Hey peeps and thanks for all the lovely comments you made on DiggyDig so far!

First I want to explain a couple of things here as reply of some of the comments:

I apologize that it is so crash prone, again. My engine is not very stable and i experiment a lot with it. I try to improve that while i work on it, but it is quite difficult to get it to work properly on different machines with all the different hardware configurations. In that respect, ludumdare is the only wide scale test i have available right now, so i am using your feedback to improve this piece of software so it will eventually end up working alright. LD 21 was already a great help there! Thanks for all your input on it.

Thanks for the praise on the game mechanics. It is certainly not unique, but rather borrowed from minecraft/terraria and taken to a slightly different direction. Getting the mechanics work properly actually took most of the time, so i only had a couple of hours left to create the content, which you can observe in the timelapse.

The limited amount of time, i think i had around 6 hours left, is of course the cause for the lack of game depth, versatility, actual content, and everything else basically.

The physics are very hackish. I never coded collision with rastered terrain before, so i am happy that it works as well as it does.

Post Mortem

What went right:

• I got the mechanics and gameplay to the degree i wanted to. I was not expecting to make a stellar entry either, instead i just wanted to fiddle around with this idea.
• Although loading times are terrible, i was able to get a quite big world created from a number of bitmaps. This was actually an important proof of concept, as i plan to use this technique to improve on the concept.
• The music was quickly hacked into like an hour before the deadline. It is not too shabby, so i’m fine with it.
• The overall appearance is not over the top, but okay. It could certainly use more polish but you can see what it is supposed to be.
• I had awesome food.

What went wrong:

• I couldn’t fall asleep on thursday, therefore overslept on friday, and was screwing up my sleeping rhythm just before LD.
• The theme. I was raging all night after the anouncement, and the day after about this ludicrous theme. I was thinking about making a game actually fitting the theme, before i realized it is just too generic to actually make a game of it. Same as Escape was, but this is getting offtopic. Anyways, only got started with the actual project some time saturday afternoon, so i wasted a lot of time actually not working.
• I spent too much time on the tech side of the game. It was not so bad this time because i was trying to get something done i planned to do anyways at some point, but i really  should get more gameplay done next time.

Aftermath

I will use the next month to play with this prototype.

I will :

• add dynamic lighting and normal maps to create a denser atmosphere.
• create a 2d Ragdoll animation thingy for teh awesome moves like i already started with as you can see in this basic proof of concept:

• add different kinds of terrain materials, and an actuall surface
• add physics (actual 2d physics) for bridges, elevators, traps, and more
• if the january is still not over by then, I will start experimenting with smooth particle hydrodynamics, or an approximation thereof in an attempt to add realistic 2d liquid simulations. I am not sure how well this will perform, but man, that would be wicked to have

I am not sure in what direction i will take this to be honest. This has an aweful lot in common with terraria, which i don’t like. Don’t get me wrong, i love terraria, but i don’t want to basically remake it. So i will just keep working on this and see what i can make of it. While i have a few hints, i am not fully certain about it.

Thanks for reading, and all your precious feedback!

with love

wzl

After getting to bed a short while after the theme was announced i thought about some ideas. Alone,…alone… isn’t almost every protagonist in a game alone? What makes the game themed alone? locked up in a cell? I dont know. I’ll just go with my gut instincts. Although the idea i had is probably not feasable in the given time frame.

However, getting up at 9:30 and…

Too tired, gotta . reach . hat

…making breakfast…

nom nom for more coding power

and after a cup of coffee i’m ready to go.

I will mostly listen to some web streaming, di.fm liquid if the playlist is awesome, and the soundtracks from the humble bundle.

If you’re interested in following my progress, you can do so at wzl.3ln.eu (we’re fucking 3ln!).
It is a kind-of-live stream with 0.3 fps, but fullHD %)

After Feasting at my parents place

Nom nom nom

I finished preparation on my work place and everything else:

wooooooooooooooah

Also HATS, because HATS. And i hide a kitten beneath it.

Awesome weekend is Awesome!
[+1 Kitten]

I just had to do this

for kittens

nyaaa

:3

As the Compo seems to be getting increasingly more attention and entries, the voting process is getting longer and more difficult to manage.

How are you supposed to vote, or which game are you supposed to vote? Usually, with this amount of games you’d look for screenshots or names that catch your attention. But not everyone has decent graphics or is creative when giving his baby a name, that doesn’t make their games any less play-worthy.

We were briefly discussing this on irc, and i came up with the idea of batch-voting for the entries, in a similar fashion as the theme votes are being made. Every hour a list gets accumulated by games that 1. have not been voted for by you yet, 2. a good amount of games which didn’t receive that much attention 3. a number of games taken randomly from the remaining.
you will only be able to vote games from within that batch(this is only true for the voting list you can request, so you still can vote others when following direct links to the submission page), and to get the next batch you’ll have to wait for the refresh.
This will also ensure that people will be able to spend more than a minute playing your game, before throw it out of the window just to quickly get their hands on the next, because they have to wait anyways, they might just aswell spend it playing your game.

If you’re a diligent voter, you could *unlock* a view-all- entry list when voted 25% of the entries.

This is just a quick idea to get more fairness in the voting progress of such a huge submission pool.

You guys have any other ideas or suggestions?

I’ll be using my own framework again, including jitter physics and ac.al audio lib.

I made some improvements on the appearance of Into Beyond, let me know what you think

I signed up for 8bit funding, and today Into Beyond got approved and i put it live.

If you don’t know what the hell Into Beyond is you can check my past Journal Entries or watch the videos on my Youtube Channel.

So if you like Shoot’em ups, exploration, space, rock, aliens, planets, stars, moons, asteroids, guns, lasers and all that stuff, hop over to http://8bitfunding.com/project_details.php?p_id=257 and spread the word <3

As always, updates will be posted on my blog at

http://redwatergames.blogspot.com

Thanks and love <3

wzl

As it turns out, i won’t be submitting the game for the october challange. It would just feel wrong to submit a milestone version, eventhough it got to the stage where i wanted to get.
The october challenge though helped a lot getting the motivation up, working continuously on a project, and keeping you posted about updates. It was great fun participating in it, and i don’t think i’d be anywhere near this stage of progress if i haven’t accidentally read about it! So, thanks for hosting!

Summary:
Into Beyond is a exploration shoot’em up with non-linear level and campaign design. Your only restrictions are your resources. You will travel to different planets, star systems, asteroid belts, space stations and lots more places, to discover loot, new gear, or even new ships. Different places may include different styles to play, so it won’t all be side scrolling action.

The goal is to get this done in the next 12-18 month, depending on resources and people i get to contribute on this project.

Now, for your pleasure, a few screenshots! (Can’t record video currently because Fraps is eating up all of the performance my pc has to offer )

All of the assets are placeholders and by no means final.
So for now this is basically a big proof of concept, which worked out quite well, and i am certain that this project may be well received once it is done.

I’m currently looking out for a way to fund further development, so if you have any suggestions, i would appreciate input on that.

I will now continue posting updates on my blog, rather than this journal, so if you are interested how the development continues you can hop over to
http://redwatergames.blogspot.com

or my youtube channel (will receive updates as soon as i am able to record again)
http://www.youtube.com/user/MegaWzl

or follow on twitter
https://twitter.com/#!/RedWaterGames

Thanks for reading and good luck to the other participants!
<wzl>

Last 2 days i was fidgeting with my shader implementation, and i finally got it to a stage that is totally usable. The Text formatting is not perfect yet, and syntax highlighting would be nice, but i’m still proud of it.

So here’s my first devlog, although i felt a bit awkward talking to myself, but i guess i’m just not used to it.

Earlier today i was playing and recording some guitar, so here’s a new theme for the solar system.

wzl – desolate place

I’ll be refining it, and probably writing some more in the next couple of days

So this week, as mentioned last time, i started adding some gameplay elements.

I started with a bit of enemy behavior. The floating spheres are now mines, that close in on your position once you get near them. I doubled their hitpoints so they need at least two hits to increase difficulty.
Also i added another enemy type: a beam turret. It aims at you and fire’s if you’re close enough. The aiming has a bit of inertia though, to make evasion possible.

Speaking of evasion: i realised the controls were rather quirky and not very fluid, so i decided to rewrite them and came up with a new control mechanic. Instead of your ship moving up and down you now pitch the nose in the desired direction.
This has two consequences:
Good: movement looks and feels smoother overall
Bad: Evasion is nigh impossible
So i added the [Shift] key to enhance the controls. Pressing it will now keep your current pitch locked (instead of automatically leveling it back to surface parallel) and you can roll up and down, or strafe, if you will.
This adds some nice depth into gameplay and allows some pretty neat dogfighting in this early stage of development already.

Furthermore i added item drops, just for the sake of implementing them. They currently serve no purpose, apart from a rewarding kching sound upon collection

AND you have a new gun! LAZOR BEAMZOR PZZZWWWWEEEEEEEEW

Now without further ado, i present to you: Funky Ship part 5!

Oh well, progress seems slow. I didn’t got done what i wanted to do, but i got other stuff fixed and implemented.

Anyways, here’s the update!

The solar system is fine for now, the transition to the level is terrible though.

The level itself is rather boring currently. I will add more content for that in the next week.
More enemies, more weapon types, more everything!

I think i made a pretty solid base to advance on, so the interesting parts can be added bit by bit now

I made a somewhat longer post being more elaborate about the whole project on my blog.

Go check it out NOW!

Spacehunter Introduction

Here are some updates and more info on this particular project:

The funky ship is untextured and therefore very funky!

Summary:
You’ll be a bounty hunter or contractor doing jobs for differnt people. You’ll be visiting different planets or areas in space, like nebulae or asteroid belts for fulfilling your objectives. You will be able to visit other solar systems for more variety of quests, vehicles, items and locations.

Technically i want to have an editor that is capable of designing different planets that are distinct from one another, so no planet is like the other, and there are several ways to do that. For now i will be saturating textures differently for planets to appear distinct from one another. I will also add foliage soon for several types of environments.

Gameplay wise it is your regular shmup, but not all the same! Take from this whatever you might

Concept of two regular boring ships, probably not gonna make any of those, just adding for good measure

Also i am looking for a decent title. Space hunter is good enough as a working title, but it fails as a product name!

Anyways i will advance gameplay mechanics the coming week. So stay tuned for some actual shooting stuff!

Challenge? Hell yes!

I was getting nowhere with my previous LD entry remake, and eventually i cancelled it. Now, just when i need something new to work on, i see this!

What i will be working on is a concept i have lying around for quite some time, which i was refining every now and then, and apparently now is the time to bring it to life! I don’t want to spoil all of it just yet, but i give you this much: it involves horizontal shmup’ness in 3D ‘n shit! Better prepare for some bad ass shoot-out

Here’s what i got so far:
SpaceHunter planetary prototype

So, how would i earn that $? Easy, you just preorder it (at some point in the near future :p).

Edit: How the heck do you embed youtube videos? >:O

The Collapse

After my failed attempt to make a video post mortem (video editing tools are just a pain in the ass) i’ll just write them down in a non-flashy manner.

Can't touch this

So, what went right?

In the given time, i was able to create and design a solid game concept that potientially could be fun. It has a continuous artstyle, although very generic at this point.

The game features a level editor, which actually consumed most time developing. I wanted to make sure to have a solid base to work on the game, which is for puzzle games obviously the level generation. It turned out to be quite useful. You can design levels fairly quick and immediately test them, which eases the level testing and balancing in the long run.

Also i am glad that i was able to spend some time working on a catchy soundtrack, although it is not very long and kind of repetitive.

What went wrong?

THIS went wrong

I got a lot of feedback that the game wont run correctly or crashes on startup. This was a fault in the coding, and still isn’t fixed completely at this point. But it should work for the vast majority currently, or at least i hope so.

Another disadvantage is the design of the levels, or rather, the order i released them in. I was getting used to the controls while developing and testing it, so they didn’t feel too difficult to me. I didnt realise that new players wouldn’t have enough time to get used to the controls and getting frustrated too quickly. Some of the earlier levels require you to control quite accurately, followed up by some rather easy levels.
This was partially due to designing the levels just few hours before the deadline. I should try saving up more time for that the next time.

Another result of the late implementation and testing of levels is the bump sound. At the point i realized it is quite annoying, and bugging at some points, it was too late to fix. However i didn’t want to remove it completely as it is important to have some audible feedback. I should have just made it less loud.

So, what are you going to do with it?

I will continue to work on it. I will make changes on things pointed out in the comments, mostly a more decent difficulty curve for the levels and better controls.

One thing that was bugging me with it though, was the art direction. I kind of like simple minimalist design, and it certainly works for a protoype for a game compo. But to capture more attention it’d need a more artsy design, something that will be recognized easily. So i was sitting down with a friend, who is concept artist, brainstorming about different themes, and he came up with a cool idea.

You will play a bacterium, or virus, and navigate through bovels and intestines. Fighting your way through to that one cell you need to infect. It will receive a new, more organic (quite literally) level design. That, however, requires a complete rewrite of the game, which i am working on currently. That theme is kind of neglecting the Escape topic, but the gameplay will basically stay the same.

I might be able to show some mockup, or ingame wip screens in the next couple of days.

Finally I made a post mortem longplay.

I assume you read enough of those already so i made it a commentary to a longplay.

Edit: Its broken, gimme some time to fix, pinnacle videospin is CRAP. It removed all of the audio, didn’t doublecheck beforehand :/. Do you know any other free video editing tools for windows?

Edit2: Enjoy it as longplay, video spin won’t render the remaining audio no matter what i do.
I will re-edit and upload it when i found another tool

Enjoy

Now, a couple of days went by and i got a lot of positive feedback, thanks to all of you <3

I must say i am pretty satisfied with my entry. But some comments had me frustrated (not the comments in particular, but the cause of them). People were experiencing crashes, or the game not starting properly, and if it works, they get stuck because i made some design fails in the early levels. Poeple weren’t able to experience, what i had worked on so hard, just because i made some mistakes in the development. It felt devastating.

When i read that submitting fixes were allowed, if they are dependant on having the game working, i was rejoicing. It still leaves me with a crappy level design, and that can’t be helped just yet. Just take it as a challenge. They are definately solveable.
I would love to record a play-through but my machine is too slow to have the game running and fraps recording at the same time I might be able to do it at a friends pc the next couple of days though, so look forward to it

So to mention the issues that came up:

1: Crash on startups
There were few occasions of startup crashes. One of them was a fault at the model loading in the collada parser. I used float.parse() without the ‘i-dont-care’ parameter (CultureInfo.Invariant) so it crashed for some localizations ( using ‘,’ / ‘.’ delimeter ). That was obviously fixed pretty easy once i knew whats wrong. I just had to add some basic exception handling to the code to find out about it. I should have added that long ago, anyways.

2. Levels only getting loaded partially or not at all
The building and collapsing animation of the level geometry was written in the last hours of the development, so it was a rather hackish attempt and i knew it wouldn’t be perfect to begin with. I also knew that my timing sucks, as i was using GetTickCount(); which is rather unprecise, only getting updated about every 16ms. Not quite enough for a solid physics simulation.

I started playing around with different timing methods that are available in .net, which boil down to GetTickCount()/Environment.TickCount and QueryPerformanceCounter()/Stopwatch, not being satisfied with the results of the latter, as it was jittering like hell. As i figured out after a couple of hours, the actual problem lies in the game loop. After reworking some basic orders (i fooked around in it while working on the game) it worked like charm. Physics feel alot smoother, and the levels construct/deconstruct correctly.

3. The goal model was not showing up for some
Actually, i have no idea what the cause was, i still don’t. It was fixed with the time/gameloop fix though. So it comes for free. (Although it still looks ugly whiteish as the texture is not working correctly. I won’t fix that for the entry, cause i’m not allowed to :p)

4. There is still a reported crash, without putting out some error message, besides “error” apparently, which i can only hope is unique to that one user. Although i’d love to fix it, i have no way to do so at this point. Sorry about that alexlarioza :\

If you experience crashes or other bugs, please let me know. You can find me on Twitter or irc://irc.afternet.org/ludumdare as wzl or redwater\wzl,

Thanks, it is really appreciated

Finally, thanks again to all of you providing constructive feedback. It really helps designing a solid concept to work on. If you liked it, you should look forward to the next iteration of the game

Enjoy playing, and good luck with your entries fellow luders \o/

I made a somewhat longer post about the entry on my blog for some more information on the development on

http://redwatergames.blogspot.com/2011/08/collapse-ludum-dare-entry.html

also uploaded a video featuring the leveleditor

and a gameplay video

Enjoy reading/watching/playing and leave some comments