Cavern Tycoon Final Screenshot

Check it out here or at its page on my site here.

Let me know if there’s any problems not known, or just send an email if you like the idea. Thanks so much guys. I’ll write a proper postmortem later. But this has been an amazing experience.

http://z-machines.com/zacs_files/youmustfinishtherace.mp3
I think that people will be pleasantly surprised by the sound effects in Cavern Tycoon.

Although I’ve just noticed that my screenshots haven’t really changed that much, I’ve made a huge amount of progress.  The game is entirely playable–I only have one problem. There’s no real goal. It’s been designed as a sandbox game–the goal is expansion with the resources you have until you can’t expand anymore. Unfortunately, I fear that some people may not see this and wonder, “Where the goal is at?!”.

It is, however, far too late to turn around now–and I think that my concept could really be fun if people just see the point. I hope they do, and think they will. So here’s a progress shot.

Cavern Tycoon WIP Screenshot 004

Why has Construct decided to turn its back on me after everything I’ve done for it, supporting it spiritedly in my posts?!

See my thread on Scirra if you want to help me sort out what is probably the equivalent of an amateur programming problem. What I don’t understand is why it did work and now it doesn’t, and that’s why I blame Construct.

Cavern Tycoon Screenshot 003

Here’s how the game’s shaping up at the moment. I’m say I’m about halfway done with being “feature complete.” I just have myriad bugs to work out, is all.

As an aside, I just want to say that Construct is great. I could never program this by myself–never. Even though Construct is finnicky sometimes (all the times ), it’s still a great program, and it’s absolutely free. Muchas gracias, Scirra.

Chicken Ramen. Predictable eh?

First Meal

I also have a new shot of Cavern Tycoon. This is this morning’s work, atm.

Cavern Tycoon Screenshot 02

More updates later!

Here’s the first shot from my game, Cavern Tycoon. This is the result of a whole night’s work of labor here, and although I’m quite proud of it, I know it doesn’t look like much. Early tomorrow I’ll start expanding the framework and making a few more graphics, after some much-needed short rest. Goodnight LDers.

Pre-LD deskphoto. I expect I’ll quickly fall into a lazy pattern of not cleaning this weekend, so the end-of-weekend photo should be pretty bad. Of course, this is bad by some people’s standards–but hey, it gets the job done. I love my Microsoft Digital Media Pro keyboard, and the Logitech mouse is unbeatable. Also notice the Xbox 360–that’s for downtime, not development.

Kato's Deskphoto

Like a few other here, this’ll be my first LD. I’ll be using Construct for the creation of the binary if my concept ends up being 2D. For 3D, I have a variety of technologies I’d like to explore.

The first is Dage. I’ve been playing around with it for a few days now, and even though the odds of me getting to make a 3D adventure game are hard, I’d certainly embrace the chance to use my recent experience.

I’m also not above Unity, if the trial is viable.

No matter what I use to assemble the game, though, I’ll be using Blender, Photoshop, and Notepad++ for the majority of modeling, texturing/art, and writing, respectively. I know that I’m a bad egg and should use GIMP–but, hey, I like Photoshop’s interface better. If I wind up with Dage, I’ll also have to use Max in my pipeline, another evil, commercial program.

As far as my experience in other areas, I’ve tried a few compos, followed more than a few, but never made a real entry. I’m determined to sneak one into this LD. I’m pretty experienced with Construct, Blender, and Photoshop, and I’m just learning other techs like Unity and Dage. I grasp programming concepts pretty well (Event Sheets in Construct come almost naturally to me), but I fail pretty hard at actual programming (even XNA is beyond me). I like it that way. I like that in this modern day and age, there’s a bunch of technologies (Construct, MMF, AGS, Wintermute) that allow you to script an entire game without programming it. I like that many things are set up for you, and I like WYSIWYG. There’s nothing wrong with WYSIWYG in my book–if you can create something totally awesome, it doesn’t matter by what means.

Anyway, that’s me. Sorry for being wordy. I can’t wait to participate, honestly. I’m sure I’ll be dreading my decision in about 144 hours.