Two lessons learned so far during this LD:

1. Don’t consume too much alcohol the day before LD starts
2. Be absolutely certain that your tech works (Also I’m kinda kicking myself now that I didn’t do a warm-up game)

Anyhow, I’m now doing a game about an adventurer who is exploring a pyramid and he is alone of course. I’m back to making a 2D game and for that I’m using my typical 2D iso look.

Here is a what I ate:

Self-made wraps with some salad, onions, olives, cheese, kidney beans, corn, pepper and a spicy paprika dip. I can’t cook really, but I’m quite good at making wraps and sandwiches. (Maybe that means I should work at Subway if being a full-time indie doesn’t pan out. )

• An experimental art game about a guy who wants to be left alone, but his friends don’t let him only to found out he can never be alone.
• An RPG where you lose points/coins if you accept any help which forces the player to do things (kill monsters, etc.) alone on their own. This would go as far as losing points if you read the in-game tutorial.
• The player is sent to a deserted village to find out what happened there (some kind of wild west ghost town)

What I want to do for this Ludum Dare is to create something 3D and graphically impressive, that’s why I choose Horde3D as a 3D graphics engine. With that in mind, I chose the third idea.

The atmosphere I would like to have in my game would be something similar to Amnesia or Bioshock. (But I’m pretty sure my skills won’t suffice for that.)

I began modeling and just finished the Sheriff’s office:

I originally thought about using some kind of “Double desk” joke, but it didn’t feel right.

The practical thing about having two desks is, while one of the computers is busy compiling or doing whatever, I can still be productive on the other machine. My white macbook on desk #2 isn’t good enough to run Horde3D, but I’ll find some use for it like posting status updates or tweeting.

• Compiler/IDE: FreePascal 2.6.0 RC1 / Lazarus 0.9.31
• Library/Framework: My own + Horde3D (if I decide to do something fancy 3D)
• Graphics: Blender 2.6 (3D), GIMP (2D), Texture Packer Pro, Horde 3D Scene Editor
• Audio: SFXR (Sounds), GarageBand (Music), Microphone (maybe)
• Development OS: Mac OS Lion
• Other stuff: Xbox 360 Controller
• Food & Drink: Well, it’s almost Christmas, so I’m gonna trade my usual cola and chips diet in for mulled wine and gingerbread

Anyhow, I have every intention of developing Wolkenwelt further and eventually releasing it. I needed to push back the pre-order date, but I hope to be able to start with pre-orders by next week, even though the first alpha may not be as feature-rich as I want it to be.

If you want to follow the development process, you can either visit the official Wolkenwelt site, which has more information on the game and forums or you could follow me on Twitter.

Before I get into what my game is all about, here is some back-story: I’ve grown up with strategy and simulation games like Sim City, Caesar or The Settlers and they have been and still are my favorite game genre. What I want to create is a peaceful strategy game which is not too complex for newbies, but not too simple for veterans. I had several prototypes in mind with different gameplay mechanics and what I settled on was a scenario in where the player has to build a settlement on sky islands.

Interestingly enough, I came up with the original sky island idea for LD #20 and after playing around with the idea for a bit, I decided to create a small prototype while I was at BIGJAM in Berlin. While I was not as productive as I hoped to be, I got the basics done and decided to stick with the prototype. All in all, I worked about three weeks on this game so far. If you want to know what happened so far development-wise, click here to be redirected to the development blog.

If you liked the screenshot, I uploaded a very short gameplay video to Youtube last month if are interested in how the game looks like in motion. I also want to mention that I’m not working alone on this: Christian Storcks is doing the music (a short preview of that is in the video I linked in the last sentence) and Jesse, a friend of mine, is helping me with some coding, in particular scripting and some backend stuff.

The game is going to be released for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. I am planning on starting pre-orders by October 21st and I hope someone will buy the game.

Description: Dig down to find a lost dwarven treasure. Gain experience and defeat monsters on the way.

Mockup:

Definition of Done:

- Very long level (~ 20 minutes of gameplay), some parts should be randomly generated

- RPG elements, e.g. you gain experience by fighting monsters, finding treasure and blowing stuff up which then allows you to spend points on these attributes

- One enemy (zombie)

- One NPC (dwarf)

- XBox 360 controller support

- One music track

- A couple of sound effects

What I’m going to be using:

FreePascal 2.5.1, Lazarus 0.9.31 and my Elysion framework. Graphics will be done in Blender and GIMP. Music in GarageBand, sounds with SFXR and my own voice.

Tech:

That really depends on the theme. I’m either going to use Unity3D and C#/JavaScript, Elysion (my own FreePascal engine), CraftyJS or perhaps I’ll make a HTML5 game from scratch using Modernizr, jQuery, CSS3, JavaScript and some stuff I put together in the last few months.

What do all of these have in common? At least Mac and Windows support, so most of you should be able to play my game.

Graphics/2D:

GIMP, Paint, Pixelmator and my cheap graphics tablet

Graphics/3D:

Blender and maybe Cinema 4D, if necessary

Audio:

WolframTunes, Audacity, GarageBand, SFXR and perhaps even LaDiDa, if I feel like me singing is a good idea.

Also here is a current picture of my desk:

OMG! Double desk all the way.

Chronolapse is installed and I’m ready. My plan for this time: Go to sleep after the theme is announced (it’s almost 4 AM here), dream about the game I’m going to make, then build it and don’t let it get too stressful.

My game concept: A science team is sent on an expedition to the north pole where they discover mutated polar bear things and have to defend their base against those things while uncovering more secrets. The game is trying to be funny, so if you liked my style of humor from my LD17 game, you’re gonna like this one as well. Also, I kept the graphics style very similar.

This what I had for dinner earlier:

And here is the obligatory screenshot. As I don’t have any gameplay at the moment, I’m gonna show you guys the main menu:

But there is another chance for me in less than two hours and I feel confident that I will do some actual coding this time. I’m going to be joining the compo. Although there will probably be no Subway sandwich food photo this time as I stocked up on snacks so I don’t even need to leave the house.

My tools of choice:

• Compiler / IDE: FreePascal 2.4.3 / Lazarus 0.9.29
• Framework: Self-made on top of SDL, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf and Vampyre Imaging
• Basecode: Download here (3.2 MB)
• Graphics: Cinema 4D, Blender, GIMP, Pixelmator, Paint and my cheap A5 graphics tablet and maybe even Sculptris depending on the theme
• Sound: SFXR/CFXR, Microphone and Voice Candy
• Music: GarageBand
• Timelapse: Chronolapse under Windows, my little screenshot command-line tool + Timelapse Assembler under Mac OS X

More stuff like a desk photo if you click to view this as a full post.

As promised, here is my desktop:

Most of the development will be done on the macbook, the PC connected to the large screen will be most likely used for checking out what others have done and having some music playing in the background. I love XBox 360 gamepads and consequently my entry will also be playable with this controller.

This time around I want to spice thing up a bit and I do something I’ve never done before. I will try to make a video each day where I’m gonna be talking about the progress I made and what I’m exactly planning to do. I made a dry run and here is the result: Link to my first VLog-thingy. Keep in mind that I’m not really good at making videos. Not yet anyways.

The plan is to make this game available on the Intel AppUp Store and probably the Mac App Store afterwards. (For free of course, I personally don’t think that anyone would buy this game if it would be a commercial product.)

What is the current status?

Since LD #17 I’ve been working on the game every now and then. So what exactly changed since LD #17?

• Rewrote the texture loader (The game is now fully working on Intel GMA 950 and similar Intel integrated chipset graphics)
• Rewrote major parts of the engine (With the might of inline the engine feels now about 2 – 3 times faster than before )
• The robot is now moving much faster (and since I implemented a delta time function in my engine, it’s moving at the same speed on all computers)
• The game is now resolution independent up to Full-HD (1920×1080 pixels): While the title screen image will be scaled, you just see more of the game world on higher resolutions than 1024×600 pixels.
• There are now always four islands at the starting point with a few resources to get you started
• Better alternation of day and night (instead of just getting darker, there is slight red-ish coloring in the evening and yellow-/orange-ish coloring in the morning)

Here is a screenshot of the current status (from last Screenshot Saturday):

What is planned?

• Originally, game tips and trivia have been displayed in the bottom bar as “Did you know?”. I intend to split that up. Signs in the game world will show game tips and the trivia will be labeled “Fun Facts”. (I already began this task, but I’m not done with that yet.)
• Chatting with aliens
• Trading with aliens (New items or boosters for collected scrap)
• New items: Flashlight (lets you stay awake longer), Compass (shows the way to your spaceship and nearby scrap), bigger reservoir (which can hold more energy and fuel)
• Energy, fuel and speed boosters
• Particle effects if you pick up energy, fuel or use boosters
• Better camera management
• One more thing that is bothering me that the game takes a while (about 20 – 30 secs) to load on netbooks but I’m not really sure how to fix that.

So, here’s my idea: It’s going a tower-defense style game, but instead of building towers the player has to drag the enemies from the field into one of a few designated zones to serve as a weapon.

My base code: Download here
Language: Javascript with Processing.js
Graphics: Cinema 4D and Blender for 3D stuff, GIMP and MS Paint for 2D stuff
Sound: Garage Band and sfxr

My workspace is whereever my notebook is at the moment, so no deskphoto, but I can take some nice pictures of the gamescom instead.

Well, I guess that’s it for now…

Endurion says …
Absolutely unplayable slow. Maybe 1 frame per 10 seconds. What weird stuff have you going on there?

Well, rendering about 500 sprites per frame without checking if the sprite needs to be drawn. I noticed a slowdown on the Mac version, but in my opinion it was still playable.
Anyways, it’s fixed now… or at least I hope so. I just updated the links.

Hempuli says …
The gameplay elements are a bit thin, but this is sure a good start! The music is also very good.

Most gameplay elements were created about one hour before the deadline and there was not much time left for playtesting. Keep an eye out for the post-compo version which I am planning to release in a few days.

psnake says …
The graphics and music are good and do their jobs. It’s noticeable that there’s polish to the graphics whichs gives a great and consistent look to the game

I wish the gameplay was on the same level, it has the basic elements, but the random maps, in this case, gets in the way of the player since any strategy he could plan by restarting the level is lost because a new map is generated. In the end, it feels like it’s mere luck to be able to go from island to island.

Thanks for your detailed comment. At first, I thought the randomness was not such a negative factor. But then I played the game again and could see the point you are making. My thought when placing the random islands: Usually with these kind of survivor games once you have build everything or “seen” everything you are not going to play the game ever again, so I wanted some replay value. I realize now that placing the islands this randomly was not a good idea, you still need a lot of luck to beat the game.
I am planning to release a post-compo version in the next few days (or so), where especially this issue will be adressed.

eli says …
wonderful graphics and music. The feeling is extremely lonely and wonderful.

Thanks. I actually was kind of inspired by the music you did for your LD warmup.

philomory says …
I was looking forward to playing this game, but when I run it (on Windows), the text is all missing, as are most of the graphics. All I see are the robot and the items to pick up, no background, and no text, including on the menu. I’ll be coming back to this one to try it again, because it looks interesting.

Hmm, that seems like an odd issue. You need at least OpenGL 1.1 to play the game, but since almost every computer does meet this requirement, I did not mention this explicitely. So, installing the latest graphics driver might help.
But first, check if the file has been downloaded correctly. The file size should be 5.2 MB. (I had a few issues with my webspace hoster the last couple of days, maybe you just downloaded the file at a bad time.)
Also every time you play the game a log file is being generated in the /bin folder called “SurvivalGuide.exe.log”. Usually the content is something like that:

- Note – Timestamp – Start log
- Note – Timestamp – Using hardware surface
- Note – Timestamp – End log

If you have a completely different content, please let me know. I just tested the game on all four Windows PCs (all either Windows XP or 7) at home, but I couldn’t reproduce this error anywhere. If you have redownloaded and tested it again and it’s still not working, could you please give me some detailed specs on the computer you are trying to play the game on.

I also added builds for Linux and Mac OS X. The Mac OS X build is a bit slow at the moment, there are some issues with the texture loader which I need to rewrite for Mac OS X in the near future.
Anyway, the links are on my entry page: Click here

Thanks to everyone who played and commented on my game.

The new version has already been uploaded. Get it here.
As for the Mac and Linux ports, I’m having a bit of a problem with the Mac port, so it might take a bit longer than expected. But you can always try to compile the source for yourself.

I have uploaded the timelapse on Youtube: Watch it here.
Gameplay and walktrough video will follow as soon as I have the Mac port ready.

I’m still a little bit sleepy, but I wanted to fix those bugs as soon as possible. And because I hacked the game together in such short time I didn’t care about memory resources and stuff you need a relatively fast computer to run (works fine on my Macbook Pro in a virtual machine, but sometimes lags on my Single-core Atom 1.6 GHz Nettop).

Read on for the post-mortem.

Personally I didn’t like the theme that much. First of all, because I used islands in my LD #16 game, in several other prototypes and couldn’t really find an idea that would be different from them. I had several ideas in my head, such as “You are the island”, some kind of Project Nomads game in which you have a floating island, build towers on your island and battle other islands, a RPG-like game where you go from island to island solving different quests and finally the survivor idea.
I went with the latter because I thought I can pull that off in 48 hours. The plan was to make kind of parody game, I don’t know if you can already tell in the status the game is now in. I planned a nice little intro, where you definitely get the idea that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it got cut due to lack of time.

I nearly spent the complete first day on graphics and I could have been more productive. The most productive time for me was the last nine hours before the deadline. The actual gameplay got finished the hour before the deadline, so there wasn’t a a lot of time left for playtesting.
Still, this is the most finished LD game I made yet, you actually have around 20 minutes of gameplay. Well, allright, that depends if you are exploring the world, building stuff or just focusing on the goal.

The Good

The Bad

What I’m planning to do for next time?

All in all, it was fun as always and I can’t wait to play all those games.

It’s Windows-only at the moment (source included in the ZIP file), I’ll try to make ports for Linux and Mac OS X (Intel only) available in the next 12 – 24 hours, but I need some sleep first.
I didn’t have much time to playtest, so balancing might be a bit off and if there are any bugs let me know.

As for the game, there is not much code there, but (nearly) all the graphics are done including some animations. Take a look at that wonderful title screen:

(It’s actually pre-rendered and the pixelated texture look is intentional, I didn’t want to invest any more time on the title screen as I’m behind schedule.)