I will be participating in the LD competition and give it my all.

I will be using:
- python
- pygame
- gimp
- guarana extract
- anything else I might need

See you then.

A slow start and a late first screen shot of a randomly generated maze – cavern. Based on my current progress it seems, I won’t be able to get the normal amount of sleep, if I wish to finish in time for submission. The next few hours will be interesting.

Well, after a few hours I’m starting to see C just wont cut it. The lack of data structures in its standard lib is getting on my nerves and I am switching to C++ where I wont be wasting my time with implementing stacks, queues or lists. I Guess next time I should do better research on the tools I want to use.

I shall join the fun. Missed out on quite a few events recently and I very excited that I have the week before LD off, so I will definitely have enough time over the weekend.

I will use:
C programming language
Allegro game library
text editor – scribes, geany maybe scite
Gimp, Inkscape, Blender – I never know what kind of graphics I might want to do
Linux OS

Never actually got far enough with the game, to start making sounds and music, so I don’t really know, what I’d use for that. Any suggestions?

PS:
Might even use OpenCV for a video interface, if I get a good idea for it.

I’ve taken to the sky.

I’ve had some trouble with my previous idea, and now I just experimenting. Maybe I can still put something together, I kinda like how these images look.

My first screenshot of some generated islands. I’ve done the preliminary graphics, and constructed the generating algorithm. Now I have 256 more or less unique islands to choose from.

I have a solid idea for a game of sorts, and I’m positive I will be able to finish that. But it’s probably not the best of ideas. Still I don’t have a very good track record for LD entries. I’ll take a short (family forced )break, and think this over. Maybe I can come up with something better that will incorporate these islands.

This should be plenty fuel for my ambitions. I may look messy (my style of cooking), but you can believe me, It’s delicious. Yum yum.

I chugged a Shark this morning, and it really gave me a kick. I’m buzzing like a bee, which is probably a bad thing, gets hard to focus.

So, here is my pitch.

A sea with lots of tiny unexplored islands. You set sail with in your small sail boat, looking for an islands of your own. The ones near the shore have already been taken, you have to try in the open waters.

The game will be online. I will host a server, that will have a generated map, and a list of islands. Once you find an island, the server will tell you if it has been discovered yet. If it has, you will see its name, and the explorer who found it. Otherwise you will get to name the island and plant a flags so to speak. Also you could leave a message for future visitors.

Might incorporate fishing into this game.

I cleaned off my desk and bought some provisions for the weekend (Lorenz chips, Shark energy drinks, OJ). Here a pic of it, although it’s not impressive, or really tidy for that matter.

workspace

Thats it for today. I’m going to distance myself from the digital world, and try to relax, maybe do some stuff around the house. Go to bed early, and wake up when the compo starts. Then I plan to burn through the 48 hours with my 8 cans of energy drink. I have the next week off (no collage lectures) so I can afford to get sleep deprived and zombified. Hope it will give me the edge I need.

Since tenacity is an important quality, I am back for another round of LD.

The tools I’ll be using:
QT4 library : lets see if it has everything that game development needs. I know how to use 2D drawing methods and openGL, I’m not sure about the sound support.
QTCreator : the official QT IDE, so far has served me well. This is the main reason I am going with QT, although I could use any other c++ lib in it. I love it.
Gimp,Inkscape : graphic tools of choice.
Blender : I might decide to go 3D with this game, haven’t decided yet. Might use blender, maybe just for 2D renders.
LMMS : linux multimedia studio, will be using it for music composing. Any other sound recording will probably be done by some generic sound recorder tool.

Now I have to prepare my timelapse script, last time I took way to many screen shots, ended up with a few hours of footage. Also need to do some shopping and prepare my work environment before the compo. Can’t wait.

I submitted my game, although not completely finished, but I lost sight of my goal. So I’ll recap and try to figure out where it went wrong. I also have a timelapse in the making, so I’ll post that next week as well. Good luck to everyone that still working hard on their submissions.

We are getting there, I hope. This little bugger took me a good 3 hours of work, but he is walking around and happily humping air, when there is nothing else to do. (Yeah, the idle animation sequence didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted it too).
For a puzzle game, I have an alarming puzzle deficiency. Looks like I won’t be able to put together more than 1 level, but already It seems this game’s quality is far beyond my usual entry (if I get one together).
Also I would need some nature themed sounds for this thing. :S

Haha, first level done. Well not really. This is just an image. I will draw this on the background, and add some nifty objects over it. But I guess this is it for day 1.

Still have a good felling about this one. I am gonna make it.

Although I am a bit late with it, I have a good feeling about this one. Most of my game mechanic is finished. On the picture you can see the graph of paths drawn out, red paths are active, blue are passive, and are activated, when you reach certain action nodes in the graph. You can see an action node, under the mouse, indicated by a spinning red circle. The filled red circle is you player, who travels over active paths. You can send him to an action node, by clicking on it. He will find the shortest way and follow it, until he reaches that node.

Now I need to replace the black background with scenery, red circle with a sprite, create animations for action nodes and some sounds all wrapped up as a neat puzzle. Right now I hope I can get one level together, after that the menu, and then maybe another level (my head is in the clouds).

Already a bunch of screenshots, meanwhile I can even get Java up and running (should have looked that up before the compo). Kinda ridiculous.

Right now I’m looking into using Slick as a game lib. I have the most problems with input right now. Once I get that sorted, I should be able to get something together. :S

But first: breakfast.

I cleaned up my workspace in preparations for LD. If you think It’s a mess, you should have seen it before.

Actually I should have posted a before and after image. I guess now all I can do is post a pre-compo and post-compo image of the desk. Should a good enough shocker as well.

… already.

Instead of C++ and SDL I will use Java and its standard library. No pre-written frameworks, all from scratch.

I will also use Gimp and maybe Inkscape for graphics. Not sure about the sounds yet, might use DrPeter’s sfxr.

To prepare for LudumDare 16, I have made a TODO list.
1.) get back on IRC (it’s not LD without it)
2.) salvage some old code (I have a c++/SDL game framework lying around somewhere, just need to detach it from an older project)
3.) do some prep code, tools
I know exactly what kind of game mechanic I will be going for (probably not ), so I’m going to try to do some tools, that might come handy. Of course, they will be available to everyone prior to the start of the competition, along with the framework (if I can find it, and patch it up).

I’d like to say I went down with a glorious ring of the clock, as the time ran out. But if I were to burn through the night, chuging something that would resemble coffee jello I would surely be out for the better part of tommorow. And I just can’t afford that. I guess this LD is just not to be.

I need to prepare myself better next time. My game this time had some potential, It wasn’t jsut some lame ass idea I usually go with. But I spent almost no time on it the first day, just enough to get my framework up. And today I bravely took on my herculean task thinking I could still salvage it, and at least make it playable. But I have failed again.

Next time I need better preperations all around. Just a good idea or refeined game engine just don’t work out. You need the package. So until next time, I will either finish up my SDL framework or learn some other killer framework or game engine. I will also buy a box of energy drinks and burn through saturday and sunday. I will find a peacefull spot, where I won’t be distracted by every little event. I will try to take monday off, so I can charge to the finish line, and more importantly, have a day dedicated to sleep. Also I will prepare for any other possible scenario, that could prevent me from finishing a kick ass game ( mother nature will not have the best of me!).

Completed the filter,  also added the main tower object. I made the map brighter, the dark color was really hard on the eyes, once I implemented the color filter. I also have a normal tower and a factory done, now I need a HUD/GUI to make them buildable.

I find the green color relaxing. Now I’m off to play some basketball, I’ll be back in ~2h and see if I can still make a game of this.