I did it again. Yesterday I started to whack up some “nice” physics stuff, thinking I’d have it covered quite soon by lifting some collision algorithm code from Real-Time Collision Detection book.

That was a mistake, and it certainly isn’t the first time I have done it. The stuff by itself worked well in single-frame test cases and I have tested the algos beforehand on that level, which fooled me to think this would be quite easy. But making things move and then testing borderline cases, that usually uncovers things to fix which takes a lot of time, and are still necessary to make the whole thing robust enough. So, once again, when in hurry, one should rely a bit more on tried&tested stuff than making something new.

So yesterday I spent most of my day just tweaking that stuff and not working on the other parts. I had built a nice hierarchical level structure, but I was relying that I’d build simple editor stuff for it, so for now it’s more or less unusable as well. After trying to fix the system I just finally got tired (and slightly angry) enough and went to sleep.

So, if I want to continue with the idea, I’d have to integrate some phys. lib in and try to fix the stuff work with it.. and create an editor.. and make some levels.. and all the other polishing. I’d say it’s quite probable that there won’t be an entry for me this time. I still might tinker around with the pieces for fun though.

(0 days 19 hours 10 minutes left)

My wife just cooked a delicious meal for us, “fishballs and chinese cabbage in ma po -sauce”, or something of the sort.

Oh and I have had some progress with the entry as well. Mostly just structure and algorithm design, since I’m still having only a blank screen.

(1 days 11 hours 56 minutes left)

At morning I just checked out the theme and left home for other things. I just came back to home a while ago, having iterated through over a few ideas… I also discussed the theme and ideas both with my wife and my friend. I think I have now settled with some stuff to work on. It’s clearly too much work to do all the things I’d want to do (once again?). Still I think I can reduce/simplify it to something worth trying.

I just copied over the example framework of Turs2 library which I used last time as well.. although I think this time I’ll stick with some 2D graphics and not make a full 3d game like last time.

Here’s a photo of my first scribblings.

(1 days 14 hours 55 minutes left)

It’s done, and it is called “warrior”. So I’m continuing my naming scheme from previous LD compos - but in minimalist fashion, not having a prefix for it. It’s a railshooter where you only have to aim with mouse and shoot by clicking.
DOWNLOAD:

•  warrior by tonic for windows (or get the source)

02:21
Now it’s starting to be finished, time to start making some final packaging and so on. Another screenshot from the irrEdit.

02:36
Final fixes done, now for the packaging.

03:01
Tweaked a bit more after all, converting samples to more compact format and moving most of data files to gamedata.zip. Now it’s time to make the release (candidate) zip and perhaps call it done!

03:07
Took a screenshot of the final version.

23:34
Added the score counter and created a README info file.

01:23
Got the player route roughly finished. Looks like this will be a “2 minutes” -game. I also added a simple ending screen. There’s still work to do, have to populate the later half of player route
with enemies.

21:00
Level creation and tweaking takes so much time.. Time to take a break and eat something. Then I’ll probably fix in some audio stuff and perhaps score/damage counting or something.

22:03
Fixed the tune a bit. Music is now playing and samples are played as well.

23:00
Title screen and its camera movement is now done. Score counter is still missing and the level still needs a lot of work.

19:45
Made some subtle differences to enemy spawn/movement behaviors.

20:09
Now it is finally starting to resemble a game… only if there would be more stuff in the level.

17:28
Yay, first enemies spawning from the level data. Now it’s about
time to make even some simple movement logic for them!

10:51
Woke up to find out my comp had bluescreened, how annoying. And no, I didn’t leave my game running for the night!

13:00
Defined base of enemy script and enemy movement systems and made some first proof-of-concept protos of them.

15:29
Tweaked way too long trying some different material choices for bullets and still settling for a really simple one. Firing, bullet movement and collision detection with enemies is now done. Now it’s time for a small break to eat something, and then I’ll work on constructing enemy script from level data.

16:52
Actually I once more had to enhance the route system to ease the content creation a bit. Let’s see if I can now add more enemies. Screenshot from level editing.

21:27
Felt like making some music for the game, so now it’s done (for now).

22:14
Seems I was longing for more break from developing, as I tweaked some more visual tricks for the level, and spent quite some time with sfxr making some funny sound effects.

22:34
Ate some more pizza, now I’ll start hacking with the code again.

01:41
Time to stop for now and go to sleep. I already took a break, i.e. I didn’t work fully for the past three hours. I got new path stuff done and also made an aiming arrow which follows mouse.

16:53
Made some camera path tests. Feeling hungry, so it’s time for a break.

18:35
Went to buy a large pizza and ate part of it. Rest of it will probably keep me going for the whole compo.. after digesting it and thinking about some impl. details, I’m ready to continue
actual development.

20:18
Ditched the previous path thingy. Decided just to make numbered nodes (w/prefixes) in irrEdit to define camera/object path, and system for it is maybe halfway done now. Can’t resist myself doing small tweaks for the visuals as well.

16:00
Created some more objects and refined visuals a bit. I have also
been annoyed by buggy ATI drivers, having to reboot the computer.
I have also looked through irr API a bit (I’m using Irrlicht).

PS. The timestamps I’m posting are from Finland (UTC+3 w/dst).

14:19
I have thought out about the concept and mostly done some
tests regarding what direction to take with the visualization.
I’ll try to take the theme “minimalism” into account in several
ways - visuals, gameplay and possibly audio as well. But still
trying to make it feel good.

10:00
Woke up to check the theme and then went back to bed.

11:10
I got up from the bed and I’m now waiting for coffee machine to do
its thing. I thought maybe I could win the theme category by not
submitting an entry at all. That should be pretty minimal?
Naturally I would fail every other aspect. Oh well, I guess I’ll
still try to make a bit better effort.

11:40

I’m finished!