (each with a name and email address, most with a job in the game world), a few hundred companies (with employees, admins and CEOs), each with one of a dozen server software packages for their websites, each with a dozen possible different versions. All of it randomly generated from lists of names. And you can bypass login screens of email services if they have crap security and you select the right options in the comboboxes, but that’s it.

I still need to do many things. For starters, it needs a goal. I also have to make the websites (they’re just empty templates, but I have to create the templates), some data to gather and abuse (like email addresses, source code, etc), create viruses and worms (to use on the email addresses), make hacking risky, simulate latency (if you want 7 proxies, go ahead, but don’t complain that it takes a minute to load a page), useful teammates, some sort of money system, digital (black) markets, botnets, more ways to hack, news, a living world, and lots of other things. Way too much for one weekend. But we’ll see how far I can get, and after it’s over I’ll decide if it’s worth continuing.

I’m tired, sleepy and half-naked in the dark, so I guess I should call it a night, I’ve got the basic movement and gamplay done, tomorrow should be more than enough to get the other things done, hopefully.

Done:

- Navigation System
- Waypoints
- little dudes Animation
- Score
- Programmer art…etc

To Do:

- Units Attack System
- Add other units
- Improve Graphics
- SFX/Music
- Levels variation/progress..blah blah

Progress Update…

Swimming moving Marine (green blob) next to Submarine (black blob)!

Started -  15:41 UK 30/07/2011.

Phase 1 – Mechanics and Gameplay – First 24 hours

1. Landscape Sea and Islands [Done 16:40] 1 hour in

Tea Break

2. Sub Movable [Done 19:45] 4 hours in
3. Marine Moving  [Done 22:48] 7 hours in
4.  Turning Turrets and Moving Robots [Paused for sleep at 23:59 -  8 hours in]
5. Shooting / Damage
6. Hubs / Decoding
7. Energy / Resources / Unlocks

Next on the list is Robots and Turrets!

Woah, this weekend is full of things to do. I’ll try to make something playable this night, because war is such an inspiring theme that I’ve already come up with a few ideas, only a few minutes after having read the theme !

See you all on IRC (although it might not be such a good idea if I want to make something before the deadline ) !

I got some box2d going on, got a graphics pallete picked out, now just need to make the rest of the game!

One unfortunate thing (for LD) is that y’all won’t be able to play this, but I am going to try my best to get it ready for app store submission by compo end.

Oh, I guess I should also mention that I am using ofxBlud, my lua framework that I started building for LD19. To get it working you will also need openframeworks. HAHA! I AM THE WORST LD’R EVAR!

The Sub can now launch Missiles and Marines in a forward direction fixed angle, but the Marines which were supposed to use the same control mechanic as the sub are going to take a little bit of work, they keep falling down and rolling about!

Small steps!

Oh man, I just thought of a great variation for my idea, but I don’t think I have time to implement it. For now I think it’s best to stick to the plan. I thought of it because as part of the design, I made the game load in the formations from image files:

You can see in the top all of the image files which present the selectable unit formations. What would be cool is, if you had to create new formations during gameplay, where instead of me predefining them, the game is about finding a set of formations, or a single formation, that allows your units to beat the level. Anyway, I’ll see what happens when I add enemies.

Yep, I am following my old ways – implement just enough of a shell to provide the programmer in me lots of things to tinker with, and then delay adding the actual game by tinkering into eternity.

Finally made a google code project for it: http://code.google.com/p/mini-ld-28-unitformations/

ToDo:

* force self to make gameplay

* force self to make gameplay fun

* ???

* profit

Looks like I am really out of practice. Some bug stopped my progress for like 1.5 hours. All the bullets just wanted to fly the same direction. Finally I found the issue and now it looks as intended. But still I’m not beyond some demo state. Probably I should quit for today after over 15 hours being awake with a lot of coding (I know… I’m getting old).

So, I’m going to join in on the MiniLD. I’ve been trying to brainstorm ideas and do a little art before the ‘Offical’ Start date but that’s it. Now I woke up to late, spent to much time doing other things and I’m not sure how much time I’m going to have. Yep, everything is off to a wonderful start. As for my tools.

Flashpunk and Actionscript 3
FlashDevelop
SFXR
Photoshop or Something for art (Not sure)

I have an idea, but I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to bring it to life. Wish me luck, and Good Luck to you!

Decided at around 1pm today to do an entry for the mini! I have been meaning to make a version of rampart for iphone since a friend told me that my last LD reminded him of that game. So, I started on that, and then just went to a bbq for like 5 hours. While there I realized I would rather make crossfire for iphone, so now I am doing that!

Ha! If anything comes out of this, it will be amazing!

Basic sub movement working with ‘bouyancy’ and fixed the problem of roll with a spring physics joint!  Not really great looking but prevents the sub from rolling over if you bump it into islands!

Progress Update…

Phase 1 – Mechanics and Gameplay – First 24 hours

1. Landscape Sea and Islands [Done 16:40]

Tea Break

2. Sub Movable [Done 19:45]
3. Marine Moving
4. Robots Moving
5. Shooting / Damage
6. Hubs / Decoding
7. Energy / Resources / Unlocks

Next up marine – may resemble green capsule!

Getting tired, have been working on this since morning (It’s 9:30pm here). I don’t think I can do much anymore today, but at least I’ve got the basic framework there and most of the gameplay elements too. So I’d call it a semi-success. Tomorrow is all about adding graphics, sounds and polishing it up.

Screenshot (not much to look at currently though ):

Quick update the ship is now a submarine after I added a Capsule shape and scaled it.  It has basic movemnt but trying to give it some floating bouyancy like physics.

Time for Tea!

I’m doing some progress on my little game for this MiniLD. The game is still a little bit rough around the edges, and there isn’t much gameplay there yet. You can try the game as it currently stands here:

http://www.vangen.org/javascript/global-warfare-compo/

I will work more on it tomorrow, adding some polish and sound effects. I would also like to add more gameplay elements into the game, but I don’t think I will get the time to do that within the timeframe of this competition. What this game needs is more weapon types and a research tree in order to give it a bit of tactical gameplay.

The game is now quite playable, with graphics, teams, an HUD and sounds. The main problem is that you still can’t die!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16895250/miniLD28/dinner%2030%20july.swf

I got to blackscreen late Friday night, but knew I was expected to go into work. While laying in bed, frustrated with work and not having the ability to join LD, an insane hack/idea popped in my head to complete my weekend work task in about an hour. Which to my luck has, mostly, succeeded. I could be working on the bugs it still right now but – I figured it mostly works and other engineers probably have better ideas at the areas I fail. Fast forwarding, my point is that I am now able to start working on my mini-LD project, something I’ve been looking forward to do since the theme was announced way back when.

So, here I sit, at 1pm Saturday, hoping that I my mini-ld project is mini enough to see through completion.

Wow, I can’t believe the next MiniLD already started!

I’m not sure if I’ll be entering a game this time around since this weekend is pretty packed for me. I might try to create a game in a few hours and see how that turns out since the theme (WAR) sounds like it’ll result in a fun project.

Good luck to everyone participating and I look forward to playing your games!

My (male) partner is helping a friend of us to change houses, so I (weak female) am alone for coding at the moment. Thus I lost a lot of time creating a girly design that does not fit the theme at all.

Anyway I wrote a few lines of code: I’ve done my memory idea for gathering “resources”. Like in Mass Effect 2 hacking passages, you see the symbols of the plate on mouseOver, until you click on a tile. Once you’ve clicked, you are in “hit” mode : if you can remember where the same other symbols where, you click on their tiles. If you find a different symbol or if you get 5 times the same one, the series ends and you earn X! resources.

I like this idea of a little “intellectual” challenge crossed with another more traditional game. I think I should add a limited-time dimension, with resources slowly decreasing or something, to stress the player.

But I have still no idea of what I could do with these resources. Maybe I could call them “Mana” and use them to cast some kinds of spells (yay! a war between magicians!)… And I still have to code a no-cheat system. For the moment, you can win the max amount of resources simply by clicking 5 times on the same tile. -_-

Hexagons ! Meanders ! Beautiful symbols ! Girly design !

You can try it out if you want!