For some reason, my visual text editor for this site broke, along with just about everything else on the “new post” screen. Anyhow, a screenshot of what I have now.

I probably won’t use wheelchairs this time. But then again, I might. Either way, I’m using GameMaker8 Pro and PXTone.

I would also post a workspace picture, but I A) lack a camera and B) don’t have anything to show off. Just about every single workspace picture I see has 2 monitors (minimum).

My God, it's full of... nails? Huh.

Spawned out of #ludumdare.

So, after my second LudumDare (the first being 14th, I forgot about LD for the 15th contest), I was rather disappointed. I made 2 entirely crappy games, one not even functional. I did manage to stick with my wheelchairs, but I really just made a platformer with spring platforms, and added some outline graphics to make the blocks look a little better, and little branches to hold the springs onto walls. But in all honesty, it was completely rushed (yes, I’m comparing this to a 48 hour timeframe) and played like crap. I couldn’t even be arsed to make the “PRESS ANY KEY” message blink in and out, or even use an outdated chiptune I made.

However, on the plus side, I participated, and I made ExciteMike’s wallpaper be square. I also learned I suck at making randomly generated mazes.

So, maybe next time I’ll think of a better idea. I can’t say I liked the theme. Don’t flame me on this, but I think most people just voted +1 because it wasn’t a bad theme, and it ended up winning (much in the same way that a tournament participator could be getting 3rd place every single round and still win).

Guess what? My new game I’m working on involves wheelchairs. Again. Perhaps I can keep this up and make more wheelchair related games in the future. However, the wheelchair here is futuristic, and in space! It’s also mind controlled by whoever is strapped into the thing. Epic win.

Screenie:

Well, I’m totally screwed now. I just implemented the full maze view into my game, thus revealing that my entire game is broken. There are invisible walls all over the place, walls that you can walk over, and it’s all really screwed up beyond repair. Unless I can make another game in these next 7 hours, I’m stuck.

Fortunately, I have an idea for a game. It’s not incredibly good, but I think it will suffice. It’s actually probably better than a random maze, since the mazes sucked anyways (could be solved in about 4 moves!).

Anyhow, I got my maze generator working. I still have to make a possible path to the end possible at all times, as evident by this picture…

So, I’ve been working on that game, and I’ve definitely made headway on it. However, GameMaker must think that “1″ = “0″. I’m using string_char_at(“0101″,4), and it returns 0! What on earth?

Yeah, with my current game, it takes 53 lines of code for you to move, and it’s just a maze game. No wonder I’m getting a headache! With the random generation system, it accesses a data structure about a million times, and sometimes it gives me errors because some spots on the data structure don’t exist yet! I’m running out of ideas and I’m panicking quite a bit, with only about another, say, 5 hours left of good development time to get it working. Then, I have to copy the code into the other 4 directions so you can actually move around the maze.

Then, I actually have to make a purpose to the game. <_> If I don’t finish, I might just make a simple preset maze, making the game much easier to make. But hey, what’s the “fun” in that?

Also, since I’m required to release the source code, I’m commenting it to help clear up my head, and that of anybody who wants to take a shot at fixing the darned thing so it works. This is really giving me a hard time.

But hey, no worries! I don’t have to submit anything, now do I?

So, about a week or so ago, I left my computer to go eat lunch. Computer enters screensaver, I eat lunch, and I come back down, just in time to see my monitor completely frozen, with random dots appearing and flashing about near the top of my screen. Nothing was responding, so I did a force-restart so I could log on again.

Then, I did the same thing. Same things happens, but every once in a while it would also flash the whole computer a random color, usually a primary color, or any other combination of the 3 (red, green, blue).

The issue hasn’t resolved itself, unfortunately. I found out that it also does it whenever I try and run a video on iTunes, or use Hammer, except it automatically resets after a few minutes.

This is quite frustrating, seeing as I was going to try and use Unity for my contest entry, and how Unity, along with the other mentioned programs, would require quite a bit of “hardcore” rendering (my screensaver was 3D pipes, so maybe it has to do with 3D rendering).

Of course, it could all be for the better: I suck at Javascript, and I’m only getting 24 hours to work on it, not including various interuptions like sleep, food, and life in general, so working with what I’m used to (GameMaker) would probably be a good idea.

Anyhow, maybe next time I’ll use Unity (and fail ).

EDIT: Just realised this means no Garrysmod.

D****t.

So, I just now took a look at the LudumDare site, and see the counter…

7 days left!

Naturally, I flipped out and started to hyperventilate. I soon realized that it was the same weekend I had to leave on saturday to participate in a competition elsewhere.

I knew I should’ve looked sooner! I could’ve tied the vote! XD

Anyhow, despite these problems, I’ll still try and get something in. So, that’s all.

This is why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRwynoYELVE

So, I decided to try LD out. I actually found it while looking for “more cowbell” pictures to put in a slideshow at school, and found a screenie of jovoc’s Cowbell Hero. I noticed: Hey, it’s going to start soon! So I decided to join.

Introduction

So, I think I did fairly well. I picked an easy way out, in my opinion: I was actually thinking Rain would win the theme (although I didn’t particuarly want it), so I came up with an idea of acid rain falling from the sky, and using moving platforms to keep the rain from hitting you. But instead, Advancing Wall of Doom won. So I came up with a quick idea: You run across randomly generated terrain (2D) to avoid some wall of sorts. I wrote some code for the laser of doom (the wall), and created a little black ball with 3 frames of animation: one with ‘J’ written on the ball, one with K, and one with L. The idea was to press them in that sequence to move the ball foward. I ran into a problem: I couldn’t get the ball to act correctly to the terrain. So, I scratched the random terrain idea and went for something much simpler: a platformer game. I got the JKL movement idea from a game called “Dick Chaney’s Sky Patrol” whereas one level you were in a wheelchair, and you used IOP to move foward. So, I made the character a wheelchair. I’m a horrid spriter, so I didn’t put a person in it. Thus, Uber Unmanned Wheelchair Delxue was born.

The creation proccess

I was currently making another game to pass the time while waiting for Ludum Dare to start. It had autotiling. So I made some quick autotiling for the walls, getting the idea from the Dream Sector in Jumper2. I also made some other colored walls.

Then, I made sprited movement. You might not be able to see it in-game, but the wheel actually “spins” when you’re moving, but it stops when you stop moving. Genius!

Then, I programmed a quick platformer engine. Nothing special, although I did everything in the “step” event instead of keyboard events, because keyboard events like to conflict with one another. Which means that you would stop for a short amount of time when you jumped. Kinda inconvenient, considering how chaotic this game is.

Next, I began level design. I made a quick introductory level, featuring 0 moving parts. A lot of people had problems with this level. Failure, because you have to beat it to play the rest of the game (non-linear level path: level designer’s worst nightmare). As a result, people didn’t like it. I thought it was rather easy, although having played the game untold amounts of times, and having 3 years of platformer-game experience, that probably wasn’t a very good judgement difficulty-wise. I also made a wall tileset so platforms wouldnt’ just float there (although they do in later levels ).

The next level introduced a gimmick used throughout the entire game: spinning sawblades! Whee! I tried to “time” the sawblades so you came up to them when they were out of the way, although this proved to be a difficult task because I could only start them at 90 degree intervals. Also, so that the sawblades wouldn’t spin off of an imaginary pivot point, I made a tileset that allowed me to make pipes. Snazzy!

The third level was an attempt to introduce the third wall color (by the way, the wall colors don’t mean anything), and the concept of waiting. Waiting. Yep, while a giant randomly-generated laser is steamrolling toward you, you have to wait. As a result, there are a few close calls. Also, the last part is kinda hard to jump over. :/

Fourth level: Giant wall of sawblades! Whee!

The fifth level introduces the pause item, which will slow down the steamrolling laser to a mere tenth of it’s original speed.

Then, the ‘game completed’ screen comes up. Party! You made it this far.

Hopefully, you didn’t quit there.

The humor proccess

At this point in making the game, I was feeling pretty worn out and silly, wanting to crank out some random gimmick, causing humor. So, I took some inspiration from Karoshi 2. If you have never played that game, go Google it. Anyways, if you have played that game, you know its random style of throwing in little injokes, or continuing the game when you try to quit. So, if you check the password box, you may notice: “Hey, I don’t remember that password being for any of the levels! So you click OK. And it goes to level six.

Level six is an abusage of pause signs. You have to go uber-fast on this level, because if you aren’t fast enough, you have to wait for the sawblade to get out of the way, and so the laser blocks off the exit. Level failed.

Then, it tells you that it’s really done now.

But it isn’t. Go check the passbox, and it’s a new password!

I had a lot of fun with this level. The original level didn’t have a pause item, yet it was still beatable. Barely. This was one of those moments when I decided to actually give the player a break.

Lookie, a new password!

This level was based off of the idea of having to backtrack a bit to make a jump, and backtracking again to win. Most levels are RUSH RUSH RUSH RUSH RUSH RUSH OMG THE LASER IS CATCHING UP OMG OMG WOAH I MADE IT HOLY CRAP, but I decided to put in a little variety.

Now, it tells you there is no new password. Don’t beleive it? Go check the password box. See? same password. You must be done now. So quit.

Yeah, I felt like being a jerk.

So, this next level is based off of waiting. The jump is kinda hard to make.

Now, for the final level. This one took a while to make/beat, especially with the sawblade at the beginning. Then, I had a lot of fun with the next part. Not only is the laser on your butt, but the sawblades are nigh-impossible to navigate. A fitting last level.

Then, it thanks you for playing and says you’re done. Trust me this time, you’re done.

What I did right

I made a game.

I made it within the time limit.

It had a main menu.

I personally think it turned out really well, for a 7-hour game.

What I did wrong

Too hard!

Not enough stuff

Inconvenient menu

Lame idea (in my opinion)

Conclusion

I think I did well for a first time, especially considering the small amount of time I had to work on the game.

Well, I added a whole lot without journaling about it. :/ Anyways, the game has a total of 10 levels. If you can only find 5, don’t worry. Instead, play some old levels. Yep. Spinning sawblades. CONTROLS: Left and right to move, up to jump. 1,2, and 3 to operate the main-menu. DOWNLOAD FROM WILLHOSTFORFOOD (becuase ludumdare refused to, for some reason) : http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=63345

I’m done for the day, I’ll continue working on the game tomorrow. I’ve gotten a working menu, and 5 levels. Can’t say much, as the “done for the day” is rather sudden, and not to my will. See ya!

So, I “cleverly” avoided making a saving system with something that actually turned out becoming harder than just regular saving: Level passwords. Each level has it’s own password, and if you enter the password into the menu, it goes to that level. Seen it before, right? Well, I took it to the next level.

The next level would be file writing. After quitting each level, it will tell you the password of the level. Then, it asks you if you want to save that password onto password.txt. If you say yes, it will write the password of the current level to password.txt, otherwise it won’t. Then, in the password section of the menu that allows to to go to a level, it will show the default password as whatever it reads in password.txt. Thus, the password default is the most previously saved-at level. Convenient. Unfortunately, this took a huge chunk of development time – I’m still working on level 3.

Also, I ate a pizza slice for lunch. I don’t have a camera, so no pic.

I named my game. So far, you control an automated wheelchair and navigate the trickiest urban terrain. Here’s the catch: A giant lazer is coming in after you! Here’s a little picture of preview-mode, which allows you to check out the level before you play it.

Rather large screenshot. The game automatically adjusts the screen resolution to reduce blurriness. It also gives the game a “retro” look because the view in the room is 320×240, half the size of the resolution. Now, an in-game screenshot.

As you can plainly see, the wall of doom is catching up on me. I intentionally did badly just so I could get the wall of doom in the screenshot.

Anyways, so far, the game has 1 level, 1 tileset, 2 blocks (green and purple), a wall of doom, and a wheelchair. And don’t forget preview mode!

So, this is my first LD. I’ll be using GameMaker to program (although if my CS4 trial didn’t run out I might’ve used Flash), and PXtone to create sounds. However, I ran into a small problem for this weekend. First, I came down with a sickness yesterday. Then, on Saturday (first day of working on the game) I have a concert to play in at about 7:00 AM. The rest of the day is free, thankfully. I’ll get most of my stuff done then. Then, the next day, I have a piano recital to attend to, AND an awards ceremony to go to. As a result, I won’t get a huge amount of production time. I’ll still try my best, though.