Right, so I decided to post this as a non-entry. Reasons include laziness and stuff. Here’s my last progress shot re-used as the ‘final’ shot.

While ‘playing’, press keys 1-3 to build stuff:

1. is a tree zapper, it gets you power for nearby trees. It costs 15 power.
2. is a mini tower of darkness, it creates darkness nearby. It costs 30 power.
3. is an attack tower, it shoots blobs of darkness at the poor butterflies. It costs 50 power.

To goal was supposed to be getting everything dark, sort of. There’s not actually any winning condition, but there’s not much other things either, so that’s all right then.

Don’t resize the window (don’t tell me I didn’t warn you).

Download Something of Doom Something Something (Windows binary, uses OpenGL, should work in wine).

I was going to post this maybe two hours ago, but some stuff turned up.

You can build stuff, and the stuff do things, but you can’t win, there’s no enemies that actually attack, it’s not balanced, there’s no levels, and it all feels sort of meh.

I could probably turn it into a pretty bad game with two hours of work (it’s pretty much all I’ve got left), but I’m not all that supportive of bad games. I’ll probably just post a non-entry.

I’ve added mini dark towers (is the prime thing used to spread darkness) and also finally decided on a dark vs. light (perhaps earlier mentioned as decay) thing.

Here’s a shot with lots of mini dark towers, so almost everything is dark, except where the butterflies fly. So in a normal game, you’d need to eliminate those.

Still need to add some sort of attacking unit to the light side, adding building interface, winning conditions, and a few levels. It might need a few others things too before it feels like an actualy game, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I probably won’t have time to make it a good game, honestly.

Battled with a stupid bug for maybe an hour. Turned out I had written an asymmetrical comparison operator which crashed sort. I’m not so great at debuggin D yet, at first I didn’t get the debug info, and when I finally did and found a debugger, it wasn’t so helpful. Funnily enough, I ended up solving it with traditional writefln debugging instead, which just took a couple of minutes. Hmm..

Anyway, what I had done before the bug was adding attack towers, which charge up blobs of darkness and fire them at the butterflies.

It mostly just looks like chaos, becuse I just randomly place everything.

They look better animated! Also, the tree zapper aren’t actually supposed to attack the butterflies.

Good morning. A little update. Yesterday I added The Dark Tower (player starting base) and tree zappers (drain trees for power and for simply draining trees).

After that, I wasted a lot of time on how the wall of decay etc should progress, only to ending up with something that wouldn’t work. So I’m still thinking about that. I could spend some time describing what didn’t work, but I’m not going to. Instead here’s a screenshot showing how the decay thing for the ground would look (the tree decay in this shot is just for testing purposes).

Now I have some thinking and showering to do. And breakfasting.

I spent the morning not doing anything, most of the afternoon playing UT2004 and Red Alert 3, but then maybe 2.5h ago I figured I should actually try doing anything. So I started out drawing some graphics (mostly vegetation sprites). Then I coded a little to get a random forest sort of thing.

And it’s doomed, you know. You are going to convert this cute little forest into a dark waste. At least, that’s the idea. We’ll see.

I had breakfast, it was mostly toast. I would have posted an image, but you can just check out all the others, and you’ll get a good idea. Though there was a cupcake too. Nom nom.

Anyway, some ideas
You use an advancing wall of doom to crush cities. This could either be a puzzle game (use your wall in the most optimal way!), some sort of RTS (gather resources etc, expand your wall), or RPG-like, you only actually control one character, but it’ll need to go out and gather power to advance the wall. Or something.

Also had the idea of not crushing cities, but rather have two elements that fight, one being for example a jungle and another the desert. The edge would be the ‘wall’, and both strive to doom the other. Would probably work best as some sort of RTS.

Then there’s of course the tower defense sort of thing, but it’d be wall defense. Could sort of work from either side — either you build the wall (wall defense!), or you need to defend against the wall.

And there’s a lot of ‘run away from the wall’ kind of games, but I’m not interested in those because I don’t usually find that kind of games fun.

Don’t yet know what I’ll do, the RTS ones sounds most fun, but would probably require a little bit too much work. So I’ll ponder some more.

Here’s my entry. You control a spider that is in dire need of getting more legs. Sort of.

Download
Windows 32-bit binary with D source

Instructions
Collect all powerups to complete level. This will give you a time bonus.
If time runs out or if you fall outside the world, the level ends, but you are left with the score you got for any collected powerups.

Controls
Enter to start game.
Esc to quit (also at level over etc).
Left click/hold to set target. Speed based on distance.
Right click/hold to set target and jump.

Hints
You need to walk slowly to round edges.
You can only sort of jump away from the current surface you are on.

Source
Some source was previously written, but only sort of texture loading, font rendering and some init code.

Uses GLFW, FModEx, sfxr and some other stuff.

Also, note that the title bar is a total lier. The game did not take 32h to make, but 40h. That math is tricky stuff.

(For the framework stuff, the score is read from and written to ’score.txt’.)

I finally got around to create a primitive edit mode. So now I can start building the level.

A shame I have no good ideas for it.

OK, time for a journal entry for this fine mini ld.

I’m doing a game where you controls a spidery thing. I’m not sure exactly what’s the point is yet, but I figure that you should a) collect something, b) evolve more legs and c) get to the top of the level. I might have scoring based on time/things collected or whatever.

It looks cooler in action!

I selected the Evolution theme just for the leg stuff, but I later realized Climb would be better really. But by that time, Climb was sadly taken. I don’t have an awful lot of time, so not sure how much evolvment I will have time to implement.

Currently I’m trying to get decent jump and foot attachment sounds, but it’s kind of tricky. Maybe better without sounds.

I was hit by the flu yesterday. So instead of setting up my coding environment and libraries and stuff (as I have a new computer), I was instead busy not doing anything but being in pain.

Then today, it turns out my favorite theme won. Great timing. Fever inspired game design and programming is sure to be a real winner. Might actually work. A bit of a problem that it feels like my brain is some distance away from me, though.

I’m bitching too much? Well, you would too.

At least I won’t have to spend time on food photos.

For like half of the LDs I’ve participated in I’ve said or thought that I would do a postmortem. But I never got around to it. Thought I’d do a postmortem this time to make up for it. And this time is one of those times that are perfect for postmortems, for several reasons. Like, I almost failed but didn’t. That’s great postmortem material, you know. But still, I’m lazy, so I’ll do the standard postmortem procedure of The Good, The Bad and The Other.

It’s long though, so be warned! Slightly updated 15th, new text at end.

(more…)

I’m finally finished with a version that both runs and could be classified as a game. So here it is. All important information is available in the game, really, if you just pay a bit of attention. I might include play information here later when I don’t need to sleep so much.

If you want another screenshot, here’s after having won.

The Tower of You, Windows binary download + D source.

Update after deadline: I’ve updated the above link to include zlib1.dll which was missing. The original package is still available.

I’ve managed to get some game stuff into the game. So it’s possible to play it, and it’s possible to win or lose (only there’s not check for it yet). It’s not overly exciting. Or intriguing. There’s an AI that plays decently if it’s lucky, but almost never wins except if you’re stupid. But it’s something.

What’s left is to fix a few known bugs, add some kinds of instructions, and end of game check, and pack it up. Exciting, huh? I’m quite tired, so I don’t really jump around in joy, but maybe I would have been. Probably would have been more had this game turned out better.

I’ll write about how you actually play in the submission post.

And I forgot to post my lunch photo from earlier. It was lasagna.

And then I just had supper. It was toast.

And no, I did not take a lot of photos of the same toast and use them to post multiple times during the course of this compo. It really was different instances all of them!

I’ve thrown out a lot of code and streamlined (simplified) gameplay. It’s still fairly pointless, but it’s pointless in a much more easygoing and fun way. Which is important.

I just need to figure out some restriction/bonus given by the tower height. And introduce an AI player. And fix some way to solve conflicts. And come up with a goal. I mean a single actual coded goal. I can think of lots of different other ones, like reach certain height in as low number of turns possible, or be the one with highest tower when resources are all out etc.

Anyway, here’s a screenshot. It looks kind of like before.

The game doesn’t work as it is. Needs to figure out a design that does. At first I thought (as I wrote) I just needed an slight control change (or a bigger one, but I went for the small). The actual game rules were the same, only this showed that the game was fairly pointless (when didn’t have to set workers every round). One just had to set them up and let the turns pass. Might have been better with an opponent, as then you’d have to figure out most optimal route, but that still wasn’t much work. And the bothersome thing left was to manually build the tower. Tested to remove that too. Made it less bothersome, but even more pointless. So I need to figure something out.

Oh, right, at least I had some candy.

I’m trying to figure out whether I’m to change the control scheme. The current one is a bit of a bother at lower levels and will be a lot of a bother at higher, or so I suspect. Just feels there’s a lot to rewrite, and I’m not sure how I should adjust the tower building. Most this probably doesn’t mean anything yet to you guys as you haven’t even played it. But just so you know I’m pondering.

I’ve added small icons so one can see directly where things have been ordered and where things can be done. Also improved the roads. It looks more promising than it plays though, so not sure I’ll get this stuff to be fun or not. It really needs an opponent to make any sense as it is.

I’m having breakfast.

It’s toast AND A DONUT.  It’s like the most awesome breakfast in weeks! For me.

I’m up and and working again. Have continued on the roads stuff so that now you can assign workers beyond influence level if it has road connection. Things missing at the moment are building fundament and expanding level of influence. And, like, and AI, decent graphics, multi-player mode etc etc.

I’ve noted that the way worker assignment is currently done is quite bothersome. Not sure how it should be instead. Thinking either that workers stay assigned and can be unassigned, or that one can just select what resources to buy for the remaining workers after having built etc. Currently it works that you select action for each hex during a road, including assigning workers. Then on next round those things are reset.

And now I need to go out in the rain on a quest to buy breakfast stuff.

Just thought I’d give some word on my progress before I go and get some sleep.

It’s now possible to expand the tower. It’s also possible to build roads. Those are perhaps the only different game changes. I’m not posting a screenshot because the roads are just lines at the moment.

Night all.

I don’t really now where all the time went, but at least there has been some progress. Added drawing of the tower with variable number of levels. And initial building of it. And getting and assigning workers to resources. And getting resources. And a bit of ending turn. And simple UI. … Well, so I guess I’ve done more than I remembered at first, but it’s still not a game, far from it. Here’s a screenshot.

And I’ve just had supper. What do you think it was?

That’s right. The toast subclass of bread. With a little butter. It’s really supposed to be a lot of butter, but I ran out of it, and wasn’t clever enough to buy more earlier when I was shopping. So now I have something fun to do before breakfast tomorrow! Yay!

I have written hex picking code, so now I could add some kind of interaction. Might be fun. Also been to the store and bought some microwave food for tomorrow. I really should have prepared yesterday, but you know what they say: “If you work all day and play all night you don’t have much time to prepare for LD48″.

Also bought some cheap low quality donuts.