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!

I’m starting to see posts about people waking up.  This is probably a god sign that I should go to sleep, huh?  I’ve got a lot of the code base put together now… but I still don’t have a solid idea of what my game will be!  I do, however, have a solid idea for a project to morph whatever this is into after LD is over and I have more time?  Go figure.  Sleep usually helps clear up my thoughts, though, so… good night!  And good luck!

I think I’m moving more quickly than I ever have before!  I have a lovely screenshot!

The thing is… I don’t actually know what my game is about yet.  That’s also not a real title… probably.  Need something catchier.  The real thing I’m trying to show here is that I not only have graphics up, but I have those little dudes!  Who move around by themselves, and deal with colliding with one-another!  It’s pretty sweet…

I’m getting started a bit late… got caught up in an important meeting at Occupy Tallahassee.  Alone is the theme, eh?  …I kind of hate it.  We had “It’s dangerous to go alone…” only 2 LDs ago!  Ah well, I’ll work with it regardless!

Just realized I forgot to state what tools I’m working with here!  This LD, like my previous two, will be completed with Python, using PyGame, for all programming.  For sfx I’ll probably use bfxr, though last time I also used a cheap mic and made some crude noises of my own.  Music will probably not exist.  Art is MS Paint, with the possibility of some minor Gimp work of I want to get fancy.  That should be about it!  I did ABSOLUTELY NO PREP for this, so I have almost no food or drink in my house, and many other inconveniences.  GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!  Brute force game design!

Good luck everybody!

AAAAAAH!~  Why is LD always on the most weirdly-timed weekend?  The first time I participated I was in the middle of moving!  Last time I was just about to start a new job!  This time… Sunday is my birthday!  Yet…. I’M IN!  That’s right, folks – I’m spending my birthday making an LD entry!~

So… Like many people, my life tends to be pretty busy, and I don’t much keep up with the LD community between compos.  I wasn’t even able to participate in voting this time, except for the final round… and there’s some kind of [joke?] drama about kittens?  Fill me in, eh?  Or not.  Just give me a theme, and I’ll give you a game!  ‘Cause that’s how I roll!  See you in the IRC room… if my client ever loads?

Woohoo! Got it done and submitted on time! See my entry HERE!

This is my 2nd LD, and the first one that was really complete, so I’m quite proud of myself! I was going to do a full write-up, but I’m just too exhausted. Maybe tomorrow?

A few comments though:

The AI needs refinement. There’s only so much you can do under the time limit… and even less when you don’t actually know the game well enough to have a good strategy even for yourself, no less for a machine.

That said, the AI is pretty competent at Defending, despite sucking at Attacking.

I forgot all about running the whole screencap video thing this time! Eek!

Most of the sounds are me screaming or bashing things into my desk.

I am going to look into what it would take to refine this for an android/apple app!

Aaand… yeah! Good job everyone! I look forward to actually being able to participate in the judging this time; something I completely missed out on last time. Hundreds and hundreds of games to review! Eek! Too much fun!

Gettin’ that polish going!~  I’ve added a title screen, as well as a way to control if a Human or CPU controls each of the two sides.  Also my AI is getting smarter!  It’s still quite beatable; my search depth is… next to nothing really, so it only gets as far as predicting your next move and making some vaguely intelligent guesses as to what kinda of things improve its position.  I’ve still got about 6 hours though, and pretty much the only thing I’ve got left to do aside from AI improvements is adding some movement animations to help see what’s going on.  I’m actually at a point where I’m about to ask some IRC peoples to help me test.  If you’d like to help with that just let me know; I’m Luthwyhn in IRC.

Here’s a shot of my title screen!

I hope everyone else is getting done too!  I’ve been too busy to keep with with chat more than occasionally.  Keep up the good work, though!

Yes, you heard right, folks!  My game is a completely playable implementation of Tablut as of about 9 hours ago!  There’s a few minor things it doesn’t do (warn you for Check/Mate), and plenty of places that can be polished (Movement animations?)… but the game can indeed be played!  Currently, though, it only works as a 2-Player game.  My goal with the remaining ~15 hours is to implement a mildly competent AI system who can play as the Attack and/or the Defender, at your own choice.  Currently the AI moves at random until and unless it has a move that will allow it to win immediately, in which case it takes that move.  It’s not much, but it is indeed a start!  The visuals have changed just a little since my last update, so I’ll post a new screenshot as well:

Nobody replied to my last post (understandably, since we’re all so busy!), so no high fives were won!  Better luck next time!

Anyway, my game is an implementation of the viking board game Tablut!  See more info HERE!

Here’s my latest update:  Got the key artwork done, got the game board displaying and mouse input being recognized… now I need to make pieces movable, and perhaps add highlighting for possible moves and some sounds and movement animations.  Then I need win/loss conditions.  Then… the real fun begins, as I will attempt to make an AI player!  I have no idea how I’m going to do that yet… decision trees with some kind of mysterious weighting system.  Time shall tell?

SCREENSHOT!

I finally know what I’m making!  First person to explain this image wins… a high-five!

Fell asleep… awake-ish now… still no idea for my game, but I did have some horrible nightmares about being stabbed in a subway?  Maybe I should make a game about that?  No.  I’m gonna do some stretches and see if any ideas pop out.

So as I mentioned previously… I’m in!  However, it’s gonna be an uphill struggle.  I quit my job today!  Wuuut?  Yeah. I also had a CT scan yesterday?  I hope I don’t have deathitis.  All that aside though, my lack of time to prepare anything else has me using the same tools as last time; Python with pygame, bfxr, maybe that music script if I can find it again, MSPaint, Gimp, energy drinks, ibuprofen, attention-seeking cats, and dedication.

Just over 4 hours left, and I need to eat dinner and do some cleaning!  Good luck everyone, and hopefully my head will stop hurting enough soon that I can look at IRC without getting dizzy, in which case I’ll see you there!

Also:  Have a picture to brighten your day.

So… life kicked my ass and I disappeared immediately after the last compo.  Suuuux.  I never got to judge anyone else’s entries, and never got to put mine in a state that others could easily get it working.  Ah well… I’m back again at least for the next week… and hopefully for a while after so I can contribute to judging this time!  We’ll see… -_-

Anyway, I’m gonna try to do some cleaning and completion on my entry from last time between now and next Friday and I’ll repost it so everyone can see… uh… how wonderful I am?  Hopefully this will also serve to reacquaint my brain with coding, since I haven’t done a single line in recent months.

Oh yes, as to technical details; I think it’ll be the same as what I ended up with last time.  Python, pygames, bfxr, mspaint, and gimp.  I’ll probably give a more contentful post next week and reiterate the details of my hardware and software setup.

I hope everyone else is doing well and getting hyped!

I GOT MY GAME SUBMITTED!  WOOHOO!!  I think it was technically 1 or 2 minutes late, but that’s because I was having upload troubles.  At any rate… I did it!  It’s not complete!  It’s not perfect!  It IS playable though!  I had to disable a couple half-finished things for the submission version, but there’s still enough there to see where I was going, I think.

Also, I’m entirely too exhausted.  And I have work in about 9 hours.  I’ve gotta go to bed, which sucks… I’d love to hang out with the festivities on IRC and here on the blagosphere.  Tomorrow, though, I’ll start looking at everyone’s stuff!  Good job, y’all!  It was an amazing experience for sure!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!  THREE AND A HALF HOURS LEFT AND I’M NOWHERE NEAR DONE!  HEEEELLLPPPPP!!!!!

I’ve made a bit more progress:  I can shoot now!  And the shots will collide with things and react accordingly!  Now to add some things for them to collide with, eh?

LD #20 Demo2