Since a couple of issues with the random number generator conspired to make the game a little harder than it needed to be, I’ve done a post-compo version of the game.  The changes are:

• Altered fungi generation to always leave a gap for the player to get through.
• Altered fungi generation to ensure the full range of fungus types appear within a reasonable timeframe.
• Weighted weapon toadstools to appear mostly on the front of the ship.
• Added menu to the title screen.
• Added easy mode (less ship inertia, less frequent (and not intensifying) spores, less frequent boulders).

And I’ve also uploaded a couple of videos of me playing through the game (spoilers, obv.):

Peaceful playthrough

Destructive playthrough

They’re slightly jittery because I had a hard time finding a screen recorder that actually worked. Fraps, camstudio, and taksi were all far too slow; I wound up using gtk-record-my-desktop on Linux (which I have on a different partition on the same machine, so it’s not a hardware issue).

First, I thought it might be worth posting all the images I made for the game:

(I’ve hidden one image above the second ship to avoid spoilers)

This LD was pretty much a dream.  I’d already decided I was going to be using watercolours for the graphics (since I’ve been painting with them quite a bit lately), and then on seeing the theme I had an idea for a game that would really benefit visually, and tie into my current reading habits (again, Jeff Vandermeer’s City of Saints and Madmen).  From there the whole thing went incredibly smoothly, with no major roadblocks.

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The OSX and *NIX ports of The Lair of Fungal Wonder are up now (and amazingly required no edits to get them to compile on the other platforms – that must be the smoothest porting of a game I’ve made to date).

I’ve also uploaded my timelapse, so you can see me making the game.  The only slight hiccup is I made the music and SFX on my other computer, so during that part you’ll have to make do with watching the screensaver.  Also I didn’t think to point the webcam at my paper while I was doing the watercolours, so for that part all you see is me hunched over, occasionally looking up with a paint brush in my mouth.

I’ll do a post-mortem later.

You can get The Lair of Fungal Wonder here.  Here’s the title screen:

I’ll upload Linux and OSX versions tomorrow.

Updates since the last post include boulders falling from the ceiling, fungi which shoot at you, various particle effects, and wee story/tutorial messages from your command base.  A picture:

I have a few more things left to do still.  With a bit of luck I’ll submit some time around 9 (GMT).  Dinner pic’s below the jump.

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So I’ve added the music, the sound effects, the drop shadows, and I’ve done a new ship.  It’s getting there:

Among the things still to do are falling boulders when you kill enough fungi, various particle effects, and a tutorial or explanation screen.  I should have it done in plenty of time for the deadline.

I’ve been up for about 2 1/2 hours now, and I’ve been doing the rest of my graphics.  Here’s a picture of some of the additional fungi:

Now I’m going to do the music and SFX while the paint dries, then scan everything in (after lunch?).

Forgot to take a picture of my breakfast, but it was just some weetabix.

Garden of Earthly Delights is fairly prominent in my head right now.

Okay, an update before I stop for today.  You can now scan the fungi (and win the game if you scan all the fungus types), and toadstools attached to your ship fire bullets and destroy fungi:

Things to do tomorrow:

• Music.
• SFX.
• Falling boulders.
• Shooter fungus?
• More fungi.
• Foreground drop shadows.
• Scanning progress bar.
• New ship.
• Title screen.

The fungi collision detection is in, and I’ve added spores and the weapon toadstools:

Next to add bullets for the toadstools to fire, and get them colliding with the fungi.  Also, I think I’m going to add drop shadows to the foreground objects to distinguish them from the background.

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So I’ve got the background scrolling nicely, I’ve got the player’s ship moving about, and I’ve added random fungi generation (currently from a pool of 7):

I’m not too sure about the design of the player’s ship though.  I might change it if I have time after everything else.  Slightly concerned also that the fungi don’t stand out enough from the background.

Next step is to add collision detection with the fungi, then fungi scanning, and spores.

A ready to bake baguette with my own special pizza sauce and some cheddar.  Mmm…

Going on, the next step is to get the background scrolling, then I’ll add the player’s ship and start adding fungi.  Hopefully by the end of the day I’ll have the scanning and spore->weapon mechanics in and can spend tomorrow finessing things.

So I’ve decided on a name, and I’ve got my background rocks into the game (though they don’t scroll yet). I give you  The Lair of Fungal Wonder:

I think the lower foreground is a bit too similar to the background, but that’ll probably be less of a problem once I add the fungi and the background rocks start moving parallax-ly.

…and gutted that Double Zombie Rainbow didn’t win, but the themes I want never win.

Anyway, having set my alarm to 3am so I could check the theme (I seem to get more interesting ideas when I’m only half-awake) and go straight back to sleep, I have my idea.  I’m currently reading Jeff Vandermeer’s ‘City of Saints and Madmen’, and obviously have fungus on the brain.  So the game’s going to be a kind of ambient sidescrolling shooter/non-shooter.  It’s set in this long cave that’s full of fungi, and the player’s job is to scan all the different types.  The catch being that the cave is also full of floating spores, and whenever the player collides with one, a toadstool grows on the hull of their ship.  A toadstool which shoots bullets.  Which destroy fungi.  And then the more fungi you accidentally destroy, the more the cave starts to fight back, with boulders falling from the ceiling, spores which kill you if you touch them, etc.  There’ll be two endings depending on how successful you were at dodging spores.

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This looks fun, here’s mine:

I’ll be entering again, using my usual C++ template code.  I’ve slightly updated it since the LD17, and it now has configurable key mappings, in addition to: image loading; 2d drawing via OpenGL; basic GUI framework; audio via portaudio; a simplistic polyphonic synthesizer; and truetype font rendering.  And it’s cross-platform, so I’ll be doing Windows, Linux and OSX versions of my game.

My dependencies are: GLEW; libjpeg; freetype; libpng; portaudio; SDL; SDL_image; SDL_ttf; zlib.

And I’ll probably be using some combination of Inkscape, Paint Shop Pro and Tracktion for my various audiovisual needs.

Template code here, GPL licensed.

I’ve fixed some bugs with my entry.  So far it seems people only noticed the clicking bug (caused by the code I use to start the game in fullscreen at your native resolution, with black bars if your monitor’s not 16:10 – it was working before the compo, then I stupidly broke it during).  Other bugs fixed include the text rendering as black boxes on OSX, and it crashing straight away on my intel graphics netbook.

I consider these game breaking, and have updated my entry’s links accordingly.  If you want to see the original versions, here they are:

Windows – OSX – Linux/source code

Also, thanks for the comments guys   I pretty much agree – visually it’s my strongest LD entry to date, but gameplay-wise it’s just too random, with no real opportunity for the player to turn it to their advantage.

Doing this now, because the longer I leave it, the less chance I’ll ever write it up.

I’ve uploaded OSX and Linux/source code versions.  These ones have the stupid bug where you could click on buoys before you’d found them fixed (thanks TFernando ), but I left the Windows version as it is, since that’s how I submitted it, and it’s not a huge bug.

Timelapse is here.  I’m afraid it’s missing the music making though, since I did that on a different computer and forgot to record a corresponding timelapse.  Post mortem after the jump:

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I did some last minute tinkering with the difficulty, and added some basic tutorial hints (displayed on your first play).  Getting the difficulty right was hard, and I suspect I may have gone too far towards the hard end of the scale.  But then these kind of games tend to rely on frequent deaths as part of their replayability.  I’m interested in what kind of comments I’ll get.

There are 5 endings by the way; 3 bad, 1 good, and 1 very good but rare.

LD entry link.

After the jump, a final food photo:

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Changed my mind, decided the cut-scenes needed colour:

Still not entirely happy with them, but it’s too late to do anything now.  Just the tutorial hints and the decision on whether to randomise the islanders’ colours left to go.

The first cut scene of the game.  It’s not amazing, but I think it’ll do.