Minimally.  Or maybe a bit more than that.  Seems like the theme is getting a lot of flack, but it was actually my top choice!  I don’t know what I hope to make yet, though.  Probably just going to brainstorm tonight and get to work in the morning.  Good luck all!

Coming back for… what?  My 5th Ludum Dare?  Not sure exactly.  As always, it’s timed at a very awkward point for me, but that’s just how things go.  I’ve accepted it by now.  Assuming all of the parts that I ordered for my new computer get in on time, and they all work, and I don’t have too much troubling setting it all up, installing an OS, etc. I should be in!  Good luck everyone!

Game mechanics are finally coming together, plus I’ve cleaned up a lot of the interface.  Still haven’t really worked much on actual content though   Let me run through real quick and list off everything that is currently working…

Start a new game, travel around the map, initiate battle, use attacks, flee, deal and receive damage, move use counters being limited and depleting properly for you and enemies, kill/die, win/lose battles, gain item drops based on drop rates, use items from inventory, view inventory…

What are the key things still missing, mechanics-wise?  Switching active Evomemes in battle, Save/load game, attack accuracy/evasion, exp gain if it’s not item-based… that’s all I’m coming up with.  We’ll see how much I can get done with ~3 hours remaining.  A lot of stuff I could try to show you, but… no screenshot for now.  Sorry!

Well, today got off to a rough start.  Low energy, lots of distractions… Still, I’m making progress.  I’ve got the core combat mechanics done with, and I’ve finally gotten my damage formula tweak’d to something that seems right to me.  Needs a lot of messages to the player so s/he can know what’s going on, but the functions themselves are working.

Next up, exp gain, item drops, and the whole inventory system!  Eek!  That’s a lot for roughly 7 hours.  GO GO GO!

Also, have a screenshot of a functioning battle:

I can feel myself slipping away as I type these words, but I am sticking to my plan and posting a screenshot before I pass out.  I’m about half-way done with combat… still need the actual damage calculations worked out… might do it half-way for now, and come back and implement elements/weaknesses/whatever later, if time permits.

But actually, first thing’s first.  Screenshot and sleep.  I’ll have about 12 hours left tomorrow, plus or minus… who knows how much content I’ll get to add… not nearly so much as I’d hoped, but… ah well!  Good night, LD Crew, and good luck!

So, we’re half way there already, huh?  Alright, I can live with that.  I got hung up for a while and didn’t make much progress for since the last update.  I’ve got the transition into battle ready.  I generate the enemy’s evomemes and deal with pre- and post-battle dialog.  Battle itself should be hard to implement… it’s mostly some numbers games, right?  Anyway, I’m gonna try to get a couple more hours’ work done tonight in case I’m interrupted tomorrow.  I still wanna get all the main mechanics done tonight if possible.  We’ll see what happens.  I’ll try to put out one more update before I go to bed if I can manage not to suddenly crash.

Also, next time I’ll have a screenshot, I promise!

Just trying to build a habit of checking in every few hours.  Still plodding along, but no major breakthroughs yet.  I’m building up the infrastructure for my critters – I’m calling them Evomemes.  Figured out what stats they’ll have… working on figuring out formulas for leveling them up… then I’ll put a couple attacks in, and build up a combat system.

Did I mention in the last update, I can’t remember… my goal is to get ALL of the game mechanics working and tested TONIGHT, which’ll leave me all day tomorrow to fill out the game with actual content!  One of my personal goals for this LD is to get enough content that I can personally consider it a “Full Game”, or close to it.  Usually with LD you end up with one or two tiny levels, and that’s it.  I want more!  I want full RPG goodness!  I’m not honestly expecting something on that scale this weekend, but I’m at least striving to push my game in that direction.  GO GO GO!!!

Hopefully by the next update I’ll be able to show you a stat screen and/or a battle screen!

Another short update – Making slow but steady-ish progress.  I’ve got the very basics of displaying and moving between rooms working.  I would post screenshots, but… it’s a text based game!  I figure there’s only so much of that sort of thing anyone can handle, so I’ll wait until I have a lot to show until I use up your patience.  Next step is to allow for rooms to add context-based commands to the prompt, such as talking to a person in the room, or battling something, or… whatever?  After that, it’ll be time to tackle actually creating the ‘mons and building the inventory, status, and battle systems!  Eek!

Just wanted to throw up a quick post with my amazing first screenshot from my text-based game, Dawkemon.  Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Gooood morning, Ludum Dare!!!~

So, my first act of last night, after the unveiling of the theme, was to go to sleep.  Sign of being old?  Perhaps.  Nonetheless, I’m awake now and the juices of creativity are percolating up into my brains.

For those just tuning in, my self-made restriction for this LD is to use a base install of Python and NOTHING ELSE!  I’ll be sticking with very simple programming techniques as well.  The idea behind this is to show my students that you can make a fun game with only a couple weeks of programming know-how.  I guess that means my game better be fun!

So what am I making then?  Well, text-based, for sure.  Evolution, hmm?

Well, my first idea, and the one I’m sticking with, is something at least loosely based off of Pokemon.  I know from a quick scan of other people’s posts that this is by no means a unique idea, nor would I expect it to be… but it’s something I think my kids can relate to even in text form.

Now… how to translate the traveling, and collecting of ‘mon into a non-tedious text game?  We’ll see… I’ve gotta start somewhere though!

…FOR SCIENCE!

So, quick story:  I’m now a high school teacher! Today was my first class ever!  Hooray!  What am I teaching, you may ask? Why Game Design, of course!  Now, my class will only have met two times come this weekend, so I doubt any of my students will be able to participate, but I wanted to use LD24 as an opportunity to show that how much you can do even with only the TINIEST amount of programming know-how and time.  That being said; here’s the tools I’ll be using this weekend:

Python 2.7

NOTHING ELSE WHATSOEVER!

That’s right!  No external libraries, not even PyGame.  No Sound.  No graphics.  I’ll also ONLY use the most basic techniques in programming; those I expect to cover in the first two weeks of class.  This means the only programming constructs I’ll use are:

Basic text/number I/O, basic math and conditional structures, basic if/else, simple variables types (INT/STRING/maybe FLOAT), basic looping structures (For… maybe WHILE).  I may through in an “import random”… and then two 2nd-week concepts I may use for sanity’s sake; simple function declarations and lists.
My goal is to create a fun, text-based game in 48 that can show my students what sorts of power is at your fingertips even with only a few hours of programming experience if you are creative about it.  Once they’ve covered all the topics I mentioned above, I’ll give them 2 weeks to create a game of their own, and we’ll see what they can come up with

My life’s been hit with a wall of horribleness this weekend, and I never got further than a couple dozen lines of code.  It really pains me not to be able to complete my LD#23 entry, but at this point it’d be impossible for me to do justice to the thing.  I’ll try to finish it up in a week or two, though, when things calm down a little here… I’ll do my best to stick to the original time rules, and I’ll try to post it so anyone who’s can tell me what they think.  Hopefully I’ll be back with a bang for LD#24?

Well… spent about the last 13 hours in bed.  Haven’t gotten any work done at all.  Feel horrible.  Trying to get started now, so… yeah.  This is not a good weekend for me.

So the theme is Tiny World?  Yay!  That was my top choice!  So, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’m working with Python and Pygame again, and this time throwing in a little curses emulation library called Pygcurse.  I’m not feeling very well today, so I’ve decided to try to keep this LD pretty low on the ambitiousness scale – wanna be able to finish and still be able to go to work on Monday feeling fairly rested.  To that end, I’m making a text game!  Well… there may be some graphics, perhaps… if so, it’ll be late in development that they get added in.  The game will be something of a spiritual successor to one of the very first games I ever played – and one that was very influential in my decision to become a programmer:  Hamurabi!

So yes like Hamurabi, but in SPAAAAAAAACE!~ You are the new ruler of a tiny space colony (TINY WORLD!~) orbiting the Earth in L2.  Your primary task is prioritizing the colony’s resources between construction (making the colony bigger), infrastructure (increasing livability), and saving for the future/emergencies – much like in Hamurabi.  There are new ideas mixed in too, though – interactions with the Earth and other colonies (trade, politics, war,…?) (I could make it an MMO, lawl), and probably a bit of city-building mechanics added in.  I’ll have to kinda judge as I go how much complexity I’ll be able to add.

Good luck all!  See you in the Tinyverse!

Oh yeah, I’m in!  This is my 4th consecutive LD!  Woohoo!  I am not prepared in the least!  That’s the 4th consecutive time too!  Anyways, I’m in!  I expect I’ll be using Python/PyGame again… possibly also trying out PygCurses, depending on the theme.  I’ll try to write a better post tomorrow when I’m less alseep, but until then:  Good luck everyone!

My game is done and submitted!  The last hours were hectic, both in terms of trying to finish the game and because I had some stuff going on in “real life” of great urgency… so unfortunately I wasn’t able to do a lot of updating.  Ah well… I’m here now!  Here’s the entry link!

Brief summary and screen shots are included with the entry, of course, so I’ll use this space to mention some other things:

First, what went right:  Most everything!  I made a lot of lovely art, got most-all of my intended game mechanics implemented within the time limit, and got a playable game out of an already otherwise very busy weekend!  I learned some new useful programming tricks and now have a MUCH better understanding of how to effectively use SpriteGroups in pygame, which helps greatly with streamlining code.  Hooray for me!  Also it’s my damn birthday, so double-hooray!

What didn’t go as planned?  Well… I didn’t have any time for sfx/music, which would have been nice.  I also wasn’t able to add all the text screens I wanted for a narrative, but that’s actually less than 10 minutes additional work there, so I’ll have it for a post-judging version.  A few other little details: Cars on the road, maybe some time/score mechanism, possibly even predators?  Hadn’t put any thought into that last one really… just an idea that existed.  There’s also still some awkwardness with people’s movements that wasn’t fully polished and makes the games slower and more frustrated than it’s meant to be… I really want to redo some of their pathing logic when I get more time.  I also didn’t have time to add a few little in-game decorations I was considering adding… wouldn’t have really made much of a difference except visually… and without the improved navigation it would have made things slower, so maybe it’s for the better.

OH YEAH!  I also need to mention!  Did you notice?!  All the maps in the game are procedurally generated!  Isn’t that awesome?  Yeah.  I’m bad-ass like that.  Random roads, trees, buildings, ponds… people navigating between them… it’s pretty dang awesome.  Sometimes you start out right next to Mommy… sometimes insanely far away; I would like to make that less random and perhaps make it something like a difficulty setting?  Changing the map size and the number of each thing in it is trivially easy, so I could easy adjust for desired complexity.

Anyways,  yeah.  Please play my game if you haven’t yet!  And vote on it!  And more importantly, give me some feedback!  I want to make the best games possible, so comments and constructive criticism are incredibly helpful for me.  Thanks

My maps now generate roads!  Example:

Only about 5 hours left, and I still need…. the rest of the map……

The bad news is that I just woke up from more than 9 straight hours of sleep and actually feel worse than before I went to bed… headache, throat is scratchy, and I just feel generally unfit for coding at the moment.

The good news is that IT’S MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!!!!

Where’s the time going?!  I haven’t even slept!  I need to do that soon… but my birthday starts in 17 minutes and I don’t want to miss it!

Game’s making reasonable progress – Player can move, and be moved… now I need to get map generation working, and various obstacle mechanics… and then the ‘plot’ narration and I should be about done?  Oh…maybe sound at some point too?

So tired…

Here’s a couple screenshots:

Yay for videos!

http://youtu.be/yiDR6b7_N0k

Tell me what you think!