Ludum Dare » ArmchairArmada

Forgive Me … What Have I Created!?

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 07:03:06 +0000

I know not what evils I have unleashed.

Surviving in a warzone

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 01:11:20 +0000

I have an idea for what kind of game I want to make, but I’m not 100% certain about how successful I might be. I have been wanting to test out Unity more and the idea I have might have quite a bit of content, so between how much might need to be figured out and how much needs to be made I might not have enough time. That being said, I still intend to try to make something.

The idea I had was to present a different perspective on war. You play as a defenseless civilian in a war-torn area. There are soldiers, tanks, artillery, and bombers throughout the area battling each other. The city is being destroyed and crumbling around you. All you need to do to ‘win’ is to survive to the end of the battle.

Awesome Game Compilation!

ArmchairArmada — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 07:11:53 +0000

I think I might be failing as far as purposely making it bad. It’s so tempting to tweak things to make it feel a little better — I cannot resist it! Anyhow, I’m making a compilation game. So far I completed (with exception to sound) two of the games today. I plan to keep making games until the time runs out, so I don’t know how many there will be in the end.

Game 1 is called “Lost In The Woods.” Try to find your way back home. Controls are arrow keys.

Game 2 is called “Alien Invader.” It’s a somewhat standard space shooter with a twist.

Edit: If you have Python & PyGame and would like to test out what I currently have, feel free to download it here: http://temp.natewm.com/prog/agc_alpha_1.zip

Greatest Discovery

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 06:35:32 +0000

Not only is there life on Mars, but that life is Dinosaurs!

Some Astronaut Graphics

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 04:54:12 +0000

I don’t know what kind of game I’m going to try to make, but I just spent some time in Blender making an astronaut on Mars. This is not actual in-game graphics, but a Blender render. The actual Unity game will look a little different.

My Declaration of Who Knows What?

ArmchairArmada — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 22:25:34 +0000

I don’t know if I will be able to accomplish much this Ludum Dare. Tomorrow might be all used up with other plans, but there might still be a possibility that something might get accomplished.

If I do participate I would like to try making something with Unity. I’ve played around with it a little, but there are still a lot of things for me to learn. I think it would be fun to try to at least make something small and simple with it.

Continuing LD #18

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 01:38:56 +0000

I will be continuing work on my LD #18 attempt. I did not upload it to the site at the time, since it was not really a game at the time — no winning or losing. It may be possible for me to create some levels and turn this into a little platforming adventure.

Here is the timelapse from the LD #18 weekend.

My Timelapse Video

ArmchairArmada — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:37:45 +0000

I didn’t quite have enough time to finish even with the extra jam day. I am still working on it and I hope to bring it to completion relatively soon. In the meantime, enjoy this timelapse video of me working on the game. It covers 32 hours worth of work over a span of three days. More information is provided in the YouTube video description.

Link to ArmchairArmada’s LD18 timelapse video

Jam Time — Here’s what I have.

ArmchairArmada — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 03:35:58 +0000

I didn’t really have a playable game at the time of the deadline, but I thought I’d share my game’s current status.

DOWNLOAD CURRENT PLAYABLE DEMO (Windows executable)

Enemies following and some musical instruments.

Barrage of Bouncing Baddies

ArmchairArmada — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 04:38:45 +0000

I now have improved player controls, animation, backgrounds, and bouncing enemies. I have no idea how the gameplay is going to work, but I’m thinking of this Pied Piper type guy being able to tame different enemies with different instruments. Then they follow him around like Yoshi’s eggs in Yoshi’s Island. I’m not sure what happens next.

Bouncing Enemies

Some Delays, Ok Progress

ArmchairArmada — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 01:38:45 +0000

I had a few delays today — slowing progress down a bit, but I feel like I’m getting back on track. Here is a screenshot of how my game currently looks. It has almost no gameplay — just a tilemap and basic character controls.

Hero standing near some water.

10 Hour LD

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:07:07 +0000

I’m not going to be able to do much (if any) work on Saturday and part of Sunday, so I might have to attempt a 10 hour Ludum Dare this weekend. Fortunately I’m going to know what the theme is so I can plan some stuff out whenever I have free time tomorrow. It still might turn out to be a fun LD even with the reduced time limit.

I plan on using the usual Python and PyGame. I’ll only have time for something simple.

Blah

ArmchairArmada — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:22:03 +0000

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where the more you mess with your game the less fun the game becomes? This Mini Ludum Dare I decided to skip good programming practices and just hack stuff together to get gameplay up and running quickly. The problem is, many of these messy ad-hoc solutions are now causing me trouble.

I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but I think I may take a break from this project. If/when I pick it up again I will most likely do a complete rewrite of the code.

Might Try To Finish By Tomorrow

ArmchairArmada — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:14:51 +0000

I took a little bit of a break today and didn’t accomplish as much as I could have. Since the animated gif I pretty much just added the title screen, a land mine that explodes, and the damage meter. I still need a few more enemies, levels, sound and music, and a few other things. The hardest part, I think, will be in trying to make tracks that are actually fun to play.

Current Progress

ArmchairArmada — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:18:00 +0000

Still need to add missile launching, enemies, crashing, exploding, mayhem and destruction.

Pop a Wheelie

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:33:59 +0000

More Exciting Bike

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 03:25:03 +0000

I don’t know how much I will be able to accomplish over this weekend, but I made a mess of graphics for “More Exciting Bike.” It’s like Excite Bike with explosions!

Timelapse and Postmortem of Unfinished Game

ArmchairArmada — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:37:53 +0000

The timelapse video of me working can be found here. It’s only 22 of the 48 hours, since I turned my computer off at night and deleted the frames which where black due to my screen turning off from inactivity.

What went right:

I had a lot of fun.
I chose to not worry too much about graphics, theme, story, etc.
Ran into no major time wasting bugs.

What went wrong:

Scope of the game would have been better for a PyWeek.
It would have been better to start with a library or codebase that handled much of the grunt work for me. Instead of working on a game, I spent a lot of time writing code for gui, animation, tilemap, resource management, collision detection, etc.
I didn’t have anything a player could control until 3 hour from the deadline.

I’m thinking of trying to bring this game to a completed state within the next few days.

Foundations

ArmchairArmada — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:02:00 +0000

I have most of the foundations of a game (probably more than I really needed), but nothing playable yet. Actually, I don’t even have any player controls. However, with what I do have I’m sure I can get a game together pretty quickly tomorrow. I’m going to have to simplify a lot of my ideas, but it might still be fun. I hope I can pull it off — it’s going to be challenging.

There above screen shot doesn’t well represent the work I’ve done.

Junk to prove I’m doing stuff

ArmchairArmada — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:56:37 +0000

Although my game engine is somewhat functional, it is not yet a game. I don’t have this guy running around yet. Maybe in a few hours I’ll be in better shape.