I thought I’d post a new screenshot here since I changed the main character, and was hoping to get some feedback. A lot of the work I’ve done since my last post was trying to make collision detection and response work right. I think it’s ok now, but I have a new idea that’s simpler and probably works for the benefit of playability.

So, any comments on the little moles? Or the old worm characters, as seen in an earlier post.

I’ve added shooting and aiming to Mato. I’ve also added gamepad controls, tailored for an Xbox 360 controller. The game currently has just one weapon, similar to the chaingun in Liero, but I’ll be adding more as I go on. The aiming is done with the second analog stick, while you can use the first analog stick to move left and right as well as control the direction of digging, so you can dig straight down, for example. The gun has analog control over the firing rate, with a maximum firing rate of 8 bullets a second. The clip is infinite right now, but that will change for the final version.

One thing I’ve noticed when writing Lua code is that it’s pretty easy to write horribly bad code. I don’t have to define classes, I’ll just use create an ad hoc table with the necessary fields. My code is a horrible mess right now, but I am going to refactor it eventually. It’s kinda nice to just make a mess of it all and write quick hacks.

Hey, this actually is kinda like a game now. I can move around with the red worm and dig holes. Well, I guess I’ve got the destructible terrain covered already, even though I thought that would be a really difficult thing to nail. Frankly, I expected the simple approach of modifying the image on the fly not to work fast enough, especially because Löve is using OpenGL behind the scenes, so I basically need to upload the fullscreen texture to the GPU every time I modify the terrain. I guess the real hard part will be making the different weapons.

It didn’t take me very long to come up with a game I wanted to clone, because I had thought about it before. I might skip destructible terrain, and the weapon selection will likely be very limited. I’ll also be trying out a gamepad control scheme instead of the classic keyboard controls. I’m calling it “Mato” for now. The screenshot should be pretty recognisable for anyone who’s played the original.

I’m starting out with the Löve game engine, but I haven’t actually used it before so I might scrap it if I feel hindered by it. I kinda do want to use scripts for defining the various weapons and stuff though, so Lua will most likely be a part of the project.

So, we’re having a quick unofficial warmup compo before the real thing starts.

The theme is: Clouds

Just comment on this post or make a new post or whatever when you’re done. Deadline is when the real compo starts.

This fall the indie scene was given the gift of Unreal Development Kit for free. I haven’t been using it, but I am of course interested, and it seems to hold a lot of promise. The question is, do we have any LD participants utilising the latest tech from Epic?

Please share any thoughts on UDK and the viability for LD games.

Lately, I’ve been mostly using Unity for my game development needs, but I’m kinda bugged about the various limitations the free version has, so I’m now looking at using the Ogre 3D rendering engine for my graphics. OIS for input, OpenAL for audio, Bullet for physics if I need any. Ogitor for a scene/level editor possibly. Does anybody have experiences with any of these? I suppose I am still missing some sort of unifying “game engine” part here, but I have to do some work, don’t I?
In other news, I just went through some surgery on wednesday, so I’m not quite sure yet whether I’ll be fit to participate in LD16, but so far I’m feeling really good so I think I’ll be able to make something.

http://pekuja.com/ludumdare/143/globehopper-post-compo-release/

Now with 70% less disorientation!

http://pekuja.com/ludumdare/119/globetrotter/

I’ll make my final submission soon. Not much time left, and at least I’ve got a goal in the game now.

http://pekuja.com/news/106/wikipedia-galaxy-forever/

Now with a playable demo!

http://pekuja.com/ludumdare/100/intergalactic-planetary/

So yeah, I guess I’m still posting in my own blog. Sorry about that.

http://pekuja.com/ludumdare/97/wiki-space/

Still posting in my own blog. I think I’ll post here directly in the future though, unless I can get the syndication hooked up.

I’ve posted about my progress on my blog. Until I get PoV to hook me up with some syndication, here’s a link:

http://pekuja.com/ludumdare/92/wikipedia-mapping/

So, I just woke up a couple of hours ago, and I’m pondering about what to do with the theme. I have a couple of ideas that I’m thinking about now. Here’s a concept image of one of them:

General laziness prevented me from making an actual game, but here are a couple of levels I made, inspired by some games I’ve been playing lately. See if you can guess which ones:

So, the compo has started. The sort of ideas I have:

• HUD editor/library. Basically, this would be a GUI editor/library with no support for direct interaction, mostly just pretty ways of displaying data.
• Start work on a multithreaded scriptable game engine. I kinda want to learn some multithreading and scriptability, so I’m thinking maybe I could start building an engine that does those.
• Library for making replays of a game. This requires close integration on the game’s part so I’m not sure if I could quite make this into a reusable library, but I think this would be an interesting feature to implement. The idea would be that this would be useful for both debuggin and as just a nifty feature on its own.

From reading the comments, I got this feeling that not everybody has understood how the grinds and walljumps work in Tiny Hawk. The way you do them is you have to be holding the button when you hit a rail or a wall. Most commonly, you’ll do a jump and you’ll keep holding the button until you hit the rail or wall. Also if you’re walljumping up a tall column, just keep on holding the button, you don’t need to let go for each jump. The walljump is actually kinda buggy, and won’t always work if you’re falling down. This is because the game thinks you’re landing on a tile instead of hitting it from the side. I’ll likely fix this at some point. Also if you hit a rail on the very edge, you might hit the rail but fall off instantly. I’m going to call that an unintentional feature, because it’s kind of a neat thing that you can “almost” hit a rail.

A lot of people have been asking for a button for changing directions, but I think that not being able to turn around and playing the game with just one button is a pretty big point. I’m probably not adding that in. The actual problem is of course level design. There should be more blocks around so that you can bounce off a wall if you want to turn, or climb up quicker if you fall down.

Anyways, people seem to be liking the game, so thanks for that. I hope this little explanation clears things out (if there was anything to be cleared).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6fX5zzRf9Q 

Here’s my timelapse video. The picture-in-picture part is not completely in sync with the big video, but it should be somewhat close. I cut out the parts where I was sleeping or otherwise away. Music is Scattered Progression by JDruid.

Tiny Hawk final release (194k)

Update: Tiny Hawk Windows executable (3.07M)

I think I’m done now. The game is six levels long, has sound effects and music, and is all sorts of awesome, naturally.

Have at it, but be gentle.

Here’s another screenshot of my game, which I’m still calling Tiny Skater I guess. This is the fifth level in the game. The other levels aren’t this big. This one’s a bit of a mess to tell you the truth. The minimal game mechanics kinda make it hard to have interesting level designs. I think I have an idea for one more.

This is what my dinner looked like today. Delicious sliced chicken fillet with colorful vegetables and long-grain rice. A glass of non-fat milk to wash it down and a red apple as a sweet finisher.

Youtube video of my game. Added some more colorful graphics since last screenshot. By the way, does wordpress allow embedded videos? I couldn’t seem to be able to do that.

Here’s another screenshot. As you can see, I’ve colored the skater sprite. I hope that doesn’t detract too much from the minimalism. I’m thinking of making the graphics more colorful in other ways too. I think the minimalism of the gameplay is quite enough for me, as the game still works with just one button, which you use to jump, grind and wall jump. You jump by pressing a button, grinding and wall jumping happens automatically when you’re holding a button when hitting a rail or a wall. I was going to make it timing based, but I didn’t want to make it very hard. So far the game doesn’t really have any goals other than collecting all the red gems. I’m thinking of having an exit you need to reach within a time limit, with the gems giving you more time. Like in N and N+.

My tiny skater now grind rails and collect red gems. It’s almost like a real game now! I’m also planning on having wall jumping, and possibly slopes. Also missing some core “game” stuff like counting points, and maybe a goal.