So I’ve got around to compiling my 2GB of screenshots into a timelapse. You can see a long period at the start when visitors came round and I got absolutely no work done, but things get more and more frantic as the deadline approaches.

It looks like I never slept – but this is because there’s no screenshots from when the computer was off.

http://www.surrealix.com/ludumdare/timelapse.html

Well, it’s here!

A Windows port of ‘The Butler Did It‘ is now available for download. It’s unchanged from the linux version (except the bits coded so badly the compiler wouldn’t let me get away with).

Download, run, and keep trying until it manages to start without crashing.

Windows Binary (zip, 2.5 mb)

Congratulations to everyone who finished, or even just attempted the LD11. I really enjoyed it, and will be back for more!

I’ve slept 2 hours in the last 2-and-a-bit days, and am seeing triple. Had a meeting this afternoon with three of my course advisors, and could barely stagger along in my Monday evening social sport.

Regardless, I managed to hold up long enough to also fix some show stopping bugs, and write a comprehensive guide to playing “The Butler Did It”. Original unplayable version is still available if you want to use it for judging (*ouch*), but give this one a whirl and catch a murderer.

Looking forward to a good long sleep, and then working my way through 60 minimalistic games. Probably a windows port of TBDI, too.

This is a whodunnit. Minimal clues, minimal interaction, and a very minimal appearance.

A crime has been committed in Lord Fletcher’s manor. Someone has been murdered.

Upon arriving at the scene, you are told who is deceased, where their body was found, and what they were murdered with. You must interview the residents, trace their movements, and ascertain the identity of the killer.

The murderer, being unlikely to confess, will fabricate lies. The innocent residents, however, will tell the truth. By careful deduction and investigation, you will slowly build up a picture of the crime, and catch the guilty party.

Pretty screenshot.

Playable Version : Ubuntu Binary + Source (rar, 1.8mb)

Windows Port : Windows Binary (zip, 2.5mb)

It may crash on startup, so keep trying until it runs :/

Under linux, you’ll need OpenSceneGraph-1.2.2 to compile it (apt-get libopenscenegraph-dev)

(The originally uploaded version had major bugs in the interface, making the game unplayable. If you really want, you can still grab it here)

Yay!

After many, many, many hours, the murder generator is now working. It will generate, consistent with the house, a mystery for you to solve. I’ve now got 2 hours to write an interface for it, and until that happens (or doesn’t, depending on how well things go), here’s a screenshot of the console.

Exciting! It shows where each person was over time, and then an output of the logic used to solve the murder. Note that it generates this differently each time (aren’t I proud).

Oh and a footnote. It seems to have developed memory issues, and crashes nearly 50% of the startups. At this stage, this is something people will have to live with :/

The house is now generated, both graphically and topologically (so characters no longer teleport between rooms on opposite sides of the house).

One worry I have is that these short ‘whodunnits’ are going to prove too difficult or unintuitive for most people to solve. I guess it’s a very specific target audience.

I was planning on posting this 2 hours ago, but it took a little longer than I expected to get it working. This is the 2 hallways and parlour, generated differently each time.  A number of rooms branch off the hallways (not visible here), in one of which the murder takes place.

I’m devoting the next few hours to implementing the timeline – sorting out who goes where, when.

A late lunch on day 2 (Sunday), we picked up pizza to maximize coding time.
Triorph on the bottom left, I’m on the right.

After being otherwise occupied for several hours and eating tea, it was good to get back to work on the whodunnit. In the last few hours I’ve not written any code, nor drawn any art, but I have produced a prodigal amount of waste paper. The end result is that the algorithms which drive the scenarios (it’s dynamically generated each time) seem to be working – at least on paper.

The camera’s gone walkabouts, so pictures of the mess will be up later. Tomorrow is implementing everything, but for now I’m off to bed.

and kicking. It also runs.

I’ve decided upon a type of who-dunnit-mystery-game (minimal clues), though I’ve yet to pin down the details. I’m going for a very minimalist art style (obviously), but also a fairly minimalistic puzzle style gameplay. More updates as I figure things out.

Anyhow, here’s what’s on screen after hour 5.

To add to the conglomeration of photos, here’s my workspace for the moment.

So I’m planning on entering LD for the first time. I’ve wanted to do this for a while, but awkward times (for those of us in New Zealand) have put a dampener on the last few. Not this time though!

I’m going to use C++ & OpenSceneGraph, and probably openAL for sound. My previous games were developed in VisualBasic & DirectX, so things may be a little interesting. Experience wise, I’m studying my final year of Engineering, and have been programming for ages. I rarely manage to finish anything I start, but with any luck I’ll contain feature creep enough to write something playable during the competition. LD11 here we come.