Finally done with finals and getting set up!

Here’s the obligatory workspace photo (I think I need some more screens…):

I’ll be hacking up some quick basis code over the next couple hours (it’ll be on my github here). I’ll probably be using SDL this time (I usually do 3D stuff, but I’d like to give something 2D a try).

Good luck everyone!

Yay! This’ll be my 6th Ludum Dare!

Not sure what I’ll be using at this point and I probably won’t have much prep time (finals week right now… and I’ll probably be starting a bit late Friday night), but it should be a fun way to celebrate the start of break.

Getting ready, I’m also wrapping up a Google Summer of Code project, so this is going to be a busy day…

I started hacking up a base framework thingy, so here’s my declaration of using it and a github link (it’s not really usable yet, and likely won’t be until just before the compo, but it’s open source and whatnot).

Also, here’s a snazzy workspace photo:

I’ll be doing most of the work in Linux with the machine on the right, while the laptop continuously pulls from git and builds in Windows (and runs IRC on the far left monitor).

I need more monitors, right?

I’m in! This’ll be my fifth LD.

As usual I’ll be using C++. Probably using Ogre, Bullet, OpenAL, and perhaps Lua/Luabind. I’ll link my base framework thingy once I’ve written it…

Tools/etc:

• Blender: For making pretty 3d thingys.
• Gimp: For making ugly 2d thingys.
• vim: For making that stuff that tells the computer what to do.
• g++: For making the computer understand that stuff.
• scrot: For taking pretty pictures of my desktop.
• CMake: For building.
• CTest/CDash: For continuous integration (mainly because “continuous integration” is fun to say).
• git (hosted on Github): For version control.

I’ll be doing 90% of the actual development in Linux, but I’m mainly targeting Windows, so I’ll be pushing changes to a github repo, and having a secondary Windows box continuously pulling changes and building. This should let me work in my preferred environment (Linux), but still ensure it’s working and building in Windows at the same time.

Here’s a little picture of my previous entries (I saw a bunch of these last time I did LD):

I picked a random electronic/dance song from the audioswap thing without previewing, and it hasn’t finished swapping, so if it doesn’t match at all, oh well…

Well, I wasn’t able to do as much I would have liked, thanks to power and internet outages, but I’m still pretty happy with the final product (gameplay is a bit slow, but it looks pretty…).

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=1503

I might keep working on this (after some sleep… ) and add some of the gameplay stuff I wanted (namely sharks and some fun little gadgets like sonar and stuff).

Here’s a final screenshot:

I’ll link my timelapse in a while..

Soooo, I woke up yesterday morning and my power went out for 8 hours. I’ve been working since I got power back, and I just now got internet back (16 hours after the power was restored…).

I dunno if I’ll be able to finish, I had some pretty grandiose plans, but I’m gonna get as close as possible.

All because of one puny little tree:

Oh, and a screenshot:

A little behind schedule, and I’m not liking some stuff, but it’s coming along…

I’m gonna be doing something 3d involving deep sea exploration (or, discovery, that is….). Here’s a shot of the fog effects and such on some crappy brown seafloor (it looks better in motion with the animated caustic-y effect…).

I have a 3d cube rendering and a scripting console working (using Chaiscript). Most of this is from my basecode, but I wasn’t 100% sure the basecode would actually work, so yay!

Now to come up with an idea (this theme kinda sucks…).

It’s not done (lacking physics among other things), but for a few hours of work yesterday/today I’m happy with it. I doubt anyone will have a use for it, but let’s call it GPL’d: [link]

The space in which I shall do work:

I was going to use codeblocks and mingw, but I had issues with dependencies and am falling back on msvc…

I’m using Ogre for graphics, OIS for input, Gorilla for basic GUI, bullet for physics, chaiscript for scripting and irrKlang for audio (oh and also fastdelegate for delegates). I’m using a custom framework, which I will release as soon I finish (with 2hrs left that’ll be hopefully soon…).

I’m in the middle of finals right now, but I’ll be done and back home Wednesday night, so I’ll have a couple days to relax and throw together some base code. Looking forward to seeing what y’all come up with!

As usual I’ll probably make something 3d using Ogre. I’ll probably use OpenAL for audio, bullet for collision/physics. Blender for modeling, code:blocks+gcc for coding, GIMP for making crappy textures, etc…

This’ll be my fourth LD.

I recently set up a quad boot with Win7/hackintoshed Snow Leopard/Arch Linux/Ubuntu, so hopefully I can make my game cross platform-like (post-compo most likely though…).

Now, there obviously isn’t a prize and the whole rating thing is pretty meaningless, but this sorta bothers me. None of the comments fit that kind of rating, and if you have some complaint to merit such a rating, I think voicing them in the comments would be the nice thing to do… (I’m more than willing to take negative feedback, but a universally negative rating tells me nothing useful).

Here’s my timelapse, for my entry “Fratricide”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNui4u02JK0

I’ll have a postmortem and some general thoughts sometime in the next day or two…

In the meantime, I might make a quick game for the jam too… just got an idea and I have some assets I could reuse.

Alright, finished up my shmup. My attempts at making music for it failed miserably, so I’ve left it music-less… but the gameplay seems to work well enough, and while still shots look sorta iffy, it looks nice enough in motion.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=1503

Turns out that using full 3d physics and graphics engines for a game with entirely 2d gameplay isn’t worth the added effort… ah well lesson learned.

Good luck to everyone still scrambling for the deadline!

9.5 hours left!

Still got a long-ish list of stuff to do, but I think I’ll finish with something reasonably game-like.

Got textures and some simple particle explosions going:

Breakfast

Diet Pepsi (that’s less than half the cans I’ve drank this LD…):

Okay, 26 hours and 30 mins in, mostly feature complete, though I’ll have to tweak the controls a lot to get em just right (gonna have mouse, arrows/ZX, WASD/something, etc to allow for peoples’ preferences). I also need to get the enemy generation running better and add more enemy ship types, but other than those, gameplay is all there. After that it’s just gonna be a mad dash to texture it all up pretty (almost every texture in the shot is placeholder) and add particle effects everywhere.

At the moment I have the enemies’ colors set to their health for debug purposes:

It’s all coming along pretty well, I’ll have some screenshots to show in a little while, but all the physics are finally cooperating… using a full 3d physics engine for a shmup might have been a bit much, but I think it’ll allow for some cool effects when I get to the polishing stage.

Muffins!

And since everyone seems to be posting pics of their cats:

Okay, 9 hours in, gonna sleep now…

I’m making a shmup, it’s 3d (though until I get some nice textures and particle effects going, it doesn’t really look interesting…), and the premise is that you control a cargo ship of some sort with powerful magnet/tractor beam-ish tech, so you can “force push” enemies into each other (I’m using bullet for some fancy physics), or pull an enemy in to use them as a shield and use their weapon to destroy other enemies.

Here’s an early shot: