I’m not entirely sure what just happened. I woke up in a strange place with a computer in front of me. A post-it note on the computer said, “You have 48 hours to make a game or we let you go.” Well, crap. We certainly wouldn’t want THAT, would we?

So I booted the computer and found myself in a Google Hangout with Mariah Almeida and Will Brierly. They were in a similar situation, though Will luckily had an unlimited supply of soda to sustain him. We therefore agreed that he’d be the one programming the game. I’d be on sound, since I love me some SFXR, and Mariah would do animations.

BUT WHAT WOULD WE MAKE?!

Well, we knew the theme was “Minimalism.” How did we know that? Don’t ask, it wasn’t established! We had also previously heard that the theme for this months One-Game-A-Month was “Spring.” Therefore, by combining these two themes together, and throwing in some POTATOES for good measure, we created… this.

The game has you controlling a little spaceship that shoots bees to pollinate potatoes, meanwhile trying to avoid the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you. And… that’s pretty much all there is to it.

Interestingly this game was created as kind of a stream of consciousness from all three of us. After the Google Hangout, Mariah went and drew 4 random things. I went and made 4 random sound effects. Will created 4 random game mechanics. We them smashed them together and called it a game.

This game has no title but you can play it here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6759226/LD/index.html

We are still currently trapped in our respective locations. Please send supplies.

- Dan

Well it’s taken about… 18 hours? Like 18-20 hours. By the time I had finished up the map, mouse scrolling, forests, mountains, houses, roads, skyscrapers, and the bulldozer, I felt like there was more than enough in Simini to justify its release into the world of Ludum Dare #23.

So here is the rundown. Simini is a miniature Sim City-esque game, though at the moment not nearly as deep. You have three kinds of structures you can build: Houses, Roads, and Skyscrapers. Houses generate resources based on what’s around them. So, for instance, if a house is placed near a forest, it will generate 1 wood per second.

Roads are basically like… the Zerg creep. You can only build houses, skyscrapers, and other roads within the vicinity of a road. To alleviate the obvious problem of “well crap, what if I destroy everything?” the player can place one free road anywhere on the map if there are no other roads. Roads are also the only structure that can be built over water and are therefore the only way you can access the other islands… for now. Airports are on the list for buildings I want to include in the future.

Skyscrapers generate money. Money doesn’t have any use yet, but I’d like to think in a future update it could be used for other kinds of buildings and potentially even public projects like parks or random events. Skyscrapers need to be placed near houses, so essentially they’re a resource generator that you build.

The other two icons you’ll notice on the bottom are the hand icon and a bulldozer. The hand switches you back to the default pointer. The bulldozer lets you destroy anything you’ve built and get back 50% of its resources. Will be handy later on when I can figure out resource destruction. I’d much prefer it if resources ran out after a specific amount of time, making them more limited in the world. The bulldozer will also be great when there are more building types and you feel like redesigning a town.

As per the rules of Ludum Dare, the source “code” is included, but as it is an MFA file you will need Multimedia Fusion to open it. The game itself currently only runs in Windows. I made a Flash test version and, trust me, you don’t want to play a 62×78 game with mouse scrolling in Flash. With the standalone version, however, you can hit Alt-Enter to fullscreen for a much less frustrating experience.

I will definitely keep picking at Simini as the year continues and get it into a form good enough for the IGF Pirate Kart. For now, hope you enjoy what I managed to whip up in well under the Ludum Dare time limit!

Download Simini Here

- Dan

Simini is coming along really, really well! I’ve been working on it for another 2.5 hours, and in that amount of time I have managed to make the following changes:

1. The game is now completely mouse based. Use left click to select a resource, or a structure from the UI. When you select a structure, the hand cursor changes to that structure so you can place it neatly. Right click is used for scrolling around the world. It’s still a little sensitive due to the very small size of the screen, but I managed to make it not-too-bad by adjusting how it scrolls and turning down the framerate.
   
2. Tweaked the numbers in the UI to be much more readable.
3. Resources have been limited to 50 apiece. This was due to a bug that would cause structures to be unbuildable once your resources surpassed 60. To make it fair, though, any gatherers you have on resources will continue to hang out on that resource until you have less than 50 of it, at which point they’ll continue gathering until the resource has been expended.
4. Fullscreen is now allowed for a less frustrating experience. Currently Alt-Enter but I’ll put in a Maximize button after lunch.

Other changes coming up will be limiting the resources you can gather to the number of Houses you have, and only to within a certain range of houses. However, roads will extend this range, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of dynamic gets created from that.

For this “Tiny World” theme I’ve decided to take the challenge from a literal perspective. This game is played at a resolution of currently 62×78, with the potential to go slightly higher but hopefully not by much. Gameplay is a mix of Sim and Strategy. Right now you click on a forest or mountain to gather Wood or Stone respectively, and then you build things: Roads, Houses, Power Lines, or Skyscrapers is the current crop of structures. Right now everything is controlled with the keyboard but first thing tomorrow I’ll be shifting over to mouse control as placing Roads currently is a pain in the butt.

I’m not entirely sure where the gameplay’s going to end up. After all, this is Ludum Dare, so I’m building from an iterative angle. Hopefully by the end I’ll have a nice little time-killer built.