First, I’ve now posted OSX and linux/source code versions on my entry’s page.  I noticed some serious slowdown when testing on my macmini – this is because it uses very large textures (1024 x 768), and there isn’t really anything I could have done (not within the 48hr time limit anyway, it would have been too fiddly and time-consuming).  Fairly recent (/non bargain-basement) graphics cards shouldn’t have a problem, but I apologise if you find the game getting slower and slower the more moves you make.

Second, here’s my timelapses:

Coding etc.

Audio

There’s two because I did the audio on a different computer, and I’m too lazy to edit them together properly.  Read on for my post mortem.

(more…)

Stopping for lunch and, incredibly, the core game’s finished.  All I’ve got to do now is the sound and the AI player.

So there you can see the 3 buttons and the amount of food the player has (top left).  Each movement/garrison costs 1 food.  On the map there’s a garrison to the right of the blue player, which means nobody can move onto that space until its turn limit is up.  You can also see various spaces with food in them.  These appear after someone forages in that space, so you can see how much food can be got from which spaces.

I keep forgetting to post my pictures of my food, but here’s my lunch:

Beans on toast, and a goblet of Irn Bru. You can just about see the original map in the pile of paper to the right.

Got up about 8, and have now got the game to colour in the spaces the current player has already explored.  I also recoloured the background paper a bit – it’s still not perfect but it’s better than it was:

Next step is to add the victory/game over screen, then the Forage, Garrison and Wait buttons.

I’m off to bed now, so here’s where I am at the end of the 1st day:

Players can move to adjacent spaces, and can’t move onto spaces that are already occupied.  The next step is to draw up graphics so you can see how many spaces the player’s already explored.  It’s fairly time-consuming filling in those thin squiggly lines, so I’m only 2/3 of the way through that.

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.

I’ve got to head off to work now.  I’ve not got as much done as I had hoped, but I’ve got the hand-inked graphics done, and the title screen’s up and running barring the buttons.

(still waiting on the tea-stained paper to dry so I can use it as the background)

The compass is kind of skewiff but otherwise I’m pretty happy with this.  Now I’m going to do the old ’soak a piece of paper in tea’ trick to create a vintage-looking paper background.  Not started coding yet…

Got up at 2:15 to see what the theme was, then went back to sleep to get some ideas.  And the idea is:  ‘For Queen and Country’, a turn-based multiplayer strategy game.

There are 4 players, and an unexplored island divided into tiles.  The player to visit all those tiles (and thus explore the whole island) gets to claim the island for their country, and wins the game.  There are three obstacles in their way:

• Players cannot move into a space another player is already occupying.
• Players can only move if they have enough food rations.  Otherwise they will have to spend a turn foraging.  Each space will have a different number of food units, so some spaces will be more useful in this regard than others.
• Players may erect a garrison on a space which will prevent other players from moving there even if the original player has moved on.  Garrisons last 3 turns.

That’s it.  It’s probably more like a boardgame than a videogame, but I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible to make things easier on myself.  There will be the option of CPU players to make up the numbers, but I can’t guarantee they’ll be particularly smart (not being particularly smart myself).

First step: draw the island map.

(I declare that) I may be a little screwed if the theme’s Twilight Fandom though – I’ve only got a vague idea of what Twilight’s about (for some reason I’ve got it stuck in my head that it’s about a vampire who beats his wife?  I always knew those vampires were no good…), and no idea what Twilight fans are like.

Anyway, I’ll most likely be coding in C++ using SDL/OpenGL and PortAudio plus libvorbis, and my template code which you can see here.  If not I may use flash, but I reckon I’ll work faster in C++.

I’ve got a 5-hour shift at work on the Saturday, so I’m aiming for a more minimal design than my previous 2 entries.  We’ll see how that goes.