I was not at home until now – BUT NOW I AM.
I already have an idea, will start sketching things up soon – hope to have first screen shots in an hour or two…

Good luck to everyone participating!

Hi Everybody,

Since I had so much fun at this competition, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts in retrospect, 7 days after everything was done.

Basically, this will be a post-mortem of my game “Mauritius” along with random thoughts.

The Idea:

Upon finding out what the theme was, I started thinking quite a bit. I set myself a deadline of 6 hours into the competition to come up with an idea, and start working. To stimulate thinking, I opened up and read about Islands in Wikipedia, yielding all sorts of stupid ideas. I wasn’t sure if I was looking for a game in which islands are a game mechanic element, or merely a theme element. Needless to say, I went with the latter.

Reading about islands really stimulated me, and soon enough I had a bunch of random drawings on my desk, portraying various islands in all shapes and forms (including one on the back of a giant sea turtle, which was the runner up idea…). Finally, somehow I stumbled upon Mauritius and the story of the Dodo, and that was it.

Game Mechanics and Code:

Choosing a platformer/side-scroller was almost obvious for me, I have only recently went back to playing with game-programming, and anything more complex than that was out of the question.

I drew some sketches of what the game would look like, and didn’t really think of the details. I think this is the main flaw of my game, game mechanics are just too simple – I just didn’t have any good ideas regarding those, at least not ones I knew how to implement.

Code was written in C++ and ClanLib. I have been playing with both in the weeks before LD, just to make sure I remember how to wield this tool. I must say that 48h of coding really helps in MAKING THINGS WORK, without worrying about “But what if I want to add this feature?”. This really streamlined the whole experience, resulting in some ugly code, but at least a whole game. Definitely one of the best lessons leared – just code, damn it! don’t think about it.

Art:

The first thing I did is draw the Dodo sprites. I LOVE drawing sprites, and this one was especially fun. As a reference I searched for “Dodo” in google images, and just left the tab open while I draw the 32×32 pixels bird. Using GraphicGale’s onion skin really helped in making the animation better. The Portuguese hunter is a sprite I am particularly proud of – I drew using a random reference I found on google images (some 18th century etching), and for a 32×64 sprite I think it has nice details. I would have worked more on the animation though, but I didn’t have the time.

Tiles were drawn in a big frame in Paint.NET and later cut down to a tile set. I found this method good because it readily shows you how the tiles connect to each other. It’s the first time I made tiles for a side scroller of this kind, and it was FUN. Paint.NET, however, is really not an ideal tool for this – the grid is just not robust enough there, and handling 32×32 chunks is real cumbersome.

Music:

Music was whipped up very quickly – I used FruityLoops which I really like, and some samples I found on my hard-drive. I wanted something “Jungle” like, but not too happy, and I kinda like the result. Sounds effects were not really important, so I just went with “sfxr” and it did the job.

Random Thoughts:

Eli who introduced me to LD was very supportive, and having someone going through what you are, and sharing ideas, version, graphics and such was a great way to feel how you are coming along in the competition. I don’t think I would have finished anything there without him, so thanks dude!

In conclusion, I had an AWESOME time here at LD, and I am really looking forward for the next one. From what I’ve seen and rated so far, there are some REALLY good games here, so Kudos to all!

Thanks for reading,

Daniel

Hi All,

This is the first time I participate in LD48,  and I am having a lot of fun!

This is a first screenshot for my “Islands” game idea – called “Mauritius”, the small Indian Ocean Island that was home of the now extinct Dodo:

Mauritius Screenshot

In this game, you play a Dodo (probably the last Dodo). I hope to make it run away from all the things threatening to kill it, from hunters to cats to rats. I still don’t know exactly how it will be in the end, but we’ll see – being on an ISLAND will make escape for this flightless, swimless bird, very hard…

The game is written with C++, using ClanLib as a graphics library. Graphics are with Graphics Gale, Paint.net and Tiled for tile maps.

Anyway, thumbs up for everyone here – I’d be happy to hear your comments!

Thanks,

Daniel