Play Seeds of Destruction
If you haven’t played, I recommened you do. It’ll only takes a few moments to get the gist. It is a flash game, so you won’t waste anytime downloading/installing.

What Went Right?
1. Practice – I spent a good month practicing. I knew I wanted to use Flash and FlashPunk which I’ve never used before. So, I spent about a month before the event doing tutorials and then I worked on porting my Ludum Dare 17 – Islands entry to flash. Althought I didn’t finish the port, it was good to get my hands dirty with FlashPunk.
2. Chevy Ray’s Code – When the keynote was released and I discovered that Chevy Ray had given everyone a beautiful gift of awesome code, I immediately downloaded it and studied it. Then, during LD23, when brainstorming I threw out ones that could not be used with his starter code. It definitely shows that I did this, but I think it was worth the trade off.

What Went Wrong?
1. Bad Screen Switching Bug – in the last hours of the LD I ran into an impossible bug when switching between the different screens. I couldn’t unravel it because I didn’t understand Flash, FlashPunk and the Chevy Ray’s keynote code well enough. I spent too much time trying to “fancy fix” it. I should have switched to hack mode earlier. I ended up with a hack, that included restarting the game within the game. If you play it long enough I think it’ll run out of memory and crash. Doh!
2. Big Plans – I spent a lot of time on my animated cut scenes. It was planned to be more involved, but I noticed in time that I had to triage. I, luckily, was able to tell the bare bones story with what I had already created, but I stress how lucky I was here. I could have easily ended up with a lot of work being abandoned. I need to better judge how much I can get done in the time allotted.
3. Curse the Cursor – Several people complained about the green cursor being hard to see against the light blue sky. I hadn’t noticed this at all. I need to build in some “looking” time into my future plans. I was so busy with game play I didn’t consider the easy of use.
4. Distractions – I spent too much time surfing. If you watch the time lapse below I think you’ll agree. While surfing is a normal part of my routine, I feel it got out of hand. Typically I surf to give me and my subconsciousness time to organize and think about problems. Maybe I need to come up with a different way to take these thinking breaks. One that is less likely to degrade into just procrastination.

Time Lapse

Tools I used
Color Wheel:
FlashDevelop
MS Paint
Google Images
Fitbit
iPhone 4
My Camera
FlashPunk
TweenMax
Chrome
imgur.com

Feeling the presure.. AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa didn’t bother cooking: tuna salad

Play Complete
I’ve had a few freinds play the Alpha test (here, comments welcome.) And! No bugs reported! Comments have been all positive too! My one fear is judges will think I just skinned the keynote’s code, but I guess that is one of the risks that comes with my strategy. Today is all about polish. My next task is to make a sort of intro cut scene that tells the story of how your seed landed.

Breakfast 2

Bacon, eggs and tomatoes again. And that’s ice tea I’m drinking, have been the whole Ludum Dare, home brewed even.

Sleep 2

Diner #2 - Cauliflower with Garlic and Butter, with a Butterfly cut pork chop topped in a cream horseradish sauce.

I have a few more items on my task list and then the game is “Play Complete.” That gives me all of tomorrow to polish, which was my goal!  I’ve never been so far at this point. I think two critical factors have made this possible:

1. ChevyRay’s code that he gave away with the Keynote!  Thanks ChevyRay!
2. I’ve spent the last month or so learning Flash and FlashPunk instead of waiting until the contest to learn!

How it looks at this point:

Celery and Peanut Butter

Bugs have slowed my progress, but I feel good about the direction I’m headed.  I can already see some post-compo potential.  I’m thinking the title will be Seeds of Destruction.

Lunch 1
It’s almost 3 pm here in Arlington, VA and I’m having my first lunch for LD23. Kind of late but I wait until I’m hungry.

Chicken and Vegetable stir-fry.

Progress

It’s coming a long, but I’m feeling the pressure. My task list seems too long. Worst part is I’ve hit a bug! Maybe you can help? My FlashPunk Entity is not calling the Update method! I’ve triple checked and the World Update is being called and calling the supper.Update()!

package SeedsOfDestruction
{
import com.greensock.easing.Cubic;
import com.greensock.easing.Quad;
import com.greensock.TweenMax;
import flash.display.BitmapData;
import net.flashpunk.Entity;
import net.flashpunk.FP;
import net.flashpunk.graphics.Image;

public class SeedBullet extends Entity
{
[Embed(source = "/assets/Seed Bullet.png")] public static const SEED_BULLET:Class;

public static const SPEED:Number = 200;

public var image:Image;

public function SeedBullet(player:Player)
{
// Make the Pink transparent
var bitmapData:BitmapData = Global.MakeTransparent(SEED_BULLET);
image = new Image(bitmapData);

super(x, y, image);

FP.angleXY(this, player.stem.angle, 40, player.x, player.y);
image.angle = player.stem.angle;
image.centerOrigin();
image.smooth = true;
active = false;
layer = 2;

setHitbox(40, 40);
type = “seedbullet”;

trace(“created”);
}

override public function update():void
{
trace(“update”);
super.update();

trace(“update2″);
if (collide(“BadPlant”, x, y))
{
explode();
}
}

override public function added():void
{
super.added();

var time:Number = FP.distance(x, y, world.mouseX, world.mouseY) / SPEED;
TweenMax.to(this, time, { x:world.mouseX, y:world.mouseY, ease:Quad.easeOut, onComplete:explode } );
}

public function explode():void
{
world.add(new Explode(this));
world.remove(this);
}
}
}

Sleep 1
I wore my Fitbit to bed last night. Here’s is it analysis:

I expected to sleep longer, but I didn’t feel like I was dragging out of bed. I’m worried I’ll need to take a nap later.  We’ll see.

Breakfast 1

Standard bacon, eggs, and tomatoes breakfast.

Brainstorming
Now, to figure out how to best improve the game:

• Scoring mechanism
• Different types of seeds
• Mobility
• Change the way your seed bullets work
• Improve graphics
• Title Screen
• Icon
• Music
• Sound Effects
• Pop-up tips

Pro Tip
Use imgur.com (free) to host you food photos and screen-shots. It reduces the load on the Ludum Dare site and it is super easy to use.  Just drag and drop to the “Upload” section or if you register and activate you email address, simply email photos from your smart phone directly. Then uses the “From URL” tab on the Insert Media screen. I’ve also found that if you remove the width and height attribute from html the “Insert Media” screen creates the pictures re-size themselves perfectly.

I’m hitting the sack.  Here’s where I stand: Seeds Screenshot 2

Game idea complete and fleshed out. I’m using ChevyRay’s missile command code and making it into a Nature at War game, it might end up with nanobots in it.

Screen Shot 1

Dinner 1

Snack 1

Here’s the command center, that’s right I code in a storage closet and that’s my cat Jack.  His hobby is to keep me from using the keyboard or mouse.

Mr. Phil Games Earth Headquarters

I also wanted to share this snippet of AS3 code that lets you choose a color and then convert pixels of that color to transparent pixels:

public static function MakeTransparent(source:*, color:uint = 0x00FF00FF) : BitmapData
{
// Get the bitmap data so we can fix it
var bitmapData:BitmapData
if (source is Class)
bitmapData = FP.getBitmap(source);
else if (source is BitmapData)
bitmapData = source;

// We aren’t use the transparent feature, hence the color
var bitmapDataNew:BitmapData = new BitmapData(bitmapData.width,
bitmapData.height, true, 0×00000000);
var pt:Point = new Point(0, 0);
var rect:Rectangle = new Rectangle(0, 0, bitmapData.width,
bitmapData.height);
var transparent:uint = 0×00000000;
var maskColor:uint = 0x00FFFFFF;
bitmapDataNew.threshold(bitmapData, rect, pt, “==”, color, transparent, maskColor, true);

return bitmapDataNew;
}

I’ve been practicing all month and looking forward to Ludum Dare 23 very much.  This will mark my 7th year!!!  That’s right, my first Ludum Dare was LD6 – Light and Darkness, April 2005!  Interestingly enough, that is the same LD that Phil Hassey’s new and just released game Dynamite Jack was conceived.

Excited!!!

I’m using a new technology, as usual: Flash/AS3 with Flash Punk

I spent the day “working” on my warm-up MiniLD32.  I have the general design done, it’s a sort of gopher smash on the head game, except you are on a float throwing beads and doubloons at people in the crowd instead on hitting them on the head.  I was going to use Orthello2D with Unity but after some hair pulling figure out it hasn’t been update to 3.5.  Then, I started figuring out how 2D Toolkit worked, but it dawned on me an hour or so in that I couldn’t use that in a Ludum Dare because I can’t share all the code.  So, then I started floundering around trying to get some basic things working a la from scratch.  After Google-ing some problem I ended up watching 3 hours of YouTube Unity tutorials.  So, a most successful warm-up so far, as long as you think of warm-ups as making all the mistakes you can’t afford to during the actual Ludum Dare.  I’m headed to bed now, but I could still have something playable by the end of the day tomorrow, stress on the could.

I missed the nano practice round, so I’m doing my own warmup. I’ve chosen the theme Mardi Gras because it’s Mardi Gras weekend (Mardi Gras is Tuesday, Feb 21st this year.)

Theme: Mardi Gras

No hard rules, timeframes, start or end times, or judging, just fun. Post what you make in the comments.

The XNA version of my game now surpasses the Unity version.  What’s working:

• Player display
• Player movement
• Player collision with items
• Background Board (no wall collision yet)
• Door key displays
• Player can pickup keys

• Wall collision
• Door display (Locked and Open)
• Level transition
• Enemy display
• Enemy following
• Enemy killing you
• More Levels

I’m feeling like this list is too long to finish in 7 hours and 15 minutes.  I also have a lot of chores around the apartment that need attention. So,  I’m going knock the “can’t ignore” ones out and then hopefully I can sprint to the end!

LD21 Screenshot 2

I’ve got a game idea and a plan.  It’s basically a Pac Man with an interested style and a little twist.

Who will be our hero?

Brainstorming

Honing in on the idea

The First Screenshot

Lock and Load:

• Unity3d
• XNA
• ExEn (Andrew Russell‘s cross-platform exapnsion of XNA)
• Visual Studio

Aim High!

Aim High

I’m in!  Will be using Unity this time around.  This will be No. 10! Wow, ten is heavy.