Well,  after only getting a non-constructive 40 minutes of dev time this weekend, and having only got some tiles, a map and a window working in a meagre 65 odd lines of code – I can say with some degree of certainty that I will have to miss out on my entry to LD23. Not a nice decision to make, but one I don’t think I can avoid.

See you all for LD24 then

Well, this weekend is sort of busy for me – so I shall see if I can make an entry… Since I’m busy with the PGD challenge number 2, more bugs are fixed in my code than ever before so…. It does indeed look promising Especially with those killer themes!

Tools:

Graphics: Gimp, Paint.NET

Audio: Sfxr, LMMS, audacity, sibelius (maybe)

Code: FreePascal Compiler, Prometheus(again… It gets better entry on entry and I’ll upload the latest files to the SVN on sourceforge on friday afternoon), sdl_audio (maybe)

Misc: The ubuntu software centre and google… you never know – sometimes I miss something big when thinking about it -_-

So what went well?

-Library, the prometheus code re-write yielded far less bugs than any previous entry as well as no run-time dll-hells

-Game concept, keeping it simple as a major plus

-Learning, the games architecture is as close to quick ‘n dirty as I’d care to get – but it worked

-Time management, everything finished with around 2 hours to spare – not 4 hours like LD20 or 3 minutes like LD21!

What went not so well:

-Lack of native prometheus audio support, the bindings for OpenAL are dodgy at best!

-PNG loader is [very] buggy… Luckily the TGA loader is outstanding!

-Hours 0-24 writing 50 lines of code due to being AFK almost the entire time!

On the whole I’d have to give Solitude-76 my ‘best LD entry by me so far’ award. It was much closer to the sweetspot than any other entry without compromising too much on any area… But then again, this is my biased opinion – only time and the ratings will tell!

In order to add sound I’ve gone and thrown in the default Sdl_mixer and its all kicking nice…

About the game – its the future, the Soviet Union has just been nuked by the USA and they have bombers patrolling the area to thwart the move of dead hand…

However, dead hand will not activate: a single member of the former USSR survives deep under UVB-76: Kernel Kitten!

You must take control of Dead Hands resources and automated assembly machines that survived, build a defense and offense network to erradicate the american threat and take back the world – will you succeed?

Note: the background ‘music’ is a record sample of UVB-76 itself and the sounds were made with the aid of sfxr/bfxr… enjoy.

Warning: Fans of Wargames – the movie – I know its similar and its not accurate but hey, this is the soviet version. Cut down to fit inside  an LD48!

And a few minutes later we now have more stuff to the game…. WOO!

Now everything is written and works – its gameplay and art time!

Lets take this Defcon/Wargames style on… You’re all alone VS the entire world!

After a slow start to LD22 it seems my entry is picking up the pace and starting to look more like a game – and as they say: a picture is worth a thousand words!

So after some major rewrites of the prometheus library its almost done. I say almost – and its now t miunus 9 hours and here is what does not work… Yet.

• The XML handling system & TMX parsing system as a result.
• The OpenAL audio system.
• The FBO system for primitives and shaders.
• The WINAPI interface system for windows systems.

So, looking good I guess! On the other hand, mint 11 is still rocking my world – my new PC is minus a motherboard which is shipping its way to me and needs an OS installed… On to the good  news: GIMP, Paint.Net, VMWare Player, Geany and the usual LMMS work!

Here we go!

Yes its mentioned yet again – anyone whom previously had a crack at building/running my games has always had trouble with the little library of mine: unmet dependencies, instability, high memory usage… The lot basically. But no more – LD22 is the third Ludum Dare this will be in and for those already agonizing over the prospect fret not: I’ve done a 95% re-write job. Thats a 45% lower memory footprint – zero, nicht, niet, yada, rien, null, nil, rei third perty dependencies – a 40% decrease in executeably size, direct interfacing with X11/WINAPI (although to be fair WINAPI support is still being written) as well as a 35% lower cpu usage for general rendering making it much more GPU limited.

TMX, PNG and TGA support remains key, the OpenAL implementation is now finally steaming ahead so oggs may come with my next entry and the particle engine is being re-written for much more oompf. A simple data record storage solution is done so no more folders full of config files (expect the one telling the app how to load/where to find the db). Nice.

And for the compilation? No more releases for X64 mint/ubuntu – its all going to be X86 code for windows & ubuntu for every release thanks to a few VMs. Finally – a game library that works.

Looks like it took 2 LDs and a few thousand lines of re-writes to get this all working, but now get your CPU’s and OpenGL cards at the ready!

Well, I’ve spend many hours after the compo attempting to understand why my entry was so unrelaible on the new links in the comments section. I have thus polled 12 people whome I know have various operating systems – we tried:

XP x86 Sp2, XP x86 SP3, Vista x64 Sp1, 7 Home Premium x64, 2 x Ultimate x64, 7 Ultimate x86, Ubuntu 10.10 x64, Ubuntu 11.04 x64 and x86, Windows Home Server 2011 (slowly)

All these are the English variants with the latest links in the comments – I don’t know if anyone got it kicking – but I fail to see the problem. However, since then, the entire library has been scrapped and has been re-written with no dependencies at all – it runs on X11 and WinAPI from the ground up. Period. So next time, its faster performance and you aren’t expected to have a GMA >950 (945SE sort of runs…) with a D3D/Gl capable OS – you just need WinAPI/X11.

PS: For those whose games I reviewed – I was generous

As in the comment on the game page, the instability was caused by my french windows 7 copy that interprets a floating point of having a , (comma) and not a . (decimal point) which of course is the opposite for english windows. The result of feeding in the incorrect decimal separator is a memory access violation (or similar on different OSes)… Download links are below, it is quite unfinished but its there at last and I cannot say how much of a headache this was to fix.

Again, my sincerest gratitude to those that tried to run this so far. The linux build is still dodgy, so I recommend using WINE despite the sound issue remaining for the time being.

Page comment:

GREAT NEWS:
—————————————————–
THE BUGS RELATING TO WIN32 RELEASES HAVE BEEN SOLVED. LINK:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4853895/LD21/LD21_CyperSpace__Win32_R3_EN.zip

The bug related to foreign builds of Windows 7 (french) that interpreted floating point values as having a , not a . and this resulted in a crash in English windows as the reverse was true. This is SOLVED! (unless you have french windows)

The linux version (experimental) with some new dependency scripts can be found here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4853895/LD21/LD21_CyperSpace_Linux_DIY_R3.tar.gz

This is a DIY release, compile it youself from the scripts please (sudo bash the dependency .sh files and then DO NOT sudo the compile script unless you want to either run some chowns or sudo ./LD21s later)

I again, apologize for the fiasco and will be writing to a few people as to why foreign versions of windows interpret floating point values differently to avoid this for all people (need to feed back to a german friend whose game only works on german windows. I now know why).

Again, my sincerest apologies for the delay.

Now I have had a swamp of build issues with this and such and such not running on yadida. This seems to be due to the variable way in which various windows builds interpret floating point values – they either want them as ’0.3′ or 0,3′

I CANNOT BUILD A WIN32 RELEASE SPECIFICALLY FOR YOU.

The builds WORK on windows 7 X64 (on two seperate machines albeit no sound), and the linux build WORKS on Ubuntu x64 with common sdl and opengl packages installed. Period. I understand Linux x64 is not popular and in that instance I am going to get a WINE version rolled out.

For those that have invested in FPC please do compile – the library code is very rushed and this is to be forseen as I’ve had a hell time getting thigs working. I am currently trawling through code on a windows 7 netbook trying to find what is affecting th windows users while also installing a 32 bit linux machine to run a test compile and dependency list.

I am sorry for those unable to rate so far, however this issue will be resolved soon and many resolutions in library craft have been pulled from this LD as was the case for the last LD also.

Thank you dually for your patience.

While youtube continues to refuse my ogg video timelapse all I can say it was done in time, 7 seconds prior to the 48hour deadline and about 15 seconds before I fell asleep for the next 14 hours…

Some bugs remain but its playable, and the name is the result of me beign too tired to remember the awesome one I had worked out earlier and the typo ‘p’ the result of caffeine at 2:50AM.

If you run windows, audio will omst likely not work, if you use linux x86_64 it may work but I recommend compiling….

Check it out here if you are brave enough: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=4203

Developped with the nonstop briti-nyan, nyan-cat and other nyan variants to ensure maximum code nyan-a-bility.

After some bug fixing (remember, when using classes, include classes to your dependencies) the engine fires up some TMX goodness:

Note that the important window is on the left, the black one with the blue grid…

Code: Prometheus, pascal, openAL, openAL, SDL (haven’t entirely decided yet)

Graphics: Paint.Net, GIMP, Maybe PhotoShop

Sound: LMMS if I get time, Finale 2009, CuBase

I think I’m going to be in by successfully pushing aside all other commitments (sort of) BUT I can say one thing already:

99% chance of me making a platforming. I walked in to LD20 (my first LD) with Prometheus as a library that was in development. Within T+6Hours: 8 SVN commits, 70+ file patches and 80 bugs found (a few of which where recurring). This time, Prometheus has been tested in what is almost its entirety – no more fiascos. Only the new data formats etc for the library which are still in Alpha. 4 days to complete my 1000+ line implementation: the 96 hour lead up to LD21 may just be as tough as the LD itself

As some will know, I’ve had a lot of trouble fixing what i thought to be memory management teething problems. I would like to say the following:

I AM PROBABLY ONE OF THE WORLDS MOST RETARTED PEOPLE FOR THIS:

The bug causing access denied and random crashes can be (or rather  not be found) on line 142 of Src/Video/LocalAssistant.pas where a missing close(f) was found later which by some miracle does not affect my 64 Bit natty box and any other 64 bit ubuntu variant for that matter bu affects Win32, Win64, Linux 32 bit and pretty much every OS under the sun. The new package is uploading as I speak with a win32 binary and libs along with a linux (ubuntu) x64 binary too. Oh, and I fixed 8 pixels in the ’tilkeset’

Sorry for the inconvenience, but its all fixed now and if you have 3-7mins of your life to waste, you can now give it a spin!

PS: Lazy people find the link here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4853895/CrunchiesLD20Mk2-All.zip

UNfinished, but its there. Build problems and faulty POC (proof of concept) with runtime teething problems.. Buts its farther than I hoped to get on my first ld48, so thank you all and see you next time!

ps: 5.5-7.5hours work in a car with 1h34m to spare! yay!

After a trip to a V2 test site from WW2, I am now officially 12.5hours behind schedule with only 4hours of work in… So far the kernel is done, engine is done, threads are mostly done and particle effects are done along with menu launcher… And to top it off, a nice screeny of the main menu with particle background:

Just broke 125 lines with 0 hours sleep yestersday and prepped to leave on paris trip, I now have: TileD maps loading 100% loading done and rendering done onto my screen, Nice along with the start of a game map file under way (super nice

Story is something like this: You are an apprentice but somehow something happens to your mentor dude and you are being chased by bad guys that blow up the wrong persons house a few times. Luckily your mentor dude is alive and so are you. So he sends you ‘the key to the world’ – what shall it be? Because that package is pretty damn light!

Stay tuned! For the fate of the world! Game name? Nothing so far! C-A-F-F-E-I-N-E YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGH!