Hi Guys,

Well after another ludum dare compo I’ve noticed alot of people, including myself have always needed to spend a great amount of time writing the tedious backend for our tile based games, The problem with these back end levels is that they are always the same old code and its just boring to have to write over and over again.

Well not anymore, I’ve been working on a application that allows you to make your tile based game and once your happy with the way it looks you can export the map as a IDE ready source file (currently XNA 4.0/  c++ and JAVA output is planned)

How is this program any different then Tiled for instance? Well with tiled and other programs of this nature it doesn’t allow you to export to ready to use code, you will always need to parse in a XML file for instance.

When you export the file it creates all the needed source code for you.. It may be a little hard to understand so I’ve made a video demonstration below.
Its also worth noting that this is extreamly early in the dev stage and alot of improvements can and will be made. You should also know that the viewport is rendered using a camera so you can look around and zoom in and out (not shown).

Got a opinion on the application, think its crap?.. Great let me know as its early days and your opinions are useful to development.
Enjoy

I’ve got a heap done tonight but I need to to a heap more, with only 10 hours left it will be a push but I’m determined.. In the mean time I’ve got John Butler Trio pumping in the background..

Whats your “Stay Awake” music..

I’ve noticed alot of people have space themes, Well so do I but ow well. Best of luck to all of us..

Dont you just hate scope creep…

If I have another all nighter I should be ok, im currently going off of 2 hours sleep as it is .

Things that are done:
Most of the art,
Gui,
Movement,
Giant map,
Quest System,
Object interaction via the mouse (vital to the quest system)

Currently have left to do doing:
Trading system (buy, sell),
Communication system,
Mining system,
Inventory Management,
Enemies,
Menu,
Sounds

Hey Guys and Gals,

Well I’ve been going since announcement, so that’s nearly 11 hours now (its 12am here in Australia)..

Time for the drink of Champions, And programmers alike..

I should also note that I’m really happy how my art and design/game choice is progressing. I think im almost done with art. Time to add game play, story, shops, items and a few other awesome things.. lol and a main character

After almost giving up 3 times out of pure frustration(computer shut down) I am finally happy with the setting I have chosen, Mainly due to the fact that I can draw it with little to no issues.

Heres a bit of artwork.

Well, I almost gave up about 1 hour ago. I Already knew that my artistic skills where sh*t and after trying to draw about 5 different things that looked horrible and didn’t suite the Idea I had I stopped right there.

Anyway, I have decided to change the theme and gameplay to be alot different then it was earlier, Mostly due to the fact that I need to limit my artistic skills to something more basic, This however doesnt mean that it will be boring..

The games tentative title is “You are NOT alone”…

Anyone else got Paul Oakenfold pumping in the background…

Love the theme, So happy its not kittens.

I’ve thought of a story as well and will soon be drawing it all up.. Awesome

Awesome, I’ve spent all morning trying to get Silver sprite(xna-silverlight) to work and have finally managed to do so.

It turns out that my camera class and a few other things wont work with silversprite but thats ok, I can manager as I wanted to have a browser version available for those of you who are on linux, mac or cant be bothered installing the xna framework. It also seems that it will only work with xna 3.1.

Either way I have setup a new website at 000webhost.com to host the app as I cant find any silverlight hosting games sites like miniclip for example.

Thankfully Visual studio auto creates a html page for you in the release folder so its as easy as renaming it to index.html and uploading to the host.

Getting so excited now. Only 1.5 hours left .

Gavin.

Hey guys,

Just making available a 2d camera class (xna 3.1 and 4.0) that I will be using for the compo, Cheers.

Its super easy to use and has Zoom(in, out), move left,right,up,down, rotate left and right, it also returns the object position via real world co-ords not camera cords(you can get these aswell if you need) for easy collision detection.

//Create a object
Camera _TheCam;

//initialise it in the load method
_TheCam = new Camera(this.graphicsDevice, YourStartPos(vector 2));

//then draw it first in the draw method
camera.draw(spritebatch);

//Download Link

http://www.mediafire.com/?iszra8ha1qh5hyu

//The camera in action.. Fast forward to about 45 seconds into the video

Gavin.

Hey guys,
I just made up a simple little app for doing your time lapses a bit easier, I’m aware that their are other programs in the tools section but they had way to many options in my opinion, This one has the basics, select output, interval and then just do it.. It is also a single .exe file written in c#..

Enjoy, Hope it can help someone..

http://www.mediafire.com/?d0ioi3k3uydfxdk

Hi From Geelong, Australia

This will be my second Ludum Dare, The first was last time (escape) but that had to be cut short due to unforceen circumstaces and I was never able to hand in my entry unfortunately.

Tools I will be using.

Code: C#

Framework: XNA, Silversprite.

Bad Artistry: Photoshop (I’m a programmer, not a artist).

TimeLaps: ZD Soft Screen Recorder

My plan is to offer the application in the form of Silverlight to allow those of you who dont have or dont want to install the xna framework to run the game in their preferred web browser. This will be the first time utilizing Silver sprite so we will see how we go.

I’m really looking forward to the theme announcement, I’m honestly hoping not Zombies as they have been done soo much in recent times. Someone suggested 1 minute game which sounds interesting.
Ether way, See you all in a week or so.

Gavin.

Well tonight has gone a bit slower then I would have liked, I dont feel that I have gotten a great deal of stuff done but I have been on and off alot tonight..

Either way I have decided on a game type, You will be the little box guy and you have to escape from all the different levels. Their will be AI in it and if they see you then you get caught and have to start again, you can flip the map at any point unless you are falling. If the map is fliped the AI wont fall down with it, they stay wherever they are and will continue their course.

I really wanted to have my lighting engine in this game but it was having some serious issues, ow well I’ll probably thing of something tommorow.

Either way, Midnight here in Australia. Goodnight and good luck all.

Not much happening, but things are drawing and I have collisions, map making and grid management going.

Well the past 2 and a bit hours been nerve racking. I nearly destroyed 4 months worth of work for my final year university programming assignment. Imagine working day in day out for months on end and having it all of a sudden crashing and not working as it should..

It turned out that 1 function in the application was throwing the whole thing off and it took me 2 hours to fix.. Either way, I now have a level editor working so I am now building levels.

Well I’ve already come across a few hurdles, but they where overcome fairly quickly.

Lighting engine implemented – Check,

Map manager implemented- Check,

Camera implemented- Check.

Crappy moving sprite for drawing tests – check

.

Just decided that I’d join this year after watching this site for the past few years..

I have few ideas in mind but nothing solid yet.

Just sharing a segment of code that I will be using to complete this game.

2d camera from the following website.

http://www.david-amador.com/2009/10/xna-camera-2d-with-zoom-and-rotation/

I will also be using a lighting engine that I wrote a while back utalising various tutorials around the web.

http://www.filedropper.com/lightingengine

Technologies:

XNA 3.1,

PHOTOSHOP,

Visual studio.