It’s up on my web page, where I’ll also be posting updates to it.

Since several people seemed to find The Triumph of Time pretty hard, I decided to give some pointers as to how to best play the game.

Let me describe the core mechanics of the game. As soon as you have built a pylon next to a star, it will extract particles from it at a fixed rate. The larger the star is, the more particles are extracted per time unit. Building several pylons next to a star will not increase this rate, the particles will just be randomly distributed over all pylons. The particles will then go on to more or less randomly distribute themselves along all barriers which extend from their current pylon.

At a fixed time interval (every two seconds, if I recall correctly), the cloud of antimatter will expand in every direction. It can only be blocked by having a barrier which is powered by particles in its way. However, for every grid cell along the barrier which the cloud tries to enter, one particle on this barrier will be destroyed; when all particles are destroyed, the barrier falls.

So here are some rules of thumb for successful play:

• Try to tap each star at your disposal as early as possible, especially the large ones.
• Try not to lose any stars to the cloud as that will severely cut your particle budget.
• Do not build any superfluous barriers within your territory. Every particle that swirls around on a barrier which is not at the frontier does not contribute to your defenses and is essentially useless. So, try to keep the paths which transport particles to the frontier as efficient and short as possible.
• Keep the frontier as small as possible. Every frontier tile (i.e., a cell on a barrier which delimits your territory from the cloud) will cost you a particle every two seconds, so minimize your surface. PRO TIP: It’s well known that the shape with the smallest ratio of circumference to area is a circle. It may help to keep your territory roughly circular.
• I’ve found that once a critical barrier has fallen, it’s often very difficult to recover. It’s better to stake out your territory on the conservative side rather than lose it all.

I hope this helps a bit. After the break (SPOILERS): screenshots on how to solve the first four levels.

I’m done. And tired. (The game’s title is quite ironic when applied to the compo, huh…)

Please read the readme if you have troubles, I don’t know how obvious the gameplay is. Also, fullscreen can be disabled in the config.ini file. So far, I only have a Windows build.

Quick instructions for the impatient:

• left mouse button places pylons,
• right mouse button scrolls,
• mouse wheel zooms.

Windows binary (2.28 MB)

Source

Mirror

Very tired, but also quite proud right now. I actually made a game in less then 48 hours!

UPDATE: I wrote a post containing a brief strategy guide for those struggling with the game!

…is my latest screenshot. I think it actually looks pretty nice by now: we have an actual backdrop (thanks to Universe Image Creator), slightly nicer sun sprite, and scrolling/zooming implemented.

There’s also some more gameplay now, hardy visible in that screenshot though. This may still go somewhere after all; I’m very afraid of time running out though.

For now, I’ll make myself some tortellini though.

Yes, that purple stuff is the wall of doom. What? Yes, I wish I was kidding too.

I’m a bit worried if I can make a finished anything out of this tomorrow. Still, good night everyone.

So, I’ll take my head off it for a while, have a couple of beers probably, and later we’ll see.

Still no nice graphics and only basic interaction. Hmmmm.

Then I realized my speakers’ power plug had come loose. D’oh.

In other news, I’ll probably go for a space theme now since that’s the only way a non-artist like me can make something that doesn’t hurt the eyes.

Yeah, it’s fugly. So what.

Now to actually come up with a gameplay idea. This is always the hardest part for me, I hope I won’t fail this time.

Currently making myself some spring rolls for lunch, hopefully they’ll inspire me.

Just made myself a cup of green tea to get me started. My tools:

• the D programming language
• SDL
• OpenGL
• a couple of homebrew classes I regularly use for game programming; vector math, font rendering, that kind of stuff. No time to post that now, but it’s online in a couple of places, so may link to it later.

First step: read up on hex grids and implement one.

Playing right now: De Stijl by the White Stripes to power me for the day. This is exciting, let’s get started.