So, just woke up about six hours in and saw the theme – Enemies as Weapons.
Very nice

I’ve had the idea of doing a top down scrolling shooter for a stupidly long time, but never really sat down to get it done. This shall be the weekend it gets a prototype at least!

Think of Uridium as an 8-way scroller, where you additionally have a grappling hook to swing yourself around the super structure if you wish, or to smash enemies into one another, or collect pickups, or any number of useful maneuvers a grappling hook affords. That’s pretty much what I have in my head.

That means the main proponent of the game will be this sodding grappling hook, so I best get that done as soon as possible, especially as I suffer from “math fail.”

As LD18 has now started, and I have zero framework/engine available to work with, it’s going to be a “from scratch” entry with my trusty GCC, and SDL providing the brunt of the back bone.. and I may have a look in seeing how quick I can get some Lua scripted action going.

Now, for breakfast and work!
Good Luck, Everyone

I’d been hoping to start LD18 with a brand spanky new engine to mess with.
That’s not quite been the case, however, due to work commitments and stuff.

This leaves me with three options, really:
1) Resurrect my old engine from it’s grave, for one more beating.
2) Be a lunatic, and write everything in the 48 hours ( no doubt spilling over to the Jam as well… )
3) Use this week to try expand my current engine beyond five source files, containing probably about a couple hundred lines in total.

As option one will lead to defeat ( the engine’s really knackered, there isn’t really any frame-rate independence in there at all, and the timers are all wobbly – the time mangling effects in Yargh! is proof enough of that! ) that leaves me with the other two.

So, I think I shall get the bare minimum of an engine ( load images, sounds, etc.. and display/play as appropriate! ) done this week, so I’ve some foundation to start with.. else, I’ll be wasting time building up framework code ( or hacking around existing broken code, ) and I’m not particularly good at time keeping, as the previous failed attempts will show

Engine code bared to all will be available here: http://svn2.xp-dev.com/svn/stuckie-SGEngine/trunk/
Looking forward to this one… think it’ll be very interesting

There’s a couple comments now about virus scanners tripping up on Yargh! for some reason.
I’ve tested it myself on a number of virus scanners without any issue, so I can only suggest to update your definition files and so on, since as far as I’m aware, it’s a false positive.

That said, the only thing I can allude it being to is that I compressed the main exe with UPX.
I’ve used UPX before for entries without an issue, so it could be the latest version I grabbed does something that makes some virus scanners thing it’s a bit iffy. As such, I’ve just uploaded an uncompressed version of the game. And seeing as I know some virus scanners would block access to the whole zip, never mind just the exe, I’ve re-uploaded the entire data set with it.

The new version is available here: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/gamez/ludumdare/ld17/yargh-uncompressed.zip

It’s the same data, and it’s effectively the same compiled exe ( I did just recompile, just in case ) but if you’re wanting to be super extra safe, the engine sources are in my entry for you to grab and compile yourself.

If there are any more problems with this, please let me know!

YARGH! Post Mortem

I enjoyed that, that was a fun weekend
Course not everything went to plan, but a number of things did, and after having had a few nights sleep, I can reflect over things with a clearer mind.
So click the link below for more details!

(more…)

Yes, yes I am…

I didn’t make it in time again, unfortunately.. but I did get a hellova lot more done than LD16′s derelict! So I’m releasing anyway.

I really enjoyed working on this, and though I say this all the time, I’m hoping I do get a chance to finish it off
Download link is here: Win32 and AMD64 Linux Binary + Data

Here’s a screenshot which sums up this weekend:

I’ll put a post mortem up later.. once I’ve had some sleep.. course I have work in the morning ( silly me forgot to book time off! clever, eh? ) so it may be a bit before I get back to it.

Well done to everyone else that took part and finished something, looking forward to seeing and playing some of them

Well, with just over four hours left, I’m still tying loose bits of code together… as per usual.

As such, I highly doubt there’ll be much polish at all.. no music, and a very poor chance of a bleepy sound effect in sight!
BUT! I’ve already surpassed the functionality from derelict, as you can actually figure out what’s going on, and get some feedback
It’s still got some niggles to work out… but I’ve got my Win32 engine build done ( took about an hour, holy hell… shouldn’t have bothered, really ) and the Hud interfaces are up and working as well!

Another screenshot:

Here’s hoping I’m posting in a few hours with a completed build!
Really enjoyed working on this

Falling behind slightly due to having to do a bit more tweaking and more work around code than I expected for things to behave themselves. Methinks this may be the last time I’ll be using SGZEngine in it’s current form.

Anyway, progress!
I’ve fixed the camera and added it’s “smarts” in again, so it only draws what it sees, not everything it can find.
I’ve added movement and attacking for men and ships! YARRRR
There’s wind – depicted by the crap clouds. It’ll randomly change direction and strength, and will affect your ships trajectory. Quite amusing to watch them perform wide arcs to get to where you told it to go as the wind’s throwing them about a bit.
The whole map is finished.. minus the randomising of where forts and treasure start.
All the graphics are done apart from the hud, though that wont take long ( nice big block of solid colour will do, if need be )

Screenshot:

What’s next…
Looting and Pillaging!
Capturing Mines and Forts ( and placing them, of course )
Some context sensitive clicking ( at the moment, left click to select/deselect a unit, right click to move, left control and right click to attack )
Hud stuff. This is probably of prime importance, actually.. as there is a lot going on, and I don’t want another derelict disaster *cough*
Polish ( sound, music, perhaps fix some of the tiles which look a bit crap )

Ahem, anyway…

I’ve taken the derelict scroller and rewritten it from the chunky scroll to a smooth scroll.. though, I’ve lost it’s “smartness” where it’d only draw what it could see.. now it draws every sodden tile ( otherwise, it gets lost and starts blanking out tiles before you’ve moved over them, and not drawing quick enough.. hmm.. some investigation later is needed. )
I’ve also added mouse support into my engine and exposed it to Lua. Need to do something with it now!
Finally, engine wise I told it to spit out a delta time properly… may as well stop making everything frame-dependent

Currently have a large (100×100 tile) map loading in and being rendered. Actually, it’s technically two maps that get loaded, one for the background, and it keeps another for collision stuff.. may change this later as it’s taking it’s time per frame ( probably due to the rendering of all those sodding tiles! )

Anyhow, time for dinner.. here’s another screenshot in the meantime:

Woke up, had a small fit with the theme ( my original ideas wouldn’t fit for it ) so made some tea and had a think.

Hmm… Islands…

After some scribbling in GIMP, I ended up with this.. so a piratey game sounds like it could be fun to do!
Also, I’ve already done most of the tiles I’ll need now, and they’re not too horrendous for a change either.
Enjoy the test tile grid I created.. now to actually get some code done!
Decided I’ll be using SGZEngine again… but perhaps gutting bits out as I go in preparation of redoing the thing.
More details about YARGH! ( working title, though it’ll probably stay ) as I think of them!

YARGH! Tile Example

With any luck, I should be able to take part in this weekend’s festivities of bludgeoning code to do our bidding in a short amount of time.

For a change, I actually have a rough idea which would fit about 80% of the themes already, with some modifications here and there.. just need to figure out the development platform, hmm.

It’ll either be the usual SGZEngine of lore that I’ve been dragging about for a while now ( though it’s in desperate need of being rewritten, ) a brand spanky new engine, or something web-based ( so that’s another new engine then, technically ) which would foster the power of PHP/MySQL, and perhaps one of them new fangled WebGL/HTML5 type things that have been gaining exposure recently. We shall see.

At any rate, looking forward to it.. and here’s hoping I actually finish something for a change.. rather than leave them to languish on the “I’ll get back to it” pile *cough*

That was fun.
Really, it was.. the majority of coding this was pretty good – as I had structured things fairly well for the most part.. till I went mad and started putting chunks of code in whatever file I was in at the time! Damn you Lua for allowing me to use any global function in any file at any time!

There were, however.. a few head smashingly horrific issues that did cost the game.

(more…)

About twenty mins late as my archive manager decided it would make bad zips – cause it felt like it.

Didn’t completely finish.. sadly… but this is something I’d definitely like to finish at some point.
You do get hot-seat multiplayer for your efforts of downloading though!

Skills were not implemented, which makes the Alien Queen utterly useless ( it can’t lay eggs that spawn into brood ) but the other classes work fine as they have weapons AI wasn’t implemented either.. so you can wander aimlessly through the HUGE part-designed ship and kill them.. but that’s about it, sadly. Lockers weren’t implemented either, so you can’t even gather loot! Yea, time managed to get the best of me, it seems.. I’ll explain more in the post mortem.
There’s also no win conditions… I forgot that… heh

I’m quite knackered after all that.. here’s a final screenshot showing what GUI I managed:

I currently only have an AMD64 Linux build as my Windows running laptop is in need of a reinstall.. I’ll get a Windows build done ASAP. You can grab the engine source from the SVN though, and compile it that way if you wish.
Other source is actually in the data zip – it’s all Lua script.

I’ll post up a post-mortem after I’ve had some sleep.. it’s been fun again!
Good Luck to everyone!

-edit-
Seems like my laptop was alive enough to produce a Win32 build! it’s up now too: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=preview&uid=267

Well I’m getting there.. slowly but surely.

I waited up for the theme last night, then went to sleep to think on the theme, so I didn’t start till about 9am GMT this morning.
Most of the day has been design, and getting some base assets down.
Code-wise, I’ve implemented a camera system, and a slightly insane map loading system again – something which wasted a huge amount of time as I stupidly based it on the Moons of Subterrane loader. which was designed specifically for it, and not for scrolling at all. This got rewritten twice, because of my stupidity.
More importantly, you can move your marines about ( though can’t choose the starting classes yet,  the menu systems are in there ready for it though ) and it recognizes doors and entities separately from the rest of the map on load.

Now, a screen shot.. then bed for a few hours sleep; tomorrows plan is finish most of the code by lunchtime, then work on assets and tidying till Midnight, which gives me two hours to port and package the final submit ( no bugger ups this time! )

Excuse the nasty hashing, I may fix this tomorrow with better art… if I have time!

A hulking mass of metal drifts
effortlessly through space.

Once teeming with life,
now quiet like the dead of the night.

This is a derelict.

For the brave amongst you,
there are unbound treasures aboard
worth unimaginable fortunes,
with a wealth of information
just laying for the taking.

However.

This is a derelict for a reason.

Pray you never find out why…

Sounds menacing, doesn’t it?
Derelict will be a top down turn-based strategy game with you controlling four marines from six classes.
Your mission is simple: raid the derelict for as much as you can find.
Your marines may leave at any time.. it’s just in how many pieces you need to worry about…

Well, after a successful LD15 ( I actually finished something! which wasn’t too bad either, if a bit brutally difficult and incomplete ) I feel up for another one.. lets see if I can not stuff up the submission this time

I’ll have a bit more of a battle plan this time.. I shall be planning my time carefully rather than just barging ahead blindly.

Tools:
GIMP, GCC, CodeLite, MilkyTracker

Pre-Developed Code:
My engine… of which the source can be found here: http://svn2.xp-dev.com/svn/stuckie-SGZEngine/ most of which is hideous, hehe .. it’s also not been touched much since LD15

And that’s that! Looking forward to another Ludum Dare, and hopefully another finished game

Just a quick note as I’ve had a few comments about this now:
As stated in my post mortem here I _severely_ buggered up the submission and included an old EXE in the upload, but the source to the correct version.
I did upload a fixed EXE compiled from the source in the package, however… but people may not have caught it.

The easiest way to check whether you have the correct version or not ( so I know if there really IS a speed issue or not ) is if you get sound. The old EXE has no sound, the correct one does. Those who have tested my game, could you double check that you’re using the correct EXE, please?

Again, if you want to make sure I’ve not just fixed something and tried to put that up, you can compile the source yourself, and can check the source for the framelock code in code/engine/CInterpret.cpp and the updateInterfaces function, which does a nasty hacky SDL-specific framelock to 60FPS.. I’m sure FRAPS or something will be able to detect the FPS of the game, and tell you whether it’s framelocked or not.

I do apologise for this and will make sure I properly test things in the next Ludum Dare!

The dust has barely settled, but I’m throwing up a post mortem anyway…

Moons of Subterrane was interesting in that for the most part, nothing went wrong.
I had been feeling a bit ill and stuff, so didn’t do the full 48hr run, I perhaps did 24hrs instead…
So in keeping with my previous post-mortems, the good, bad and ugly -

The Good:
As said, nothing really went wrong during the work I did.
Adding things was really easy due to the way I had set it up – albeit slightly convoluted in that maps and enemies/stations are in different files.
The system kinda worked like a database to that effect… where each room was designed in a text editor and given a room number, and the map just referenced the room numbers. All data was loaded in on level load ( which can cause a pause or two )
Enemy spawners and flight paths were relatively easy to add as well.
Seeing as I did miniLD11 with Little Quirks ( which I’ve still been working on ) I was a lot more confident with the engine and how things worked, or should work, which was probably how I managed so well this time

The Bad:
Again, I didn’t really factor much time in for sounds.. and a ZX Spectrum could beat the sounds I did!
Testing was quite tricky as well, as the levels can be quite involving.
Also, no animations… so everything’s a static sprite – doesn’t look quite so good as it could’ve been but then, I’m no artist!

The Ugly:
The submission phase… heh… I buggered this up spectacularly and only just realised after I got a comment stating it was far too fast.
The game was coded primarily on a Linux box, and I had a Windows laptop setup to do win32 builds on. I tested and built the correct binary, but somehow transferred an older binary to my Linux box when packing things up. Same thing happened with the Dingoo and Wiz builds ( they should work but just not have input, instead they crash due to other factors which I fixed this morning. )
Now, I have updated my entry with a fixed exe to download.. but this is tricky though as my original submission does have a broken exe – HOWEVER, and here’s the fun bit.. I included full source in that package and if you were to compile an exe from that source, you’d get the correct working version!
Also, I did put up various versions on my site, as I had some other people who were testing my game throughout the duration on Windows for me.
You can find them all here:
http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/gamez/ludumdare/ld15/

(The submitted package is: MoonsOfSubterrane-LD15.7z and the Win32 fix is: SGZ2D.exe)
You’ll see that the exe in hour 44 does infact work at the correct pace ( without sound.. though the sound is so dire and you’ll be probably turning it off anyway ), and you can check the source in the submitted package: specifically line 132 onwards (the updateInterfaces function) in Source/code/engine/CInterpret.cpp – there lies the nasty hacky SDL specific framelimit code – which obviously isn’t active in the submitted exe.

Also… KATE on Linux seems to do stuff to the files it edits, as on Windows they seem to have extra blank lines between every normal line.. hmm..

So yea, although nothing technically went wrong during the competition, and I was surprised at that, I managed to bugger up the submission in spectacular style, instead! Woo!

Well, more or less…

I only got the first seven levels done – the entire Moon of Chronos, and the first two sectors of Kala. Rest are repeats of Chronos with slightly different gravity pulls, and textures.

But wow, I felt it was complete enough to actually submit!
Here’s some screenshots of the past few hours:

But it’s all submitted now so, hope you have fun playing it as I have had making it this weekend
Even if I did only spend about a day all in on it due to feeling a bit bleh…
Good Luck to everyone that entered!

That’s me reached my third milestone!
Seems like it’s third time lucky, this time ( this is my third main ludumdare ) and I might actually really finish this on time

Obligatory screenshot:

All game mechanics are implemented and work, it’s now a case of sorting the levels out properly, and sound!
There’s meant to be 25 levels in all ( or atleast, I’ve made space for 25 levels) – five areas per moon.
Each moon has a different graphic set ( read, I’ve changed the colours in GIMP ) and a different amount of rooms per cavern. Your first moon – Chronos – starts with 4×4 caves, whereas the last moon – Wenut – will have 8×8 caves.
Oh and be warned, the gravity changes per sector Chronos Sector 1 is fairly light, Sector 2 is heavy as sin, but 3 – 5 are about average.

Currently, Chronos is complete… though some of the rooms could be tightened up a bit, but it works for the moment. Rest of the moons are just repeats of Chronos for the time being.
Playable is here – http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/gamez/ludumdare/ld15/MoonsOfSubterrane-44.7z

Now for some sound!

Scarily, LD15 ends in about 14 and a half hours.. I’ve still a lot to do, most important of which is getting font support in for some feedback!
Some sounds wouldn’t go amiss either…

However, the onslaught of nasties continues as base spawners have been implemented.
Here’s a bit in the first sector of the first moon that’s somewhat nasty:

I had just destroyed the one on the right when the screenshot clicked they take quite a beating though but at least they stay dead! There’s also a puff of smoke when something collides with a bullet or enemy. Definitely crying out for sound effects now!

What’s left in Order of Importance:
Fonts.
Picking up Researchers and Repairing ( as you can still shoot stuff so, yea..  I can change the game to destroy all enemy spawners if need be )
Sounds.
Some actual level design ( though the way the levels are built, I could whip up a lot of them in the last two hours quite easily. )

Nicities:
Frontend.
Music.

Current playable with four spawners is here: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/gamez/ludumdare/ld15/MoonsOfSubterrane-32.7z
It’s getting there.. and I might actually finish for a change!