I’m a ninja who needed to do some pirating to makes ends meet, but ended up becoming a zombie from a voodoo curse after hexing a detergent salesman with a shark that looked remarkably like the large mouthed one from the movie one time.

So there.

oh, “I is in”. Unless they catch me and send me back to the mental hospital for awesome game makers who can’t make games good.

JS ninja ATTACK!

So there.

Got some particle system lighting coming from the characters flare. All the darkness should give a nice dark atmosphere… and a sense of exploring the caverns.

A new source release here if you wanna have a look (requires python/pygame/numpy):
http://rene.f0o.com/~rene/stuff/exploratio-0.1.1.tar.gz

Or check it out with bzr…

bzr clone lp:exploratio

The basic idea for the lighting code seems to be working ok now.  Now have to put in some lights for around the character so you can see the character

Got my character moving around and throwing flares.  Going to limit my player controls.  So there is less work for me to do.  Forwards/backwards along the bridge, and throw flare up… throw flare down.  Now instead of a whip/gun or other attack, the flare will both be the weapon and the way to light up the level.  UP,DOWN,LEFT,RIGHT.

The rendering is still pretty bad. Not at all how I want it.

After I fix up the drawing… next will be to put in the BIG BAD code, make some lasers, then do collision detection between the particles and the BIG BAD, and also collisions with the cavern.

For lighting and shadows I’ve decided to have a lighting layer with per pixel alpha.  Which will just be an image that is blit across the whole screen.  It will be all black, except in areas where it will have parts taken away by lighting. So I will draw the lights onto this lighting layer, so that it leaves alpha at 50 or so, and instead of black an orangey color where the lighting is… the rest will be shadows.

So now to implement that… but here is a screenie of ‘Exploratio‘ so far…

Started to quickly draw a baddy.  A dwarf was suggested… which then turned into a dwarf with lasers on it.  Since the baddy needs to shoot up and down you see.

Drew a really bad BIG BAD… turned out more like a flying green pumkin than a dwarf with lasers on it.

The laser will just be an animated line, and a sound that goes bzzzzzzzz.  With of course a particle effect explosion when it hits something.

Speaking of particle effects, I kind of got my flare going.  So the flare can light up areas either thrown left or right.  Maybe will make it follow the mouse… not sure yet.

Now it’s time to go down to the pub for a friends birthday.  Feel kind of ok about maybe getting some gameplay in tomorrow… and maybe getting a basic game going.

ok… my first source release!!!    http://rene.f0o.com/~rene/stuff/exploratio-0.1.0.tar.gz

It needs python/pygame/numpy. Doesn’t do much… just shows off the particle system and the bridge graphics.

or for those with bazaar installed:

bzr clone lp:exploratio

healthy pumpkin soup for lunch…

… and not so healthy junk food – corn chips and salsa.

Cavern artwork prototype… (part two, this time with ropes)

Got some ideas for ‘Exploratio’ (the name of my game) whilst messing around with my particle system code.

A side scroller where you walk through a cave… and there are stalactites and stalagmites… and something that hides around them.  you need to shine your light in places to see them, and throw explosives on the BIG BAD.

When dropping bombs down, or throwing bombs up you need to avoid the explosion.

Your torch will not illuminate the whole cavern.  So you need to walk under the tites and mites to shine your torch on them… but then you have to watch out for the BIG BAD… which could be hiding underneath the bridge or above the bridge!

OH FUCK!!!    IT SOUNDS SCARY…

A bit of blending(alpha, MULT, or ADD) for the lighting.  With a little light around the character, and light where ever the torch goes.

Then some collision detection with the particle system explosions.  Or maybe you need to throw flares to light up the area, and get the BIG BAD with a whip.  WHIP IT!

Now to draw some caverns, and a bridge I think.

Witness particle effects with lines and rects.  11 particle systems with 100 particles in each.

Renders ok with pygame software rendering on my system.  Now to work on the game part… hrmm.  Or maybe time for some music?  Or perhaps some drawings… um, ar… or more particle systems?

Got a fairly nice base code set up now.   “bzr clone lp:exploratio” to check it out.  So now I can do:   make build, make clean, make commit, make push, make upload, create .exe .dmg .tar.gz source, and linux also x86 binaries.

No actual game yet though

Ideas wise, I’ve explored the theme a lot and think I have an idea(*drum noises*).  The exploration part will be done in the story… like a choose your own adventure.  With game elements coming in between parts.

In order to win the competition I will include some particles.  PFTW!!!

Well, maybe I’ll just get some particles flying around first and worry about the other stuff later.  Not even a window showing up yet… but At least I have a cool Makefile,

Gonna pygame it up a notch. Plan to try testing out a ‘pygame_distribute’ prototype… to make generating pygame executables much easier.  Apart from that, there’s definitely going to be some particles.

Particles for the win! (PFTW)

‘Gentlemen start your engines’

Standing at my local, quietly sipping on a pint, I overhear an englishmans conversation he is having at someone…  a real posh accent, not common around these parts:

“”"
It’s a mamal… that lays eggs?  I didn’t know mammals could lay eggs?

A bill like a duck?  It swims??!?

An elaborate hoax is what it is.

Don’t listen to a word those crytozoologists say!  They’re not going to use this ‘platypus’ as an excuse for their non scientific ways.

Science is the only way… we must kill all of these platypus to prove that crytozoology is wrong – science must win!
“”"

‘Well‘, I thought.  ‘Can’t have this toff kill off any of these strange platypus creatures…’

Off to Australia to save the platypus!!!  I screamed loudly… (must have drank a bit too much)

‘I wonder if they have cold beer in Australia?  I heard it’s 45 today in Melbourne, so some nice cold ales would be good.’

Pov picked some random numbers, and I choose two pygame projects to VS as my entry.

Soccor game: http://pygame.org/project/630/

VS

Vector pods: http://pygame.org/project/650/

So I’ll mix these two pygame games together and see what I get.  Quickest idea for an LD entry I’ve had… evar!

I don’t have any gameplay yet.  Just a simple animation program, which can animate lines.

Here are the things I’ll need to do to, so I can then start on some gameplay:
- interpolate between key frames to get the frame to draw.
- box select
- copy previous key frame into current key frame.
- save and load Frames with pickle.

I’ve also been playing around with the wonderful sfxr – to make beeps.

LOG
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AEST GMT +10

2008/04/19 17:13:53 AEST GMT +10

2008/04/19 17:53:39 AEST GMT +10

Don’t have internet at home, but going in the competition anyway…

I saw the theme at about +1 hours after the competition started (about 4-5 hours ago) in an email when I was at a cafe checking my email on the free wireless.  I have been coming up with a basic idea since then, but not giving it all that much thought.  I was thinking about drawing lines on paper, and scanning them in… then making minimal beep noises…

But then I wrote the name of my directory for the game… mini_mal… and aha!  Mini Mal was born.  I haven’t even to the ludumdare website since the comp started, but I imagine someone else has come up with the idea for ignoring the theme

So the idea so far is this… Mini Mal the stick figure, with minimal beep noises.

MOST OF THE COMPETITON I WON’T HAVE INTERNET.  Bugger.

I accidentally had skellington game framework on my computer, along with pygame, and python.  So I’m just going to do a pygame game… with basic stuff.  Luckily I also downloaded the pygame documentation and examples… also lucky the python objects have documentation built in, also lucky I have been maintaining pygame for over 3 years now.

… now my todo…

DONE – window up, and basic event loop.
- basic animation program…
- draw line, click point, click second point.
- select point.
- draw end points of lines with rectangles.  Use collision functions to see which points are selected.

- lines are in each frame of the animation.
- to not show lines in one frame, you can mark them as invisible (somehow do invisible lines differently).
- key frames.
- can add/delete key frames.
- interpolation happens between key frames.
- frames per second.  Set at 30fps.

2008/04/19 18:30:03 AEST GMT +10

I made a line class, which subclasses the Rect class.

It can draw itself, with it’s own color…  oooh.  A white picture with a black line on it.

… now to make a screenshot function I think… maybe when I have something a bit better.

- draw line with end points.

2008/04/19 19:20:13 AEST GMT +10

It can now draw a line, and select the end points – and move the line

Now to go and get some junk food.

- make a Lines class, that has a def handle_events(self, events): method.
- make a Lines.new_line method.  So you then click to make the two points.
- make a Lines.delete_line method, which deletes any line selected.

2008/04/19 20:38:37 AEST GMT +10

Went and got some junk food.  A few lollies, and chips.

Then I had dinner, and then came back to work on a Lines class.  Almost there with being able to draw multiple lines.  Whilst coding, I’ve been thinking of how I can structure the animation editor.  Like how I can make collections of lines play at different positions.  I’ll have to translate the positions of the lines somehow… perhaps I’ll give each set of Lines a transform   Then allow selecting groups of lines, so I can animate multiple groups on the same screen.

Then I’ll need a way to load and save Lines… probably with pickle.

Now to finish off my new_line, and delete_line methods.

… oh, and I need to figure out the actual game part… hrmm.  that can come later, once I’ve figured out something cool.

2008/04/19 21:30:11 AEST GMT +10

the lines can be drawn pretty easily now.

Accidentally I came across a way to have the lines join up at the vertices.

Now I have a mode where I can select multiple verts to move at once… which allows a primative form of welding of vertices.

2008/04/19 21:46:28 AEST GMT +10

been playing a bit with drawing more… it’s kind of fun.  I’ve made it slightly easier for me to do things, and also experimented with line thickness… That could also be a fun thing to animate.

So the lines could grow thick from frame to frame.

… but how to save them all.

2008/04/19 22:34:24 AEST GMT +10

I think the pygame.Rect subclasses only pickle the pygame.Rect attributes.  Oh well.

Perhaps I can replace it later with a vec4d subclass… or something.

Anyway… this is what I want to do I think:

Frames
Frame
Lines
Line

So then I think I can just pickle the whole lot, and reload it.

2008/04/20 09:09:17 AEST GMT +10

I put a basic screenshot function in there.

- Create Frames class, get basic animation working.
- Make a box select.  So you can easily move many lines at once.

Here the weight held up by a chain rests on a see-saw.

I still haven’t really thought up an idea for a game. Here’s one idea, but it’s kind of lame. maybe lame enough to use… the player shows the chain to different celebrities pictures from google images, and sees their reaction.

Maybe something to do with setting off a chain reaction in a plastiscene world. With weights, chains and see-saws. Or maybe just hitting celebs with chains to see their reactions. Not sure.

As you can see I had to make my chains very strong. Strong enough to carry this 700kg weight made out of plastiscene. To do this I needed to reinforce the chains with wire. I some how have lost my pliers, so needed to make a trip across the road to the pliers shop.