I’ve been working quite a bit on my map editor over the last couple of weeks, so this weekend’s mini-ludum seems like a perfect oppertunity to take it for a proper test drive (assuming that I come up with a design that needs manually created maps that is).

Editor info + download

If anyone else wants to use it you’re more than welcome, it’s designed to be game-agnostic and should suit a wide variety of game styles. Plus I’ll probably be on irc during the compo if you have any problems.

The Steam Tower has fallen apart and it’s up to you to put it back together again. Run around, pick up the stray pipes and plug them into the rest of the plumbing so that the machinery works again.

Windows download

Webstart link (for Windows, Mac and Linux people).

Gameplay
Use the cursor keys to move and space to jump. X will pick up and drop a stray pipe. C will plug in a pipe to the wall or unplug it from the wall.
Activate all engines and you’ll complete the level.
If the tension in a pipe you’re carrying is too high you’ll lose your grip on it and drop it. A red glow around your player shows when the tension is getting high.

Notes
The use of the theme is a little weak unfortunately. It started off being based on window cleaning and then moved onto drainpipes and plumbing. Somewhere along the line I started thinking about the Steam Castle in Steamboy and Howl’s Moving Castle and decided to switch from water/drainpipes to steam/steam engines.

However I found out in the last 12h that I can’t draw steampunk sprites at all, so the steampunk theme (and hence tower) doesn’t really come across. I should probably have stuck with water/drainpipes and designed the levels to look more like a tower block with plumbing on the outside.

Oh yeah, levels. These got thrown in right at the last minute so there’s only a few of them unfortunately (especially because I found some bugs in the level loading right at the last minute). I really should have allocated more time to them because I think there’s some good gameplay struggling to get out under the hastily designed levels.

Created some proper steam engine and steam source sprites and threw in some simple animation so you can tell when they’re activated.

So very tired right now, but I don’t have any levels or sound yet, and I’m determined to get this to a playable state. 2h to go!

Since the realistic look clearly wasn’t working, I’ve gone for a more familiary vector-y style with bold colours. Spent a couple of hours on these and I think it’s looking much better. My first attempt at a run cycle too, which is more like a limp but it’s better than nothing.

Still lots to do though…

I’ve realised I need an absolute ton of sprites to make this work, and while I can just about get away with drawing vector-y stuff, I can’t even slightly draw semi-realistic steampunk sprites. Which means my game actually looks worse with the sprites than it did with the wireframe rendering.

Still don’t have any levels created, and I need to add scrolling and the actual tower (plus sprites) in as well. This is going to be a long night…

Pipework and plumbing have been added, so I’ve actually got some gameplay now, but no proper levels to play on. I also spent quite a bit of time getting a proper menu flow (main menu -> in game -> game over). It’s amazing what a good font and a few simple gui sprites will do for the visuals.

I have steam engines and steam sources, that can be piped together. Except they’re currently nothing more than wireframe X’s so it’s completely uninspiring… Although one of my goals was to have a more complete journal i’m going to ignore it for a bit and focus on the game. Hopefully I’ll remember to take a bunch of progress shots as I go along for the end.

I’ve wasted too much time trying to get the physics robust enough and it’s just not quite there. I’ve decided to cheat and make the player let go of a pipe if the tension is too hight. This is easy to code and works better than I expected actually, although it does mean the levels will have to be a bit simpler. At the moment since I have no proper graphics or even any gameplay that’s something I’ll just have to live with.

Really, really need some actual goals and gameplay now though. No screenshot since it looks the same as before.

Spent a lot of time reworking the physics, especially the collisions and relaxation code as it was jitterier than an epileptic on crack. Seems to be much more stable now, although it’s a bit slower than I’d like it should hold up ok.

So I took a risk in deciding to code some “proper” physics myself insted of just fudging things and having pipes that don’t collide with anything. It seemed to work, but now I’ve let the player grab hold of one end it all goes horribly wrong. The pipes tend to get stuck on the rather angular levels so it stretches and goes wrong in all sorts of horrible ways.

Unless I can figure out a quick way to make this stable, I think I’m screwed.

Crude, hacky physics that is. I’ve got some pipes which will eventually become drain pipes of some kind but at the moment they just flop around on the map and look limp.

And it still looks very ugly. That’ll have to wait until tomorrow I think.

I can’t seem to decide between doing “proper” rope physics (with collisions between the rope and platforms etc.) and some kind of hideous cheesy hack and ignoring platform collisions for the sake of getting something done quickly.

I suspect this could make or break the game, so I should probably get it done quickly and see how it goes either way…

Progress is good, so here’s the current progress:

It loads a crude inkscape .svg file via Slick’s svg parser and converts it into some platforms and a player start position. The player can run along a platform but can’t jump yet so that’s next on my list. Small break first because my hands are cramping up and I need caffeine…

Woke up a couple of hours ago and saw the theme. Cursed. Threw a couple of ideas away over breakfast. If anyone wants it “Extreme window cleaning” is up for grabs.

I’m now going to attempt a steam-punk-esque platformer (with a twist, so hopefully a bit unique). However it’s going to be a lot of code and art so I don’t know how finished it’s going to be, so I’m keeping this breif and to the point.

Progress so far is a blank window with some text in it. Woo!

I’m finding IRC and the compo blog to be terribly distracting, so I’m going to go dark and thrash out some code and try and really focus…

Unfortunately I’m away from home for this competition, so i’ll be using my tablet pc instead of my proper pc. That’s not a big problem, but Eclipse does feel a little cramped at only 1024×780. The other snag is that it’s got a bare-bones graphics chip so I can’t use fancy shader magic. Although I suspect that’s actually a good thing since otherwise I’d probably waste far too long messing around with some trivial graphics tweeking instead of focusing on the gameplay.

My tools will be:

• Java 1.4 and OpenGL for the game
• Eclipse and Ant for an IDE and build scripts
• ArtRage and Paint Shop Pro for drawing
• Sfxr for sounds (if I get time)

I’m also toying with the idea of using Inkscape as a level design tool. I’ve seen it used to great effect in a couple of other games, but I’ve not used it before myself. I’m going to spend some time today toying with it to see how it is and see what kind of file format it chucks out. I don’t want to spend hours trying to figure out how to parse it’s file format and waste a lot of time. Of course I might want to do something tile-based, in which case it’ll probably be regular ascii maps FTW.

Like most LD48h competitions in the past, I’m going to set myself a few personal goals for this time around:

• Something playable.
• Something fun. Always tricky.
• Something accessible. Gameplay and controls need to be explained simply so people “get it”.
• Cross-platform. Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Proper menu flow (main menu, in game, game over, repeat). Probably too ambitious for 48hours, so might get cut.
• A more complete series of progress screenshots, rather than just a couple near the begining as usual.

Things I won’t be caring about:

• Sound. A massive time sink for me, it takes hours to get a single sound effect right.
• Fancy graphics. I’ll be on a laptop with just a basic graphics card, so no fancy pixel shader magic.
• Code elegence. Hack hack hack!
• My general state of health.

Things I’ll be trying to avoid:

• Spending too long creating sprites.
• Leaving something vital to the last couple of hours like last time (level creation).
• Burning the midnight oil on the first day and ending up wasting a good chunk of the second day because I got up at midday.

Anyone else have any personal goals they’ve set?

My third LD48 entry, and so far my best. This just about manages to include all the stuff I missed in the previous ones - nice graphics, fun gameplay and the difficulty curve is about right (well, except for the insane spike right at the last level).

Also, I think the way the plants grow is rather cool. Lots of seat-of-the-pants platforming to keep you on your toes.

More details and a download link here!

This was my second LD48 hour entry (the first having been lost to the eather) and is pretty much the opposite of my first entry. The first had shiny 3d graphics but poor controls and gameplay. This attempts to focus purely on game play and avoids doing any graphics.

Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to balence the difficulty, so it’s very, very hard. Still worth a play if you’ve got a few minutes though, if only for the mental swirly plasma flux which may or may not have been proven to give people seizures.

More details and download link here!