The only changes in this edition are to do with making the game play a little nicer with some people’s systems.  If you’re computer supports 320×200 resolution in fullscreen, and is 32 bit, you should find very little difference between the previous release and this one.  If however you have a 64 bit operating system, would rather run the game in a window, or can’t support small resolutions in fullscreen, you should download this 800×600 resolution version:

http://www.mediafire.com/?myztgenjf04

There are no gameplay or balance fixes, as I am saving game updates for post competition.

The biggest problem people are finding with the game is with the control.  I did conciously choose to use sim-based controls rather than arcade, as I find them much more interesting.  Unfortunately they seem to be harder to pick up than I realized.  As for future versions, I’m not sure how much I am willing to dumb the controls down, but I’ll admit they might be a little excessive at this point.  One thing I had been planning to add at some point were better ships that had more engines (perhaps a reverse thruster) or better engines (easier turning).

Personally I do find the control a little hard, but also a lot more fun than it would be if there were velocity or angular speed limits.  You can’t just hold your thrusters down, because you will continually accelerate (both in turning or moving forward).  Just a little bit of force is enough to get you turning.  If you want to turn faster, hold it down more.  If you want to turn slower, hold the opposite key slightly.  I am really glad I tweaked turning before release (It was twice as fast before one of the final changes I made), but apparently I didn’t tweak it enough.

Game balance in general is pretty random I admit.  I spent the majority of my time on physics, particle effects, and ai, saving the very last few hours to actually balance the game.  Not only are the trade runs rife with exploits or the planet names rediculous, but the random spawns are far too random, and most enemies shoot too fast to put up with them.  For the immediate future, I hope to have some variety with enemies, and keep most of the starting areas much safer.  I also want the game to be less random in general, with more simulation behind the scenes.  I just didn’t have time for this before.  The game would be more satisfying if you could go toe to toe with some enemies more often, instead of having to constantly run away :)  I have had a few fights that were very exciting and winnable, but they are very rare.  It’s also possible to be killed 3 seconds into the game, which is just dumb.

There is also a bug with the planet police.  If a pirate attacks you and manages to hit a civillian ship, the police will come out and think you are the culprit!  The police were invented to protect the exploit of camping the civilian ships for all of their cargo.  (If you haven’t ever won a fight, you may not know that ships drop cargo when they die)  So I made the police extremely tough.  As a result of the bug and the strong police, any fight near a planet will quickly result in destruction, as a stray bullet from the fight hits a civilian ship

I also received several comments to this effect: “This game is so tiny!  But how does it fit the minimal theme?”  This may have not been communicated adequately,  but I went for minimal window size and minimal code size.  I also went for a minimal space sim, and there weren’t any features that I felt I could take away.  But the screen size was the main source of minimal.  This fixed release kind of takes that away, but I suppose it had to be done.

I will be improving this game once voting is over.  First I will tackle the bugs, and then I will tackle the spawn system.  I plan on adding some semblance of story or an overall goal too, with trading being a means of completing that goal; and numerous interesting events and things to see throughout the system.  I don’t plan on adding any form of hyperspace, and I probably wont add quests like they are usually implemented.  Oh yeah, and there will be a way to save your game!  I’m real sorry I didn’t have time for that one

Original source: http://pastebin.com/m3194032

It’s a minimalistic space trading game, a la elite.

EXE, source, and data: http://www.mediafire.com/?dsdbyntsxn2

Press “F” to switch to fullscreen, it’s a much better game when you do this.  It’s kind of small and more confusing if you don’t.  Of course, if that doesn’t work, then you’ll be stuck playing it small.  Sorry for that.  Controls are pretty simple: left, up right; or a,w,d for turn left, accelerate, and turn right.  Z to shoot, X to dock, and tab to switch shops while docked.  Since there is no deccelerator, you will have to accelerate in the opposite direction.  Also, there is no friction in space, so if you accelerate too much it may become difficult to maneuver (plus you will waste fuel).  The idea is to accelerate towards your target till you hit some ideal speed, and then accelerate away from your target when you are closer.

Unfortunately, I worked on the basics right until the deadline, and didn’t have much time to balance the actual universe.  So many trade routes might stink, and it is probably a bit easy to die.  If you upgrade your health a lot at first, then you might survive longer.  I find it very fun, and hope you can too.  Enjoy!

By the way, I’ll definitely be working on this more, so if you have any ideas for improvements feel free to give me a comment.

Noooo, I’ve passed 100 lines, not minimal enough!

I decided to do a space game.  My criteria is the minimal amount of features to make a cool space game for me, which means decent physics, and non linearity.  Beyond that I don’t know.  Here’s the boring minimal starscape:

And here’s the entire game so far:

Has particles, flashy stars (I don’t care if they don’t twinkle in space, I WANT TO SEE THE TWINKLY), physics, and guns.  Pretty good for 100 lines of code, but I could do better.

I have modified Devon’s clock program to update in realtime, and countdown till the end rather than increment from zero.  It also shows the time on the window/startbar, and uses few cycles (in pygame1.8 at least).

http://pastebin.com/m10f7a6f8

It’s dumb that there is no way to preserve indentation on here :/

Oh well, enjoy the panic

Several ideas come to mind but I don’t think they will be doable in 48 hrs.  I have a scientist who continually makes himself smaller, until he is the size of an electron.  Ok, it’s a cool idea, but I would need a few days to gameify it I think.  Is it a shooter, a puzzler?  What exactly do you do in the game?  How do I handle the shrink effect?  Too complicated.

Next, we have the building puzzle game.  There is some sort of support structure holding something up, and you have to remove pieces to some minimal limit without knocking it down.  Something sort of like jenga, but without putting the pieces back.  Unfortunately, this relies far too heavily on good physics balancing.  Make physics important for an LD48and it will crumble like the house of cards you are modelling.  That is one of my rules.

My last resort is to be boring and come up with something cool for dots to do and say, “hey look, everything is a dot, see it’s minimalistic!”  I most likely will be doing something like this, unless I come up with something better or manage to work my other ideas into something manageable.

Good luck all!

Here is my next final entry, I have to run off. Too close to the wire.

pygame source: http://www.divshare.com/download/3138725-184

windows exe: http://www.divshare.com/download/3138857-ef8

In case I don’t have time to do everything else I want to, here is my “final” entry. The core gameplay is pretty good, if you have played either zuma or space invaders it will make perfect sense, as it’s basically a combination of those two games. There are a ton of things I want to add but I’m not sure time is on my side at this point.

Anyway, I like my game It was fun to make a decent, fun game, in a little less than 4 hours.

Here is the final entry, in python source:

http://www.divshare.com/download/3137920-91a

I had a hard time coming up with an idea, so shelved it for a while, but then something came to me. Basically, I am making a zuma style game with a space invaders theme. There are some interesting twists I plan on integrating, and all in all it might turn out to be a pretty fun little arcade game. I had some fun making some decent art and getting the basic code framework set up. At this point you can win, although it’s got a long way to go. You can shoot the invaders with different colored bullets, if the colors match the invader is destroyed; otherwise the bullet bounces back. What’s missing is the invader ai, and of course, the chain reactions themselves. When an invader dies, he is going to coat nearby invaders with magnetized energy causing them to be drawn together. If the color matches on any colliding invaders, they will also explode

I actually do like my art, although it’s a bit too primary color. I’ll probably experiment with different shades of stuff, and add some more gradient to the palettes. If I finish the game first and have time left over

Uh oh, for some reason I thought the 15th was next week. Finals sure got me mixed up. I can’t believe December is half over already. Anyway, we’ll see if I can even come up with an idea for this, let alone code anything!

Ok, I should probably come up with something I can actually accomplish, versus the over ambitious ideas I usually do. Some kind of puzzle game should do it. But it has to be somewhat unique or I won’t care enough to finish.

Hmm, I’ll think about it for a few hours and see if I can come up with anything. If I have any good ideas, then I can begin mad coding time