Big milestone here. The other 2 player-weapons are finally done! Next update: THE WALL.

I’ve released a version with all 3 weapons:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/WallGirlAlpha2.zip

As always, I will be very grateful – not eternally so, I’m afraid, but very grateful nonetheless – to anyone who feels like testing it.

As with the previous version, controls are Up, Down, Left, Right (arrows) to move. Z launches firebolts (spread), X fires the laser, and Z+X launches magic missiles.

When the program starts you need to press any key to start the game. Esc exits.

You have 4 lives, and when all are gone, the game doesn’t return to the title screen (yet) – you have to exit and start again.

For those of you who are missing a redistributable, you can find it on my compo page:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

And now I must sleep. Good night (or whatever the time is where you are).

Hint: The Malice Cannon technique is alive and well, for those of you who know what that is!

Hi all,

I’m running a quick stress test of my game (pre-alpha 1) to make sure it runs on as many machines as possible. (Min spec is a Geforce FX or equivalent – i.e. about 4-5 year old machine.) If you have the time, it would be a great help if you took a break to play it!

Here’s a direct download link to the file:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/WallGirlAlpha1.zip

Since it’s made using XNA, you’ll probably need to download the appropriate files. I’ve placed links to all the needed files on my contest page:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

If nothing else, you can download the redistributables etc. in the background while working on your entry. (Pretty please?)

Controls are Up, Down, Left, Right (arrows) to move, hold Z to shoot. When the program starts you need to press any key to start the game. Esc exits.

You have 4 lives, and when all are gone, the game doesn’t return to the title screen (yet) – you have to exit and start again. Sorry about that – I’m planning to fix it up before I submit the final version.

Thanks in advance!

In case there’s any doubt, the blue bullets are going downwards.

Only one problem: I haven’t implemented collision detection yet, so no shooting enemies and no getting shot. And the framerate is already acting funny for some reason. -_-; I have to force myself to concentrate on making the gameplay work first…

I’ve got the basic thing up and running. There’s an attract mode which pretty much displays nothing (just the scrolling background), and the play mode. Player can move around and is stopped when she hits the edge of the playable area. Animation not in yet.

The funny thing is, the one theme I actually did plan out in my head was “Advancing Wall Of Doom”. So here’s my design (Kabe Shoujo).

It’s a vertical shmup where you’re a magician. You’ve got the usual 3 kinds of shots: red shotgun spread (shot button 1), blue laser (shot button 2) and purple homing bolts (hold both shot buttons down – makes you move slower).

In addition, you can summon a “wall” of 6 or so magic circles (the Advancing Wall Of Doom) which forms a line about 1/3 way up the screen. You start with the wall active.Each circle starts as a random colour – red, blue or purple.

Enemies who touch the wall are destroyed. Every time an enemy touches the wall, it moves back a bit.

Now there are 3 kinds of enemy bullets – you guessed it: red, blue and purple. The wall circles only absorb bullets of the same colour. However, if you fly into the circle and use one of the shots, the circle will change colour after a short duration. The trick is to change the circle colours to best absorb the massive barrage of oncoming fire.

Also, you can dispel the wall by using the Bomb button – doing so makes you briefly invincible and unleashes a super attack. You can re-summon the wall using the same button, but you only get 3 re-summons per life.

I’m planning to have 1 tutorial stage (really a mini-stage) and 1 real stage.

Good luck, y’all.

Well, I managed to do as much as I thought I could. Now with nice particle systems and a couple of other enhancements.

Source code: http://haitaka.googlepages.com/Booon.zip

Time to go find myself some food, and possibly a quick shower before the compo starts.

Not for the game, for your development work!

If you have a Nico Nico Douga account, go search for the tag 作業用BGM.

More music than you can shake a stick at. Also, the downtime when the current mix ends and you’re looking for a new one helps to clear your head.

This is a little library for XNA to help with game making. It wraps stuff like object management, asset loading, shaders, etc. into a compact package. The idea is to make it easy to bang out something double-quick.

The library is based on Mike Schuld’s tutorials (www.thehazymind.com).

It’s not complete, but I don’t have the energy to finish it right now. Will try to add more functionality before the compo begins. No documentation but there’s an example program.

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/Booon.zip

Also, I made a page for my compo entry, whatever it will be.

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

Blah, must sleep now. It’s 1 am here.

Just wondering:

Do HLSL shaders count as “content” (in which case they must be written during the compo) or “part of a graphics library” (in which case they can be written before the compo)?

So I just heard that the compo’s this weekend. Might as well join, I guess.

My previous experience with *rapid* game development is limited to having coded up a simple shmup in Java with 3 enemy types (graphics courtesy of MSPaint) in approximately 6 hours. This was when I was on the graveyard shift and bored out of my mind. With any luck I shouldn’t have too much trouble cooking up something for this round.

The other problem, though, is that I have no idea how to do sound. Music, maybe, but not sound. I guess I should go find out about those two free audio tools that everyone’s raving about…

I’m thinking about making a custom library for simple management of assets and 3D models in XNA – probably built upon Michael Schuld’s tutorials (http://www.thehazymind.com/XNAEngine.htm) – I’ve done that twice in the past, so it should go pretty smoothly. Will see how that goes. In any case, if I do do that, it’ll be made available to everybody before start time.

Tools I’m using:

- XNA 3.0

- Photoshop 7 – yes, 7! I’ve never really felt the need to upgrade…

- Milkshape, if I do decide to do 3D graphics

- Possibly some audio stuff – what’s that one audio tool that everyone says is awesome?

- I may compose music using Daigasso! Band Brothers DX for the Nintendo DS, provided I have time. Since I have prior engagements during the compo period, the commute time should allow me to bang out a quick track or two.

Anyways, in my local time zone, the compo runs from 11am on Saturday morning to 11am on Monday morning – may actually take a half-day off work on Monday to finish up, but otherwise I fully intend to go at a relaxed pace. This probably means I’ll only have about 24 hours of working time – should be interesting.

Edit: Just downloaded sfxr. Thanks, DrPetter! Will play around with it when I have a bit of time.

Edit 2: sfxr is awesome. I’ll probably want to use Audacity to post-edit the sounds though, tweak the frequency or add echoes and stuff. I managed to produce a decent steam-valve effect in less than 5 minutes! Of course I’ll have to try and remember how I did it, since I can’t use it for the compo ><