So far today I’ve managed to get some base code done that I should have done a long time ago (hooray!) and basic player movement.

The level generation is still just a test thing to see how the tiles look… not great, but they’ll do for now.

I’m currently metaphorically bashing my head against a wall, trying to do collision checking. I’d forgotten how horrible it is. I think jumping in using hitboxes isn’t a good idea. I’ll have to simplify it, get it working, and then make it horribly complicated.

Not visible is the scrolling view as you move around. (Yay!)

Anyway, not spending enough time on this today, and hitting a block have injured my plans in getting Done. Oh, well.

Or, “Oh no, what am I letting myself in for?”

My themes are the above. Dig dirt, Descend into the ground, Destroy the environment for your own selfish needs.

Title: Dig, Descend, Destroy

Because I cannot think of a name.

Description:

Yet Another Mining Game ™. Dig, admire the not-very-realistic water and rock physics, collect treasure! Probably die horribly.

Mockup:

Definition of Done: (Oh dear, this is the hard bit! I’ve tried to limit myself, which means I might actually achieve ‘done’.)

• Player can run around and destroy terrain.
• Terrain is randomly generated to some extent. Caves, mineral veins, streams, all very basic.
• Water moves around, in a semi-realistic fashion.
• At least one kind of dangerous enemy.
• Animation of some sort. Fairly basic.

The more I look at this list the more minimal it looks! I’d like to try to have:

• Terrain generation that makes sense and isn’t boring.
• Several enemy types
• Terrain be falling-sand like, to some extent. Haven’t fully considered how that would work.
• Sounds! Not that likely and if so, probably sfxr.
• Particles! Ooh, sparkly.
• More player control over the terrain. Buckets, maybe explosives somehow.
• Maybe a shop? That’d make some sense.
• Even more feature creep…

Code-wise, I’ve decided to go with C++ as it’s what I’m most comfortable with, and depending on what convoluted physics models I end-up developing, Flash might not be fast enough.

Art is likely to be done in a mix of Paint and the GIMP, as the latter is better but takes forever to load up.

Sounds will probably be generated in sfxr, should they exist at all.

Music? You must be kidding!

So yeah, I spent too long getting nowhere, and didn’t feel like carrying on today (though I did make a brief attempt to fix things) so I’ll declare myself out.

Good luck to everyone else! There are quite a few games I look forward to playing.

As is traditional now, I’ve spent a couple of hours having things not work for no explicable reason. It doesn’t help that Flashpunk’s documentation isn’t very good, but all I’m trying to do is draw a line, for which there is a function, which does nothing.

Maybe it’s a simple thing (the equivalent to forgetting to add a tween to the world) but whatever it is, it’s burned me out a bit. If anyone could tell me how to draw a line and make it work (preferably onto a Canvas, as I’ll be doing collisions from it too) then I’d be very, very grateful! And you’ll get a warm, fuzzy feeling, along with a game that has lines in! Everyone’s a winner!

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.

The theme is a bit of an odd one, but I don’t think it’s terrible. That being said, I don’t actually have an idea yet!

First thoughts:

• Where are you going?
• Why is it dangerous?
• What are you given?

Naturally, all my vague ideas are monstrously too big for 48 hours. Maybe some kind of randomised structure, so that each of the three questions has several answers. But that still doesn’t help me know what I’m making! Especially if I want to stick with text-commands. Hmmmm.

Something about today made me lose motivation for LD, but then again, this doesn’t come around often, and it’s always a good laugh.

For some reason, I fancy doing an HTML/Javascript game, which relies of text commands as input – not necessarily text as output though. Most obvious use for that would be a text adventure, but I’ll try and think of something more interesting than that. Depends on the theme, of course!

Anyway, may the code be with you all! I’ll see you in the morning.

I’ve managed to be busy then uninspired, and spent most of yesterday discovering that FlashDevelop wasn’t working, and reinstalling that and Flex. So, I have very little of what could be considered a game:

The latest version looks like this, except the #s are replaced by text loaded from a file.

My eventual idea,thought of in the shower, is something a bit like a cross between a roguelike and Infinite Blank. So, a potentially infinite set of roguelike rooms, created and edited by players. This is quite blatantly well beyond what I can achieve before the end of his compo, but oh well!

I’ve wanted to enter since I heard of this, and having suddenly got a simple, but pretty cool idea last night, I’m going for it! And to make me more likely to complete my game, I’m posting publicly about doing so. That way, I can be motivated by public humiliation!

Not sure I want to give away the idea yet, so I’ll just say I’m finally going to properly try Flash with Flashpunk, and Box2D. Should be very educational if nothing else!

Dear C#,

I know we got off to a bad start. I was prejudiced against you, despite what my friends said. But in the end I gave you a go, because Visual Studio 2008 is the only IDE on this, my Dad’s laptop, and I didn’t want to use C++. I mean, me and C++ were good friends. Good friends. But she’s too awkward to work with.

You didn’t meet up to my expectations, when your console output was so slow; when you only allowed a few, predefined colours. I could see the good in you, see how you were trying so hard.

Then today, well, I’ve had enough. I wasted so much time today, when I should have been writing game logic, searching through your documentation, trying to find how to draw one image onto another. Eventually someone helped me know how to do it, but it’s still awkward. Why does it involve another class? It’s a basic, fundamental thing to do.

But the final straw was window sizes. When I want an 800×600 window, that means the inside. I wouldn’t mind if there was a way to know the border sizes, but there isn’t, and they vary between operating systems. There is simply no way to do it. Or if there is, it’s not worth the hassle.

Goodbye, C#. It’s not me, it’s you.

(Relatedly, I guess I’m out of the competition now. Bah!)

OK… so, as things have turned out, the only IDE I have around is VS08, so I’ll be using C#, which I’ve only been using for about a week now. Oh well!

For some reason, I was thinking about enemies as weapons earlier, it just popped into my head. The current idea is that rather than literally using enemies as weapons, you’re in some situation where enemies hate each other too. Like… like a Colosseum, that could work! Yeah. So somewhat like Daleks, you have to guide the enemies into each other, but they actually batle in that case rather than exploding. YES! Hooray for a game idea in about 10 mins!

… isn’t much different from the end of Saturday, I think.

I wasn’t taking this contest seriously, expecting most of my time to be used up. What I did have left I did very little with. Mostly today I just drew a floating island and added them in. So in 2 days I’ve almost made the overworld.

Link again is here. I’m not submitting as it isn’t a game. But it’s been fun, and I’m looking forward to wasting a couple of weeks playing other people’s entries.

Well, I did have some time to work on it. Not enough for me to think I could finish anything, so I’ve sort-of dawdled. But I’m learning how to use Flashpunk, anyway, so that’s handy.

Current build of my “game” is here. You can move with the arrow keys and… that’s it. Yeah. PRODUCTIVITY HIGH SCORE!!

Turns out that everything is against me this weekend. Visiting people, and I have some assignments I need to finish for next week too. Bah! I’ll have a go at working on my game anyway, as I do have an idea I want to try:

Some guy, or a race of some guys, have kidnapped all the islands, which are thus illogically floating. You must fly your airship (yay, airship!) to islands, where you then battle some guys, stop the whatever-it-is that makes the island float, and it falls back in the sea with a satisfying plop as you escape on your airship again. Rinse and repeat.

That’s the basic idea, but there are a few ways I could go with it… Originally I was thinking trading between islands. Or maybe there’s a shop you need to go to to buy ammo/weapons/ health packs/etc. And randomised levels, but I always try level generators in LD and they always take most of my time and turn-out awful.

I was gong to give Flashpunk a go with this too, which I have no experience in yet.

So yeah, doomed to failure. Good luck everyone else!

LD16 was a lot of fun, despite continually running into killer bugs that took ages to fix.

What went well:

• I managed to pull it all together in the last couple of hours and actually end-up with a game. I very nearly didn’t.
• People seem to like it, too! Didn’t expect that one.
• After releasing, I managed to locate and destroy one last memory leak. Otherwise it would have been unplayable.

What went badly:

• The aforementioned bugs.I probably spent at least a third of the time I was working on the game trying to fix memory leaks, infinite loops, and the like. These were often related to…
• I didn’t prepare. DESPITE knowing very well that I needed to get a basic framework, in the end I was just too lazy, and started the compo even without most of the libraries I needed.
• I didn’t spend enough time at the start thinking about what my game would be. Instead, I charged ahead with a turn- and tile-based engine, assuming I’d think of something later. Fortunately I did, and the idea was reasonably fun.

What I would improve:

• There are still a couple of glitches – one is that sometimes monsters manage to get on the same tile as you and you can’t attack them – not sure why.
• The view is too small. This is mostly so I could avoid trying to do any ray-casting and what-have-you. Though since I let you see monsters for an extra tile away, you can still see through walls. Whoops.
• You automatically climb down ladders, which isn’t ideal. In fact, I think I accidentally left it so that you’ll go down a ladder if you attack a monster which is standing on it. I ran out of time, and it was easier to code like this. Sorry!
• I had ideas for more things you could ‘explore’ and earn XP from – such as each time you come across a new animal or plant. But I never got time for it.
• The difficulty increase is really naff. Or at least, what’s meant to increase the difficulty – each time you go down a level, the monsters get +1 to attack, defence, and hp. But each time you level up, which can occur 2 or 3 times per level, you get +2 max hp, are fully healed, and your attack and defence increase by 1. So it’s very, very easy to quickly outpace the monsters. I didn’t take the time to balance it, as it was about 1:30 am by then, so yeah.

Final notes:

• I do have some ideas for expanding it, and I hope I actually get around to doing so this time. I think I will do, as I’ve wanted to make a roguelike for a long while, and after I lost all the code to my other one (Nooooooo!) this is a good opportunity to get back into it.
• Hanging out in #ludumdare made the whole thing a lot more fun, even when it seemed I would end the competition with only a mediocre level-generator.

My LD entry, Boboil goes Exploring, will no longer ‘melt your laptop’, as I’ve fixed the memory leak.

Also, as some people said they were on laptops, I’ve added support for arrow keys too. So play it NOWZ!

Well, I’m finished. The game… isn’t as finished.

Linky

But wow, I’m pleased I got so much done in the last couple of hours. There’s a game in it! Wow. You run around, biffing bodzhas, and exploring to gain XP and level-up – the only way to get stronger is to explore the map! That’s about the only interesting feature, but oh well. It’s over, it works, and I’m happy.

Hooray! It now functions as an actual game, albeit without win/lose conditions or multiple levels. But still, progress! And if there’s one thing I need now, it’s progress.

Hooray!

I’m actually quite pleased with the player and monster graphics. 16×16 means you can do really rubbish drawing and it still looks OK. Hurrah!

Everything was going smoothly so I should have known it would all go wrong. I’ve been battling a SIGSEGV error where I can’t locate the problem. It’s the sort of situation that needs a sleep, and a fresh look in the morning… except it’s LD so I can’t do that. Bah.

Erm, yeah, maybe I will eventually sort this out, and then… I will nearly have a playable game! Maybe. Fun? Definitely not.

EDIT: Fixed it, and you know what? The problem was a distance away from the error – it was caused by the monsters not knowing where to move when they’re too near to the player. Bah! If I’d considered their AI earlier, I’d have saved a couple of hours, probably.

First, current screenshot:

Whoooo!

Yeah! In the last… hour and a half, I think, I got some player interaction in there! Oh, yeah! Things are going quite smoothly all of a sudden, it’s rather odd.

Finally had an idea of what the game will be about, and I might as well say it – a dungeon crawler, where the only way to get experience is by exploring. Plan is every tile revealed will give you 1 XP, though other exploratory things could help too – perhaps discovering interesting plants? Actually, maybe each time you face a new monster you get some, that could work.

The darkness has the added usefulness of partially disguising how bad the level generator is.