I finished my entry but not quite to the standard I would have liked. Last night my insomnia kicked into full swing and I ended up spending 6 of my 8 hours sleep just laying in bed. So not only did I essentially waste 6 hours, I’ve been so tired today it’s been a major struggle to get stuff done.

Still, I achieved what I wanted to, I made a game in AS3 for the first time and I implemented ‘Worms’ style terrain destruction. It’s a shame I didn’t have any time for sounds, title screens, fancy game over screens, music, etc etc, but I do quite like my little game, so I’ll probably eventually come back to it, even if it’s just for a week to tighten everything up. The engine isn’t perfect either, there are still some graphical glitches and collision problems, so I’d like to come back to that at some point. Who knows, maybe even after a good nights sleep I’ll fancy working on it and submitting it to the jam.

I’ve made a fair bit of progress since my last update, I’ve got some nice new graphics and alot of the engine stuff sorted. All I need to do now is make the bones pick-upable and add lives and it’s pretty much a game. I’m going to try and add enemies, since it’s a bit easy without them and some type of barrel that creates a huge explosion if it gets blown up would be cool too. Unforunately I slept horribly last night and it’s starting to catch up with me now. But I’ll soldier through and try to finish in time.

As you can see from the screenshot, there’s now naturally forming  spaces in the rock. I’d like to round these off so they look abit more natural though, not a priority at the moment though. There’s also a little archeologist sprite and some bones scattered about.. probably should have screenshotted the dynamite and it exploding, but too late now. You might notice a few graphical glitches (texture seam near the bottom, dark curves left on the background by the explosion that aren’t solid). I hope to be able to get these fixed up, but I don’t think they’re too major right now.

Things are going moderately well, I’ve still not got much art and the engine isn’t totally finished. But I’m optimistic about finishing on time. I was pretty ambitious with this project, switching from AS2 to AS3 which I’ve not used for games before and also trying alot of new things programming wise, so I won’t feel too upset if I can’t finish.

The game I’m trying to make is a cross between Digdug, Worms and  Go To Hell. Basically you’re an archeologist digging for bones, but being too impatient to dig them out the traditional way, you instead opt to blast your way through the ground with explosives. Getting deeper under ground and collecting bones scores points, but if you blast yourself or something falls on you, you lose a life. 3 lives then you’re dead. If I have time I’d like to add living dinosaurs that you can blow up for more bones too.

As you can see from the screenshot there’s not a whole lot going  on artwise, tried to get something going this evening but my brain  was stuck in programming mode, so I’m going to sleep that off. The  basic engine is all there though, the blue square can move around,  mouse click throws a rectangle which explodes in one second,  clearing a hole in the earth that the player can move into, move far enough down the screen and a new block of destructible ground is created, so you never reach the bottom. Distance from the mouse cursor to the player decides the force the explosive is thrown with, should be easy enough to add in an arc so people can see the trajectory of an explosive before it’s thrown.

Next part of programming is adding in natural holes that contain bones and other objects, which need to be affected by gravity and probably the impulse of the explosives exploding.

Now I’ll sleep and hopefully have another productive day tomorrow.

I only woke up a couple of hours ago, so here’s a post just outlining my tools and initial thoughts.

I’ll be using Flash for the game, AS3 this time rather than AS2 which I usually use. I’ve started using AS3 alot at work and I feel fairly confident I can make a game using it, either way, this will be a good experience.

Photoshop for the graphics, I imagine, I’ll probably stick to my standard simple pixel art style. SFXR for sounds and I might even try playing with a music tracker to make some music, who knows.

The theme is interesting, initially I groaned when I read it, but now I’ve got a fairly good idea and I’m pretty excited to see how it works.

Good luck all!

I have finished my game, now titled ‘Crustacean Cannon’. Go check it out!

There are 8 levels, complete them all to unlock a hidden scene and reveal the intricate plot of this game! The game is quite hard though, so it may take a bit of time. First person to complete the game (and screenshot the credits screen) wins a prize of some kind! (probably not)

I had a lot of fun working on this and I really enjoyed seeing everyone’s games slowly develop alongside mine. I feel like I’ve learned alot this weekend and I’m sure I’ll write up what that includes, as soon as I’ve had a nice long sleep. Check out my blog tomorrow for a breakdown of what went into my game, or follow me on twitter.

Cheers guys! And good luck to those still working on their games!

I was just wondering, are we allowed to include music we haven’t made ourselves if we explicity state that it isn’t ours and is just to make the game a little more interesting? I only ask because I have no musical talent and I’d like to put some background music in.

Meanwhile, game development is going well. Just finishing touches now, but I’m getting very tired already. I’m sure I’ll finish in time though. Here’s a screenshot of my neato title art:

Things are going well, I’ve got all the hard stuff programmed and a fair few sprites sorted. The game is playable and has 1 level at the moment. Still need to sort out some more levels, more art, sounds.

Here’s a screenshot:

Oh look, it’s a crab, the natural enemy of the rabbit! We can deal with this problem by loading one into the cannon and firing at the other.

Hey, some of you might remember me from the last mini LD. This is my first proper Ludum Dare and I’m having loads of fun so far.

Like the last LD, I’m going to be using Photoshop and Flash with AS2 (don’t feel confident enough with AS3 just yet).

I’ve been going for about 4 hours now, and I’ve got the basic collisions and sprites sorted. Here’s a screenshot:

My idea is this: the rabbit has a big cannon and he needs to kill the enemies on screen (of which there are currently none drawn) but he has no ammo. So he has to load the enemies into his cannon and fire them at other enemies to kill them. At first this will be pretty easy but the plan is in later levels you’ll have to make some much more difficult shots to hit them. I’m hoping to make those tiles destructible too.

I’ve got the cannon rotating and firing at the moment (but nothing fires out) and the collision with the tiles and everything works.

Here it is, my first Ludumdare entry. I went with a side scrolling platformer type game built in Flash with Actionscript 2.0.

I’ve uploaded it to my blog, here: http://hellfangvidya.blogspot.com/2010/07/greed-my-mini-ludumdare-20-entry.html

You play as the personification of greed and must try to move through the levels without being pushed off screen. You can eat items scattered around to increase your score but they will also make you heavier, thus making it more difficult to progress through the level. Being too greedy may result in you not being able to jump over an obstactle.

All edible items are unique, there are about 16 different items with different weights and properties. Sometimes the player character will request a certain kind of item at the end of a level and bonus points can be obtained by eating an item that matches it’s description.

Might be a few bugs still, I haven’t tested it much (it’s pretty hard :\) but it’s releasable at least.

The final (5th) level has a fishing theme.