win32 binary file: http://triorph.surrealix.com/MikeIsAwesome_win32.zip

and of course, original linux source at http://triorph.surrealix.com/ludumdare-triorph.zip

everything is unchanged, just ported for windows.. no fixing bugs and making things work differently, judge as harshly as you want.

green player: up -> accelerate, down->deccelerate, left->rotate anticlockwise, right->rotate clockwis, enter/return -> shoot

blue player: W -> accelerate, S->deccelerate, A->rotate anticlockwise, D->rotate clockwise, Q->shoot

Having trouble difficulty porting this to windows, but here is my final copy for linux at least. I will add the windows port slightly later.

source can be found at http://triorph.surrealix.com/ludumdare-triorph.zip

keys are up/down/left/right/enter for p1 and WASDQ for p2

http://triorph.surrealix.com/ludumdare.zip

Feedback is appreciated, especially if it doesn’t compile.. So far only linux ports should be available, although feel free to check if it works under windows, you will need sdl-mixer, sdl-image, sdl-ttf, sdl, and g++ to compile it.

player 1’s keys are up, down, left, right, and enter/return for shoot

player 2’s keys are W, S, A, D, and Q for shoot.

To begin with, the game’s AI has control of both players, choose a character for yourself and press a key to disable the AI.

I have added an AI into this game, its very aggressive, and it kinda gets to *cheat* as well (can instantly change its angle, i may change this later but for now its better). It sometimes gets caught trying to maneuvre between planets. I just made screencaptures of my game, but am feeling sleepy and its too difficult to make a movie out of them. Anyway i’ve decided to post at least one of them here.

Particles follow gravity paths just like most of the other stuff does, looks pretty cool. Tomorrow morning, going to add configuration files, sound, and maybe a menu.. so i’ll see you all when i get up (probably only gonna get 3 hours of sleep :S)

Working copy of the game, have one of my friends here playing it with me.. The merging of the planets now goes to an appropriate position, but generally happens too fast so you just get a few of them in one point.. Momentum is not conserved yet either but it still seems to look ok.

Each ship can shoot 5 sets of bullets (each has its own  “trail”, as you can see in the picture above, which lets you see it curve etc..), whenever the bullets hit the edge of the map, another player, or a planet, they let you shoot again. Bullets now curve appropriately based on the gravitational pull of the planets. I removed the background because not only does it look more minimalistic without it, but it also looks better without it.

Next step is to provide a “stability” factor for the planets, where they will split into several planets if its not stable enough, the stability can be decreased by shooting the planets. This should help offset the fact that all the planets just merge together, I’d also like to get some particles flying round the screen that nothing, just to give the feel of the scales when the screen zooms out.

Since i’m making pretty good time with such a simple idea, I will also be trying to get an AI done for this.. although the only previous experience i’ve had with programming an AI was for “hunt the wumpus” (check wikipedia).. so no guarentees of its awesomeness.

Once all thats done i’ll be making some config file loader (like an ini file) for changing settings, because currently the only way toproperly customise it all is through the source code.

Latest screenshot of my game.. Getting the spaceship(s) moving around properly, gravity effects them and planets will combine when they intersect (although there are still a few kinks with that — momentum is not properly conserved upon merging).

When the planets reach the edge of the map,it “zooms” out to incorporate them (although the background doesn’t change yet,so it looks pretty stupid). Also these screen changes don’t maintain the screen ratio, so everything often gets quite skewed. Ships crashing into planets does nothing yet..

The next step is to add the bullets and shooting in, and to differentiate input between the single ships. I’m thinking that when the bullets collide with planets, it will split them apart into smaller chunks again.

I also think it would be a good idea to have a central “neutral” gravity point (like a sun) that everything can rotate around.. Because at the moment everything just merges into one group (and now those merge into larger planets).

Anyway now is as good as time as ever for sleep, since I am feeling quite tired.. gonna get up early tomorrow though and work work work (had friends over today, so had a good 2-3 hours doing not-programming)

hey hey its updates galore..

we’ve had dinner, lasagne + bread + coleslaw deliciously made by surrealix’s mum.

i’ve also got some a few screenies of my game, was having alot of trouble with the planets not being attracted to each other properly, then it turns out I was treating the angle returned by atan2 as degrees, when it was radians (i did that before when i was practicing as well, fool me twice).

As you can see, everything looks very “minimalistic” (and if you disagree, you’re wrong)

I have an idea, its not too minimalist, so it’ll have to be a small game (which ludum does by default anyway).

anyway, i’ll be back later with a prototype so cool..

This will be my first time entering this competition, some friends of mine are doing it for the first time as well and they suggested that I joined in with them. Since its the University holidays down here in NZ, I figured why not? Unfortunately its been a while since I did any gaming, so I’ve had to have been doing some practice to get myself into gear. Been using openGL through SDL to use 3D graphics to render 2D, and it seems to be the smoothest looking game I’ve written ever so far. So this could be promising, hopefully I’ll be able to apply this knowledge to make a kickass game for the competition (but like many other people, I shall make no promises of quality).

bit about me: My name’s Michael, I’m in my second professional year (third year) of computer engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Although I consider myself to be quite good at programming, I don’t spend that much spare time on it. Instead I game a ridiculous amount of time.