Here’s my entry for mini-LD#5.

It’s a cover of GBGames LD#11 entry, ‘minimalist’; turned evil. I like to think of it as a minimalist survival horror.

You can download maximalist and read more details here.

There is a gameplay video here … but it leaves off the surprise ending, so you still have to play the game :).

The goal is to complete 25 levels an achieve the highest score possible.
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I really enjoyed the simple, satisfying feel of GBGames LD#11 “minimalist” entry. The anxiety-inducing two-tone audio was also great touch. Not wanting to work too hard this weekend, it’s also simple enough that I was sure I could make a cover version without to much stress ….

Here’s a quick screenshot of where I’m up to.

These might turn out to be placeholder graphics (or they might just remain ). So far I have the basic feaures of GBgames original implemented, including the anxiety-inducing audio. I’m also adding a new spin on the idea … the enemies move a little, and can be ‘baited’ to coax them away from the exit.

Not sure if I’ll participate in Mini-LD5 yet or not, but just in case, here’s an alpha release of my ’simplemenu’ library. It could well be the simplest GUI framework you can imagine. It barely deserves the title of GUI, actually. It’s intended to make it easy to add clickable “Start”, “Options”, “Quit” buttons to the title screen of a game. It works for me, but it’s far from finished.

(Also, sorry to release code so close to the start time … won’t do it for a ‘real’ LD … but for a mini-LD … well … better lateish than neverish).

Here’s my timelapse … it wasn’t all that exciting so I added a little running commentary.

LD#12: pansapiens timelapse

Congratulations to everyone who participated. I can wait to see what y’all have created ….

Some post mortem thoughts
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Here’s my final LD#12 entry: The Siege of von Danken Tower !*

It’s a game for the Atari 2600 VCS, but you can play it here in a browser based emulator. There is also a zip for Windows, packaged up with a standalone copy of the excellent Stella emulator, including the ROM. Hint for Debian/Ubuntu users: sudo apt-get install stella. For a laugh, take a look at the ugly source code.

Back in the day, every great Atari 2600 game had a back-story (to help you enhance the incredible graphics using your incredible imagination). Be sure to read the all-important cheezy back-story.
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Meh, too tried for details.

Two mintue noodles with mini dim sims.

I’ve been having lots of minor disasters here that have really impacted on my productivity. Around lunch time, the electricity went off again. This doesn’t happen where I live in Australia very often … geez, you’d think we were a Third World country or California with all these “brown outs”. Anyhow, I went into my workplace to use their electricity and internet connection (and the microwave for my delicious quick meal above), but didn’t manage to get much actual work done. I tried to make a quick video blog post about the saga using Cheese on Ubuntu 8.04 … but it was just buggy enough on my system that I failed to even finish that.

Driving home, I think I mentally debugged a problem I was having with collisions … back to it ….

I just woke up to find my computer off … there had been a rare power failure in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Then I went to have a shower, and the bathroom clock had stopped. The problem is, the bathroom clock runs on batteries .. it wouldn’t be effected by a mains power failure.

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Here’s rough and unexciting rundown of the story so far:

• 1 PM: initially toyed with Batari BASIC, with the idea of making an Atari 2600 game. Got the compiler working, but couldn’t get the multi-sprite kernel working … which basically meant I was stuck with only two decent sprites on screen at a time. Decided to fall back on Pygame+Rabbyt, since I was lacking a coherent game design at this stage too.
• 3 PM: drew a quick picture of a possible design. A falling block/build a tower game for two people, or one person and an AI. Flip blocks between your opponents tower and your own to annihilate same coloured ones and make their tower shorter. First tower to reach the sky wins. Good potential for crazy sound and graphics, if I ever get that far. Seemed solid and simple enough that it should work, with the potential for some featuritis later on. Started coding.

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Baby peas, baby potatoes, baby carrots, baby mammal sausages.

Hidden, then revealed.

So, I’ve been lurking on IRC but remaining mute … deep in thought (plus a little bit of Olympic mens beach volleyball … Go Australia !! .. just beat the Brazi… er… I mean Georgian team).

I saw Jach mention his whiteboard, and thought, what the hell, that may help. So fired up the Wacom and let the Gimp off it’s chain:

I’ll leave everyone else to have fun speculating the what these diagrams mean (like I even know myself yet ). It’s a likely to be a two player game, unless I can make some AI for a CPU player.

BBQ Chicken, Greek Salad and Egg salad. Thinking tall thoughts. Thinking Atari 2600 … time for some research.

Oh, and while grocery shopping, I got all twitchy with excitement and managed to knock over a box of Okra at $12.99 per kg. Luckily they didn’t make me pay for it, or I’d be eating Okra-based food all weekend

So, with all the hubris and overconfidence of a LD second-timer, I’ve made no firm plans for my participation in this compo. But I will produce something. I’m waiting for the theme to direct me.

I do have three (or four) very general ideas of what I might use:

1. Pygame + Rabbyt (the old fallback, if I decide to avoid … option 2 or 3)
2. Processing.js … but it could run too slowly if I do anything too complicated
3. Some type of browser based scene/image based puzzle/adventure game (think Myst), where the images are served up online, via Google App Engine or Turbogears. Click points encoded using a CSS hotspot grid. Maybe multiple players could interact somehow too.

Everything will be coded on Ubuntu Linux, with Gimp, Inkscape for graphics, sfxr and whatever audio tracker/softsynth takes my fancy (maybe LMMS, since I had a fairly good experience with that last time).

Also plan to use the Python debugger Winpdb for the first time on a project. I feel like it will really help, but we will see …..

Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone who voted for providing kind and constructive comments in the voting area. They’ve really encouraged me to continue developing this game. Keep in mind when reading my comments that I too am trying to be constructive, and I’m not trying to come across as a complete butthead. In my mind anyone who even got half a final entry completed has done an amazing thing in such a short time. Secondly, let me apologize for including a few levels that were far too hard …. actually I’m almost certain now that they were impossible.

So, I’ve prepared an updated version of Mondrian for those who’d like to play it. I thought I’d leave this release until after voting, to ensure that nobody could accidentally judge based on the non-48 hour version. You can get the latest version a my OMGWTF Games !!1! page. This new updated version includes: (more…)

Here’s the timelapse of the development of my entry [youtube.com], Mondrian. It spans pretty much the whole 48 hours, with one shot every 10 mins, (except the blank ones when I was sleeping with the screen on powersave).

For my own future reference:

Screenshots taken with the cronjob:

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * import -window root -display :0.0 /home/pansapiens/LD11/screenshots/$(date +%F_%R).png >/dev/null 2>/dev/null

Converted to video with:

$ mogrify -format jpg -scale 840x526 *.png

$ mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=4 -o timelapse.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800

Here’s my final submission of Mondrian.

The game is heavily inspired by the visual art of Piet Mondrian, and while he wasn’t strictly a Minimalist (apparently he was a Neo-Plasticist), his works look pretty minimal to me. It also has a minimal ambient soundtrack.

You can download it here [Mondrian_by_pansapiens_LD11.zip] (runs on Windows and Linux).

Read the README in the zip. Esstentially, you just click the mouse and press ‘r’ to restart a level.

Here’s the screenshot:

Don’t let it fool you … it looks (and sounds) much prettier when in motion.

There are ten levels. I think it can be completed, but the last few levels are hard (or impossible :P). It could do with some better levels … there is an in built level editor (using the commandline switch -e). Send me some better levels !

Tools used:

Python (2.5), Pygame (1.8), Rabbyt (0.8.1) (and it’s dependency, PyOpenGL)

Played with Pyglet but hacked that code out and didn’t use it in the end.

Gvim and Eric as IDEs, SVN and Trac for source control.

The GIMP for image editing, LMMS (using the BitInvader softsynth) for sound. Sounds trimmed using Rezound, encoded with oggenc. My Ensoniq Mirage was used as a controller keyboard (should have just sampled it).

All put together on Ubuntu Linux, Hardy Heron Beta with a flaky Pulseaudio server that wasted my time (should have never upgraded before the official release date :/ ). Windows version compiled with PyMike’s PySetup.py, on Windows XP running in a VirtualBox VM. Briefly tested on Vista.

Big thanks to my girlfriend for cooking all weekend.

Now it’s sleepytime.

A pleasant surprise … I had this made for me.

What is it about me doing LD that makes my girlfriend want to cook so much !

So, I’ve been pretty quiet on IRC … because I’ve been coding and making sounds flat chat.

Here’s a screenshot of Level 5 in my game, Mondrian.

I still have TODO list to work through before I release the final:

1.  Fix collision rules (it got ugly while I was playing with ideas)
2. Allow level restart (you’d think this would be easy … well, you haven’t seen the codebase yet )
3. Make more levels (it’s important, but there is a level editor, so ….)
4. Compile the Windows version (please, please work without hitches !)
5. Upload final & bask in the glory of Ludum Dare completion !!!!!!

Again, made for me. How appreciative am I.

Coffee (lovingly prepared by my girlfriend) & Hot’n'Spicy vegetable juice. I’ll probably have some biscuits later on too.

The game is moving along, but I’ve gotta get cracking if I’m going to have something semi-finished by the end of today. Onward … to the level editor !!!!

So here’s an early screen shot of the current state of my (puzzle?) game (it’s based on the paintings of Piet Mondrian … more about that later).

I’m currenty experimenting with the gameplay rules and mechanics … but at the moment same colour squares annilate eachother, while different colors breed when they touch, generating new squares in random positions. The player moves the black lines to allow the coloured squares to expand.

Here’s a screenshot of a glitch that shows what sometimes happens when two different colours touch and the whole system starts breeding with itself.

That’s not supposed to happen. I’ll fix it in the morning.

Step 1: Leave the computer to start making some coffee.

Step 2: Return to computer while coffee is pouring.

Step 3: Completely zone-out making minimal techno with freebirth.

Step 4: Return, to find … er … not a minimal amount of coffee. Everywhere.

I’m going to eat this leftover Thai green curry.

It has anything but minimal flavour.

Here’s where the magic will happen

Still need to do the grocery shopping !!!