And by basic, I mean very basic.  I’ve had a pretty productive day, though I really thought I would be much further along by this point.

The concept is an arena shooter meets zelda-esq adventure, with a Sci-Fi setting.  I have the basics of the game mechanics built, but that’s about it.  It’s almost all squares and flixel default graphics currently.

Click here to play the prototype.

It’s bed time.  There is lots to do tomorrow.

• Multiple level support
• Dialog interface
• Upgrades and items
• Art
• Story
• Sound
• and much more…

We will see how far I get.

Progress is slower than expected, largely due to my lack of experience with Flixel.  I’m pretty happy with the player movement and shooting though.  Next up up is enemies.  But first I’m going to take a break and meet some friends for food.  I’m hoping to have most of the gameplay wrapped up tonight, and then I can spend tomorrow on things like art and story.  No screen shots yet, as it is all still rectangles and Flixel defaults.

I have Flixel up and running, and now have a framework I can start building a game on top of.  I’m still a bit uncertain about the theme.  So I’m going to continue to work on my engine.  Next steps are:

• Improve player movement
• Mouse aim and shooting
• Proper level loading
• Enemies
• Enemy path finding

I didn’t get a chance to buy groceries last night, so I’ve ordered pizza.  I tend to eat pretty poorly during LD48s.

I’m getting a bit of a late start, but I figure I can get a couple of hours work in, and still get up reasonably early tomorrow.

I’m at a bit of a loss for what to do with this theme.  But I’ve wanted to make a Zelda-esque adventure game for a while, so I’ll start working on the engine for that.  The idea will evolve over time.  My first instinct is to build my own engine, but ld48 experience tells me I need to simplify as much as I possibly can.  So I’m going to go with Flixel.  I haven’t worked with Flixel much in the past though, so I’ll have to start by reacquainting myself with it, and getting something simple up and running.

I’m looking forward to this LD48.  I have a birthday party to attend Friday night, but otherwise my weekend is open.  It’s been a while since I’ve participated, and I missed out on the montage fun last year, so I decided to do one now.

My history with the LD48:

Good luck everyone.

This weekend I’m going to revisit my LD13 entry.

The game received reasonably high ratings in the judging, which surprised me.  I felt the game was very unfinished, but the feedback was quite positive.

The game is playable here:

http://disruption.ca/roads/roads.html

The LD13 details are here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/?category_name=ld13&author_name=erik

Based on the feedback, I plan to work on the following things this weekend:

• Interface improvements.
• Better graphics.  More visual feedback for actions.
• More levels, perhaps with some additional gameplay elements.

The November MiniLD will be happening on the weekend of the 26th.  I’m announcing the rules now so that you have some time to think about what you would like to do.

The concept is Unfinished Business.

On the 26th, write a journal entry about a game that you created in the past, preferably a previous LD48 entry.  In the journal entry link to a build of the game in it’s current state, talk about where the game is at, and where you would like it to be.

Then, over the weekend do as much as you can to improve on your old game.  Submit your improved game after 48 hours, and be sure to link back to your opening journal entry in your submission.

The regular LD48 restrictions are relaxed for this MiniLD.  Do whatever you can to make your game as awesome as possible, as long as you still have the legal right to redistribute the game. (no copyright infringement allowed)

To submit:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-22/

To view all submissions:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-22/?action=preview

I’ve been working on my game, and it’s come a long way.  It now looks better, the character moves faster, and there are 5 levels that were not in the competition version.  I think the new levels present some interesting puzzles.

Play Online

I still need to work on making the wall collision less sticky.  Also, I’d like to animate my character and explosion sprites.

Here is a post-compo, not for judging build of my game.  3 additional levels, improved player movement and various minor tweaks.

The graphics are still very primitive, but I think the new levels are interesting.

Normally I make an effort at including at least a couple of journal entries, but I didn’t write anything at all this time.  By about hour 30 an entry was looking very unlikely, so I didn’t bother.

Inspiration struck in the last 10 hours though.  I made a puzzle game with crude graphics, little polish, but a reasonable number of levels.

Play it here if you are interested:

http://disruption.ca/cave/cave.html

I’ve got a couple more level ideas, and some tweaks in mind.  I’ll probably upload a post-compo version in a few days.  Happy rating everyone.

Lack of motivation at the half way point means that I never did get around to art.  Also, the lack of playtesting makes me nervous.

But I think I have a pretty neat game.

Click here to play The Growth online.

Download the source + SFW.

Edit: If you can’t see the text (flash under linux?) please try this build with embedded fonts.

I had mixed motivation levels today.  I did manage to get things to a playable point.  I should have gotten more done though.

Play my current build on line.

I have a very simple tile system in place.  I thought I would have simple gameplay by this point, but I’ve run into a problem where my recursive flood fill is blowing the as3 stack.  I’m too tired to figure out what I’m doing wrong, so I think I’m going to call it a night and look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow.

I’ve participated in a lot of LD48s, but I’ve never posted a workspace photo.

I really should learn to make music with that keyboard.  It’s probably time to get rid of the g3 imac as well.

Roads to Nowhere Post Mortem

My Significant Other was disappointed to discover that the fancy salad she made me for lunch on the Sunday of the competition didn’t make it into my food journal because even though I took the photo, I was too busy implementing last minute game play to write the post.

So, here it is.  Pears soaked in craberry juice, roasted almonds and brie cheese with mixed greens.  Very tasty.

In the end I did get my pathfinding working to the point that I was happy with it.  However I spent so much time on debugging that I had to simplify my game play significantly.  Painfully, the game play that is included barely requires any pathfinding at all.  Another downside to so much time wasted bug hunting is that I didn’t take the time to improve the graphics.

On the plus side, I got a few levels made, and I think you can call this a fairly complete game.

Follow the link to play online:

http://disruption.ca/roads/roads.html

Click here to download the source and .SWF:

http://disruption.ca/roads/roads.tgz

I’ve spent a lot of time today fighting with buggy path finding.  The code is supposed to find the shortest path from any road tile to the city.  It’s mostly working, but it occasionally produces incorrect results when there are loops in the graph.  Frustrating.  I haven’t implemented any game play yet because I’ve been trying to get this right.  In the future I think I will need to take a more planned approach to this sort of thing, and work out my algorithm in advance instead of just hacking together the first idea that comes to mind.  Either that or modify my game play idea so it doesn’t require any path finding more advanced than a flood fill.

Dinner this evening involved hors d’oeuvres at a Christmas party.  There always seems to be something else going on during LD48 weekends.

Taking a picture of my food in the middle of a crowded room in a formal setting was a bit weird.

Deep dish pepperoni and mushroom pizza has become a bit of a ld48 tradition for me.

Eating Cinnabon cereal is easier than working on path finding.